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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867

Author: Various


        
Release date: March 9, 2009 [eBook #28285]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 20, NO. 121, NOVEMBER, 1867 ***




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







THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

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


VOL. XX.--NOVEMBER, 1867.--NO. CXXI.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, 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.




THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.


CHAPTER XXXI.

MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY CONSULTS WITH JACOB PENHALLOW, ESQUIRE.

Lawyer Penhallow was seated in his study, his day's work over, his feet
in slippers, after the comfortable but inelegant fashion which Sir
Walter Scott reprobates, amusing himself with a volume of old Reports.
He was a knowing man enough, a keen country lawyer, but honest, and
therefore less ready to suspect the honesty of others. He had a great
belief in his young partner's ability, and, though he knew him to be
astute, did not think him capable of roguery.

It was at his request that Mr. Bradshaw had undertaken his journey,
which, as he believed,--and as Mr. Bradshaw had still stronger evidence
of a strictly confidential nature which led him to feel sure,--would end
in the final settlement of the great land claim in favor of their
client. The case had been dragging along from year to year, like an
English chancery suit; and while courts and lawyers and witnesses had
been sleeping, the property had been steadily growing. A railroad had
passed close to one margin of the township, some mines had been opened
in the county, in which a village calling itself a city had grown big
enough to have a newspaper and Fourth of July orations. It was plain
that the successful issue of the long process would make the heirs of
the late Malachi Withers possessors of an ample fortune, and it was also
plain that the firm of Penhallow and Bradshaw were like to receive, in
such case, the largest fee that had gladdened the professional existence
of its members.

Mr. Penhallow had his book open before him, but his thoughts were
wandering from the page. He was thinking of his absent partner, and the
probable results of his expedition. What would be the consequence if all
this property came into the possession of Silence Withers? Could she
have any liberal intentions with reference to Myrtle Hazard, the young
girl who had grown up with her, or was the common impression true, that
she was bent on endowing an institution, and thus securing for herself a
favorable consideration in the higher courts, where her beneficiaries
would be, it might be supposed, influential advocates? He could not help
thinking that Mr. Bradshaw believed that Myrtle Hazard would eventually
come to a part at least of this inheritance. For the story was, that he
was paying his court to the young lady whenever he got an opportunity,
and that he was cultivating an intimacy with Miss Cynthia Badlam.
"Bradshaw wouldn't make a move in that direction," Mr. Penhallow said to
himself, "until he felt pretty sure that it was going to be a paying
business. If he was only a young minister now, there'd be no difficulty
about it. Let any man, young or old, in a clerical white cravat, step up
to Myrtle Hazard, and ask her to be miserable in his company through
this wretched life, and Aunt Silence would very likely give them her
blessing, and add something to it that the man in the white cravat would
think worth even more than that was. But I don't know what she'll say to
Bradshaw. Perhaps he'd better have a hint to go to meeting a little more
regularly. However, I suppose he knows what he's about."

He was thinking all this over when a visitor was announced, and Mr.
Byles Gridley entered the study.

"Good evening, Mr. Penhallow," Mr. Gridley said, wiping his forehead.
"Quite warm, isn't it, this evening?"

"Warm!" said Mr. Penhallow, "I should think it would freeze pretty thick
to-night. I should have asked you to come up to the fire and warm
yourself. But take off your coat, Mr. Gridley,--very glad to see you.
You don't come to the house half as often as you come to the office. Sit
down, sit down."

Mr. Gridley took off his outside coat and sat down. "He does look warm,
doesn't he?" Mr. Penhallow thought. "Wonder what has heated up the old
gentleman so. Find out quick enough, for he always goes straight to
business."

"Mr. Penhallow," Mr. Gridley began at once, "I have come on a very grave
matter, in which you are interested as well as myself, and I wish to
lay the whole of it before you as explicitly as I can, so that we may
settle this night before I go what is to be done. I am afraid the good
standing of your partner, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, is concerned in
the matter. Would it be a surprise to you, if he had carried his
acuteness in some particular case like the one I am to mention beyond
the prescribed limits?"

The question was put so diplomatically that there was no chance for an
indignant denial of the possibility of Mr. Bradshaw's being involved in
any discreditable transaction.

"It is possible," he answered, "that Bradshaw's keen wits may have
betrayed him into sharper practice than I should altogether approve in
any business we carried on together. He is a very knowing young man, but
I can't think he is foolish enough, to say nothing of his honesty, to
make any false step of the kind you seem to hint. I think he might on
occasion go pretty near the line, but I don't believe he would cross
it."

"Permit me a few questions, Mr. Penhallow. You settled the estate of the
late Malachi Withers, did you not?"

"Mr. Wibird and myself settled it together."

"Have you received any papers from any of the family since the
settlement of the estate?"

"Let me see. Yes; a roll of old plans of the Withers Place, and so
forth,--not of much use, but labelled and kept. An old trunk with
letters and account-books, some of them in Dutch,--mere curiosities. A
year ago or more, I remember that Silence sent me over some papers she
had found in an odd corner,--the old man hid things like a magpie. I
looked over most of them,--trumpery not worth keeping,--old leases and
so forth."

"Do you recollect giving some of them to Mr. Bradshaw to look over?"

"Now I come to think of it, I believe I did; but he reported to me, if I
remember right, that they amounted to nothing."

"If any of those papers were of importance, should you think your junior
partner ought to keep them from your knowledge?"

"I need not answer that question, Mr. Gridley. Will you be so good as to
come at once to the facts on which you found your suspicions, and which
lead you to put these questions to me?"

Thereupon Mr. Gridley proceeded to state succinctly the singular
behavior of Murray Bradshaw in taking one paper from a number handed to
him by Mr. Penhallow, and concealing it in a volume. He related how he
was just on the point of taking out the volume which contained the
paper, when Mr. Bradshaw entered and disconcerted him. He had, however,
noticed three spots on the paper by which he should know it anywhere. He
then repeated the substance of Kitty Fagan's story, accenting the fact
that she too noticed three remarkable spots on the paper which Mr.
Bradshaw had pointed out to Miss Badlam as the one so important to both
of them. Here he rested the case for the moment.

Mr. Penhallow looked thoughtful. There was something questionable in the
aspect of this business. It did obviously suggest the idea of an
underhand arrangement with Miss Cynthia, possibly involving some very
grave consequences. It would have been most desirable, he said, to have
ascertained what these papers, or rather this particular paper, to which
so much importance was attached, amounted to. Without that knowledge
there was nothing, after all, which it might not be possible to explain.
He might have laid aside the spotted paper to examine for some object of
mere curiosity. It was certainly odd that the one the Fagan woman had
seen should present three spots so like those on the other paper, but
people did sometimes throw _treys_ at backgammon, and that which not
rarely happened with two dice of six faces _might_ happen if they had
sixty or six hundred faces. On the whole, he did not see that there was
any ground, so far, for anything more than a vague suspicion. He
thought it not unlikely that Mr. Bradshaw was a little smitten with the
young lady up at The Poplars, and that he had made some diplomatic
overtures to the duenna, after the approved method of suitors. She was
young for Bradshaw,--very young,--but he knew his own affairs. If he
chose to make love to a child, it was natural enough that he should
begin by courting her nurse.

Master Byles Gridley lost himself for half a minute in a most
discreditable inward discussion as to whether Laura Penhallow was
probably one or two years older than Mr. Bradshaw. That was his way,--he
could not help it. He could not think of anything without these mental
parentheses. But he came back to business at the end of his half-minute.

"I can lay the package before you at this moment, Mr. Penhallow. I have
induced that woman in whose charge it was left to intrust it to my
keeping, with the express intention of showing it to you. But it is
protected by a seal, as I have told you, which I should on no account
presume to meddle with."

Mr. Gridley took out the package of papers.

"How damp it is!" Mr. Penhallow said; "must have been lying in some very
moist neighborhood."

"Very," Mr. Gridley answered, with a peculiar expression which said,
"Never mind about that."

"Did the party give you possession of these documents without making any
effort to retain them?" the lawyer asked.

"Not precisely. It cost some effort to induce Miss Badlam to let them go
out of her hands. I hope you think I was justified in making the effort
I did, not without a considerable strain upon my feelings, as well as
her own, to get hold of the papers?"

"That will depend something on what the papers prove to be, Mr. Gridley.
A man takes a certain responsibility in doing just what you have done.
If, for instance, it should prove that this envelope contained matters
relating solely to private transactions between Mr. Bradshaw and Miss
Badlam, concerning no one but themselves,--and if the words on the back
of the envelope and the seal had been put there merely as a protection
for a package containing private papers of a delicate but perfectly
legitimate character--"

The lawyer paused, as careful experts do, after bending the bow of an
hypothesis, before letting the arrow go. Mr. Gridley felt very warm
indeed, uncomfortably so, and applied his handkerchief to his face.
Couldn't be anything in such a violent supposition as that,--and yet
such a crafty fellow as that Bradshaw,--what trick was he not up to?
Absurd! Cynthia was not acting,--Rachel wouldn't be equal to such a
performance!--"why then, Mr. Gridley," the lawyer continued, "I don't
see but what my partner would have you at an advantage, and, if disposed
to make you uncomfortable, could do so pretty effectively. But this, you
understand, is only a supposed case, and not a very likely one. I don't
think it would have been prudent in you to meddle with that seal. But it
is a very different matter with regard to myself. It makes no
difference, so far as I am concerned, where this package came from, or
how it was obtained. It is just as absolutely within my control as any
piece of property I call my own. I should not hesitate, if I saw fit, to
break this seal at once, and proceed to the examination of any papers
contained within the envelope. If I found any paper of the slightest
importance relating to the estate, I should act as if it had never been
out of my possession.

"Suppose, however, I chose to know what was in the package, and, having
ascertained, act my judgment about returning it to the party from whom
you obtained it. In such case I might see fit to restore, or cause it to
be restored, to the party, without any marks of violence having been
used being apparent. If everything is not right, probably no questions
would be asked by the party having charge of the package. If there is no
underhand work going on, and the papers are what they profess to be,
nobody is compromised but yourself, so far as I can see, and you are
compromised at any rate, Mr. Gridley, at least in the good graces of the
party from whom you obtained the documents. Tell that party that I took
the package without opening it, and shall return it, very likely,
without breaking the seal. Will consider of the matter, say a couple of
days. Then you shall hear from me, and she shall hear from you. So. So.
Yes, that's it. A nice business. A thing to sleep on. You had better
leave the whole matter of dealing with the package to me. If I see fit
to send it back with the seal unbroken, that is my affair. But keep
perfectly quiet, if you please, Mr. Gridley, about the whole matter. Mr.
Bradshaw is off, as you know, and the business on which he is gone is
important,--very important. He can be depended on for that; he has acted
all along as if he had a personal interest in the success of our firm
beyond his legal relation to it."

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Penhallow's light burned very late in the office that night, and the
following one. He looked troubled and absent-minded, and, when Miss
Laura ventured to ask him how long Mr. Bradshaw was like to be gone,
answered her in such a way that the girl who waited at table concluded
that he didn't mean to have Miss Laury keep company with Mr. Bradshaw,
or he'd never have spoke so dreadful hash to her when she ahst about
him.


CHAPTER XXXII.

SUSAN POSEY'S TRIAL.

A day or two after Myrtle Hazard returned to the village, Master Byles
Gridley, accompanied by Gifted Hopkins, followed her, as has been
already mentioned, to the same scene of the principal events of this
narrative. The young man had been persuaded that it would be doing
injustice to his talents to crowd their fruit prematurely upon the
market. He carried his manuscript back with him, having relinquished the
idea of publishing for the present. Master Byles Gridley, on the other
hand, had in his pocket a very flattering proposal from the same
publisher to whom he had introduced the young poet, for a new and
revised edition of his work, "Thoughts on the Universe," which was to be
remodelled in some respects, and to have a new title not quite so
formidable to the average reader.

It would be hardly fair to Susan Posey to describe with what delight and
innocent enthusiasm she welcomed back Gifted Hopkins. She had been so
lonely since he was away! She had read such of his poems as she
possessed--duplicates of his printed ones, or autographs which he had
kindly written out for her--over and over again, not without the sweet
tribute of feminine sensibility, which is the most precious of all
testimonials to a poet's power over the heart. True, her love belonged
to another,--but then she was so used to Gifted! She did so love to hear
him read his poems,--and Clement had never written that "little bit of a
poem to Susie," which she had asked him for so long ago! She received
him therefore with open arms,--not literally, of course, which would
have been a breach of duty and propriety, but in a figurative sense,
which it is hoped no reader will interpret to her discredit.

The young poet was in need of consolation. It is true that he had seen
many remarkable sights during his visit to the city; that he had got
"smarted up," as his mother called it, a good deal; that he had been to
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's party, where he had looked upon life in all its
splendors; and that he brought back many interesting experiences, which
would serve to enliven his conversation for a long time. But he had
failed in the great enterprise he had undertaken. He was forced to
confess to his revered parent, and his esteemed friend Susan Posey, that
his genius, which was freely acknowledged, was not thought to be quite
ripe as yet. He told the young lady some particulars of his visit to the
publisher, how he had listened with great interest to one of his
poems,--"The Triumph of Song,"--how he had treated him with marked and
flattering attention; but that he advised him not to risk anything
prematurely, giving him the hope that _by and by_ he would be admitted
into that series of illustrious authors which it was the publisher's
privilege to present to the reading public. In short, he was advised not
to print. That was the net total of the matter, and it was a pang to the
susceptible heart of the poet. He had hoped to have come home enriched
by the sale of his copyright, and with the prospect of seeing his name
before long on the back of a handsome volume.

Gifted's mother did all in her power to console him in his
disappointment.--There was plenty of jealous people always that wanted
to keep young folks from rising in the world. Never mind, she didn't
believe but what Gifted could make jest as good verses as any of them
that they kept such a talk about.--She had a fear that he might pine
away in consequence of the mental excitement he had gone through, and
solicited his appetite with her choicest appliances,--of which he
partook in a measure which showed that there was no immediate cause of
alarm.

But Susan Posey was more than a consoler,--she was an angel to him in
this time of his disappointment. "Read me all the poems over again," she
said,--"it is almost the only pleasure I have left, to hear you read
your beautiful verses." Clement Lindsay had not written to Susan quite
as often of late as at some former periods of the history of their love.
Perhaps it was that which had made her look paler than usual for some
little time. Something was evidently preying on her. Her only delight
seemed to be in listening to Gifted as he read, sometimes with fine
declamatory emphasis, sometimes in low, tremulous tones, the various
poems enshrined in his manuscript. At other times she was sad, and more
than once Mrs. Hopkins had seen a tear steal down her innocent cheek,
when there seemed to be no special cause for grief. She ventured to
speak of it to Master Byles Gridley.

"Our Susan's in trouble, Mr. Gridley, for some reason or other that's
unbeknown to me, and I can't help wishing you could jest have a few
words with her. You're a kind of a grandfather, you know, to all the
young folks, and they'd tell you pretty much everything about
themselves. I calc'late she isn't at ease in her mind about somethin' or
other, and I kind o' think, Mr. Gridley, you could coax it out of her."

"Was there ever anything like it?" said Master Byles Gridley to himself.
"I shall have all the young folks in Oxbow Village to take care of at
this rate! Susan Posey in trouble, too! Well, well, well, it's easier to
get a birch-bark canoe off the shallows than a big ship off the rocks.
Susan Posey's trouble will be come at easily enough; but Myrtle Hazard
floats in deeper water. We must make Susan Posey tell her own story, or
let her tell it, for it will all come out of itself."

       *       *       *       *       *

"I am going to dust the books in the open shelves this morning. I wonder
if Miss Susan Posey wouldn't like to help for half an hour or so,"
Master Gridley remarked at the breakfast-table.

The amiable girl's very pleasant countenance lighted up at the thought
of obliging the old man who had been so kind to her and so liberal to
her friend, the poet. She would be delighted to help him; she would dust
them all for him, if he wanted her to. No, Master Gridley said, he
always wanted to have a hand in it; and, besides, such a little body as
she was could not lift those great folios out of the lower shelves
without overstraining herself; she might handle the musketry and the
light artillery, but he must deal with the heavy guns himself. "As low
down as the octavos, Susan Posey, you shall govern; below that, the
Salic law."

Susan did not know much about the Salic law; but she knew he meant that
he would dust the big books and she would attend to the little ones.

A very young and a very pretty girl is sometimes quite charming in a
costume which thinks of nothing less than of being attractive. Susan
appeared after breakfast in the study, her head bound with a kerchief of
bright pattern, a little jacket she had outgrown buttoned, in spite of
opposition, close about her up to the throat, round which a white
handkerchief was loosely tied, and a pair of old gauntlets protecting
her hands, so that she suggested something between a gypsy, a jaunty
_soubrette_, and the _fille du regiment_.

Master Gridley took out a great volume from the lower shelf,--a folio in
massive oaken covers with clasps like prison hinges, bearing the stately
colophon, white on a ground of vermilion, of Nicholas Jenson and his
associates. He opened the volume,--paused over its blue and scarlet
initial letter,--he turned page after page, admiring its brilliant
characters, its broad, white marginal rivers, and the narrower white
creek that separated the black-typed twin-columns,--he turned back to
the beginning and read the commendatory paragraph, "_Nam ipsorum omnia
fulgent tum correctione dignissima, tum cura imprimendo splendida ac
miranda_," and began reading, "_Incipit proemium super apparatum
decretalium_ ..." when it suddenly occurred to him that this was not
exactly doing what he had undertaken to do, and he began whisking an
ancient bandanna about the ears of the venerable volume. All this time
Miss Susan Posey was catching the little books by the small of their
backs, pulling them out, opening them, and clapping them together,
'p-'p-'p! 'p-'p-'p! and carefully caressing all their edges with a
regular professional dusting-cloth, so persuasively that they yielded up
every particle that a year had drifted upon them, and came forth
refreshed and rejuvenated. This process went on for a while, until Susan
had worked down among the octavos, and Master Gridley had worked up
among the quartos. He had got hold of Calmet's Dictionary, and was
caught by the article Solomon, so that he forgot his occupation again.
All at once it struck him that everything was very silent,--the
'p-'p-'p! of clapping the books had ceased, and the light rustle of
Susan's dress was no longer heard. He looked up and saw her standing
perfectly still, with a book in one hand and her duster in the other.
She was lost in thought, and by the shadow on her face and the
glistening of her blue eyes he knew it was her hidden sorrow that had
just come back to her. Master Gridley shut up his book, leaving Solomon
to his fate, like the worthy Benedictine he was reading, without
discussing the question whether he was saved or not.

"Susan Posey, child, what is your trouble?"

Poor Susan was in the state of unstable equilibrium which the least
touch upsets, and fell to crying. It took her some time to get down the
waves of emotion so that speech would live upon them. At last it
ventured out,--showing at intervals, like the boat rising on the billow,
sinking into the hollow, and climbing again into notice.

"O Mr. Grid--ley--I can't--I can't--tell you or--any--body--what's the
mat--mat--matter.--My heart will br--br--break."

"No, no, no, child," said Mr. Gridley, sympathetically stirred a little
himself by the sight of Susan in tears and sobbing and catching her
breath, "that mustn't be, Susan Posey. Come off the steps, Susan Posey,
and stop dusting the books,--I can finish them,--and tell me all about
your troubles. I will try to help you out of them, and I have begun to
think I know how to help young people pretty well. I have had some
experience at it."

But Susan cried and sobbed all the more uncontrollably and convulsively.
Master Gridley thought he had better lead her at once to what he felt
pretty sure was the source of her troubles, and that, when she had had
her cry out, she would probably make the hole in the ice he had broken
big enough in a very few minutes.

"I think something has gone wrong between you and your friend, the young
gentleman with whom you are in intimate relations, my child, and I think
you had better talk freely with me, for I can perhaps give you a little
counsel that will be of service."

Susan cried herself quiet at last. "There's nobody in the world like
you, Mr. Gridley," she said, "and I've been wanting to tell you
something ever so long. My friend--Mr. Clem--Clement Lindsay doesn't
care for me as he used to,--I know he doesn't. He hasn't written to me
for--I don't know but it's a month. And O Mr. Gridley! he's such a great
man, and I am such a simple person,--I can't help thinking--he would be
happier with somebody else than poor little Susan Posey!"

This last touch of self-pity overcame her, as it is so apt to do those
who indulge in that delightful misery, and she broke up badly, as a
horse-fancier would say, so that it was some little time before she
recovered her conversational road-gait.

"O Mr. Gridley," she began again, at length, "if I only dared to tell
him what I think,--that perhaps it would be happier for us both--if we
could forget each other! Ought I not to tell him so? _Don't_ you think
he would find another to make him happy? _Wouldn't_ he forgive me for
telling him he was free? _Were_ we not too young to know each other's
hearts when we promised each other that we would love as long as we
lived? _Sha'n't_ I write him a letter this very day and tell him all?
_Do_ you think it would be wrong in me to do it? O Mr. Gridley, it makes
me almost crazy to think about it. Clement must be free! I cannot,
cannot hold him to a promise he doesn't want to keep."

There were so many questions in this eloquent rhapsody of Susan's that
they neutralized each other, as one might say, and Master Gridley had
time for reflection. His thoughts went on something in this way:--

"Pretty clear case! Guess Mr. Clement can make up his mind to it. Put it
well, didn't she? Not a word about our little Gifted! That's the
trouble. Poets! how they do bewitch these school-girls! And having a
chance every day, too, how could you expect her to stand it?" Then
aloud: "Susan Posey, you are a good, honest little girl as ever was. I
think you and Clement _were_ too hasty in coming together for life
before you knew what life meant. I think if you write Clement a letter,
telling him that you cannot help fearing that you two are not perfectly
adapted to each other, on account of certain differences for which
neither of you is responsible, and that you propose that each should
release the other from the pledge given so long ago,--in that case, I
say, I believe he will think no worse of you for so doing, and may
perhaps agree that it is best for both of you to seek your happiness
elsewhere than in each other."

The book-dusting came to as abrupt a close as the reading of Lancelot.
Susan went straight to her room, dried her tears so as to write in a
fair hand, but had to stop every few lines and take a turn at the
"dust-layers," as Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's friend used to call the
fountains of sensibility. It would seem like betraying Susan's
confidence to reveal the contents of this letter, but the reader may be
assured that it was simple and sincere and very sweetly written, without
the slightest allusion to any other young man, whether of the poetical
or cheaper human varieties.

It was not long before Susan received a reply from Clement Lindsay. It
was as kind and generous and noble as she could have asked. It was
affectionate, as a very amiable brother's letter might be, and candidly
appreciative of the reasons Susan had assigned for her proposal. He gave
her back her freedom,--not that he should cease to feel an interest in
her, always. He accepted his own release, not that he would ever think
she could be indifferent to his future fortunes. And within a very brief
period of time after sending his answer to Susan Posey, whether he
wished to see her in person, or whether he had some other motive, he had
packed his trunk, and made his excuses for an absence of uncertain
length at the studio, and was on his way to Oxbow Village.


CHAPTER XXXIII.

JUST AS YOU EXPECTED.

The spring of 1861 had now arrived,--that eventful spring which was to
lift the curtain and show the first scene of the first act in the mighty
drama which fixed the eyes of mankind during four bloody years. The
little schemes of little people were going on in all our cities and
villages without thought of the fearful convulsion which was soon coming
to shatter the hopes and prospects of millions. Our little Oxbow
Village, which held itself by no means the least of human centres, was
the scene of its own commotions, as intense and exciting to those
concerned as if the destiny of the nation had been involved in them.

Mr. Clement Lindsay appeared suddenly in that important locality, and
repaired to his accustomed quarters at the house of Deacon Rumrill. That
worthy person received him with a certain gravity of manner, caused by
his recollection of the involuntary transgression into which Mr. Lindsay
had led him by his present of Ivanhoe. He was, on the whole, glad to see
him, for his finances were not yet wholly recovered from the injury
inflicted on them by the devouring element. But he could not forget
that his boarder had betrayed him into a breach of the fourth
commandment, and that the strict eyes of his clergyman had detected him
in the very commission of the offence. He had no sooner seen Mr. Clement
comfortably installed, therefore, than he presented himself at the door
of his chamber with the book, enveloped in strong paper and very
securely tied round with a stout string.

"Here is your vollum, Mr. Lindsay," the Deacon said. "I understand it is
not the work of that great and good mahn who I thought wrote it. I did
not see anything immoral in it as fur as I read, but it belongs to what
I consider a very dangerous class of publications. These novels and
romances are awfully destructive to our youth. I should recommend you,
as a young mahn of principle, to burn the vollum. At least I hope you
will not leave it about anywhere unless it is carefully tied up. I have
written upon the paper round it to warn off all the young persons of my
household from meddling with it."

True enough, Mr. Clement saw in strong black letters on the back of the
paper wrapping his unfortunate Ivanhoe,--

    "DANGEROUS READING FOR CHRISTIAN YOUTH.

    "TOUCH NOT THE UNCLEAN THING."

"I thought you said you had Scott's picture hung up in your parlor,
Deacon Rumrill," he said, a little amused with the worthy man's fear and
precautions.

"It is _the great_ Scott's likeness that I have in my parlor," he said;
"I will show it to you if you will come with me."

Mr. Clement followed the Deacon into that sacred apartment.

"That is the portrait of the great Scott," he said, pointing to an
engraving of a heavy-looking person whose phrenological developments
were a somewhat striking contrast to those of the distinguished Sir
Walter.

"I will take good care that none of your young people see this volume,"
Mr. Clement said; "I trust you read it yourself, however, and found
something to please you in it. I am sure you are safe from being harmed
by any such book. Didn't you have to finish it, Deacon, after you had
once begun?"

"Well,--I--I--perused a consid'able portion of the work," the Deacon
answered, in a way that led Mr. Clement to think he had not stopped much
short of _Finis_. "Anything new in the city?"

"Nothing except what you've all had,--Confederate States establishing an
army and all that,--not very new either. What has been going on here
lately, Deacon?"

"Well, Mr. Lindsay, not a great deal. My new barn is pretty nigh done.
I've got as fine a litter of pigs as ever you see. I don't know whether
you're a judge of pigs or no. The Hazard gal's come back, spilt, pooty
much, I guess. Been to one o' them fashionable schools,--I've heerd that
she's learnt to dance. I've heerd say that that Hopkins boy's round the
Posey gal,--come to think, she's the one you went with some when you was
here,--I'm gettin' kind o' forgetful. Old Doctor Hurlbut's pretty
low,--ninety-four year old,--born in '67,--folks ain't ginerally very
spry after they're ninety, but he held out wonderful."

"How's Mr. Bradshaw?"

"Well, the young squire, he's off travellin' somewhere in the West, or
to Washin'ton, or somewhere else,--I don't jestly know where. They say
that he's follerin' up the courts in the business about old Malachi's
estate. I don' know much about it."

       *       *       *       *       *

The news got round Oxbow Village very speedily that Mr. Clement Lindsay,
generally considered the accepted lover of Miss Susan Posey, had arrived
in that place. Now it had come to be the common talk of the village that
young Gifted Hopkins and Susan Posey were getting to be mighty thick
with each other, and the prevailing idea was that Clement's visit had
reference to that state of affairs. Some said that Susan had given her
young man the mitten, meaning thereby that she had signified that his
services as a suitor were dispensed with. Others thought there was only
a wavering in her affection for her lover, and that he feared for her
constancy, and had come to vindicate his rights.

Some of the young fellows, who were doubtless envious of Gifted's
popularity with the fair sex, attempted in the most unjustifiable manner
to play upon his susceptible nature. One of them informed him that he
had seen that Lindsay fellah raound taown with the darndest big stick y'
ever did see. Looked kind o' savage and wild like. Another one told him
that perhaps he'd better keep a little shady; that are chap that had got
the mittin was praowlin' abaout with a pistil,--one o' them Darringers
abaout as long as your thumb, an' 'll fire a bullet as big as a
potato-ball,--a fellah carries one in his breeches-pocket, an' shoots y'
right threugh his own pahnts, withaout ever takin' on it aout of his
pocket. The stable-keeper, who it may be remembered once exchanged a few
playful words with Mr. Gridley, got a hint from some of these unfeeling
young men, and offered the resources of his stable to the youth supposed
to be in peril.

"I've got a faaest colt, Mr. Hopkins, that'll put twenty mild between you
an' this here village, as quick as any four huffs'll dew it in this here
caounty, if you _should_ want to git away suddin. I've heern tell there
was some lookin' raound here that wouldn't be wholesome to meet,--jest
say the word, Mr. Hopkins, an' I'll have ye on that are colt's back in
less than no time, an' start ye off full jump. There's a good many
that's kind o' worried for fear something might happen to ye, Mr.
Hopkins,--y' see fellahs don't like to have other chaps cuttin' on 'em
aout with their gals."

Gifted Hopkins had become excessively nervous by this time. It is true
that everything in his intimacy with Susan Posey so far might come under
the general head of friendship; but he was conscious that something more
was in both their thoughts. Susan had given him mysterious hints that
her relations with Clement had undergone a change, but had never had
quite courage enough, perhaps had too much delicacy, to reveal the whole
truth.

Gifted was walking home, deeply immersed in thoughts excited by the
hints which had been thus wantonly thrown out to inflame his
imagination, when all at once, on lifting his eyes, he saw Clement
Lindsay coming straight towards him. Gifted was unarmed, except with a
pair of blunt scissors, which he carried habitually in his pocket. What
should he do? Should he fly? But he was never a good runner, being apt
to find himself scant o' breath, like Hamlet, after violent exercise.
His demeanor on the occasion, did credit to his sense of his own
virtuous conduct and his self-possession. He put his hand out, while yet
at a considerable distance, and marched up towards Clement, smiling with
all the native amiability which belonged to him.

To his infinite relief, Clement put out _his_ hand to grasp the one
offered him, and greeted the young poet in the most frank and cordial
manner.

"And how is Miss Susan Posey, Mr. Hopkins?" asked Clement, in the most
cheerful tone. "It is a long while since I have seen her, and you must
tell her that I hope I shall not leave the village without finding time
to call upon her. She and I are good friends always, Mr. Hopkins, though
perhaps I shall not be quite so often at your mother's as I was during
my last visit to Oxbow Village."

Gifted felt somewhat as the subject of one of those old-fashioned forms
of argument, formerly much employed to convince men of error in matters
of religion, must have felt when the official who superintended the
stretching-machine said, "Slack up!"

He told Mr. Clement all about Susan, and was on the point of saying
that if he, Mr. Clement, did not claim any engrossing interest in her,
he, Gifted, was ready to offer her the devotion of a poet's heart. Mr.
Clement, however, had so many other questions to ask him about everybody
in the village, more particularly concerning certain young persons in
whom he seemed to be specially interested, that there was no chance to
work in his own revelations of sentiment.

Clement Lindsay had come to Oxbow Village with a single purpose. He
could now venture to trust himself in the presence of Myrtle Hazard. He
was free, and he knew nothing to show that she had lost the liberty of
disposing of her heart. But after an experience such as he had gone
through, he was naturally distrustful of himself, and inclined to be
cautious and reserved in yielding to a new passion. Should he tell her
the true relations in which they stood to each other,--that she owed her
life to him, and that he had very nearly sacrificed his own in saving
hers? Why not? He had a claim on her gratitude for what he had done in
her behalf, and out of this gratitude there might naturally spring a
warmer feeling.

No, he could not try to win her affections by showing that he had paid
for them beforehand. She seemed to be utterly unconscious of the fact
that it was he who had been with her in the abyss of waters. If the
thought came to her of itself, and she ever asked him, it would be time
enough to tell her the story. If not, the moment might arrive when he
could reveal to her the truth that he was her deliverer, without
accusing himself of bribing her woman's heart to reward him for his
services. He would wait for that moment.

It was the most natural thing in the world that Mr. Lindsay, a young
gentleman from the city, should call to see Miss Hazard, a young lady
whom he had met recently at a party. To that pleasing duty he addressed
himself the evening after his arrival.

"The young gentleman's goin' a courtin', I calc'late," was the remark
of the Deacon's wife when she saw what a handsome figure Mr. Clement
was making at the tea-table.

"A very hahnsome young mahn," the Deacon replied, "and looks as if he
might know consid'able. An architect, you know,--a sort of a builder.
Wonder if he hasn't got any good plans for a hahnsome pigsty. I suppose
he'd charge somethin' for one, but it couldn't be much, an' he could
take it out in board."

"Better ask him," his wife said; "he looks mighty pleasant; there's
nothin' lost by askin', an' a good deal got sometimes, grandma used to
say."

The Deacon followed her advice. Mr. Clement was perfectly good-natured
about it, asked the Deacon the number of snouts in his menagerie, got an
idea of the accommodations required, and sketched the plan of a neat and
appropriate edifice for the _Porcellarium_, as Master Gridley afterwards
pleasantly christened it, which was carried out by the carpenter, and
stands to this day a monument of his obliging disposition, and a proof
that there is nothing so humble that taste cannot be shown in it.

"What'll be your charge for the plan of the pigsty, Mr. Lindsay?" the
Deacon inquired with an air of interest,--he might have been involved
more deeply than he had intended. "How much should you call about right
for the picter an' figgerin'?"

"O, you're quite welcome to my sketch of a plan, Deacon. I've seen much
showier buildings tenanted by animals not very different from those your
edifice is meant for."

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Clement found the three ladies sitting together in the chill, dim
parlor at The Poplars. They had one of the city papers spread out on the
table, and Myrtle was reading aloud the last news from Charleston
Harbor. She rose as Mr. Clement entered, and stepped forward to meet
him. It was a strange impression this young man produced upon her,--not
through the common channels of the intelligence,--not exactly that
"magnetic" influence of which she had had experience at a former time.
It did not overcome her as at the moment of their second meeting. But it
was something she must struggle against, and she had force and pride and
training enough now to maintain her usual tranquillity, in spite of a
certain inward commotion which seemed to reach her breathing and her
pulse by some strange, inexplicable mechanism.

Myrtle, it must be remembered, was no longer the simple country girl who
had run away at fifteen, but a young lady of seventeen, who had learned
all that more than a year's diligence at a great school could teach her,
who had been much with girls of taste and of culture, and was familiar
with the style and manners of those who came from what considered itself
the supreme order in the social hierarchy. Her natural love for
picturesque adornment was qualified by a knowledge of the prevailing
modes not usual in so small a place as Oxbow Village. All this had not
failed to produce its impression on those about her. Persons who, like
Miss Silence Withers, believe, not in education, inasmuch as there is no
healthy nature to be educated, but in transformation, worry about their
charges up to a certain period of their lives. Then, if the
transformation does not come, they seem to think their cares and duties
are at an end, and, considering their theories of human destiny, usually
accept the situation with wonderful complacency. This was the stage
which Miss Silence Withers had reached with reference to Myrtle. It made
her infinitely more agreeable, or less disagreeable, as the reader may
choose one or the other statement, than when she was always fretting
about her "responsibility." She even began to take an interest in some
of Myrtle's worldly experiences, and something like a smile would now
and then disarrange the chief-mourner stillness of her features, as
Myrtle would tell some lively story she had brought away from the gay
society she had frequented.

Cynthia Badlam kept her keen eyes on her like a hawk. Murray Bradshaw
was away, and here was this handsome and agreeable youth coming in to
poach on the preserve of which she considered herself the gamekeeper.
What did it mean? She had heard the story about Susan's being off with
her old love and on with a new one. Ah ha! this is the game, is it?

Clement Lindsay passed not so much a pleasant evening, as one of
strange, perplexed, and mingled delight and inward conflict. He had
found his marble once more turned to flesh and blood, and breathing
before him. This was the woman he was born for; her form was fit to
model his proudest ideal from,--her eyes melted him when they rested for
an instant on his face,--her voice reached those hidden sensibilities of
his inmost nature, which never betray their existence until the outward
chord to which they vibrate in response sends its message to stir them.
But was she not already pledged to that other,--that cold-blooded,
contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating man of the
world, whose artful strategy would pass with nine women out of ten for
the most romantic devotion?

If he had known the impression he made, he would have felt less anxiety
with reference to this particular possibility. Miss Silence expressed
herself gratified with his appearance, and thought he looked like a good
young man,--he reminded her of a young friend of hers who--[It was the
same who had gone to one of the cannibal islands as a missionary,--and
stayed there.] Myrtle was very quiet. She had nothing to say about
Clement, except that she had met him at a party in the city, and found
him agreeable. Miss Cynthia wrote a letter to Murray Bradshaw that very
evening, telling him that he had better come back to Oxbow Village as
quickly as he could, unless he wished to find his place occupied by an
intruder.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the mean time, the country was watching the garrison in Charleston
Harbor. All at once the first gun of the four years' cannonade hurled
its ball against the walls of Fort Sumter. There was no hamlet in the
land which the reverberations of that cannon-roar did not reach. There
was no valley so darkened by overshadowing hills that it did not see the
American flag hauled down on the 13th of April. There was no loyal heart
in the North that did not answer to the call of the country to its
defenders which went forth two days later. The great tide of feeling
reached the locality where the lesser events of our narrative were
occurring. A meeting of the citizens was instantly called. The venerable
Father Pemberton opened it with a prayer that filled every soul with
courage and high resolve. The young farmers and mechanics of that whole
region joined the companies to which they belonged, or organized in
squads and marched at once, or got ready to march, to the scene of
conflict.

The contagion of warlike patriotism reached the most peacefully inclined
young persons.

"My country calls me," Gifted Hopkins said to Susan Posey, "and I am
preparing to obey her summons. If I can pass the medical examination,
which it is possible I may, though I fear my constitution _may_ be
thought too weak, and if no obstacle impedes me, I think of marching in
the ranks of the Oxbow Invincibles. If I go, Susan, and if I fall, will
you not remember me ... as one who ... cherished the tenderest ...
sentiments ... towards you ... and who had looked forward to the time
when ... when...."

His eyes told the rest. He loved!

Susan forgot all the rules of reserve to which she had been trained.
What were cold conventionalities at such a moment? "Never! never!" she
said, throwing her arms about his neck and mingling her tears with his,
which were flowing freely. "Your country does not need your sword,...
but it does need ... your pen. Your poems will inspire ... our
soldiers.... The Oxbow Invincibles will march to victory, singing your
songs.... If you go ... and if you ... fall.... O Gifted!... I ... I ...
yes I ... shall die too!"

His love was returned. He was blest!

"Susan," he said, "my own Susan, I yield to your wishes, at every
sacrifice. Henceforth they will be my law. Yes, I will stay and
encourage my brave countrymen to go forward to the bloody field. My
voice shall urge them on to the battle-ground. I will give my dearest
breath to stimulate their ardor.... O Susan! My own, own Susan!"

       *       *       *       *       *

While these interesting events had been going on beneath the modest roof
of the Widow Hopkins, affairs had been rapidly hastening to a similar
conclusion under the statelier shadow of The Poplars. Clement Lindsay
was so well received at his first visit that he ventured to repeat it
several times, with so short intervals that it implied something more
than a common interest in one of the members of the household. There was
no room for doubt who this could be, and Myrtle Hazard could not help
seeing that she was the object of his undisguised admiration. The belief
was now general in the village that Gifted Hopkins and Susan Posey were
either engaged, or on the point of being so; and it was equally
understood that, whatever might be the explanation, she and her former
lover had parted company in an amicable manner.

Love works very strange transformations in young women. Sometimes it
leads them to try every mode of adding to their attractions,--their
whole thought is how to be most lovely in the eyes they would fill so as
to keep out all other images. Poor darlings! We smile at their little
vanities, as if they were very trivial things compared with the last
Congressman's speech or the great election sermon; but Nature knows well
what she is about. The maiden's ribbon or ruffle means a great deal more
for her than the judge's wig or the priest's surplice.

It was not in this way that the gentle emotion awaking in the breast of
Myrtle Hazard betrayed itself. As the thought dawned in her
consciousness that she was loved, a change came over her such as the
spirit that protected her, according to the harmless fancy she had
inherited, might have wept for joy to behold, if tears could flow from
angelic eyes. She forgot herself and her ambitions,--the thought of
shining in the great world died out in the presence of new visions of a
future in which she was not to be her own,--of feelings in the depth of
which the shallow vanities which had drawn her young eyes to them for a
while seemed less than nothing. Myrtle had not hitherto said to herself
that Clement was her lover, yet her whole nature was expanding and
deepening in the light of that friendship which any other eye could have
known at a glance for the great passion.

Cynthia Badlam wrote a pressing letter to Murray Bradshaw. "There is no
time to be lost; she is bewitched, and will be gone beyond hope if this
business is not put a stop to."

Love moves in an accelerating ratio; and there comes a time when the
progress of the passion escapes from all human formulae, and brings two
young hearts, which had been gradually drawing nearer and nearer
together, into complete union, with a suddenness that puts an infinity
between the moment when all is told and that which went just before.

They were sitting together by themselves in the dimly lighted parlor.
They had told each other many experiences of their past lives, very
freely, as two intimate friends of different sex might do. Clement had
happened to allude to Susan, speaking very kindly and tenderly of her.
He hoped this youth to whom she was attached would make her life happy.
"You know how simple-hearted and good she is; her image will always be a
pleasant one in my memory,--second to but one other."

Myrtie ought, according to the common rules of conversation, to have
asked, _What other?_ but she did not. She may have looked as if she
wanted to ask,--she may have blushed or turned pale,--perhaps she could
not trust her voice; but whatever the reason was, she sat still, with
downcast eyes. Clement waited a reasonable time, but, finding it was of
no use, began again.

"_Your_ image is the one other,--the only one, let me say, for all else
fades in its presence,--your image fills all my thought. Will you trust
your life and happiness with one who can offer you so little beside his
love? You know my whole heart is yours."

Whether Myrtle said anything in reply or not,--whether she acted like
Coleridge's Genevieve,--that is, "fled to him and wept," or suffered her
feelings to betray themselves in some less startling confession, we will
leave untold. Her answer, spoken or silent, could not have been a cruel
one, for in another moment Clement was pressing his lips to hers; after
the manner of accepted lovers.

"Our lips have met to-day for the second time," he said, presently.

She looked at him in wonder. What did he mean? The second time! How
assuredly he spoke! She looked him calmly in the face, and awaited his
explanation.

"I have a singular story to tell you. On the morning of the 16th of
June, now nearly two years ago, I was sitting in my room at Alderbank,
some twenty miles down the river, when I heard a cry for help coming
from the river. I ran down to the bank, and there I saw a boy in an old
boat--"

When it came to the "boy" in the old boat, Myrtle's cheeks flamed so
that she could not bear it, and she covered her face with both her
hands. But Clement told his story calmly through to the end, sliding
gently over its later incidents, for Myrtle's heart was throbbing
violently, and her breath a little catching and sighing, as when she had
first lived with the new life his breath had given her.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Why did you ask me for myself, when you could have claimed me?" she
said.

"I wanted a free gift, Myrtle," Clement answered, "and I have it."

They sat in silence, lost in the sense of that new life which had
suddenly risen on their souls.

The door-bell rang sharply. Kitty Fagan answered its summons, and
presently entered the parlor and announced that Mr. Bradshaw was in the
library, and wished to see the ladies.




OPINIONS OF THE LATE DR. NOTT RESPECTING BOOKS, STUDIES, AND ORATORS.


During the summer of 1833, several professional gentlemen, clergymen,
lawyers, and educators were spending their vacation at Saratoga Springs.
Among them was Dr. Nott. He was then regarded as a veteran teacher,
whose long experience and acknowledged wisdom gave a peculiar value to
his matured opinions. The younger members of this little circle of
scholars, taking their ease at their inn, purposely sought to "draw out"
the Doctor upon those topics in which they felt an especial interest.
They were, therefore, in their leisure moments, constantly hearing and
asking him questions. One of them, then a tutor in Dartmouth College,
took notes of the conversations, and the following dialogue is copied
from his manuscript:--

_Mr. C._ "Doctor, how long have you been at the head of Union College?"

_Dr. N._ "Thirty years. I am the oldest _president_ in the United
States, though not the oldest man in office. I cannot drop down anywhere
in the Union without meeting some one of my _children_."

_Mr. C._ "And that, too, though so many of them are dead! I believe that
nearly half of my class are dead!"

_Dr. N._ "Indeed! That is a large proportion to die so soon. I think it
remarkable that so few deaths have occurred among the members of the
college since I have been connected with it. I can distinctly recollect
all the individuals who have died at college, and during thirty years
there have been but _seven_. The proportion has been less than one third
of one per cent. Very many have died, however, very soon after leaving
college. Two or three in almost every class have died within a year
after they have graduated. I have been at a loss as to the cause of this
marked difference. I can assign no other than the sudden change which
then takes place in the student's whole manner and habits of living,
diet, &c."

_Mr. C._ "How do the students generally answer the expectations they
have raised during their college course?"

_Dr. N._ "I have been rarely disappointed. I have found my little
anticipatory notes generally fulfilled. I recollect, however, one class,
which graduated four or five years ago, in regard to which I have been
very happily disappointed. It had given us more trouble, and there were
more sceptics in it than in any other class we ever had. But now every
one of those infidels except _one_ is studying for the ministry."

_Mr. C._ "What course do you take with a sceptical student?"

_Dr. N._ "I remember a very interesting case I had several years ago.
There was a young man in college of fine talents, an excellent and
exemplary student, but an atheist. He roomed near me. I was interested
in him; but I feared his influence. It was very injurious in college,
and yet he did nothing worthy of censure. I called him one day to my
study. I questioned him familiarly and kindly in relation to his
speculative views. He said he was not an atheist, but had very serious
doubts and difficulties on the subject, and frankly stated them to me. I
did not talk with him _religiously_, but as a philosopher. I did not
think he would bear it. I told him that I felt a peculiar sympathy with
young men in his state of mind; for once, during the French Revolution,
I had been troubled with the same difficulties myself. I had been over
that whole ground; and would gladly assist his inquiries, and direct him
to such authors as I thought would aid him in his investigations after
truth. As he left my study, I said, 'Now, I expect yet to see you a
minister of the Gospel!' He returned to his room; he paced it with
emotion; said he to his room-mate (these facts his room-mate
communicated to me within a year), 'What do you think the President
says?' 'I don't know.' 'He says he expects yet to see me a minister. I a
minister! I a minister!'--and he continued to walk the room, and
reiterate the words. No immediate effect on his character was produced.
But the _prophetic_ words (for so he seemed to regard them) clung to him
as a magic talisman, and would never leave his mind; and he is now a
pious man, and a student in divinity."

_Mr. C._ "Doctor, we have been seeking amusement and profit by some
exercises in elocution. Mr. G---- and myself have been trying to read
Shakespeare a little; but some gentlemen here have had some qualms of
conscience as to the propriety of it, and have condemned the reading of
Shakespeare as demoralizing. What is your opinion, sir?"

_Dr. N._ "Why, as to that matter, sir, I always say to my young men,
'Gentlemen, if you wish to get a knowledge of the world and of human
nature, read the Bible. The Bible is the first and best book that can be
studied for the exhibition of human character; and the man who goes out
into the world expecting to find men just such as Moses and Paul have
represented them will never be disappointed. If you are contented to
read nothing but your Bibles, _well, you have it all there_. But if you
will read any other books, read Homer and Shakespeare. They come nearer,
in my estimation, to Moses and Paul, in their delineations of human
character, than any other authors I am acquainted with. I would have
every young man read Shakespeare. I have always taught my children to
read it.' Ministers, as a class, know less practically of human nature
than any other _class_ of men. As I belong to the fraternity, I can say
this without prejudice. Men are reserved in the presence of a
respectable clergyman. I might live in Schenectady, and discharge all my
appropriate duties from year to year, and never hear an oath, nor see a
man drunk; and if some one should ask me, 'What sort of a population
have you in Schenectady? Are they a moral people? Do they swear? Do they
get drunk?' for aught that I had seen or heard, I might answer, 'This
is, after all, a very decent world. There is very little vice in it.
People have entirely left off the sin of profaneness; and, as to
intemperance, there is very little of that.' But I can put on my old
great-coat, and an old slouching hat, and in five minutes place myself
amid the scenes of blasphemy and vice and misery, which I never could
have believed to exist if I had not seen them. So a man may walk along
Broadway, and think to himself, 'What a fine place this is! How civil
the people are! What a decent and orderly and virtuous city New York
is!'--while, at the same time, within thirty rods of him are scenes of
pollution and crime such as none but an eyewitness can adequately
imagine. I would have a minister _see_ the world for himself. _It is
rotten to the core._ Ministers ordinarily see only the brighter side of
the world. Almost everybody treats them with civility; the religious,
with peculiar kindness and attention. Hence they are apt to think too
well of the world. Lawyers, on the other hand, think too ill of it. They
see only, or for the most part, its worst side. They are brought in
contact with dishonesty and villany in their worst developments. I have
observed, in doing business with lawyers, that they are exceedingly
hawk-eyed, and jealous of everybody. The omission of a word or letter in
a will, they will scan with the closest scrutiny; and while I could see
no use for any but the most concise and simple terms to express the
wishes of the testator, a lawyer would be satisfied with nothing but the
most precise and formal instrument, stuffed full of legal _caveats_ and
technicalities."

_Mr. C._ "Which do you think excels in eloquence, the bar or the
pulpit?"

_Dr. N._ "The bar."

_Mr. C._ "To what causes do you ascribe the superiority?"

_Dr. N._ "The superior influence of things of sight over those of faith.
The nearness of objects enhances their importance. The subjects on which
the lawyer speaks come home to men's business and bosoms. Some present,
immediate object is to be gained. The lawyer _feels_, and he aims to
accomplish something. But ministers have plunged into the metaphysics of
religion, and gone about to inculcate the peculiarities of a system, and
have neither felt themselves, nor been able to make others feel. It has
long been a most interesting question to me, Why is the ministry so
inefficient? It has seemed to me, that, with the thousands of pulpits in
this country for a theatre to act on, and the eye and ear of the whole
community thus opened to us, we might _overturn the world_. Some ascribe
this want of efficiency to human depravity. That is not the sole cause
of it. The clergy want knowledge of human nature. They want directness
of appeal. They want the same go-ahead common-sense way of interesting
men which lawyers have."

_Mr. C._ "Ought they not to cultivate elocution?"

_Dr. N._ "It seems to me that at those institutions where they pay the
most attention to elocution they speak the worst. I have no faith in
artificial eloquence. Teach men to think and feel, and, when they have
anything to the purpose to say, they can say it. I should about as soon
think of teaching a man to weep, or to laugh, or to swallow, as to speak
when he has anything to say."

_Mr. C._ "How, then, do you account for the astonishing power of some
tragedians?"

_Dr. N._ "Ah! the speaking in the theatre is all overacted. There is no
nature in it. Those actors, placed in a public assembly, and called upon
to address men on some real and momentous occasion, would utterly fail
to touch men's hearts, while some plain country-man, who had never
learned a rule of art, would find his way at once to the fountains of
feeling and action within them. The secret of the influence which is
felt in the acting of the teatre is _not_ that it is natural. Let a
_real tragedy_ be acted, and let men _believe_ that a _real_ scene is
before them, and the theatre would be deserted. No audience in this
country could bear the presentation of a natural and real tragedy. Men
go to the theatre to be amused. The scenery, the music, the attitudes,
the gesticulations, all unite to fix attention and amuse; but the
eloquence, so called, of the theatre, is all factitious, and is no more
adapted to the real occasions of life than would be the recitative in
singing, and it pleases on the same principle that _this does_."

_Mr. C._ "But, Doctor, why was it that, when Cooke or Kean appeared on
the stage, he engrossed all eyes and ears, and nothing was heard or seen
or thought of but himself? The acting of Kean was just as irresistible
as the whirlwind. He would take up an audience of three thousand in his
fist, as it were, and carry them just where he pleased, through every
extreme of passion."

_Dr. N._ "because these actors were great men. Cooke, as far as I have
been able to learn, (I never saw him,--I had once an engagement to meet
him in Philadelphia, but he was drunk at the time, and disappointed me,)
was perfectly _natural_. So I suppose Kean to have been. So Garrick was,
and Talma. And the secret of the influence of these men was, that they
burst the bonds of art and histrionic trick, and stood before their
audience in their untrammelled natural strength. Garrick, at his first
appearance, could not command an audience. It was first necessary for
him entirely to revolutionize the English stage.

"Ministers have, very often, a sanctimonious tone, which by many is
deemed a symbol of goodness. I would not say it is a symbol of
hypocrisy, as many very pious men have it. One man acquires a tone, and
those who study with him learn to associate it with his piety, and come
to esteem it an essential part of ministerial qualification. But,
instead of its being to me evidence of feeling, it evinces, in every
degree of it, want of feeling; and whenever a man rises in his religious
feelings sufficiently high, he will break away from the shackles of his
perverse habit, and speak in the tone of nature.

"The most eloquent preacher I have ever heard was Dr. L----. General
Hamilton at the bar was unrivalled. I heard his great effort in the case
of People _versus_ Croswell, for a libel upon Jefferson. There was a
curious changing of sides in the position of the advocates. Spencer, the
Attorney-General, who had long been climbing the ladder of democracy,
managed the cause for the people; and Hamilton, esteemed an old-school
Federalist, appeared as the champion of a free press. Of course, it
afforded the better opportunity of witnessing the professional skill and
rhetorical power of the respective advocates.

"Spencer, in the course of his plea, had occasion to refer to certain
decisions of Lord Mansfield, and embraced the opportunity of introducing
a splendid _ad captandum_ eulogium on his Lordship,--'A name born for
immortality; whose sun of fame would never set, but still hold its
course in the heavens, when the humble names of his antagonist and
himself should have sunk beneath the waves of oblivion.'

"Hamilton was evidently nettled at this invidious and unnecessary
comparison, and cast about in his mind how he might retort upon Spencer.
I do not know that my conjecture is right; but it has always seemed to
me that his reason for introducing his repartee to Spencer in the odd
place where he did, just after a most eloquent and pathetic peroration,
was something as follows--'I have now constructed and arranged my
argument, and the thread of it must not be broken by the intervention of
any such extraneous matter. Neither will it do to separate my peroration
from the main body of my argument. I must, then, give up the opportunity
of retorting at all, or tack it on after the whole, and take the risk of
destroying the effect of my argument.'

"He rose, and went through his argument, which was a tissue of the
clearest, most powerful, and triumphant reasoning. He turned every
position of his opponent, and took and dismantled every fortification.
But his peroration was inimitably fine. As he went on to depict the
horrors consequent upon a muzzled press, there was not a dry eye in the
court-house. It was the most perfect triumph of eloquence over the
passions of men I ever witnessed.

"When he had thus brought his speech to its proper, and what would have
been a perfect close, he suddenly changed his tone, and, in a strain of
consummate and powerful irony, began to rally his antagonist. He
assented to the gentleman's eulogium upon Lord Mansfield. It was
deserved. He acknowledged the justice of his remarks in relation to
himself (Hamilton) and his ephemeral fame; but he did not see why the
gentleman should have included himself in the same oblivious sentence.
His course hitherto in the race of fame had been as successful, for
aught he knew, as was ever his Lordship's. His strides had been as long
and as rapid. His disposition, too, to run the race was as eager, and he
knew no reason why he might not yet soar on stronger pinions, and reach
a loftier height, than his Lordship had done.

"During the whole reply, the audience were in a titter; and he sat down
amidst a burst of incontrollable laughter. Said Spencer to him
frowningly, (I sat by the side of the judges on the bench, and both
Hamilton and Spencer were within arm's length of me,) 'What do you mean,
sir?' Said Hamilton, with an arch smile, 'Nothing but a mere
compliment.' 'Very well, sir, I desire no more such compliments.'"

_Mr. C._ "What was the difference between the oratory of Hamilton and
that of Burr?"

_Dr. N._ "Burr, above all men whom I ever knew, possessed the most
consummate tact in evading and covering up the arguments of his
opponent. His great art was to throw dust in the eyes of the jury, and
make them believe that there was neither force nor sense nor anything
else in the arguments of the opposite counsel. He never met a position,
nor answered an argument, but threw around them the mist of sophistry,
and thus weakened their force. He was the _prince of plausibilities_. He
was always on the right side (in his own opinion), and always perfectly
confident.

"Hamilton, on the other hand, allowed to the arguments of his opponent
all the weight that could ever be fairly claimed for them, and attacked
and demolished them with the club of Hercules. He would never engage in
a cause unless he believed he was on the side of justice; and he often
threw into the scale of his client the whole weight of his personal
character and opinion. His opponents frequently complained of the undue
influence he thus exerted upon the court."

_Mr. C._ "You have heard Webster, I suppose."

_Dr. N._ "I have never heard him speak. I have the pleasure of a slight
personal acquaintance with him, and, from what I know of him, should
think he would have less power over the passions of men than Hamilton.
He is a giant, and deals with _great principles_ rather than passions.

"Bishop McIlvaine will always be heard. He has an elegant form, a fine
voice, and a brilliant imagination, and he can carry an audience just
where he pleases."

_Mr. C._ "You, of course, have heard Dr. Cox."

_Dr. N._ "Yes, often. He is an original, powerful man, unequal in his
performances: sometimes he hits, sometimes he misses; sometimes he rises
to the sublimity of powerful speaking, and at others sinks below the
common level."

_Mr. C._ "Have you read his book on Quakerism?"

_Dr. N._ "As much of it as I can. Some Presbyterians like it. For my
part, I confess I do not. He carries his anti-Quaker antipathies too
far. It is perfectly natural he should do so. Men who go over from one
denomination to another always stand up more than straight, and for two
reasons;--first, to satisfy their new friends that they have heartily
renounced their former error; secondly, to convince their former friends
that they had good reasons for desertion. Baptists who have become such
from Presbyterians are uniformly the most bigoted, and _vice versa_.

"I am disgusted and grieved with the religious controversies of the
present age. The divisions of schools, old school and new school, and
the polemical zeal and fury with which the contest is waged, are
entirely foreign from the true spirit of Christianity. The Christianity
of the age is, in my view, most unamiable. It has none of those lovely,
mellow features which distinguished primitive Christianity. If
Christianity as it now exists should be propagated over the world, and
thus the millennium be introduced, we should need two or three more
millenniums before the world would be fit to live in."

_Mr. C._ "Why do you judge so, Doctor?"

_Dr. N._ "By the style of our religious periodicals. If I had suddenly
dropped down here, and wished to ascertain at a bird's-eye view the
religious and moral state of the community, I would call for the papers
and magazines, and when I had glanced at them I should pronounce that
community to be in a low moral and religious state which could tolerate
such periodicals. A bad paper cannot live in a good community.

"I have been especially grieved and offended with the recent Catholic
controversy. I abhor much in the Catholic religion; but, nevertheless, I
believe there is a great deal of religion in that Church. I do not like
the condemnation of men in classes. I would not, in controversy with the
Catholics, render railing for railing. They cannot be put down so. They
must be charmed down by kindness and love."

_Mr. C._ "I have been much amused by reading that controversy."

_Dr. N._ "My dear sir, I am sorry to hear you say so. You cannot have
read that controversy with pleasure, without having been made a worse
man by it."

_Mr. C._ "Why, I was amused by it, I suppose, just as I should be amused
by seeing a gladiator's show."

_Dr. N._ "Just so; a very good comparison,--a very accurate comparison!
It is a mere gladiatorial contest; and the object of it, I fear, is not
so much truth as victory."

_Mr. C._ "But Luther fought so, Doctor."

_Dr. N._ "I know it; and I have no sympathy with that trait in the
character of Luther. The world owes more, perhaps, to Martin Luther
than to any other man who has ever lived; and as God makes the wrath of
man to praise him, and restrains the remainder, so he raised up Luther
as an instrument adapted to his age and the circumstances of the times.
But Luther's character in some of its features was harsh, rugged, and
unlovely; and in these it was not founded upon the Gospel.

"Compare him with St. Paul. Once they were placed in circumstances
almost identically the same. Luther's friends were endeavoring to
dissuade him from going to Worms, on account of apprehended danger. Said
Luther, 'If there were as many devils at Worms as there are tiles on the
roofs of the houses, I would go.'

"When Paul's friends at Caesarea wept, and besought him not to go up to
Jerusalem, knowing the things which would befall him there, 'What mean
ye,' said he, 'to weep, and break my heart? For I am ready, not to be
bound only, but to die also at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord
Jesus.'

"Many a bold, reckless man of the world could have said what Luther
said. None but a Christian could have uttered the words of Paul."

_Mr. C._ "Was it not in part a constitutional difference? Peter and Paul
were very different men; so, if Luther had not been a Christian, he
would have exhibited the same rugged features of character."

_Dr. N._ "That is just the point, sir. These traits in his character
were no part of his Christianity. They existed, not in consequence, but
in spite, of his religion. I want to see, in Christian character, the
rich, deep, mellow tint of the Scriptures."




CRETAN DAYS.


I.

CANEA.

It was by a happy chance that my first acquaintance with Crete and the
Cretans was made just previous to the outbreak of the insurrection which
has just now brought the island so strongly to the attention of the
world, and which will prevent any future traveller of this generation
from seeing it, as I saw it, at the highest point of that comparative
material prosperity which thirty-five years of such peace as Christian
lands enjoy under Turkish rule had created, and before the beginning of
that course of destruction which has now made the island one expanse of
poverty and ruin. It was in the beginning of the last year of the
administration of Ismael Pacha, in August, 1865, that, blockaded a month
in Syra by cholera, I finally got passage on a twenty-ton yacht
belonging to an English resident of that place, and made a loitering
three days' run to Canea.

Crete, though _never_ visited by cholera, was in quarantine at all Greek
ports, and intercourse with the great world was limited to occasional
voyages of the little caiques of the island to Syra, where they endured
two weeks' quarantine, and whence they brought back the mails and a
cargo of supplies, so that any arrival was an event to the Cydonians,
and that of a yacht flying the English and American flags at once was
enough to turn out the entire population. The fitful northerly breeze
had kept us the whole afternoon in sight of the port; and it was only as
sunset closed the doors of the health-office that we dropped anchor in
the middle of the little harbor,--the wondering centre of attraction to
a wondering town, whose folk came to assist at the sunsetting and our
arrival. Lazy soldiers, lying at full length on the old bronze cannon of
the batteries, looked out at us, only raising their heads from their
crossed arms; grave Turks, smoking their nargiles in front of the cafes
that open on the Marina, turned their chairs round to look at us without
stopping their hubble-bubbling; and all about us, where nothing else
was, a line of motley humanity--Greek, Turk, Egyptian, Nubian,
Abyssinian, under hats, caps, tarbouches, turbans, hats Persian and
ecclesiastical, and no hats at all--half circled us with mute and mostly
stupid admiration.

It was my first experience of a Turkish town, and perhaps I was more
struck with the dilapidation and evident decay than I ought to have
been. The sea-wall of the massive Venetian fortification seemed
crumbling and carious; the earth-work above it was half washed away; the
semicircle of houses on the Marina looked seedy and tottering; the
Marina itself was in places under-cut and falling into the water; and
above us, overtopping the whole city, the Pacha's palace, built on the
still substantial, though time-worn and neglected walls of the old
Venetian citadel, reared a lath-and-plaster shabbiness against the glow
of the western sky, reminding one of an American seaside hotel in the
last stages of popularity and profitable tenancy,--great gaps in the
plaster showing the flimsiness of the construction, while a coating of
unmitigated whitewash almost defied the sunset glow to modify it. On the
western point of the crescent of the Marina, under the height on which
stands the palace, is a domed mosque,--one large central dome surrounded
by little ones,--with a not ugly minaret, slightly cracked by
earthquakes, standing at one side in a little cemetery, among whose
turbaned tombstones grow a palm and an olive tree, and beyond which the
khan (also serving as custom-house), a two-story house of the Venetian
days, relieves the dreary white with a wash of ochre, stained and
streaked to any tint almost. A little nearer the bottom of the port is
an old Venetian gate, which once shut the Marina in at night while the
custom-house guard slept, and over the keystone of which the Lion of St.
Mark's still turns his mutilated head to the sea.

On the whole, the look of the thing was not unpicturesque, except for
the hopeless whiteness and shabbiness of the principal architectural
features, and especially the "Konak" (palace), which was, beyond all
disguise of light or circumstance, an eyesore and a nuisance, the more
so that its foundations were fine old brown stone masonry, delicious in
color, solid, and showing at one end a pointed arched vault, with its
portward end fallen down to show the interior, and crowned with an
enormous mass of cactus. On the south side, invisible from the port, are
three fine Gothic windows, now filled up, but preserving the traceries.
The palace could scarcely have had a nobler site, or the site a more
ignoble occupancy.

Too late for pratique, we had nothing to do but turn in early, and get
ready to go ashore at sunrise.

Once landed, I began to wish that the comparison I had drawn for the
Konak was a more just one, and that inside its card-board classicalism
could be found the slightest approach to American hospitality. Not an
inn of any kind exists in Canea: a dirty, dingy restaurant, which called
itself "The Guest-House of the Spheres," offered one small bedroom,
which the filth of the place, with its suggestions of bugs and fleas,
forbade the title of a sleeping-room. While the yacht stayed I had a
bed; but after that it was a dreary prospect for a man who had intended
living at his ease in his inn the rest of the summer. And here let me,
once for all, give due credit to Crete, and say that, though there is
not from one end of the island to the other an inn, the stranger will
never wait long, even in the smallest village, to know where he may
sleep, and will rarely find a greater difficulty than to reconcile the
rival claims to the honor of his presence. In my case, I had no greatly
prolonged anxiety, and accepted the proffered hospitality of Mr. Alexis,
then Vice-Consul of the United States of America, and now Dutch Consul,
to whom most of the few travellers in Crete are more or less under
obligations.

I thoroughly enjoyed some days of careless loafing about Canea. I have
intimated my slight experience of Turkish towns; and if the critic
should think it worth while to remark that I should have seen
Constantinople and Cairo, Smyrna and Salonica, before attempting to
describe one, I admit the justice of the criticism, and pass over
readily all that is Turkish in Canea, the more that it is mainly of
negative or destructive character. What remains of interest in Canea is
Venetian, though of that there is almost nothing which represents the
great period of the sea-republic, except the fine, and in most parts
well-conditioned walls. Here and there a double-arched window, with a
bit of fine carving in the capitals, peeps out from the jutting
uglinesses of seraglio windows, close latticed and mysterious; one or
two fine doorways, neglected and battered as to their ornamentation,
some coats of arms, three or four arched gateways, and as many
fountains, are all that will catch the eye of the artist inside the
walls, unless it be the port, with its quaint and picturesque boats of
antique pattern.

Canea had its west-end in what is now known as the Castelli,--the slight
elevation on which, most probably, the ancient city was built, and on
which stood the Venetian citadel, and the aristocratic quarter, enclosed
and gated with an interior wall, whose circuit may still be traced in
occasional glimpses of the brown stone above and between the Turkish
houses. The Castelli of to-day is the principal street of this quarter,
running through its centre, and guarded by the gates whose arches
remain, valueless and without portcullis, but showing in their present
state how strong a defence was needed to assure the patricians in their
slumbers against any importunate attempts of their malcontent subjects
and fellow-townsmen to clear off the score which the infamous government
of the Republic accumulated. One doorway in this street struck me
particularly, from the exquisite ornamentation of its stone doorway; but
the palace to which it opened is abandoned, and in ruins. Most of the
better class of these houses are in the same state, modern repair being
only a shabby patching up and whitewashing. The quarter is inhabited
almost entirely by Mussulmans; and, though habitable houses are greatly
in demand in the business parts of Canea, and many of these old palaces
could be made available at a small cost, their owners have so little
energy, or so great an aversion to new-comers and Christians, that none
of them are put under repairs.

On the walls of the city are many old bronze guns of both Venetian and
Turkish manufacture. The former still bear the Lion of St. Mark's, and
one long nine-pounder is exquisitely ornamented with a reticulation of
vines cast in relief over the whole length of it. It bears the name of
Albergetti, its founder. The only modern guns I saw were half a dozen
heavy cast-iron thirty-two-pounders of Liege, and a few light bronze
guns on the battery commanding the entrance of the harbor. The whole
circuit of the walls is still furnished with the ancient bronze guns, of
which several are of about twelve-inch calibre, with their stone balls
still lying by them.

The harbor of Canea approximates in form to a clumsy L, the bottom of
the letter forming the basin in the centre of which our yacht was
moored, with a longer recess running eastward from the entrance, and
divided from the open sea only by a reef on which the mole is built,
following the direction of the coast at this part of the island. The
narrow entrance is at the exterior angle of the L, between the
water-battery and the lighthouse; and in the interior angle are the
Castelli, Konak, &c. Along the inner side of the eastern recess, and
across its extremity, is a line of galley-houses,--the penitential
offering, it is said, of a patrician exiled here, to purchase his
repatriation. Earthquakes have rent their walls, decay has followed
disuse, for the harbor has now become so filled up that only a small
boat can get into the furthermost of the arches, and the greater part of
the galley-houses have dry land out to their entrances, and the
ship-yard of to-day is in the vacant space left by the fall of two or
three of them.

As might be expected, Canea is a very dull city. Out of the highway of
Eastern trade or travel, whoever visits it must do so for itself alone,
for the arts of amusing idlers and luring travellers are unknown to it.
The only amusements for summer are a nargile on the Marina, studying
primitive civilization the while, during the twilight hours, and the
afternoon circuit of the ramparts, where every day at five o'clock an
execrable band tortures the most familiar arias with clangor of
discordant brass. From the ramparts we overlooked the plain, bounded by
Mount Malaxa, above which loomed the Aspravouna, showing late in summer
strips of snow in the ravines that furrowed the bare crystalline peaks,
brown and gray and parched with the drought of three months. The Cretan
summer runs rainless from June to October; and the only relief to the
aridity of the landscape is formed by the olive-orchards, covering
nearly the whole expanse between the sea sands and the treeless ridge of
Malaxa with so luxuriant a green, that, accustomed to the olive of
Italy, I could scarcely believe these to be the same trees. This I at
first supposed to be owing to some peculiarity of the plain, but
subsequently found it to be characteristic of the Cretan olive; and I
remember hearing Captain Brine of the Racer express the same surprise I
myself felt on first seeing the olive here. The trees are like
river-side willows in early summer.

To get a clear comprehension of the position of Canea and the ancient
advantages of Cydonia, its local predecessor, and at the same time of
the whole northwestern district of Crete, one must ascend the hills of
the Akroteri,--at least the first ridge, from which the view is superb.
The Aspravouna towers higher: we look into the gorges of the Malaxa
ridge, and up the ravine of Theriso, to the mountains about Laki,--an
immemorial strong-hold of the Cretans, behind which, a sure and
impregnable refuge to brave men, is the great plain of Omalos. Farther
on are the hills of Selinos and Kisamos, sending off northward two long
parallel ridges of considerable altitude, the peninsula of Grabusa, the
ancient Corycus, the western land of Crete, and, from where we look,
visible in portions above the nearer ridge of Cape Spada, the Dictynnian
peninsula, which divides the plain of Cydonia from that of Kisamon and
Polyrrhenia, and, but for the glimpses of Corycus above it, shutting in
our view, as it bounds the territory dependent on the ancient city.

No site in Crete is more distinctly recognizable from the indications of
the ancient geographers than Cydonia. It had "a port with shoals
outside," and from this elevation one looks directly down the longer
fork of the harbor, and can see how the mole is built on a black reef,
whose detached masses extend from the lighthouse eastward to the corner
of the city wall, which is built out to meet it, and then descends to
the mole, with which it is continuous. Beyond the entrance of the
harbor, the reef again appears, gradually nearing the shore; and beyond
this, as far as the eye can reach, are no rocks,--no Other nook where a
galley could have taken refuge.

How the hearts of the Pelasgian wanderers must have bounded when their
exploring prows pushed into this nook, which offered them shelter from
all winds that blow! It was a site to gladden the eyes of those builders
of cities. Up above them, the bluff rock waiting for the layers of huge
stones,--the eastern nook of the port more perfectly protected than the
southern, which receives more or less the swell from the northerly
winds, and whose inner shore of hard sand tempted the weary
keels,--while all around stretched a wide, fertile, and then probably
forest-clad plain, doubtless abounding in the stags for which the
district was long famous. Here the restless race "located," and seem to
have prospered in the days of those brave men who lived before
Agamemnon, to whom and to whose allies in the Trojan war they seem to
have given much the same trouble that their reputed descendants, the
Sphakiotes, did to the Cretan Assembly of 1866, not being either then or
now over-devoted to Panhellenism, though never averse to a comfortable
fight.

Pashley quotes a Latin author to show that Cydonia was one of the most
ancient, if not the most ancient, of Cretan cities,--"Cnossus and
Erythraea, and, as the Greeks say, Cydonia, mother of cities." The
alleged foundation of the city by Agamemnon was clearly, if anything,
only a revival of the more ancient city; and after him successive
colonizations rolled their waves in on this beautiful shore, obedient to
its irresistible attraction. Dorian, Samiote, Roman, followed, adding
new blood, and perhaps new wealth; and when finally, in the degradation
of the Byzantine empire, Venice took possession of Crete, Cydonia had so
far passed into insignificance, that, "seeking a place to build a
fortress to quell the turbulent Greeks," she refounded Cydonia, and
called it Canea,--an evident corruption of the old name. With all this
building and rebuilding, nothing remains, of the ancient city. A mass of
masonry near the Mussulman cemetery, which Chevalier in 1699 saw covered
with a mosaic pavement, is still visible, but is Roman work, rubble and
mortar. As Pashley says, the modern walls of Canea would have been
sufficient to consume all vestiges of the ancient building. The
citations he gives ought to put at rest all question, of the identity of
Canea with Cydonia, and we shall presently see the only serious
objection which has been raised against it disappear under an
examination of the geological character of the plain.[A]

Looking from our hill-top southwestwardly across the plain, the eye is
carried between two low ranges of hills into a valley which seems a
continuation of this plain. Here runs the Iardanos, along which,
according to Homer, the Cydonians dwelt. But it is now in no point of
its course nearer than ten miles to Canea. This discrepancy troubled the
early travellers, who were finally inclined to solve the riddle by
supposing Cydonia to have been a district, and not a city merely. But
study the plain a little, or Spratt's chart of it, and we shall see that
from that far-off river-bed an almost unbroken and very gentle
inclination leads through the plain, by the rear of the city, to the bay
of Suda, a considerable ridge rising between it and the sea.

Suppose the mountains reclothed with forests, the hillsides pierced with
perennial springs, and the flowing of the waters, not, as now, fitful
and impetuous, but copious and constant. Then dam up the narrow opening
the river has cut through the coast line of hills, in its direct course
from the mountains to the sea, with a smaller and similar one cut by a
stream coming down from Theriso, and you have the whole water sheet of
the north side of the Aspravouna emptying into the bay of Suda. In this
supposed route of the Iardanos (now the Platanos), just where it
commences its cutting through the hills, is a large marsh, the remnant
of what was once a lake of a mile or more in width, when the Iardanos,
then a gentle, bounteous river, turned from its present course to run
eastward, and deposit its washings where they made the marshes of
Tuzla, and the shallows at the head of Suda Bay. Civilization,
ship-building, commerce, carried away the forests; and, thus changed[B]
into a furious mountain torrent,--three months a roaring flood which no
bridge can stride, and the rest of the year almost a dry pebbled
bed,--the Iardanos made a straight cut for the sea, drained its lake,
forgot its old courses, and changed, in time, its name; and _so_ it
happens that the Cydonians no longer dwell along the Iardanos.

While we are on our look-out, let us try to study out another puzzle,
which even Spratt left in doubt, i. e. the site of Pergamos. We know
that it was near both Cydonia and Achaia, and Spratt pretty conclusively
fixes the latter on the Dictynnian peninsula; so that it must have been
in our present field of view. Looking this over, we can see but one
point of land which offers the indispensable requisites for a city of
the heroic ages, and that is the site of the modern Platania, midway
between Canea and the peninsula,--a bold hill with a nearly
perpendicular face to the north and east, and so abrupt on the west as
to be easily fortified, and connected with the hills on the south by a
narrow neck of hill,--such a site, in fact, as any one familiar with
Pelasgic remains would seek at once in a country where any such remains
existed. The fact that no remains exist to show that an ancient city
stood here proves no more than at Canea; while the fact that none of the
possible sites in the neighborhood show any such remains is conclusive
against them, as no modern cities are there to consume the ancient
masonry. In our researches in the island, we shall almost invariably
find that, where there are remains of ancient cities, there is no modern
town, and that, where a modern town stands on an ancient site
determined, there are few, if any, antique vestiges. The reason is
evident,--the ruins serve as quarry. The change of name even proves more
for our hypothesis than against it. The plane-tree was not in ancient
times so rare in the island as now, and would hardly have then given a
name to a city, while now it not only names Platania, but the river
even,--a grove of plane-trees occupying the valley between the city and
the mouth of the river. The probability is, then, that the names of both
are synchronous; and it would be useless to look for any Platania in
ancient times, or any vestige of the name "Pergamos" in modern times,
while, if the ancient city stood on a site now abandoned, we should in
all probability find both ruins and name to indicate the locality.

The conjecture of Spratt, that Pergamos was near Pyrgos Pori is only a
conjecture, Pyrgos being too common a name for any strongly situated
village or ruin to have any significance. A city at that locality would,
moreover, have been cut off from all sea approach by the Iardanos in its
ancient course; and as Pergamos was one of those cities founded by the
wanderers from Troy,--either, they say, by Agamemnon or AEneas,--it would
probably not have been founded on an inland site, or even on a river
navigable, as the Iardanos must have been, for small craft, the access
to which would be commanded by Aptera, Minoa, and Cydonia. So far as
conjecture goes, it seems to me much more likely that Hagia Irene--which
Spratt supposes the ancient city--was Achaia, the location of which he
avoids by supposing it a district, rather than a city, forgetting that
in those days no one dwelt outside of city walls. My hypothesis, coupled
with that of the identity of Platania with Pergamos, would satisfy all
the exigencies of the case, which that of neither Spratt nor Pashley
does. For the rest, Pergamos is mainly interesting as the burial-place
of Lycurgus.

From our point of view on the Akroteri, we see the whole domain of
Cydonia,--as at our left Suda Bay terminates the view, (on the first
plateau eastward of the bay Aptera presided,) while the Dictynnian hills
divide it from the plain of Kisamos to the west, and the mountains rise
abruptly to the south;--a little kingdom well defined, one of the most
perfectly beautiful territories the tourist can find, and still
fertile,--though the hills have forgotten their fruit and the plain its
river,--and capable of sustaining a much larger population than it now
supports, if the Mohammedan blight were off it.

Almost at the foot of the ridge where we stand is a beautiful example of
a Venetian fortified country-house,--a little castle, turreted and
loop-holed, with a drawbridge thrown from a tower rising opposite the
doorway, and still in excellent preservation. Other similar houses may
be seen, but I have nowhere in the island found one so fine as this. At
the farther edge of the plain, lying along under the hills, is a
succession of white villages,--Zukalaria, Nerokouro (running water),
Murnies, celebrated for its oranges and the brutal and gratuitous
massacre by Mustapha Pacha (late Imperial Commissioner), in 1833,
Boutzounaria (dripping water), first place of assembling of the Cretan
malcontents in 1866, Perivolia, Galatas, Hagia Marina, and Platania, by
the sea.

Off Platania is the island of St. Theodore, whose fortress, defended by
the Venetian mercenaries against the Turks, showed one of those examples
of heroic constancy we so generally and erroneously attribute to
patriotic courage; for, defying the enemy to the last, the garrison
defended the castle until the Turks had stormed and filled it with their
numbers, and then blew it up, destroying every one within the walls. The
foundations still remain, but level with the cemented floor; everything
is razed cleanly, while the fragments lie along the slopes like the
ejections of a volcano.

Midway between the Akroteri and Canea lies Kalepa, a suburb where most
of the foreign consuls reside in summer, with many of the wealthier
Khaniotes, and the only place in the vicinity where the summer can be
passed in comfort. A few houses are fitted with European improvements,
but the greater part are the simple and cheerless residences of the
Cretan peasant, furnished with the merest necessities of existence. Even
here, in the most prosperous of the villages I have been in, life is,
for most of the people, only a struggle against poverty, thrift being
impossible where every surplus meets a new impost. Many houses are still
in ruins from the devastations of 1821-1830, showing how incompletely
the island had recovered from that war before being plunged into another
more destructive still. From the ravages of this, however, Kalepa is
saved so far,--thanks to a few consular residents,--but saved alone of
all the villages of the plain country.

If it be true that civilization is determined by natural advantages, it
must be that Cydonia was the "mother of cities," at least of all the
Hellenic realm, for no more enchanting or tempting site have I ever
known through travel or description. With its climate of paradisiacal
softness and healthfulness, and the beauty of its framing hills,--fanned
in summer by the north winds from the AEgean and by south winds tempered
by the snows of the Aspravouna,--with a winter in which vegetation never
ceases and frost never comes,--with its garden-like plain and its
old-time river, and its port unexceptionable in ancient times,--nothing
was wanting to render prosperity and security complete in former days,
as nothing but freedom is wanting now to restore both, and make the city
the most attractive place in the classical world. Hitherto, its charms
have but tempted invasion, and its fertility has only grown harvests for
the sword. Here began the Cretan conquest by Metellus; here began the
movements which, one after the other, have shaken the Ottoman chain only
to make it heavier; and here began the latest struggle, which, so long
and gallantly upheld, may finally bring back to Crete the civilization
born on her shores, but for so many centuries an exile.


II.

THE AKROTERI.

Not to make one's first excursion from Canea to the Akroteri, with its
convent of the Hagia Triada (Holy Trinity), and its sacred Grotto of St.
John, would be _lesa maesta_ to the Khaniotes, who regard a pilgrimage
to the latter as entitling one to a Hadjiship.

The ride (or walk, which I recommend, in preference, to good
pedestrians) is a delightful one in early summer; and, even after the
heats of August have browned the plain of the Akroteri, an early start
from Canea will leave a memory of breezy upland with wide expanse of
mountain and sea,--including some of the most picturesque views to be
found in Crete,--and of the rich odors of many aromatic herbs and
flowers, through whose rifled sweets the Akroteri is famous for its
honey. A three hours' ride--first up the zigzag road that climbs the
ridge above Kalepa, and then over an undulating plain sparsely dotted
with hamlets and clouded here and there with olive-orchards--brings one,
with a sufficient appreciation of good cheer, and clean, cool rooms,
shade, and quiet, into the cloistered court of Hagia Triada, a
semi-military building of the Venetian days. Still unfinished, the
Turkish conquest having interrupted its progress, with all other in the
seventeenth century. In the centre of the quadrangle, round which are
the rooms of the monks and the guest-rooms, stands the church, an
edifice nondescript as to style, with a facade of a species of Venetian
Doric, fronting a building whose plan is a Latin cross, and whose roof
observes Byzantine tradition. On the entablature over the doorway are
the dedicatory Greek capitals, [Greek: BGYTHTP],--the meaning of which
none of the priests could tell me, though a duplicate inscription in
Latin and Greek beside the door told by whom the convent was built; and
the Hegoumenos added the tradition, that the two founders, being
converted by an extraordinary illumination from the Latin to the Greek
Church, gave an edifying proof of their devotion to their new creed by
erecting this convent.

The Hegoumenos was a Sphakiote, a very shrewd, clear-headed and
energetic man, and, though betraying no great familiarity with books or
dogmas, showed that he was a better fisher in those waters where men are
to be caught than most of his _confreres_ of any creed. He had that
manner of innate authority which never fails to impose itself on the
indecisions and self-distrusts of the mass of men, and which in a wider
circle of ambition would certainly have won him a larger place. Like the
Hegoumenos of every other Greek convent, he was elected by the monks,
and, though completely in the hands of his brethren, and at any time
liable to be removed by another election, the subordination to him was
perfect as could have been imagined. It was a curious exemplification of
the force of democracy. Yet not only in Hagia Triada, but in other
Cretan convents, I have seen how the mass of men find their governors as
surely and wisely, and often more fitly, than if they had had men born
to the place, or appointed by some superior hierarchy.

In Italy I had always been accustomed to find the convents posted on the
hill-tops, and almost inaccessible; but in Crete the loveliest valleys
are almost certain to have been chosen as their locations. The convent
of the Hagia Triada is indeed on a plain, but at the foot of the range
of hills which skirts the Akroteri to the north, and is thus almost shut
in from two sides, while to the south the plain extends to Suda Bay,
which is hidden in the chasm between the Akroteri and Mount Malaxa, and
beyond which the mountains of Sphakia rise in picturesque and alluring
redundance of ravine and massive rock. All the nearer plain is green
with the olive-orchards, and the road which approaches the front
entrance is flanked with two lines of cypresses, and carob-trees grow up
the rocky heights overlooking the convent, where no other tree will
grow. The hum of bees filled the air, and mingled with the notes of
nightingales (poetically fabled to sing _only_ by night), the chirping
of multitudinous sparrows, wrens, and linnets, and the twittering of
swallows. At the outer gate sat two or three aged monks, picturesque and
sculpturesque at once, like enchanted porters at the doors of some
spellbound palace, their long, gray beards and sunken, listless eyes
according with their own and the convent's external dilapidation.

The beauty and quiet of the place were almost enchantment enough to
account for the gray-headed porters, their immobility and longevity, and
I longed to draw the charm over me. But I was one of a party which had
come under the inspiration of the most inane motive of travel,--the
desire to see all there was to be seen; and so, after a half-hour's
repose, and the usual refreshments,--preserved fruits and a glass of
water, followed by coffee,--we enlisted the Hegoumenos in our party, and
set out for the grotto, taking in the way Hagios Joannes, a still more
incomplete and still more secluded convent than Hagia Triada, among the
hills between the latter and the sea. The road which we followed would
be called by no means a bad road for Crete, but anywhere else would be
execrable,--a mere bridle-path through a gorge in a range of hills from
which all the soil seems to have been washed with most of the small
stones, and where, with much precaution, your beast goes picking his way
as if in a laborious, slow-paced minuet. The convent stands in an
opening of the hills, on a little bit of comparatively plain land,-a
half-finished battlemented square pile, offering defence against a
slight attack; but the monks said that the Turks always found the road
so bad that they never came to attack them during any of the island
wars, though Hagia Triada was twice pillaged. The comparative poverty
of Hagios Joannes may have had something to do with its exemption, but
the road would defend it from my encroachments forever; and, in fact,
visitors only pass it on the way to the grottoes and convent of
Katholikon, which lie near the opening of the gorge, where it becomes a
wild glen, and approaches the sea. The path, descending, led us to the
Cave of the Bear, where we had arranged to lunch, and the bounties of
Canea, spread on the ground in the mouth of the cave, went to repair the
wear and tear of body and temper caused by the badness of the road. The
cave derives its name from a mass of stalactite which has a traceable
resemblance to a bear, but it had no further interest than being our
lunching-place. Here the road became so bad that even a donkey could not
follow it, and we clambered down on foot by zigzag and rock stair to the
mouth of the Cave of St. John. Caves _per se_ have no kind of attraction
to me. Stalactite and stalagmite are pretty much the same: so, half the
way in, I made excuse of the fatigue of some of the ladies, and,
determining to go no farther, proved my gallantry by stopping to keep
them company, thus abandoning my Hadjiship, which can only be claimed
when the inner chamber is attained. If, then, the reader would know
more, he must consult the guide-book, when there is one; and meanwhile
let me assure him, on the authority of Pashley, that the cave is four
hundred and seventy feet deep, and, on that of my more persevering
fellow-visitors, that at the bottom is a chamber, very fine and imposing
by torchlight, where is a couch of natural formation on which died the
saint, leaving his name with his bones and the odor of his sanctity. The
story is that this St. John--neither the Baptist nor the Evangelist, but
a hermit of Crete--centuries ago made his abode here, and lived many
years without seeing the face of another man. Lest he should in daylight
chance upon his abhorred and outcast brethren, or any of them, he only
ventured out at night, and lived on what he could find in other people's
gardens or orchards. Happening one night to be discovered in the act of
laying in a provision of corn, he was mistaken for a thief, and received
an arrow from the owner of the provision. He crawled back, mortally
wounded, to his grotto, and never came out again except in the shape of
relics.

The convent of Katholikon, long abandoned, did not invite entrance: a
Venetian bridge spans the ravine, and gave access to the chapel for the
hermits whose little dens still remain on the other side, the denizens
having long since deserted them. Down by the sea are some Venetian
ruins, a boat-house, and some masonry of a landing. I advise travellers
who will visit Katholikon, its cave and hermitages, to order a boat
round from Canea to meet them at this place, and then go home in
comfort,--the only point to be gained from going back by land being a
more thorough experience of Cretan roads. To those who intend seeing the
rest of the island, opportunities will not lack for this; to others, the
knowledge is superfluous. A careful horse will make his way down, but he
ought to be strong to get up. Mine was not; and, in climbing, his force
or his footing failed him, and over he went backwards, and I narrowly
escaped being crushed under him. Stunned and half bewildered by the
fall,--for I had struck on my back amongst sharp stones, with one of
which my head had made intimate acquaintance,--I managed, I know not
how, to extricate myself from the flourish of legs; the horse lying more
helpless than myself in the narrow path between two slopes of stone, and
vainly plunging to get over on his side. He finally completed his
somerset, to the confusion of the line of equestrians behind, the
nearest of whom were speedily dismounted; and the chances of a kicking
match among the quadrupeds were good for a moment, until two prompt
Arabs, in attendance on Miss T----, restored the disorderly elements to
peace. Sore, bleeding, and faint, I lay awhile on a bed of wild thyme,
until I began to feel the good effects of a cordial administered by the
_pateras_, and we resumed our file, most of the party returning directly
to Canea,--myself, with a companion who served as guide and interpreter,
passing the night at the convent, the good Hegoumenos being urgent in
his entreaties that the whole company would likewise honor his roof.
None of the ladies felt inclined to do so, and perhaps it was just as
well for their repose that they did not; for, clean as the rooms of the
convent were, and white as was the linen, there were discomforts which,
though infinitely small, were infinitely numerous, and, by the law of
majorities, our tormentors turned us out of bed to pass the night in the
open air,--a change always safe, and even delightful at this season, in
Crete.

The Greek convent is a true hostel; no one is refused admission and
hospitality,--no restrictions on the gentler sex make it impossible for
real parties of pleasure to visit its beautiful valley,--no Pharisaic
rigidity of self-denial makes it imperative to refuse visitors good
cheer, though the community observe their long and trying fasts with a
severity which puts to shame abstinence in Catholic countries. (The
Greek fasts two hundred and forty-six days out of three hundred and
sixty-five, and most of this time not even fish is allowed, while part
of the time oil, milk, and shell-fish are also forbidden.) And the
welcome is no mere show of kindliness; the longer you stay at the
convent, the better the monks are pleased, and staying longer than you
intended is the highest compliment you can pay them. What change a
larger acquaintance with the world will produce, of course I cannot say,
or how much the spirit of hospitality will diminish by an increase of
the calls on it; but now no English country-house makes you more at home
than a Cretan convent.

In the morning, the _pateras_ guided us to a peak, near the northeastern
point of the Akroteri, whence we could overlook, not only the peninsula
and Suda Bay, but the Apokorona, the coast from Cape Spada to Cape
Stavros, the Rhiza as far as the mountains of Kisamos, Mount Ida, and
the mountains of Sphakia, Lampe, and even, in the dim distance,
Lassithe. Included in the field of view were the sites of seven of the
Cretan cities of _early_ days, not counting Minoa and Canea, hidden from
view. On the north, we had the Greek islands Cerigotto, Cerigo, Milo,
Santorini, and others less prominent. It was my intention to return by
the shore of Suda Bay, in order to visit Minoa, but the badness of the
roads, and the utter want of interest in the intermediate distance,
determined me to visit that part of the Akroteri by boat at a later
period.

Returning to the convent, we had not long to wait for a capital
dinner,--soup, a boiled chicken, mutton stewed with artichokes and
beans, new honey, and rice prepared with milk, sugar, and spices, with a
dessert of figs and grapes. The wine of the convent had a bitter taste,
from an herb steeped in it, which was preferable to the pitch of Greek
wines, but still not a desirable addition. One of the monks, who had a
small property close by the convent, brought us a bottle of wine of his
own production, which was one of the best I have ever tasted in the
East, and to my mind better than that of Cyprus. With coffee and
cigarettes we stretched ourselves on the sofas before the windows,
through which the east wind blew the odors extorted from the fragrant
herbs and flowers by the overpowering sun. No other sound than the hum
of the bees darting past with unwearying haste, and the chirping of a
few birds amongst the olives, disturbed the air, and the monks left us
to dream or doze as we pleased. The charm of the place was complete, and
it would not have been a penance to make the convent a summer's abode.
The fleas were a drawback, surely; but nowhere in Crete can one get away
from that plague, and at Hagia Triada they were less offensive, as I
learned by later experience, than in many other convents, and even in
most private houses.

When, the sun cooling his fires, we ordered our steeds out, and prepared
to return, the whole _personnel_ of the convent came to assist, with the
inhabitants of a little village adjoining, which finds protection and
Christian charity from the convent. The monks, excepting two or three,
seemed of an ignorant and boorish quality, but hard-working and
kind-hearted. Here, evidently, a certain kind of bliss was in ignorance,
and the most learned were not wise enough to be accused of much folly.
The Hegoumenos, in bidding us good by, begged us warmly to come again
and stay long,--a month at least. All joined in the kindly wish; and we
rode back through the lengthening olive shadows, which never had fitter
accompaniment than in the peace and content which the convent promised
us, and I am sure not vainly. Not that I am a believer in the peace that
does not come of fighting,--the retreat before battle,--or think that
quiet and laziness are one. Content is a piggish virtue and one which no
earnest soul can abide in, and unsleeping ambition is the only Jacob's
ladder; but when my reader is tired of struggling, and must repose, I am
sure that he (or she, even) would find in Hagia Triada such peace and
content as may be healthfully known, and no begrudging of the solace and
satisfaction to heretics. It seems to me that only those who have no
right to a quiet life envy it in others, and, as our monks earn their
right to be charitable, they are not envious, even with sinners.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] As I shall have constant occasion to draw from Pashley information
and quotations which my own classical reading, time, and library
facilities do not permit me even to verify, I shall, once for all,
confess indebtedness for almost all the classical knowledge I possess of
the island, as well as for almost all the topographical information and
direction in my visits to antique sites, to either him or Spratt,
without whose invaluable researches the half of Crete would still be in
a measure _terra incognita_. What I hope to add to the knowledge of
Crete will be in a different vein from theirs.

[B] Consult Marsh's "Man and Nature."




CHANSON WITHOUT MUSIC.

BY THE PROFESSOR EMERITUS Of DEAD AND LIVE LANGUAGES.

([Greek: Phi. Beta. Kappa.]--CAMBRIDGE, 1867.)


    You bid me sing,--can I forget
      The classic ode of days gone by,--
    How belle Fifine and jeune Lisette
      Exclaimed, "Anacreon, geron ei"?
    "Regardez donc," those ladies said,--
      "You're getting bald and wrinkled too:
    When summer's roses all are shed,
      Love's nullum ite, voyez-vous!"

    In vain ce brave Anacreon's cry,
      "Of Love alone my banjo sings"
    (Erota mounon). "Etiam si,--
      Eh b'en?" replied the saucy things,--
    "Go find a maid whose hair is gray,
      And strike your lyre,--we sha'n't complain;
    But parce nobis, s'il vous plait,--
      Voila Adolphe! Voila Eugene!"

    Ah, jeune Lisette! Ah, belle Fifine!
      Anacreon's lesson all must learn;
    'O kairos oxus; Spring is green;
      But Acer Hyems waits his turn!
    I hear you whispering from the dust,
      "Tiens, mon cher, c'est toujours so,--
    The brightest blade grows dim with rust,
      The fairest meadow white with snow!"

    You do not mean it! _Not_ encore?
      _Another_ string of playday rhymes?
    You've heard me--nonne est?--before,
      Multoties,--more than twenty times;
    Non possum,--vraiment,--pas du tout,
      I cannot! I am loath to shirk;
    But who will listen if I do,
      My memory makes such shocking work?

    Ginosko, Scio. Yes, I'm told
      Some ancients like my rusty lay,
    As Grandpa Noah loved the old
      Red-sandstone march of Jubal's day
    I used to carol like the birds,
      But time my wits has quite unfixed,
    Et quoad verba,--for my words,--
      Ciel! Eheu! Whe-ew!--how they're mixed!

    Mehercle! Zeu! Diable! how
      My thoughts were dressed when I was young
    But tempus fugit! see them now
      Half clad in rags of every tongue!
    O philoi, fratres, chers amis!
      I dare not court the youthful Muse,
    For fear her sharp response should be,
      "Papa Anacreon, please excuse!"

    Adieu! I've trod my annual track
      How long!--let others count the miles,--
    And peddled out my rhyming pack
      To friends who always paid in smiles.
    So, laissez-moi! some youthful wit
      No doubt has wares he wants to show;
    And I am asking, "Let me sit,"
      Dum ille clamat, "Dos pou sto!"




THE ROSE ROLLINS.


PART II.

"It was a Sunday evening that was coming on, you see, and there was a
full moon, and all the willagers would be out to church, because there
was a rewival a-going on, and, thinks says I, he'll walk into his sleep,
like as not, and he'll be wisible to one and he'll be wisible to all,
and I must adopt the adwice that's been adwised me, whether it's quite
adwisable or not; so I gets the clothes-line, and I cuts off about five
yards, and I slips it under my piller before I goes to--before I retires
to rest. The clothes-line was a new hempen one, and strong as could be.
Well, he was no sooner asleep than up I riz, and slips the line from
under my piller, and I ties my arm to his'n with a knot that couldn't be
ontied easy. And now, thinks says I to myself, you get away and walk
into your sleep if you can! But you'll see directly that I was adwised
bad.

"Just as the meetin' folks was a-goin' home, I, bein' about half asleep,
feels somethin' pullin' and pullin' onto my arm, and says I, 'Let go!'
and nothin' answered, and then says I, 'Let go, I tell you!' and, bless
you! I had no more than got the words out of my mouth when down I comes
onto the floor, piller and all! I knowed then, right away, what was the
matter,--he was a-walkin' into his sleep. 'O, stop,' says I, 'just for a
minute, till I ontie myself!'

"'Divel a bit!' says he, and with that he strode off, and me headlong at
his heels!"

"My little wentersome one!" says John; and finding that that but very
inadequately expressed what he felt, he repeated it, with slight
alteration, "My wentersome little one!" at the same time lifting his
eyes to heaven and shaking his finger in a menacing way at the air.

"Me--your own--headlong at his heels," whispered the widow, softly. And
then she boxed his ear with the tips of her fingers, and then he said he
would love to have her a-boxin' on 'em forever, and then she laughed
incredulously, and then she went on:--

'Stop, you willain, till I ontie myself,' says I.

"'Ontie me, you wixen!' says he, 'who cares whether you are ontied or
not?' and he histed the winder,--a two-story winder it was,--and out he
went!"

"My brain is a-reelin'!" cries John. "You poor dewoted dove!"

"Dewoted, sure enough," says the widow, "and dewoted you'd 'a' thought
if you'd 'a' seen me; for up he hists the winder, and out he goes. Now
there was the framework of a new house--a great skeleton like--standin'
alongside of us, and into that he waults, and I waults after him,--for
what could I do but wault?--and away he goes from beam to beam, and from
jice to jice, and from scantlin' to scantlin', waultin' up and up, and
me waultin' after,--for what could I do but wault?--and cryin' with all
my might, 'You willain!' and he a-cryin' back, 'You wixen!' and the moon
a-shinin' like a blaze, and the meetin' folks goin' by, and my
night-gownd a-floppin', and both of us plain wisible!

"'Help! murder!' I cries, for my salwation depended on it, and, seein'
the meetin' folks adwance, he just waulted from the timber onto which we
stood right into the thin and insupportable air--"

"And dragged you after him? Lord 'a' mercy!" cried John.

"No," says the widow, speaking with great calmness; "my presence of mind
never forsook me,--I was an undertaker's daughter, and adwantage of
birth prewailed over the disadwantage of position,--I waulted down the
tother side; and there we hung balanced into the air, and there we would
have hung all night but for the accident of the rewival.

"When they cut us down,--which one of the rewival folks did with his
jack-knife,--I woluntarily fainted away, and was carried in for dead,
and didn't rewive, and wouldn't rewive, for hours and hours. La me! I
was so ashamed!"

"I wish it had been my forten to carry you into the house," says John.

"So do I," says the widow; "but let us be thankful that the wicissitudes
of life have driv us together at last."

"At last, sure enough," says John; "you speak wisdom when you don't know
on 't, you dove of doves!"

She bent her eyes upon him in tender inquiry, in answer to which he
said, "At last it is, sweetheart, for you don't know that I loved you
when I was a youngster not more 'n a dozen year old!"

"Loved _me_, captain! It isn't creditable! Tell me all about it. Are you
sure?"

"Just as sure on 't as I be of anything; just as sure as I be that I
love you now."

"Tell me all about it, I'm dying to know; it seems like some wild
novelty, to be sure."

"Yes, you're right, it is like a novelty if it was only writ out, and it
don't seem creditable, but it's true; I'm just as sure on 't as I be of
anything,--just as sure as I be that I love you now!"

"O captain!"

"Yes, my own Rose, I loved you when I was a little lad,--loved you just
as I did the mornin' star,--loved you and worshipped you from far away.
What a spry little thing you was, a-hoppin' about among the mahogany and
walnut stuff like a young sparrer! O, how I've watched and follered you
with my eyes when you didn't dream on 't!"

"But, John, my nerves are a woman's, remember, and you mustn't keep them
a-strain so long; they're wery much weakened by all this."

"Ay, to be sure," says John; "your nerves be a woman's, to say nothin'
of your curosity bein' a woman's!"

And he laughed with as much heartiness at her expense as though she had
been his wife already.

"John!" This with tender reproach, and he resumed, in a tone of
respectful and lover-like humility.

"Wa'n't your name Rose Rollins afore you was jined to the
vagabond,--wagabond, that is to say,--afore you was dethroned; and
didn't you live in Fust Street, opposite them old tenement housen knowed
as Baker's Row?"

"Of course I did, John, in the yaller brick with the shop in the corner,
and the entrance embellished with a beautiful sign,--three coffins, with
their leds turned back so as to reweal the satin linin's, and my
father's name in letters that represented silver screws! A stroke of
genius that design was!--the sign of the three coffins, two of them
sideways and one end; my father's name--Farewell Rollins, wery
appropriate to his business as it turned out--in letters that they was
modelled after silver screws."

"Three on 'em, two sideways and one end?" says John; "and the name,
Farewell Rollins, shaped arter silver screws! Why, as you be a livin'
cretur, you're the very--wery--little gal I was in love with; and many a
day, dark enough otherwise with poverty and sorrer, you've lighted up
with your purty golden head!" And then he tells her, by way of
illustrating the depth and sincerity of his early attachment, that it
once happened to him to have an orange given him at Christmas time; and
that, although he had never tasted an orange in all his born days,
except through a confectioner's window-glass, he without hesitation
tossed it over the wall into her father's yard, hoping that she, who ate
oranges every day, might possibly have his added to the rest. And he
concluded with, "Such was the nater of my feelin's for you even then."

"And the nater of your feelin's, John, was not only wergin' close upon
the feelin's of love," says the milliner, deeply touched, "but they was
love,--love of the wiolentest kind!"

And then she says that, if she can only find in the town an orange as
big as the full moon, she'll buy it, let it cost what it will, and give
it to him.

And then she says, playfully tapping his chin, "I only wish them
feelin's had hild."

"You wish them feelin's had hild!" says John, leaning his face still
lower to the touches of her pretty hands; and then in his reverence he
addressed her in the third person, saying, "How sweetly prowokin' she
is!"

Then, very earnestly, "They hev hild all these years, them feelin's hev,
and they hev been rewived this day in all their wiolence; and the
beautiful curls that used to shine down all the daffodils are just as
soft and as golden as ever!" Here he ventured to touch the ends of the
long-admired tresses; but he did not see that they were both thin and
faded, and that the parting was very, very wide. "Ay, it's the same
bright head," he went on, "that's been a-shinin' all these years so far
away that I never expected to put my rough hand on 't,--not, anyhow,
afore I'd crossed the dark ferry, and got refined into a spirit. And
now, just think! here you be, a-sailin' in my little wessel, that I'd
christened 'The Rose Rollins' for your memory's sake,--a-sailin' by my
side in all the freshness and bloom of your perfect beauty!"

The milliner laughed, well pleased with the compliment, and said that,
when one charm wanished, another took its place sometimes; so that, if
we only kept up our witality, we didn't look much the worse for all our
years. "Now you, for instance, could never have been handsomer than you
are to-day!" she concluded, pointing her theory with that kindly method
so characteristic of women.

His face had been drawing nearer to hers all the while she spoke, so
that his eyes were quite looking into hers now. "I'm broke a leetle,"
says he, "I know it; but when I see myself in these lovely
lookin'-glasses I do look right nice, for all." And then he went on with
his story.

"I was a'most forgettin' on 't," he said; "but what wonder!

"My father was a sailor; and the last time he ever went out was as one
of the crew of the Dauphin, of Nantucket, Captain Griscom,--how well I
remember it! though I was a little chap then,--about seven year old, I
guess. The Dauphin was a whaler, you must know, and Captain Griscom as
rough and hard as the sea-rocks themselves. I seen him once; and I've
got a picter in my mind of his furrered, weather-beat face, and eyes
that was more like the bulb of some pison plant than anything else,--so
blue, and dull, and lackin' all human expression. His ear was like a dry
knot,--seemed as if 't would break off if you touched it, and his nose
wa' n't much better. He wa' n't a man that any child would ever go
nigh,--anyhow I couldn't. My father was high-sperited,--too
high-sperited for his sitooation, as'll be showed by an' by.

"My mother was a little, pale woman, with blue eyes, and hair as soft as
flax. You've seen her, I dare say, for she took in washin', and used to
hang the things on the ruf, and I would go up with her under pertence of
helpin', but more, I'm afeard, because I could the better see into your
door-yard, and maybe get a glimpse o' you. Well, my father used to tell
her, 'Katura,' he would say, 'arter one more voyage I'll leave the sea,
for then I shall be rich enough to buy an acre o' ground somewheres
where I can hear the waters a-lappin' on the sand; and we'll build a
snug little house, and send our boy to school, and you sha' n't wash no
more, for you ain't strong, Katura,--not nigh so strong as you used to
be,--I can see that plain enough.' Then the tears would come to my
mother's eyes; for a tender word was always touchin' to her, and seein'
on 'em my father would make haste to say, pattin' of her cheek, that,
although some o' the airly roses was gone, she wa' n't a mite less
purty than she used to be! and then she'd wipe her eyes and smile agin,
and arter a little smoothin' up of her hair, or carefuller pinnin' of
her handkerchief, light his pipe for him, and fetch the big chair out of
the corner; and then she'd set herself to darnin' of his socks, or
patchin' of his jackets, and so they'd pass an evenin' happy as could
be,--my father singin' a sea-song, or a love-song, maybe, first or last.

"We lived in the last house o' the Row,--the housen was all poor enough,
you mind, but ourn was the very poorest on 'em, and then we had the top
floor,--one room and a pantry bein' all, exceptin' the ruf, which was
flat, and which we had the privilege on for a yard, in consideration of
a dollar extra a month. 'Have the ruf, be sure, Katura!' my father would
say. 'What's a dollar?' and he'd slap his hand down as though 't was
full o' dollars, but 't wa' n't, and mother always paid the extra dollar
out of her own airnin's, but feelin' all the time a'most as if he'd paid
it, just because of the generous way he had o' speekin'. I remember the
last time father sailed with the Dauphin, as I was sayin'
afore,--remember it just as though it was yesterday. It was a mornin' in
winter,--the twenty-third o' December, and snow a-lyin' on the ground. I
could see his tracks along the walk for a week arter he was gone, and
then the snow begun to melt; thawin' and freezin' together at first, and
then a clean thaw, so the tracks filled up with water, and arter another
week I couldn't find no trace on 'em.

"'Take good care o' your mother, my lad!' he said, 'take the best o'
care on her! I'll be home afore long, for good and all, to take care on
her myself; it won't be but two or three year at the outside,'--and he
give my shoulder a little shake, and then he slipped a quarter-dollar
into my hand. And then he turned to her. 'Three year ain't long,
Katura,' he says; 'why, they'll fly round just like so many hours,
a'most, and fust thing you know you'll hear my step a-comin' up the
stair! Have everything you want, good wife, and don't work hard; you
know its agin my will that you should,--these pale cheeks make me a
little afeard; but, arter all, you'll come round with the daisies, I
guess.' And with that he turned from her, and writ a little with his
finger on the table, and then he chirked up like, and buttoned his
jacket quick, and went out the door just as though he wa' n't a-goin' no
furder than across the street.

"The minute follerin', mother went up to the house-ruf. She wanted to
see arter the washed things, she said, how they was a-dryin' and all;
but I knowd well enough she wanted to see arter him, and didn't pull at
her skirt and foller, as I generally did. I stayed down stairs, and, to
kind o' break up my sorrer, I chucked my head aginst the knob that was
atop o' the andiron! A curus way to git relief; but my diversions, them
times, was somewhat limited.

"When my mother came down agin, there wa' n't no tears in her eyes, but
they had a kind of a fur-reachin' look, as if they was a-gazin' clear
across the salt seas; and they never lost that look arterwards. It was
wofuller than tears, that look was,--'cause it seemed as if it was arter
somethin' that wa'n't to be found on this airth.

"I hung round her, and when she did n't say nothin' I told her I was
goin' to be the best boy that ever was, and build all the fires, and
help her to keep things snug; and that I could make my old shoes last
three year, till father would come home. I was sure on 't, with one new
pair o' half-soles, and one new pair o' toe-caps, anyhow.

"Then she took me on her knee, and leaned her face agin mine, and said I
was the best child in all the world, and she hoped yet to see the time
that I'd hev as nice shoes and other things as I deserved. I slipped the
ring up and down her finger, as she held me so, a-talkin' to me, and at
last I said, 'This ring is too big, mother; what made you get such a
big one?' And then she said, 'Your father give it to me long ago, my
child, and it wa'n't none too big at fust; it's the fault of the
finger,--that is getting too thin'; and then she took the ring off,--it
was a leetle slim thing,--and put it in an old teapot that was kept on
the top shelf of the cupboard. She was afeared she'd either lose it off
her hand, she said, or break it on the washboard. She didn't say nothin'
furder, but I see she thought that the losin' on 't would be the
dreadfullest misfortin that could happen to her.

"It would take too long, and wear out your patience, I calculate, if I
was to tell you of all the troubles we hed arter the sailin' of the
Dauphin, and troubles ain't interestin' to hear on, nohow; so I'll pass
'em by, trustin' your lively imagination to picter on 'em out.

"Well, when the three year was purty near up, she used to say to me
every day, 'Where do you 'spose poor father is? And what will he think
of his little boy when he sees him?' And then she would answer her own
question, and say, 'He'll think he's a little man,--that 's what he'll
think.' And with such like talk she seemed to get a sort of comfort,
somehow. From her, more than from anything I knowed myself, I got a fine
notion o' my father; among other things, I thought he was the biggest
man in the world, and I used to spekilate as to whether Mr. Farewell
Rollins had a coffin in his shop that would be long enough for him, if
he should happen to die at home. I didn't s'pose he had, and the thought
of what it would cost to get one big enough caused me a good deal of
sorrer. More 'n this, I thought he must have wonderful powers, and that
he could make me a kite that would fly to the moon, or, if he chose, dip
all the water out o' the sea with mother's long-handled gourd.

"These thoughts give me a good deal o' satisfaction, but there was times
that nothin' I could git out o' myself could chirk me up; and them
times I always betook myself to the andirons, and bobbed my head agin
the top on 'em, and that was sure to fetch me round.

"I longed for my father to come back, as much, maybe, that Rose Rollins
might see what a big man he was, as for anything else. I guessed she'd
begin to notice of us some when the Dauphin come in! Hows'ever, the
three year went by, and no Dauphin come in; and then the eyes o' my
mother began to look, not only as if they was a-gazin' away across the
salt sea, but clean into eternity. Her cheeks fell in like a pie that
has been sot in a cellar for a week arter the bakin' on't, and her arm
showed in her sleeve no bigger than a broomstick. I was a'most afeared
on her sometimes, her forehead come to look so like yaller glass, and as
if I could see right into it, if I only tried; and them times I thumped
my head uncommon hard on the knobs of the andirons,--they was a
blessin', Rose,--and I used to spekilate as to what folks did that wa'
n't rich enough to hev 'em. My mother got so weak, arter a while, that
she would sometimes sit by the side o' the tub and wash; and it was
astonishin' to me to see what great sheets and bed-quilts she could
wring dry them times; and it was astonishin', too, that she could keep
her hands in freezin' water, day arter day, and be none the wuss for it;
but she always said she wa' n't,--in, fact, she used to tell me she
thought it done her good; and, happy enough for me! I never thought o'
doubtin' of her for many a long day arterwards.

"Many a time she give me the last bit o' bread, and said she wa' n't
hungry, and once when I broke my slice in two, and offered her part
back, she said, 'No, Johnny, I don't think I feel so well for eatin'.
Rich food,' she said, 'didn't suit her constitution. And so, if we
happened to hev meat or butter, she put it all on my plate. When it come
to be my share to work without eatin', then I understood.

"Many a time o' nights I heard her a-turnin' and moanin' in her sleep,
as if soul and body was clean wore out; and at last I went to the lady
that lived in the house with the painted door, and fitted young ladies
with corsets, and sold them pomatum that made the hair grow to their
heels,--so she said,--and told how my mother moaned in the night as if
she was a-bein' drownded in the sea; and she told me it was a nasty
habit some folks had,--mostly because they slept too sound,--and that,
if I would give her a rough shake, she guessed she would come out all
right. I tried to believe her on account o' the pomatum and the painted
door, partly; but it wa'n't in the heart o' me to give the rough shake,
and I never done it, thank the Lord!

"Sometimes the fine lady would come in with her sewin'-work to bring us
a little sunshine, she used to say, and I'm sure she never brought
nothin' else, nor that neither, that anybody could see; and I always
noticed that my mother felt a good deal less cheerful arter one o' these
visits.

"'Why don't you ride out, Mrs. Chidlaw?' she would say, 'and why don't
you call the doctor? and why don't you wear warm flannels?' and then why
didn't she do a thousand things that wa'n't to be thought on, 'cause
they wa'n't in the nater o' the case; and then she would go away, sayin'
she would run in another time and bring more sunshine!

"My mother generally cried for a spell arter one o' these bright
mornin's; and I didn't wonder, for it seemed to me as if the scent o'
the pomatum was pison, and all the air was heavy like, arter one o' the
visits.

"She used to set up o'nights, a-workin', my mother did, long beyond
midnight sometimes. 'What makes you, mother?' I would say. 'O, 'cause I
like it, John!' she 'd answer, so lively like; and then she 'd begin to
hum a tune, maybe, as if she was overflowin' with sperits.

"She didn't seem to need sleep no more, she said, and, besides, she
wanted to be wide awake when father come. So night arter night she would
set by our one taller candle, a-mendin' of my jackets, and a-darnin' of
my stockin's, and a-straightenin' and a stiffenin' up of the run-down
heels of my old shoes.

"'I don't care nothin' about 'em, mother,' I would say. 'I 'd just as
lives be a wearin' on 'em ragged as not, and you 've chores enough
without a-mindin' of me so much.' But she always said that, whether or
not I cared for myself, she cared for me, and that she wanted I should
look as smart as anybody's boy, so that father would be proud on me when
he come home; concludin' with 'He must sartainly come now afore long.'

"Many a time I've waked up of a winter night and found her woollen
petticoat spread onto my bed, and she ashiverin' by the dyin' fire. One
mornin' she surprised me uncommon by holdin' of a cap afore my eyes. 'A
new one made of the old one,' says she, 'but you 'd never dream on 't,
would you, Johnny?'

"I hung it on the chair-post, and then I stood off, fairly dazzled, so
gret was my admiration on 't. It was my old cap, be sure; but then it
was all brushed up and pressed into shape, and lined anew with one o'
the sleeves of my mother's silk weddin'-gown.. It wa' n't to be wore no
longer every day, so she said, but must be put on the upper shelf o' the
cupboard with her ring and her Sunday shawl, and kep' nice agin the time
father should come home. I suffered, on givin' on 't up, the most
tormentin' pangs, and had to bob my head agin the andirons considerable
longer than common afore I come round. I was bent on wearin' on't in the
sight of Rose Rollins,--that's you,--and forcin' on her to see the silk
linin' some ways, and I planned out warious stratagems to that end. But
mother said, 'No, Johnny, keep it nice just a leetle bit, till poor
father comes.' And arter that she pacified me by takin' on 't down from
time to time and allowin' of me to wear it as much as two or three
minutes sometimes. The linin' was pea-green; and I've often thought
since it was a leetle too fine for the tother part, which was
seal-skin, and wore tolerable bare,--I havin' wore it, not off and on,
but steady on, from the time I left off my bunnet that was made of the
end of my cradle-quilt; but I didn't calculate it was too fine then, and
I made a pint o' standin' on a chair afore the lookin'-glass, or else
afore the winder towards your 'us, all the whilst I was a-wearin' on 't.
It worried me a good deal, them times, to decide which I 'd rather
do,--look at myself, or hev you look at me!

"I used to tease mother to put the white shawl round her shoulders.
'Just for a minute,' I would say; but she always answered, 'One of these
days, Johnny; it 's all wrapt up with camp-phire, and I don't want to be
gettin' on 't down!' I understood well enough that it was to be got out
when the great day come.

"'Suppose, Johnny,' says she, one day, 'we cut off some of our luxuries,
and save up to buy somethin' nice for poor father agin he comes home!' I
was struck favorable with the idee of the present, but what luxuries was
to be cut off I didn't see clear.

"There's the candle, for one thing!' says mother. 'Taller's taller, at
the best o' times; and the few chores I do at night I can do just as
well by the light of a pine-knot.'

"Butter, she said, wa' n't healthy for her, nor milk, nor meat, nor
sugar, nor no such things, so it would all be easy enough for her. She
only hesitated on my account. But I spoke up ever so brave. 'I don't
mind,' says I; 'it'll be good fun, in fact, just to see how leetle we
can live on!' And I think yet my mind was some expanded by that
experience,--it driv me to such curus devices. At fust I took leetle
bites off my cake, and leetle sips of my porridge; but I found a more
effective plan afore long, for looks goes a good ways, and even when we
deceive ourselves it kind o' helps us. Well, I took to hevin' my
porridge in a shaller plate, so that there seemed twice as much on 't as
there really was, and to hollerin' my cake out from the under side, so
that, when it was reduced to a mere shell, it still represented what it
wa' n't; a trick that I found to work very slick, especially when I
imagined Rose a-lookin' at my shaller plate, and not knowin' how deep it
was.

"'Won't we hev a beautiful surprise, though, for poor father!' my mother
would say, when my spoon touched bottom, and it always touched bottom
premature; and then we would talk of what we should buy, and I would be
carried away like, and forget myself.

"A fur hat was talked on in our fust wild enthusiasm, but that idee was
gin up arter we'd gone about among the stores; and we settled final on
't a pair o' square-toed brogans, with nails in the heels on 'em.

"'Let 'em be good sewed shoes, and not peg,' says my mother, when she
give the shoemaker his order, 'and make 'em up just as soon as possible.
You see my husband may be here any day now; and we mean to hev a great
surprise for him,--Johnny and me.'

"The shoemaker, to my surprise,--for I expected him to enter into it
with as much enthusiasm as we,--hesitated, said he was pressed heavy
with work just then, and that he thought she had best go to some other
shop! I didn't understand the meanin' on 't at all; but my mother did,
and told him she could pay him aforehand, if he wanted it; at which he
brightened up, and said, come to think on 't, he could make the brogans
right away.

"Sure enough, they was finished at the appinted time, and I carried 'em
home, with the money that come back in change inside o' one on 'em.

"'Why, Johnny,' says mother, when she counted it, her face all
a-glowin', 'here's enough left to buy a handkerchief for your father!'

"Then she counted it agin, and said there was enough, she was a'most
sure on 't. It mightn't get a silk one, not pure silk, but if she could
only find somethin' with a leetle mixter o' cotton in 't, why it would
look nearly as well,--the difference would never be knowed across the
house.

"She wanted a new gingham apron for herself; but that wa' n't bought,
and all the money, as I have guessed sence, went into the handkerchief.
And a purty one it was, too,--yaller-colored, with a red border, and an
anchor worked in one corner on 't with blue-silk yarn.

"So the fine presents was put away on the top shelf o' the cupboard,
with the cap and the ring and the shawl, and there they stayed, week in
and week out, and still the Dauphin didn't come in. I could see that my
mother was a-growin' uneasy, more and more, though she never said
nothin' to me that was discouragin'. She'd set sometimes for an hour
a-lookin' straight into the air, and then she went up to the ruf more 'n
common to look arter the things a-dryin' there.

"One day there come on snow and sleet, but for all that she stayed
aloft, just as though the sun had been a-shinin'; and at last, when the
dusk had gathered so that she couldn't see no longer, she come down with
a gret heap o' wet things, in her arms, and all of a shiver.

"Her hand shook as she sot down to bind shoes,--she had took to bindin'
of shoes some them times, not bein' so strong as she used to be for the
washin'; but arter a while she fell of a tremble all over. 'It's no
use,' says she, 'I ain't good for nothin' no more,' and she put away the
bindin' and cowered close over the ashes.

"I wanted to lay on a big stick, but she said no, she'd go to bed, and
get warm there; but she didn't get warm, not even when I had piled all
the things I could rake and scrape over the bed-quilt, for I could see
them tremblin' together like a heap o' dry leaves.

"I went to the lady with the painted door, and she promised to come in
and see my mother early in the mornin'; but in the mornin', when I went
agin, she said she had so many corsets to fit that it wa' n't
possible,--that I must tell my mother she sent a great deal o' love, and
hoped she'd be better very soon.

"I didn't go arter her no more, and all that day and the next my poor
mother lay, now a-burnin' and now a-freezin', but by and by she got
better, and sot up in bed some, havin' my little chair agin her back;
and so she finished bindin' o' the shoes, and I carried on 'em home, she
a-chargin' me twenty times afore I sot out to take care and not lose the
money I got for bindin' on 'em. 'And don't forget to stop at the store,'
she said, 'and buy me a quarter o' tea, as you come back, Johnny.'

"But, after all, I went home without the tea, or the money either.

"In the fust place, the shoemaker said my mother had disappinted him in
not sendin' the work home when she promised; and when I said she was
sick, he answered that that wa 'n't his look-out; and then he eyed the
work sharply, sayin', at last, that he couldn't pay for them sort o'
stitches, and he wouldn't give out no more bindin' neither, and that I
might go with a hop, skip, and jump, and tell my mother so; and he waved
his hand, with a big boot-last in it, as though, if I didn't hop quick,
he'd be glad to help me for'a'd himself.

"'Never mind, Johnny,' says mother, as I leaned my head on her piller,
a-cryin', and told her what the shoemaker had said, 'it'll all be right
when father comes back.'

"She didn't mind about the tea, she said, water would serve just as
well; and then, arter pickin' at the bed-clothes a leetle, she said she
felt sleepy, and turned her face to the wall.

"All winter long she was sick, and there was heart-breakin' things all
the while comin' to pass; but I'd rather not tell on 'em.

"Spring come round at last,--as come it will, whether them that watch
for its comin' are cryin' or laughin',--and the sun shined in at the
south winder and made a patch o' gold on the floor,--all we had, to be
sure,--when one day comes the news we had been a-lookin' for so
long,--the Dauphin was a-comin' in!

"'And me here in bed!' says my mother; 'that'll never do. How
good-for-nothin' I be!'

"Then she told me to run and fetch her best gown out of the chest, and
she was out o' bed the next minute; and though she looked as pale as the
sheet she managed somehow to dress herself. Then she told me to fetch
her the lookin'-glass where she sot by the bedside; and when she seen
her face the tears came to her eyes, and one little low moan, that
seemed away down in her heart, made me shudder. 'I don't care for my own
sake,' she said, puttin' her arm across my neck; 'but what will your
father think o' me?'

"Then she sot the glass up afore her, and combed her hair half a dozen
different ways, but none on 'em suited. She didn't look like herself,
she said, nohow; and then she told me to climb to the upper shelf and
git down the fine shawl, and see if that would mend matters any.

"I fetched the ring too; but it wouldn't stay on a single finger; and so
she give it to me, smilin', and sayin' I might wear it till she got
well.

"I sot the house in order myself, with her a-tellin' on me some about
things. The two silver teaspoons was burnished up, and stuck for show
into the edge of the dresser; the three glass tumblers was sot forth in
full view; and the tin coffee-pot, so high and so narrer at the top, was
turned sideways on the shelf, so as to make the most on 't; and the
little brown earthen-ware teapot was histed atop o' that. We had a dozen
eggs we had been a-savin', for we kep' a hen on the ruf, and them I took
and sot endwise in the sand-bowl, so that, to all appearance, the whole
bowl was full of eggs; and I raly thought the appintments, one and all,
made us look considerable like rich folks.

"'Do go up to the ruf, Johnny, my child,' says my mother, at last, 'and
see what you will see.'

"She had sot two hours, with her shawl held just so across her bosom,
and was a-growin' impatient and faint like.

"She looked at me so eager, when I come down, I could hardly bear to
tell her that I could only just see the Dauphin a-lyin' out, and that
she looked black and ugly, and that I couldn't see nothin' furder. But I
did tell it, and then come another o' them little low moans away down in
her heart. Directly, though, she smiled agin, and told me to go to the
chest and open the till, and get the table-cloth and the pewter platter
that I would find there. 'We must have our supper-table shine its best
to-night,' she said.

"Agin and agin I went up to the ruf, but I didn't see nothin' no time
except the whaler a-lyin' a little out, and lookin' black and ugly, as
if there wa'n't no good a-comin' with her.

"At last evenin' fell, and then my mother crept to the winder, and got
her face agin the pane, and such a look of wistfulness come to her eyes
as I had never seen in 'em afore.

"She didn't say nothin' no more, and I didn't say nothin'; it was an
awful silence, but somethin' appeared to keep us from breakin' on 't.

"The shadders had gathered so that the street was all dusky; for there
wa'n't no lamps at our end o' the street,--when all at once mother was
a-standin' up, and holdin' out her arms. The next minute she says, 'Run
to the door, Johnny; I ain't quite sure whether or not it's him!' And
she sunk down, tremblin', and all of a heap.

"I could hear the stairs a creakin' under the tread of heavy steps, and
when I got to the door there was two men a comin' up instead o' one.
'It's him! mother! it's him!' I shouted with all my might, for I see a
sailor's cap and jacket, and took the rest for granted. I swung the door
wide, and stood a-dancin' in it, and yet I didn't like the looks o'
neither on 'em; only I thought I ought to be glad, and so I danced for
pertended joy. 'Get out o' the way! you sassy lad!' says one o' the men,
and he led the tother right past me into the house, I follerin' along
behind, but neither on 'em noticin' of me in the least; and there sot my
mother, dead still on her chair, just as if she was froze into stone.
'Here he is,' says the man that was leadin' of him,--'here's John
Chidlaw, what there is left on him!' Then he give me a push toward him,
and nodded to my mother like, a-drawin' his mouth into such queer shapes
that I couldn't tell whether he was a-laughin' or cryin', and I didn't
know which I ought to do neither.

"By this time the man that I partly took to be my father was a-backin'
furder and furder from us, and at last he got clean agin the jamb o' the
chimney, and then he looked up wild, as if he was a looking at the sky,
and directly he spoke. 'This'll be a stiff blow,' says he. 'We're struck
aft, and we'll be in the trough of the sea in a minute! God help us
all!' And with that he began to climb up the shelves o' the cupboard, as
though he was a climbin' into a ship's riggin'.

"Next thing I seen, mother had got to him, somehow, and was a-holdin'
round his neck, and talkin' to him in tones as sweet and coaxin' as
though he had been a sick baby. 'Don't you know me, John?' she
says,--'your own Katura, that you left so long ago!' He didn't answer
her at all; he didn't seem to see her, but kep' right on, a-talkin'
about the ship not bein' able to lift herself, and about the rudder
bein' tore away, and a leak som'er's, and settin' of a gang o' hands at
the pumps, and gettin' of the cargo up, and the dear knows what all! I
didn't understand a word on 't, and, besides that, I was afeard on him.

"'Tell 'em about the last whale we ketched, Jack,--that big bull that so
nigh upsot us all. Come, that's a story worth while!' It was the man
that had led him in who said this; and he laughed loud, and slapped him
on the shoulder as he said it; and then he looked at my mother and
winked, and drawed his mouth queer agin.

"My father kind o' come to himself like now, and seatin' himself astride
a chair, and with his face to the back on 't, he began:--

"We was a cruisin' about in the South Pacific, when, between three and
four in the afternoon of an August day, we bein' in latitude forty at
the time, the man on the look-out at the fore-topmast-head cried out
that a whale had broke water in plain view of our ship, and on her
weather bow.

"'Where away, sir? and what do you call her?' shouts the captain,
hailin' the mast-head.

"'Sperm whale, sir, three pints on the weather-bow, and about two miles
off!'

"'Keep a sharp eye, and sing out when the ship heads for her!'

"'Ay, ay, sir.'

"The captain went aloft with his spy-glass. 'Keep her away!' was his
next order to the man at the helm.

"'Steady!' sung out the mast-head.

"'Steady it is!' answered the wheel.

"'Square in the after-yards, and call all hands!'

"'Ay, ay, sir.'

"'Forward there! Haul the mainsail up, and square the yards!'

"'Steady, steady!' sings out the mast-head.

"'Steady it is!' answers the wheel.

"'Call all hands!' shouts the captain, in a voice like a tempest.

"The main hatches was off, and the men mostly in the blubber-room,
engaged, some on 'em, in mincin' and pikin' pieces of blanket and horse
from one tub to another, and some was a-tendin' fires, and some
a-fillin' casks with hot ile from the cooler; but quick as lightnin' all
the deck is thronged, like the street of a city when there is a cry of
fire.

"'There she blows! O, she's a beauty, a regular old sog!' sings the
mast-head.

"'Slack down the fires! Quick, by G--!' shouts the captain in a voice
like thunder.

"'She peaks her flukes, and goes down!' cries the mast-head.

"'A sharp eye, sir! Mind where she comes up!'

"'Ay, ay, sir!'

"'Get your boats ready, lads, and stand by to lower away!'

"The men work as for life,--the boat-bottoms are tallered, the
boat-tackle-falls laid down, so as to run clear, the tub o' line and
the harpoons got in, the gripes cast clear, and each boat's crew by the
side o' their boat.

"'Hoist and swing! Lower away!'

"In a moment we're off, bendin' to our oars, every man on us, eager to
see who will be up first. The whale was under half an hour; but at last
we get sight o' the signal at the main, which tells us that she's up
agin.

"'Down to your oars, lads! Give way hard!' says the captain.

"I got the palm o' my hand under the abaft oar, so as with each stroke
to throw a part of my weight agin it, and our boat leapt for'a'd across
the water, spring arter spring, like a tiger,--her length and twice her
length afore the others in a minute.

"'She's an eighty-barrel! right ahead! Give way, my boys!' cries the
captain, encouragin' on us. And all our strength was put to the oar.

"'Spring harder, boys! Harder! If she blows agin, some on you'll have an
iron into her afore five minutes!' Then to the whale,--a-standin' with
his legs wide, and bendin' for'a'd like,--'O, you're a beauty! Ahoy!
ahoy! and let us fasten!'

"We was nearly out of sight of our ship now, but we could see the smoke
of her try-works still standin' black above her, though the fires had
been slacked so long.

"All at once the whale blowed agin; and we could see her plain now,
lyin' like a log, not more 'n twenty rods ahead. A little more hard
pullin', and 'Stand up!' says the Captain, and then, 'Give me the first
chance at her!' I was a-steerin' and I steered him steady, closer,
closer, alongside a'most, and give his iron the best chance possible;
but it grazed off, and she settled quietly under, all but her head.

"'That wa'n't quite low enough,' says he. 'Another lance!'

"This failed too, and she settled clean under. Every man was quiverin'
with excitement; but I watched calmly, and, as soon as I spied her
whitenin' under water, I sent my lance arter her without orders, and by
good forten sunk it into her very life--full length.

"She throwed out a great spout o' blood, and dashed furiously under.

"'God help us! She'll come up so as to upset our boat!' cries the
captain. 'Every man here at her, when she comes in sight!'

"He had hardly done speakin' when I felt a great knock, and at the same
time seen somethin' a-flyin' through the air. She had just grazed us,
shovin' our boat aside as a pig shoves his trough, and was breakin'
water not a stone's throw ahead.

"The captain had gone overboard; but we obeyed his last words before we
looked arter him, and had a dozen irons into her afore you could 'a'
said Jack Robinson! Down she went agin, pullin' the line arter her, coil
on coil; but the pain wouldn't allow her to stay down long, and directly
she was out agin, thrashin' the water with her flukes till it was all
churned up like blubbers o'blood,--for her side was bristlin' with
harpoons, and the life pourin' out on her like rain out of a
thunder-cloud.

"Meantime the captain had been hauled aboard, and as he sunk down on an
oar,--for he couldn't stand,--all his shirt and hair a-drippin' red, his
cold, spiteful eye shot into me like a bullet, and says I to the mate,
'I'm a doomed man.'"

"Then my father began ramblin' wildly about goin' overboard himself, and
how he seen a stream o' fire afore his eyes as he sunk into the cold and
dark; and how there came an awful pressure on his brain, and a roarin'
in his ears; and how the strength went out of his thighs, and was as if
the marrer was cut,--how he heard a gurglin', and felt suffocation, and
then clean lost himself!"

At this point John Chidlaw ceased to be master of his voice, and all at
once hid his face in his arms. When the woman who had been listening so
attentively, getting one of his rough hands upon her knee, stroked it
gently, without a word, and by and by he returned her a little
pressure, and then, steadying himself up, he said: "It ain't no use to
think on't, Rose,--it's all over now, and they've met beyond the seas o'
time, my poor father and mother, for they both crossed long ago,--met,
and knowed each other, I hope, but the one never come to himself here,
nor recognized the other. My mother took straight to her bed; and when
she wore the white shawl agin, and had it drawed across her bosom, it
was for that journey from which none on us come back."

"Dear John," says Rose, very softly,--all the coquette gone,--only the
woman left. And presently he was strong enough to go on.

"It was a good many year," he said, "not till I was a'most a man, before
I came to understand rightly what it was that sot my father crazy. The
captain had been agin him all along on account of his too much sperit,
and that capterin' o' the whale finished up the business, and pinted his
fate. It wa'n't long arter this till Captain Griscom found occasion to
treat him very hardly, which bein' resented only by a look, he ordered
him down below to be flogged! This, Rose, was what broke the spirit on
him; he was never himself arterwards, never knowed nothin' at all clear,
exceptin' about the takin' o' that whale; and that he told over and over
a hundred times, arter that fust time, just as I've told it to you, but
all before it and all behind it was shadders, till the great shadder of
all came over him.

"When I come to hear on 't, I said I hoped my father would meet that
'ere captain som'er's on the seas of eternity, and flog him within an
inch of his life; and I ha'n't repented the sayin' on't yet."

The tide had come up while John Chidlaw was telling his story, and his
little boat slid off the bar directly, when, taking up the oars, he soon
brought her to land.

"Bless your dear heart, John!" says Rose, pointing back to the boat's
name, as he handed her ashore, "would you believe I was so stupid as
not to see that the name o' your wessel was the same as my own? I read
it the _Rose Rolling_, to be sure!"

But John maintained that she was not stupid a single bit nor mite, but,
on the contrary, smart altogether beyond the common. "To come so nigh
the truth," says he, "and yet not get hold on 't, arter all, is a leetle
the slickest thing yet!"

And then he told, as they walked home together,--he with three bandboxes
in one arm, and her on the other,--all about his weary years of hardship
and poverty, and all about the beginning of his good fortune, the
running away of the horse and of the little girl who drew him after her,
because she reminded him so much of Rose herself as she used to be when
he looked down upon her so fondly from the roof in Baker's Row,--told
her of the child's father, and how he set him up in business,--of his
prosperity since, ending with her taking passage with him, which he said
was the best fortune of all.

"That was luck," says he, "that no words can shadder forth!" And then he
said, "I oughtn't to call it luck, my dear; it was just an intervention
of Divine Providence!" Then he corrected himself. "An interwention o'
Diwine Providence," says he,--"that's what it was!" And he hugged the
very bandboxes till he fairly stove them in.

About a month after this blessed luck, the milliner's shop was closed
one day at an unusually early hour, and the white-muslin curtains at the
parlor windows above might have been noticed to nutter and sway, as with
some gay excitement indoors. And so indeed there was. John had taken his
Rose for good and all, and the little parlor was full of glad hearts and
merry feet. All the milliner's apprentices and sewing-girls of the
neighborhood were there, bright as so many butterflies, laughing, and
nodding, and whispering one another, and dropping their eyes before the
young sailors, and teamsters, and other fine fellows, who were serving
them with a generosity that was only equalled by their admiration.
Coffee, cakes, cheese, chowder, bottled beer, fruits, and hot
bannocks,--the lasses had them all at once, and the lads would have been
glad to give them even more.

And John, grown ten years younger that day, kept all the while (being
forced to turn his head away now and then to receive congratulations)
one foot under the table, and against the soft slipper and silken
stocking of Rose, lest at any moment she might be caught up into heaven,
and so vanish out of his sight; and she, in turn, kept fond watch of
him, pressing the oranges upon him with almost importunate solicitude.
Perhaps she remembered that one which he had parted with for her sake,
when he used to look down upon her from the roof of Baker's Row with
such hopeless and helpless admiration.




ARE THE CHILDREN AT HOME?


    Each day when the glow of sunset
      Fades in the western sky,
    And the wee ones, tired of playing,
      Go tripping lightly by,
    I steal away from my husband,
      Asleep in his easy-chair,
    And watch from the open doorway
      Their faces fresh and fair.

    Alone in the dear old homestead
      That once was full of life,
    Ringing with girlish laughter,
      Echoing boyish strife,
    We two are waiting together;
      And oft, as the shadows come,
    With tremulous voice he calls me,
      "It is night! are the children home?"

    "Yes, love!" I answer him gently,
      "They're all home long ago";--
    And I sing, in my quivering treble,
      A song so soft and low,
    Till the old man drops to slumber,
      With his head upon his hand,
    And I tell to myself the number
      Home in the better land.

    Home, where never a sorrow
      Shall dim their eyes with tears!
    Where the smile of God is on them
      Through all the summer years!

    I know!--yet my arms are empty,
      That fondly folded seven,
    And the mother heart within me
      Is almost starved for heaven.

    Sometimes, in the dusk of evening,
      I only shut my eyes,
    And the children are all about me,
      A vision from the skies:
    The babes whose dimpled fingers
      Lost the way to my breast,
    And the beautiful ones, the angels,
      Passed to the world of the blessed.

    With never a cloud upon them,
      I see their radiant brows:
    My boys that I gave to freedom,--
      The red sword sealed their vows!
    In a tangled Southern forest,
      Twin brothers, bold and brave,
    They fell; and the flag they died for,
      Thank God! floats over their grave.

    A breath, and the vision is lifted
      Away on wings of light,
    And again we two are together,
      All alone in the night.
    They tell me his mind is failing,
      But I smile at idle fears;
    He is only back with the children,
      In the dear and peaceful years.

    And still as the summer sunset
      Fades away in the west,
    And the wee ones, tired of playing,
      Go trooping home to rest,
    My husband calls from his corner,
      "Say, love! have the children come?"
    And I answer, with eyes uplifted,
      "Yes, dear! they are all at home!"




IN THE GRAY GOTH.


If the wick of the big oil lamp had been cut straight, I don't believe
it would ever have happened.

Where is the poker, Johnny? Can't you push back that for'ard log a
little? Dear, dear! Well, it doesn't make much difference, does it?
Something always seems to ail your Massachusetts fires; your hickory is
green, and your maple is gnarly, and the worms eat out your oak like a
sponge. I haven't seen anything like what I call a fire,--not since Mary
Ann was married, and I came here to stay. "As long as you live, father,"
she said; and in that very letter she told me I should always have an
open fire, and how she wouldn't let Jacob put in the air-tight in the
sitting-room, but had the fireplace kept on purpose. Mary Ann was a good
girl always, if I remember straight, and I'm sure I don't complain.
Isn't that a pine-knot at the bottom of the basket? There! that's
better.

Let me see; I began to tell you something, didn't I? O yes; about that
winter of '41. I remember now. I declare, I can't get over it, to think
you never heard about it, and you twenty-four year old come Christmas.
You don't know much more, either, about Maine folks and Maine fashions
than you do about China,--though it's small wonder, for the matter of
that, you were such a little shaver when Uncle Jed took you. There were
a great many of us, it seems to me, that year, I 'most forget how
many;--we buried the twins next summer, didn't we?--then there was Mary
Ann, and little Nancy, and--well, coffee was dearer than ever I'd seen
it, I know, about that time, and butter selling for nothing; we just
threw our milk away, and there wasn't any market for eggs; besides
doctor's bills and Isaac to be sent to school; so it seemed to be the
best thing, though your mother took on pretty badly about it at first.
Jedediah has been good to you, I'm sure, and brought you up
religious,--though you've cost him a sight, spending three hundred and
fifty dollars a year at Amherst College.

But, as I was going to say, when I started to talk about '41,--to tell
the truth, Johnny, I'm always a long while coming to it, I believe. I'm
getting to be an old man,--a little of a coward, maybe, and sometimes,
when I sit alone here nights, and think it over, it's just like the
toothache, Johnny. As I was saying, if she had cut that wick straight, I
do believe it wouldn't have happened,--though it isn't that I mean to
lay the blame on her _now_.

I'd been out at work all day about the place, slicking things up for
to-morrow; there was a gap in the barn-yard fence to mend,--I left that
till the last thing, I remember,--I remember everything, some way or
other, that happened that day,--and there was a new roof to put on the
pig-pen, and the grape-vine needed an extra layer of straw, and the
latch was loose on the south barn door; then I had to go round and take
a last look at the sheep, and toss down an extra forkful for the cows,
and go into the stall to have a talk with Ben, and unbutton the coop
door to see if the hens looked warm,--just to tuck 'em up, as you might
say. I always felt sort of homesick--though I wouldn't have owned up to
it, not even to Nancy--saying good by to the creeturs the night before I
went in. There, now! it beats all, to think you don't know what I'm
talking about, and you a lumberman's son. "Going in" is going up into
the woods, you know, to cut and haul for the winter,--up, sometimes, a
hundred miles deep,--in in the fall and out in the spring; whole gangs
of us shut up there sometimes for six months, then down with the
freshets on the logs, and all summer to work the farm,--a merry sort of
life when you get used to it, Johnny; but it was a great while ago, and
it seems to me as if it must have been very cold.--Isn't there a little
draft coming in at the pantry door?

So when I'd said good by to the creeturs,--I remember just as plain how
Ben put his great neck on my shoulder and whinnied like a baby,--that
horse knew when the season came round and I was going in, just as well
as I did,--I tinkered up the barn-yard fence, and locked the doors, and
went in to supper.

I gave my finger a knock with the hammer, which may have had something
to do with it, for a man doesn't feel very good-natured when he's been
green enough to do a thing like that, and he doesn't like to say it
aches either. But if there is anything I can't bear it is lamp-smoke; it
always did put me out, and I expect it always will. Nancy knew what a
fuss I made about it, and she was always very careful not to hector me
with it I ought to have remembered that, but I didn't. She had lighted
the company lamp on purpose, too, because it was my last night. I liked
it better than the tallow candle.

So I came in, stamping off the snow, and they were all in there about
the fire,--the twins, and Mary Ann, and the rest; baby was sick, and
Nancy was walking back and forth with him, with little Nancy pulling at
her gown. You were the baby then, I believe, Johnny; but there always
was a baby, and I don't rightly remember. The room was so black with
smoke, that they all looked as if they were swimming round and round in
it. I guess coming in from the cold, and the pain in my finger and all,
it made me a bit sick. At any rate, I threw open the window and blew out
the light, as mad as a hornet.

"Nancy," said I, "this room would strangle a dog, and you might have
known it, if you'd had two eyes to see what you were about. There, now!
I've tipped the lamp over, and you just get a cloth and wipe up the
oil."

"Dear me!" said she, lighting a candle, and she spoke up very soft, too.
"Please, Aaron, don't let the cold in on baby. I'm sorry it was smoking,
but I never knew a thing about it; he's been fretting and taking on so
the last hour, I didn't notice anyway."

"That's just what you ought to have done," says I, madder than ever.
"You know how I hate the stuff, and you ought to have cared more about
me than to choke me up with it this way the last night before going in."

Nancy was a patient, gentle-spoken sort of woman, and would bear a good
deal from a fellow; but she used to fire up sometimes, and that was more
than she could stand. "You don't deserve to be cared about, for speaking
like that!" says she, with her cheeks as red as peat-coals.

That was right before the children. Mary Ann's eyes were as big as
saucers, and little Nancy was crying at the top of her lungs, with the
baby tuning in, so we knew it was time to stop. But stopping wasn't
ending; and folks can look things that they don't say.

We sat down to supper as glum as pump-handles; there were some
fritters--I never knew anybody beat your mother at fritters--smoking hot
off the stove, and some maple molasses in one of the best chiny teacups;
I knew well enough it was just on purpose for my last night, but I never
had a word to say, and Nancy crumbed up the children's bread with a
jerk. Her cheeks didn't grow any whiter; it seemed as if they would
blaze right up,--I couldn't help looking at them, for all I pretended
not to, for she looked just like a pictur. Some women always are pretty
when they are put out,--and then again, some ain't; it appears to me
there's a great difference in women, very much as there is in hens; now,
there was your aunt Deborah,--but there, I won't get on that track now,
only so far as to say that when she was flustered up she used to go red
all over, something like a piny, which didn't seem to have just the same
effect.

That supper was a very dreary sort of supper, with the baby crying, and
Nancy getting up between the mouthfuls to walk up and down the room with
him; he was a heavy little chap for a ten-month-old, and I think she
must have been tuckered out with him all day. I didn't think about it
then; a man doesn't notice such things when he's angry,--it isn't in
him. I can't say but _she_ would if I'd been in her place. I just eat up
the fritters and the maple molasses,--seems to me I told her she ought
not to use the best chiny cup, but I'm not just sure,--and then I took
my pipe, and sat down in the corner.

I watched her putting the children to bed; they made her a great deal of
bother, squirming off of her lap and running round barefoot. Sometimes I
used to hold them and talk to them and help her a bit, when I felt
good-natured, but I just sat and smoked, and let them alone. I was all
worked up about that lamp-wick, and I thought, you see, if she hadn't
had any feelings for me there was no need of my having any for her,--if
she had cut the wick, I'd have taken the babies; she hadn't cut the
wick, and I wouldn't take the babies; she might see it if she wanted to,
and think what she pleased. I had been badly treated, and I meant to
show it.

It is strange, Johnny, it really does seem to me very strange, how easy
it is in this world to be always taking care of our _rights_. I've
thought a great deal about it since I've been growing old, and there
seems to me a good many things we'd better look after fust.

But you see I hadn't found that out in '41, and so I sat in the corner,
and felt very much abused. I can't say but what Nancy had pretty much
the same idea; for when the young ones were all in bed at last, she took
her knitting and sat down the other side of the fire, sort of turning
her head round and looking up at the ceiling, as if she were trying her
best to forget I was there. That was a way she had when I was courting,
and we went along to huskings together, with the moon shining round.

Well, I kept on smoking, and she kept on looking at the ceiling, and
nobody said a word for a while, till by and by the fire burnt down, and
she got up and put on a fresh log.

"You're dreadful wasteful with the wood, Nancy," says I, bound to say
something cross, and that was all I could think of.

"Take care of your own fire, then," says she, throwing the log down and
standing up as straight as she could stand. "I think it's a pity if you
haven't anything better to do, the last night before going in, than to
pick everything I do to pieces this way, and I tired enough to drop,
carrying that great crying child in my arms all day. You ought to be
ashamed of yourself, Aaron Hollis!"

Now if she had cried a little, very like I should have given up, and
that would have been the end of it, for I never could bear to see a
woman cry; it goes against the grain. But your mother wasn't one of the
crying sort, and she didn't feel like it that night.

She just stood up there by the fireplace, as proud as Queen Victory,--I
don't blame her, Johnny,--O no, I don't blame her; she had the right of
it there, I _ought_ to have been ashamed of myself; but a man never
likes to hear that from other folks, and I put my pipe down on the
chimney-shelf so hard I heard it snap like ice, and I stood up too, and
said--but no matter what I said, I guess. A man's quarrels with his wife
always make me think of what the Scripture says about other folks not
intermeddling. They're things, in my opinion, that don't concern anybody
else as a general thing, and I couldn't tell what I said without telling
what she said, and I'd rather not do that. Your mother was as good and
patient-tempered a woman as ever lived, Johnny, and she didn't mean it,
and it was I that set her on. Besides, my words were worst of the two.

Well, well, I'll hurry along just here, for it's not a time I like to
think about; but we had it back and forth there for half an hour, till
we had angered each other up so I couldn't stand it, and I lifted up my
hand,--I would have struck her if she hadn't been a woman.

"Well," says I, "Nancy Hollis, I'm sorry for the day I married you, and
that's the truth, if ever I spoke a true word in my life!"

I wouldn't have told you that now if you could understand the rest
without. I'd give the world, Johnny,--I'd give the world and all those
coupon bonds Jedediah invested for me if I could anyway forget it; but I
said it, and I can't.

Well, I've seen your mother look 'most all sorts of ways in the course
of her life, but I never saw her before, and I never saw her since, look
as she looked that minute. All the blaze went out in her cheeks, as if
somebody had thrown cold water on it, and she stood there stock still,
so white I thought she would drop.

"Aaron--" she began, and stopped to catch her breath, "Aaron--" but she
couldn't get any farther; she just caught hold of a little shawl she had
on with both her hands, as if she thought she could hold herself up by
it, and walked right out of the room. I knew she had gone to bed, for I
heard her go up and shut the door. I stood there a few minutes with my
hands in my pockets, whistling Yankee Doodle. Your mother used to say
men were queer folks, Johnny; they always whistled up the gayest when
they felt the wust. Then I went to the closet and got another pipe, and
I didn't go up stairs till it was smoked out.

When I was a young man, Johnny, I used to be that sort of fellow that
couldn't bear to give up beat. I'd acted like a brute, and I knew it,
but I was too spunky to say so. So I says to myself, "If she won't make
up first, I won't, and that's the end on't." Very likely she said the
same thing, for your mother was a spirited sort of woman when her
temper _was_ up; so there we were, more like enemies sworn against each
other than man and wife who had loved each other true for fifteen
years,--a whole winter, and danger, and death perhaps, coming between
us, too.

It may seem very queer to you, Johnny,--it did to me when I was your
age, and didn't know any more than you do,--how folks can work
themselves up into great quarrels out of such little things; but they
do, and into worse, if it's a man who likes his own way, and a woman
that knows how to talk. It's my opinion, two thirds of all the divorce
cases in the law-books just grow up out of things no bigger than that
lamp-wick.

But how people that ever loved each other could come to hard words like
that, you don't see? Well, ha, ha! Johnny, that amuses me, that really
does amuse me, for I never saw a young man nor a young woman
either,--and young men and young women in general are very much like
fresh-hatched chickens, to my mind, and know just about as much of the
world, Johnny,--well, I never saw one yet who didn't say that very
thing. And what's more, I never saw one who could get it into his head
that old folks knew better.

But I say I had loved your mother true, Johnny, and she had loved me
true, for more than fifteen years; and I loved her more the fifteenth
year than I did the first, and we couldn't have got along without each
other, any more than you could get along if somebody cut your heart
right out. We had laughed together and cried together; we had been sick,
and we'd been well together; we'd had our hard times and our pleasant
times right along, side by side; we'd christened the babies, and we'd
buried 'em, holding on to each other's hand; we had grown along year
after year, through ups and downs and downs and ups, just like one
person, and there wasn't any more dividing of us. But for all that we'd
been put out, and we'd had our two ways, and we had spoken our sharp
words like any other two folks, and this wasn't our first quarrel by any
means.

I tell you, Johnny, young folks they start in life with very pretty
ideas,--very pretty. But take it as a general thing, they don't know any
more what they're talking about than they do about each other, and they
don't know any more about each other than they do about the man in the
moon. They begin very nice, with their new carpets and teaspoons, and a
little mending to do, and coming home early evenings to talk; but by and
by the shine wears off. Then come the babies, and worry and wear and
temper. About that time they begin to be a little acquainted, and to
find out that there are two wills and two sets of habits to be fitted
somehow. It takes them anywhere along from one year to three to get
jostled down together. As for smoothing off, there's more or less of
that to be done always.

Well, I didn't sleep very well that night, dropping into naps and waking
up. The baby was worrying over his teeth every half-hour, and Nancy
getting up to walk him off to sleep in her arms,--it was the only way
you _would_ be hushed up, and you'd lie and yell till somebody did it.

Now, it wasn't many times since we'd been married that I had let her do
that thing all night long. I used to have a way of getting up to take my
turn, and sending her off to sleep. It isn't a man's business, some
folks say. I don't know anything about that; maybe, if I'd been broiling
my brain in book learning all day till come night, and I was hard put to
it to get my sleep anyhow, like the parson there, it wouldn't; but all I
know is, what if I had been breaking my back in the potato-patch since
morning? so she'd broken her's over the oven; and what if I did need
nine hours' sound sleep? I could chop and saw without it next day, just
as well as she could do the ironing, to say nothing of my being a great
stout fellow,--there wasn't a chap for ten miles round with my
muscle,--and she with those blue veins on her forehead. Howsomever that
may be, I wasn't used to letting her do it by herself, and so I lay with
my eyes shut, and pretended that I was asleep; for I didn't feel like
giving in, and speaking up gentle, not about that nor anything else.

I could see her though, between my eyelashes, and I lay there, every
time I woke up, and watched her walking back and forth, back and forth,
up and down, with the heavy little fellow in her arms, all night long.

Sometimes, Johnny, when I'm gone to bed now of a winter night, I think I
see her in her white nightgown with her red-plaid shawl pinned over her
shoulders and over the baby, walking up and down, and up and down. I
shut my eyes, but there she is, and I open them again, but I see her all
the same.

I was off very early in the morning; I don't think it could have been
much after three o'clock when I woke up. Nancy had my breakfast all laid
out overnight, except the coffee, and we had fixed it that I was to make
up the fire, and get off without waking her, if the baby was very bad.
At least, that was the way I wanted it; but she stuck to it she should
be up,--that was before there'd been any words between us.

The room was very gray and still,--I remember just how it looked, with
Nancy's clothes on a chair, and the baby's shoes lying round. She had
got him off to sleep in his cradle, and had dropped into a nap, poor
thing! with her face as white as the sheet, from watching.

I stopped when I was dressed, halfway out of the room, and looked round
at it,--it was so white, Johnny! It would be a long time before I should
see it again,--five months were a long time; then there was the risk,
coming down in the freshets, and the words I'd said last night. I
thought, you see, if I should kiss it once,--I needn't wake her
up,--maybe I should go off feeling better. So I stood there looking: she
was lying so still, I couldn't see any more stir to her than if she had
her breath held in. I wish I had done it, Johnny,--I can't get over
wishing I'd done it, yet. But I was just too proud, and I turned round
and went out, and shut the door.

We were going to meet down at the post-office, the whole gang of us, and
I had quite a spell to walk. I was going in on Bob Stokes's team. I
remember how fast I walked with my hands in my pockets, looking along up
at the stars,--the sun was putting them out pretty fast,--and trying not
to think of Nancy. But I didn't think of anything else.

It was so early, that there wasn't many folks about to see us off; but
Bob Stokes's wife,--she lived nigh the office, just across the
road,--she was there to say good by, kissing of him, and crying on his
shoulder. I don't know what difference that should make with Bob Stokes,
but I snapped him up well, when he came along, and said good morning.

There were twenty-one of us just, on that gang, in on contract for Dove
and Beadle. Dove and Beadle did about the heaviest thing on woodland of
anybody, about that time. Good, steady men we were, most of us,--none of
your blundering Irish, that wouldn't know a maple from a hickory, with
their gin-bottles in their pockets,--but our solid, Down-East Yankee
heads, owning their farms all along the river, with schooling enough to
know what they were about 'lection day. You didn't catch any of _us_
voting your new-fangled tickets when we had meant to go up on Whig, for
want of knowing the difference, nor visa vussy. To say nothing of Bob
Stokes, and Holt, and me, and another fellow,--I forget his name,--being
members in good and reg'lar standing, and paying in our five dollars to
the parson every quarter, charitable.

Yes, though I say it that shouldn't say it, we were as fine a looking
gang as any in the county, starting off that morning in our red
uniform,--Nancy took a sight of pains with my shirt, sewing it up stout,
for fear it should bother me ripping, and I with nobody to take a
stitch for me all winter. The boys went off in good spirits, singing
till they were out of sight of town, and waving their caps at their
wives and babies standing in the window along on the way. I didn't sing.
I thought the wind blew too hard,--seems to me that was the reason,--I'm
sure there must have been a reason, for I had a voice of my own in those
days, and had led the choir perpetual for five years.

We weren't going in very deep; Dove and Beadle's lots lay about thirty
miles from the nearest house; and a straggling, lonely sort of place
that was too, five miles out of the village, with nobody but a dog and a
deaf old woman in it. Sometimes, as I was telling you, we had been in a
hundred miles from any human creature but ourselves.

It took us two days to get there though, with the oxen; and the teams
were loaded down well, with so many axes and the pork-barrels;--I don't
know anything like pork for hefting down more than you expect it to,
reasonable. It was one of your ugly gray days, growing dark at four
o'clock, with snow in the air, when we hauled up in the lonely place.
The trees were blazed pretty thick, I remember, especially the pines;
Dove and Beadle always had that done up prompt in October. It's pretty
work going in blazing while the sun is warm, and the woods like a great
bonfire with the maples. I used to like it, but your mother wouldn't
hear of it when she could help herself, it kept me away so long.

It's queer, Johnny, how we do remember things that ain't of no account;
but I remember, as plainly as if it were yesterday morning, just how
everything looked that night, when the teams came up, one by one, and we
went to work spry to get to rights before the sun went down.

There were three shanties,--they don't often have more than two or three
in one place,--they were empty, and the snow had drifted in; Bob
Stokes's oxen were fagged out, with their heads hanging down, and the
horses were whinnying for their supper. Holt had one of his great
brush-fires going,--there was nobody like Holt for making fires,--and
the boys were hurrying round in their red shirts, shouting at the oxen,
and singing a little, some of them low, under their breath, to keep
their spirits up. There was snow as far as you could see,--down the
cart-path, and all around, and away into the woods; and there was snow
in the sky now, setting in for a regular nor'easter. The trees stood up
straight all around without any leaves, and under the bushes it was as
black as pitch.

"Five months," said I to myself,--"five months!"

"What in time's the matter with you, Hollis?" says Bob Stokes, with a
great slap on my arm; "you're giving that 'ere ox molasses on his hay!"

Sure enough I was, and he said I acted like a dazed creatur, and very
likely I did. But I couldn't have told Bob the reason. You see, I knew
Nancy was just drawing up her little rocking-chair--the one with the
green cushion--close by the fire, sitting there with the children to
wait for the tea to boil. And I knew--I couldn't help knowing, if I'd
tried hard for it--how she was crying away softly in the dark, so that
none of them could see her, to think of the words we'd said, and I gone
in without ever making of them up. I was sorry for them then. O Johnny,
I was sorry, and she was thirty miles away. I'd got to be sorry five
months, thirty miles away, and couldn't let her know.

The boys said I was poor company that first week, and I shouldn't wonder
if I was. I couldn't seem to get over it any way, to think I couldn't
let her know.

If I could have sent her a scrap of a letter, or a message, or
something, I should have felt better. But there wasn't any chance of
that this long time, unless we got out of pork or fodder, and had to
send down,--which we didn't expect to, for we'd laid in more than
usual.

We had two pretty rough weeks' work to begin with, for the worst storms
of the season set in, and kept in, and I never saw their like, before or
since. It seemed as if there'd never be an end to them. Storm after
storm, blow after blow, freeze after freeze; half a day's sunshine, and
then at it again! We were well tired of it before they stopped; it made
the boys homesick.

However, we kept at work pretty brisk,--lumbermen aren't the fellows to
be put out for a snow-storm,--cutting and hauling and sawing, out in the
sleet and wind. Bob Stokes froze his left foot that second week, and I
was frost-bitten pretty badly myself. Cullen--he was the boss--he was
well out of sorts, I tell you, before the sun came out, and cross enough
to bite a ten-penny nail in two.

But when the sun _is_ out, it isn't so bad a kind of life, after all. At
work all day, with a good hot dinner in the middle; then back to the
shanties at dark, to as rousing a fire and tiptop swagan as anybody
could ask for. Holt was cook that season, and Holt couldn't be beaten on
his swagan.

Now you don't mean to say you don't know what swagan is? Well, well! To
think of it! All I have to say is, you don't know what's good then.
Beans and pork and bread and molasses,--that's swagan,--all stirred up
in a great kettle, and boiled together; and I don't know anything--not
even your mother's fritters--I'd give more for a taste of now. We just
about lived on that; there's nothing you can cut and haul all day on
like swagan. Besides that, we used to have doughnuts,--you don't know
what doughnuts are here in Massachusetts; as big as a dinner-plate,
those doughnuts were, and--well, a little hard, perhaps. They used to
have it about in Bangor that we used them for clock pendulums, but I
don't know about that.

I used to think a great deal about Nancy nights, when we were sitting up
by the fire,--we had our fire right in the middle of the hut, you know,
with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out. When supper was eaten, the
boys all sat up around it, and told stories, and sang, and cracked their
jokes; then they had their backgammon and cards; we got sleepy early,
along about nine or ten o'clock, and turned in under the roof with our
blankets. The roof sloped down, you know, to the ground; so we lay with
our heads in under the little eaves, and our feet to the fire,--ten or
twelve of us to a shanty, all round in a row. They built the huts up
like a baby's cob-house, with the logs fitted in together. I used to
think a great deal about your mother, as I was saying; sometimes I would
lie awake when the rest were off as sound as a top, and think about her.
Maybe it was foolish, and I'm sure I wouldn't have told anybody of it;
but I couldn't get rid of the notion that something might happen to her
or to me before five months were out, and I with those words unforgiven.

Then, perhaps, when I went to sleep, I would dream about her, walking
back and forth, up and down, in her nightgown and little red shawl, with
the great heavy baby in her arms.

So it went along till come the last of January, when one day I saw the
boys all standing round in a heap, and talking.

"What's the matter?" says I.

"Pork's given out," says Bob, with a whistle. "Beadle got that last lot
from Jenkins there, his son-in-law, and it's sp'ilt. I could have told
him that beforehand. Never knew Jenkins to do the fair thing by anybody
yet."

"Who's going down?" said I, stopping short. I felt the blood run all
over my face, like a woman's.

"Cullen hasn't made up his mind yet," says Bob, walking off.

Now you see there wasn't a man on the ground who wouldn't jump at the
chance to go; it broke up the winter for them, and sometimes they could
run in home for half an hour, driving by; so there wasn't much of a hope
for me. But I went straight to Mr. Cullen.

"Too late! Just promised Jim Jacobs," said he, speaking up quick; it was
just business to him, you know.

I turned off, and I didn't say a word. I wouldn't have believed it, I
never would have believed it, that I could have felt so cut up about
such a little thing. Cullen looked round at me sharp.

"Hilloa, Hollis!" said he. "What's to pay?"

"Nothing, thank you, sir," says I, and walked off, whistling.

I had a little talk with Jim alone. He said he would take good care of
something I'd give him, and carry it straight. So when night came I went
and borrowed Mr. Cullen's pencil, and Holt tore me off a bit of clean
brown paper he found in the flour-barrel, and I went off among the trees
with it alone. I built a little fire for myself out of a
huckleberry-bush, and sat down there on the snow to write. I couldn't do
it in the shanty, with the noise and singing. The little brown paper
wouldn't hold much; but these were the words I wrote,--I remember every
one of them,--it is curious now I should, and that more than twenty
years ago:--

"Dear Nancy,"--that was it,--"Dear Nancy, I can't get over it, and I
take them all back. And if anything happens coming down on the logs--"

I couldn't finish that anyhow, so I just wrote "Aaron" down in the
corner, and folded the brown paper up. It didn't look any more like
"Aaron" than it did like "Abimelech," though; for I didn't see a single
letter I wrote,--not one.

After that I went to bed, and wished I was Jim Jacobs.

Next morning somebody woke me up with a push, and there was the boss.

"Why, Mr. Cullen!" says I, with a jump.

"Hurry up, man, and eat your breakfast," said he; "Jacobs is down sick
with his cold."

"_Oh!_" said I.

"You and the pork must be back here day after to-morrow,--so be spry,"
said he.

I rather think I was, Johnny.

It was just eight o'clock when I started; it took some time to get
breakfast, and feed the nags, and get orders. I stood there, slapping
the snow with my whip, crazy to be off, hearing the last of what Mr.
Cullen had to say.

They gave me the two horses,--we hadn't but two,--oxen are tougher for
going in, as a general thing,--and the lightest team on the ground; it
was considerably lighter than Bob Stokes's. If it hadn't been for the
snow, I might have put the thing through in two days, but the snow was
up to the creatures' knees in the shady places all along; off from the
road, in among the gullies, you could stick a four-foot measure down
anywhere. So they didn't look for me back before Wednesday night.

"I must have that pork Wednesday night sure," says Cullen.

"Well, sir," says I, "you shall have it Wednesday noon, Providence
permitting; and you shall have it Wednesday night anyway."

"You will have a storm to do it in, I'm afraid," said he, looking at the
clouds, just as I was whipping up. "You're all right on the road, I
suppose?"

"All right," 

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