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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 98, December, 1865

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 98, December, 1865

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 16, NO. 98, DECEMBER, 1865 ***




Produced by Joshua Hutchinson and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://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. XVI.--DECEMBER, 1865.--NO. XCVIII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.




GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.


CHAPTER I

"Then I say, once for all, that priest shall never darken my doors
again."

"Then I say they are my doors, and not yours, and that holy man shall
brighten them whenever he will."

The gentleman and lady, who faced each other pale and furious, and
interchanged this bitter defiance, were man and wife, and had loved each
other well.

Miss Catharine Peyton was a young lady of ancient family in Cumberland,
and the most striking, but least popular, beauty in the county. She was
very tall and straight, and carried herself a little too imperiously;
yet she would sometimes relax and all but dissolve that haughty figure,
and hang sweetly drooping over her favorites; then the contrast was
delicious, and the woman fascinating.

Her hair was golden and glossy, her eyes a lovely gray; and she had a
way of turning them on slowly and full, so that their victim could not
fail to observe two things: first, that they were grand and beautiful
orbs; secondly, that they were thoughtfully overlooking him, instead of
looking at him.

So contemplated by glorious eyes, a man feels small and bitter.

Catharine was apt to receive the blunt compliments of the Cumberland
squires with this sweet, celestial, superior gaze, and for this and
other imperial charms was more admired than liked.

The family estate was entailed on her brother; her father spent every
farthing he could; so she had no money, and no expectations, except from
a distant cousin,--Mr. Charlton, of Hernshaw Castle and Bolton Hall.

Even these soon dwindled. Mr. Charlton took a fancy to his late wife's
relation, Griffith Gaunt, and had him into his house, and treated him as
his heir. This disheartened two admirers who had hitherto sustained
Catharine Peyton's gaze, and they retired. Comely girls, girls
long-nosed, but rich, girls snub-nosed, but winning, married on all
sides of her; but the imperial beauty remained Miss Peyton at
two-and-twenty.

She was rather kind to the poor; would give them money out of her
slender purse, and would even make clothes for the women, and sometimes
read to them: very few of them could read to themselves in that day. All
she required in return was, that they should be Roman Catholics, like
herself, or at least pretend they might be brought to that faith by
little and little.

She was a high-minded girl, and could be a womanly one,--whenever she
chose.

She hunted about twice a week in the season, and was at home in the
saddle, for she had ridden from a child; but so ingrained was her
character, that this sport, which more or less unsexes most women, had
no perceptible effect on her mind, nor even on her manners. The scarlet
riding-habit and little purple cap, and the great, white, bony horse she
rode, were often seen in a good place at the end of a long run; but, for
all that, the lady was a most ungenial fox-huntress. She never spoke a
word but to her acquaintances, and wore a settled air of dreamy
indifference, except when the hounds happened to be in full cry, and she
galloping at their heels. Worse than that, when the dogs were running
into the fox, and his fate certain, she had been known to rein in her
struggling horse, and pace thoughtfully home, instead of coming in at
the death, and claiming the brush.

One day, being complimented at the end of a hard run by the gentleman
who kept the hounds, she turned her celestial orbs on him, and said,--

"Nay, Sir Ralph, I love to gallop; and this sorry business gives me an
excuse."

It was full a hundred years ago. The country teemed with foxes; but it
abounded in stiff coverts, and a knowing fox was sure to run from one to
another; and then came wearisome efforts to dislodge him; and then Miss
Peyton's gray eyes used to explore vacancy, and ignore her companions,
biped and quadruped.

But one day they drew Yewtree Brow, and found a stray fox. At Gaylad's
first note he broke cover, and went away for home across the open
country. A hedger saw him steal out, and gave a view halloo; the riders
came round helter-skelter; the dogs in cover one by one threw up their
noses and voices; the horns blew, the canine music swelled to a strong
chorus, and away they swept across country,--dogs, horses, men; and the
Deuse take the hindmost!

It was a gallant chase, and our dreamy virgin's blood got up. Erect, but
lithe and vigorous, and one with her great white gelding, she came
flying behind the foremost riders, and took leap for leap with them. One
glossy, golden curl streamed back in the rushing air; her gray eyes
glowed with earthly fire; and two red spots on the upper part of her
cheeks showed she was much excited, without a grain of fear. Yet in the
first ten minutes one gentleman was unhorsed before her eyes, and one
came to grief along with his animal, and a thorough-bred chestnut was
galloping and snorting beside her with empty saddle. Presently young
Featherstone, who led her by about fifteen yards, crashed through a high
hedge, and was seen no more, but heard wallowing in the deep,
unsuspected ditch beyond. There was no time to draw bridle. "Lie still,
Sir, if you please," said Catharine, with cool civility; then up rein,
in spur, and she cleared the ditch and its muddy contents, alive and
dead, and away without looking behind her.

On, on, on, till all the pinks and buckskins, erst so smart, were
splashed with clay and dirt of every hue, and all the horses' late
glossy coats were bathed with sweat and lathered with foam, and their
gaping nostrils blowing and glowing red; and then it was that Harrowden
Brook, swollen wide and deep by the late rains, came right between the
fox and Dogmore Underwood, for which he was making.

The hunt sweeping down a hillside caught sight of Reynard running for
the brook. They made sure of him now. But he lapped a drop, and then
slipped in, and soon crawled out on the other side, and made feebly for
the covert, weighted with wet fur.

At sight of him, the hunt hallooed and trumpeted, and came tearing on
with fresh vigor.

But when they came near the brook, lo, it was twenty feet wide, and
running fast and brown. Some riders skirted it, looking for a narrow
part. Two horses, being spurred at it, came to the bank, and then went
rearing round on their heels, depositing one hat and another rider in
the current. One gallant steed planted his feet like a tower, and
snorted down at the water. One flopped gravely in, and had to swim, and
be dragged out. Another leaped, and landed with his feet on the other
bank, his haunches in the water, and his rider curled round his neck,
and glaring out between his retroverted ears.

But Miss Peyton encouraged her horse with spur and voice, set her teeth,
turned rather pale this time, and went at the brook with a rush, and
cleared it like a deer. She and the huntsman were almost alone together
on the other side, and were as close to the dogs as the dogs were to
poor Pug, when he slipped through a run in a quickset hedge, and,
reducing the dogs to single file, glided into Dogmore Underwood, a stiff
hazel coppice of five years' growth.

The other riders soon straggled up, and then the thing was to get him
out again. There were a few narrow roads cut in the underwood; and up
and down these the huntsman and whipper-in went trotting, and encouraged
the stanch hounds, and whipped the skulkers back into covert. Others
galloped uselessly about, pounding the earth, for daisy-cutters were few
in those days; and Miss Peyton relapsed into the transcendental. She sat
in one place, with her elbow on her knee, and her fair chin supported by
two fingers, as undisturbed by the fracas of horns and voices as an
equestrian statue of Diana.

She sat so still and so long at a corner of the underwood that at last
the harassed fox stole out close to her with lolling tongue and eye
askant, and took the open field again. She thrilled at first sight of
him, and her cheeks burned; but her quick eye took in all the signs of
his distress, and she sat quiet, and watched him coolly. Not so her
horse. He plunged, and then trembled all over, and planted his fore-feet
together at this angle \, and parted his hind-legs a little, and so
stood quivering, with cocked ears, and peeped over a low paling at the
retiring quadruped, and fretted and sweated in anticipation of the
gallop his long head told him was to follow. He looked a deal more
statuesque than any three statues in England, and all about a creature
not up to his knee.--And by the bye: the gentlemen who carve horses in
our native isle, did they ever see one,--out of an omnibus?--The
whipper-in came by, and found him in this gallant attitude, and
suspected the truth, but, observing the rider's tranquil position,
thought the fox had only popped out and then in again. However, he fell
in with the huntsman, and told him Miss Peyton's gray had seen
something. The hounds appeared puzzled; and so the huntsman rode round
to Miss Peyton, and, touching his cap, asked her if she had seen nothing
of the fox.

She looked him dreamily in the face.

"The fox?" said she; "he broke cover ten minutes ago."

The man blew his horn lustily, and then asked her reproachfully why she
had not tally-hoed him, or winded her horn: with that he blew his own
again impatiently.

Miss Peyton replied, very slowly and pensively, that the fox had come
out soiled and fatigued, and trailing his brush. "I looked at him," said
she, "and I pitied him. He was one, and we are many; he was so little,
and we are so big; _he had given us a good gallop_; and so I made up my
mind he should live to run another day."

The huntsman stared stupidly at her for a moment, then burst into a
torrent of oaths, then blew his horn till it was hoarse, then cursed and
swore till he was hoarse himself, then to his horn again, and dogs and
men came rushing to the sound.

"Couple up, and go home to supper," said Miss Peyton, quietly. "The fox
is half-way to Gallowstree Gorse; and you won't get him out of that this
afternoon, I promise you."

As she said this, she just touched her horse with the spur, leaped the
low hedge in front of her, and cantered slowly home across country. She
was one that seldom troubled the hard road, go where she would.

She had ridden about a mile, when she heard a horse's feet behind her.
She smiled, and her color rose a little; but she cantered on.

"Halt, in the king's name!" shouted a mellow voice; and a gentleman
galloped up to her side, and reined in his mare.

"What! have they killed?" inquired Catharine, demurely.

"Not they; he is in the middle of Gallowstree Gorse by now."

"And is this the way to Gallowstree Gorse?"

"Nay, Mistress," said the young man; "but when the fox heads one way and
the deer another, what is a poor hunter to do?"

"Follow the slower, it seems."

"Say the lovelier and the dearer, sweet Kate."

"Now, Griffith, you know I hate flattery," said Kate; and the next
moment came a soft smile, and belied this unsocial sentiment.

"Flattery?" said the lover. "I have no tongue to speak half your
praises. I think the people in this country are as blind as bats, or
they'd"----

"All except Mr. Griffith Gaunt; _he_ has found a paragon, where wiser
people see a wayward, capricious girl."

"Then _he_ is the man for you. Don't you see that, Mistress?"

"No, I don't quite see that," said the lady, dryly.

This cavalier reply caused a dismay the speaker never intended. The fact
is, Mr. George Neville, young, handsome, and rich, had lately settled in
the neighborhood, and had been greatly smitten with Kate. The county was
talking about it, and Griffith had been secretly on thorns for some days
past. And now he could hide his uneasiness no longer; he cried out, in a
sharp, trembling voice,--

"Why, Kate, my dear Kate! what! could you love any man but me? Could you
be so cruel? could you? There, let me get off my horse, and lie down on
this stubble, and you ride over me, and trample me to death. I would
rather have you trample on my ribs than on my heart, with loving any one
but me."

"Why, what now?" said Catharine, drawing herself up; "I must scold you
handsomely"; and she drew rein and turned full upon him; but by this
means she saw his face was full of real distress; so, instead of
reprimanding him, she said, gently, "Why, Griffith, what is to do? Are
you not my servant? Do not I send you word, whenever I dine from home?"

"Yes, dearest; and then I call at that house, and stick there till they
guess what I would be at, and ask me, too."

Catharine smiled, and proceeded to remind him that thrice a week she
permitted him to ride over from Bolton, (a distance of fifteen miles,)
to see her.

"Yes," replied Griffith, "and I must say you always come, wet or dry, to
the shrubbery-gate, and put your hand in mine a minute. And, Kate," said
he, piteously, "at the bare thought of your putting that same dear hand
in another man's, my heart turns sick within me, and my skin burns and
trembles on me."

"But you have no cause," said Catharine, soothingly. "Nobody, except
yourself, doubts my affection for you. You are often thrown in my teeth,
Griffith,--and" (clenching her own) "I like you all the better, of
course."

Griffith replied with a burst of gratitude; and then, as men will,
proceeded to encroach.

"Ah," said he, "if you would but pluck up courage, and take the
matrimonial fence with me at once."

Miss Peyton sighed at that, and drooped a little upon her saddle. After
a pause, she enumerated the "just impediments." She reminded him that
neither of them had means to marry on.

He made light of that; he should soon have plenty; Mr. Charlton has as
good as told him he was to have Bolton Hall and Grange: "Six hundred
acres, Kate, besides the park and paddocks."

In his warmth he forgot that Catharine was to have been Mr. Charlton's
heir. Catharine was too high-minded to bear Griffith any grudge; but she
colored a little, and said she was averse to come to him a penniless
bride.

"Why, what matters it which of us has the dross, so that there is enough
for both?" said Griffith, with an air of astonishment.

Catharine smiled approbation, and tacitly yielded that point. But then
she objected the difference in their faith.

"Oh, honest folk get to heaven by different roads," said Griffith,
carelessly.

"I have been taught otherwise," replied Catharine, gravely.

"Then give me your hand and I'll give you my soul," said Griffith Gaunt,
impetuously. "I'll go to heaven your way, if you can't go mine. Anything
sooner than be parted in this world or the next."

She looked at him in silence; and it was in a faint, half apologetic
tone she objected, that all her kinsfolk were set against it.

"It is not their business; it is ours," was the prompt reply.

"Well, then," said Catharine, sadly, "I suppose I must tell you the true
reason: I feel I should not make you happy; I do not love you quite as
you want to be loved, as you deserve to be loved. You need not look so;
nothing in flesh and blood is your rival. But my heart bleeds for the
Church; I think of her ancient glory in this kingdom, and, when I see
her present condition, I long to devote myself to her service. I am very
fit to be an abbess or a nun,--most unfit to be a wife. No, no,--I must
not, ought not, dare not, marry a Protestant. Take the advice of one who
esteems you dearly; leave me,--fly from me,--forget me,--do everything
but hate me. Nay, do not hate me; you little know the struggle in my
mind. Farewell; the saints, whom you scorn, watch over and protect you!
Farewell!"

And with this she sighed, and struck her spur into the gray, and he
darted off at a gallop.

Griffith, little able to cope with such a character as this, sat
petrified, and would have been rooted to the spot, if he had happened to
be on foot. But his mare set off after her companion, and a chase of a
novel kind commenced. Catharine's horse was fresher than Griffith's
mare, and the latter, not being urged by her petrified master, lost
ground.

But when she drew near to her father's gate, Catharine relaxed her
speed, and Griffith rejoined her.

She had already half relented, and only wanted a warm and resolute wooer
to bring her round. But Griffith was too sore, and too little versed in
woman. Full of suspicion and bitterness, he paced gloomy and silent by
her side, till they reached the great avenue that led to her father's
house.

And while he rides alongside the capricious creature in sulky silence, I
may as well reveal a certain foible in his own character.

This Griffith Gaunt was by no means deficient in physical courage; but
he was instinctively disposed to run away from mental pain the moment he
lost hope of driving it away from him. For instance, if Catharine had
been ill and her life in danger, he would have ridden day and night to
save her,--would have beggared himself to save her; but if she had died,
he would either have killed himself, or else fled the country, and so
escaped the sight of every object that was associated with her and could
agonize him. I do not think he could have attended the funeral of one he
loved.

The mind, as well as the body, has its self-protecting instincts. This
of Griffith's was, after all, an instinct of that class, and, under
certain circumstances, is true wisdom. But Griffith, I think, carried
the instinct to excess; and that is why I call it his foible.

"Catharine," said he, resolutely, "let me ride by your side to the house
for once; for I read your advice my own way, and I mean to follow it:
after to-day you will be troubled with me no more. I have loved you
these three years, I have courted you these two years, and I am none the
nearer; I see I am not the man you mean to marry: so I shall do as my
father did, ride down to the coast, and sell my horse, and ship for
foreign parts."

"Oh, as you will," said Catharine, haughtily: she quite forgot she had
just recommended him to do something of this very kind.

Presently she stole a look. His fine ruddy cheek was pale; his manly
brown eyes were moist; yet a gloomy and resolute expression on his
tight-drawn lips. She looked at him sidelong, and thought how often he
had ridden thirty miles on that very mare to get a word with her at the
shrubbery-gate. And now the mare to be sold! The man to go
broken-hearted to sea,--perhaps to his death! Her good heart began to
yearn.

"Griffith," said she, softly, "it is not as if I were going to wed
anybody else. Is it nothing to be preferred by her you say you love? If
I were you, I would do nothing rash. Why not give me a little time? In
truth, I hardly know my own mind about it two days together."

"Kate," said the young man, firmly, "I am courting you this two years.
If I wait two years more, it will be but to see the right man come and
carry you in a month; for so girls are won, when they are won at all.
Your sister that is married and dead, she held Josh Pitt in hand for
years; and what is the upshot? Why, he wears the willow for her to this
day; and her husband married again, before her grave was green. Nay, I
have done all an honest man can to woo you; so take me now, or let me
go."

At this, Kate began to waver secretly, and ask herself whether it would
not be better to yield, since he was so abominably resolute.

But the unlucky fellow did not leave well alone. He went on to say,--

"Once out of sight of this place, I may cure myself of my fancy. Here I
never could."

"Oh," said Catharine, directly, "if you are so bent on being cured, it
would not become me to say nay."

Griffith Gaunt bit his lip and hung his head, and made no reply.

The patience with which he received her hard speech was more apparent
than real; but it told. Catharine, receiving no fresh positive
provocation, relented again of her own accord, and, after a considerable
silence, whispered, softly,--

"Think how we should all miss you."

Here was an overture to reconciliation. But, unfortunately, it brought
out what had long been rankling in Griffith's mind, and was in fact the
real cause of the misunderstanding.

"Oh," said he, "those I care for will soon find another to take my
place! Soon? quotha. They have not waited till I was gone for that."

"Ah, indeed!" said Catharine, with some surprise; then, like the
quick-witted girl she was, "so this is what all the coil is about."

She then, with a charming smile, begged him to inform her who was his
destined successor in her esteem. Griffith colored purple at her cool
hypocrisy, (for such he considered it,) and replied, almost fiercely,--

"Who but that young black-a-vised George Neville, that you have been
coquetting with this month past,--and danced all night with him at Lady
Munster's ball, you did."

Catharine blushed, and said, deprecatingly,--

"_You_ were not there, Griffith, or to be sure I had not danced with
_him_."

"And he toasts you by name, wherever he goes."

"Can I help that? Wait till I toast him, before you make yourself
ridiculous, and me very angry--about nothing."

Griffith, sticking to his one idea, replied, doggedly,--

"Mistress Alice Peyton shilly-shallied with her true lover for years,
till Richard Hilton came, that was not fit to tie his shoes; and
then"----

Catharine cut him short,--

"Affront me, if nothing less will serve; but spare my sister in her
grave."

She began the sentence angrily, but concluded it in a broken voice.
Griffith was half disarmed; but only half. He answered, sullenly,--

"She did not die till she had jilted an honest gentleman and broken his
heart, and married a sot, to her cost. And you are of her breed, when
all is done; and now that young coxcomb has come, like Dick Hilton,
between you and me."

"But I do not encourage him."

"You do not _dis_courage him," retorted Griffith, "or he would not be so
hot after you. Were you ever the woman to say, 'I have a servant already
that loves me dear'? That one frank word had sent him packing."

Miss Peyton colored, and the water came into her eyes.

"I may have been imprudent," she murmured. "The young gentleman made me
smile with his extravagance. I never thought to be misunderstood by him,
far less by you." Then, suddenly, as bold as brass,--"It's all your
fault; if he had the power to make you uneasy, why did you not check me
before?"

"Ay, forsooth, and have it cast in my teeth I was a jealous monster, and
played the tyrant before my time. A poor fellow scarce knows what to be
at that loves a coquette."

"Coquette I am none," replied the lady, bridling magnificently.

Griffith took no notice of this interruption. He proceeded to say that
he had hitherto endured this intrusion of a rival in silence, though
with a sore heart, hoping his patience might touch her, or the fire go
out of itself. But at last, unable to bear it any longer in silence, he
had shown his wound to one he knew could feel for him, his poor friend
Pitt. Pitt had then let him know that his own mistake had been
over-confidence in Alice Peyton's constancy.

"He said to me, 'Watch your Kate close, and, at the first blush of a
rival, say you to her, Part with him, or part with me.'"

Catharine pinned him directly.

"And this is how you take Joshua Pitt's advice,--by offering to run away
from this sorry rival."

The shrewd reply, and a curl of the lip, half arch, half contemptuous,
that accompanied the thrust, staggered the less ready Griffith. He got
puzzled, and showed it.

"Well, but," stammered he at last, "your spirit is high; I was mostly
afeard to put it so plump to you. So I thought I would go about a bit.
However, it comes to the same thing; for this I do know,--that, if you
refuse me your hand this day, it is to give it to a new acquaintance, as
your Alice did before you. And if it is to be so, 'tis best for me to be
gone: best for _him_, and best for you. You don't know me, Kate; for, as
clever as you are, at the thought of your playing me false, after all
these years, and marrying that George Neville, my heart turns to ice,
and then to fire, and my head seems ready to burst, and my hands to do
mad and bloody acts. Ay, I feel I should kill him, or you, or both, at
the church-porch. Ah!"

He suddenly griped her arm, and at the same time involuntarily checked
his mare.

Both horses stopped.

She raised her head with an inquiring look, and saw her lover's face
discolored with passion, and so strangely convulsed that she feared at
first he was in a fit, or stricken with death or palsy.

She uttered a cry of alarm, and stretched forth her hand towards him.

But the next moment she drew it back from him; for, following his eye,
she discerned the cause of this ghastly look. Her father's house stood
at the end of the avenue they had just entered; but there was another
approach to it, namely, by a bridle-road at right angles to the avenue
or main entrance; and up that bridle-road a gentleman was walking his
horse, and bid fair to meet them at the hall-door.

It was young Neville. There was no mistaking his piebald charger for any
other animal in that county.

       *       *       *       *       *

Kate Peyton glanced from lover to lover, and shuddered at Griffith. She
was familiar with petty jealousy; she had even detected it pinching or
coloring many a pretty face that tried very hard to hide it all the
time. But that was nothing to what she saw now: hitherto she had but
beheld the feeling of jealousy; but now she witnessed the livid passion
of jealousy writhing in every lineament of a human face. That terrible
passion had transfigured its victim in a moment: the ruddy, genial,
kindly Griffith, with his soft brown eye, was gone; and in his place
lowered a face older, and discolored, and convulsed, and almost
demoniacal.

Women (wiser, perhaps, in this than men) take their strongest
impressions by the eye, not ear. Catharine, I say, looked at him she had
hitherto thought she knew,--looked and feared him. And even while she
looked and shuddered, Griffith spurred his mare sharply, and then drew
her head across the gray gelding's path. It was an instinctive impulse
to bar the lady he loved from taking another step towards the place
where his rival awaited her.

"I cannot bear it," he gasped. "Choose you now, once for all, between
that puppy there and me": and he pointed with his riding-whip at his
rival, and waited with his teeth clenched for her decision.

The movement was rapid, the gesture large and commanding, and the words
manly: for what says the fighting poet?--

    "He either fears his fate too much,
      Or his deserts are small,
    Who fears to put it to the touch,
      To win or lose it all."


CHAPTER II.

Miss Peyton drew herself up and back by one motion, like a queen at bay;
but still she eyed him with a certain respect, and was careful now not
to provoke nor pain him needlessly.

"I prefer _you_,--though you speak harshly to me, Sir," said she, with
gentle dignity.

"Then give me your hand, with _that man_ in sight, and end my torments;
promise to marry me this very week. Ah, Kate, have pity on your poor,
faithful servant, who has loved you so long!"

"I do, Griffith, I do," said she, sweetly; "but I shall never marry now.
Only set your mind at rest about Mr. Neville there. He has never asked
me, for one thing."

"He soon will, then."

"No, no; I declare I will be very cool to him, after what you have said
to me. But I cannot marry you, neither. I dare not. Listen to me, and
do, pray, govern your temper, as I am doing mine. I have often read of
men with a passion for jealousy,--I mean, men whose jealousy feeds upon
air, and defies reason. I know you now for such a man. Marriage would
not cure this madness; for wives do not escape admiration any more than
maids. Something tells me you would be jealous of every fool that paid
me some stale compliment, jealous of my female friends, and jealous of
my relations, and perhaps jealous of your own children, and of that
holy, persecuted Church which must still have a large share of _my_
heart. No, no; your face and your words have shown me a precipice. I
tremble and draw back, and now I never _will_ marry at all: from this
day I give myself to the Church."

Griffith did not believe one word of all this.

"That is your answer to me," said he, bitterly. "When the right man puts
the question (and he is not far off) you will tell another tale. You
take me for a fool, and you mock me; you are not the lass to die an old
maid: and men are not the fools to let you. With faces like yours, the
new servant comes before the old one is gone. Well, I have got my
answer. County Cumberland, you are no place for me! The ways and the
fields we two have ridden together,--oh, how could I bear their sight
without my dear? Why, what a poor-spirited fool I am to stay and whine!
Come, Mistress, your lover waits you there, and your discarded servant
knows good-breeding: he leaves the country not to spoil your sport."

Catharine panted heavily.

"Well, Sir," said she, "then it is your doing, not mine. Will you not
even shake hands with me, Griffith?"

"I were a brute else," sighed the jealous one, with a sudden revulsion
of feeling. "I have spent the happiest hours of my life beside you. If I
loved thee less, I had never left thee."

He clung a little while to her hands, more like a drowning man than
anything else, then let them go, and suddenly shook his clenched fist in
the direction of George Neville, and cried out with a savage yell,--

"My curse on him that parts us twain! And you, Kate, may God bless you
single, and curse you married! and that is my last word in Cumberland."

"Amen!" said Catharine, resignedly.

And even with this they wheeled their horses apart, and rode away from
each other: she very pale, but erect with wounded pride; he reeling in
his saddle like a drunken man.

And so Griffith Gaunt, stung mad by jealousy, affronted his sweetheart,
the proudest girl in Cumberland, and, yielding to his foible, fled from
his pain.

Our foibles are our manias.


CHAPTER III.

Miss Peyton was shocked and grieved; but she was also affronted and
wounded. Now anger seems to have some fine buoyant quality, which makes
it rise and come uppermost in an agitated mind. She rode proudly into
the court-yard of her father's house, and would not look once behind to
see the last of her perverse lover.

The old groom, Joe, who had taught her to ride when she was six years
old, saw her coming, and hobbled out to hold her horse, while she
alighted.

"Mistress Kate," said he, "have you seen Master Griffith Gaunt
anywheres?"

The young lady colored at this question.

"Why?" said she.

"Why?" repeated old Joe, a little contemptuously. "Why, where have _you_
been not to know the country is out after un? First comed Jock Dennet,
with his horse all in a lather, to say old Mr. Charlton was took ill,
and had asked for Master Griffith. I told him to go to Dogmore Copse:
'Our Kate is a-hunting to-day,' says I; 'and your Griffith, he is sure
not to be far from her gelding's tail'; a sticks in his spurs and away a
goes. What, ha'n't you seen Jock, neither?"

"No, no," replied Miss Peyton, impatiently. "What, is there anything the
matter?"

"The matter, quo' she! Why, Jock hadn't been gone an hour when in rides
the new footman all in a lather, and brings a letter for Master Griffith
from the old gentleman's housekeeper. 'You leave the letter with me, in
case,' says I, and I sends him a-field after t' other. Here be the
letter."

He took off his cap and produced the letter.

Catharine started at the sight of it.

"Alack!" said she, "this is a heavy day. Look, Joe; sealed with black.
Poor Cousin Charlton! I doubt he is no more."

Joe shook his head expressively, and told her the butcher had come from
that part not ten minutes ago, with word that the blinds were all down
at Bolton Hall.

Poor human nature! A gleam of joy shot through Catharine's heart; this
sad news would compel Griffith to stay at home and bury his benefactor;
and that delay would give him time to reflect; and, somehow or other,
she felt sure it would end in his not going at all.

But these thoughts had no sooner passed through her than she was ashamed
of them and of herself. What! welcome that poor old man's death because
it would keep her cross-grained lover at home? Her cheeks burned with
shame; and, with a superfluous exercise of self-defence, she retired
from Old Joe, lest he should divine what was passing in her mind.

But she was so wrapt in thought that she carried the letter away with
her unconsciously.

As she passed through the hall, she heard George Neville and her father
in animated conversation. She mounted the stairs softly, and went into a
little boudoir of her own on the first floor, and sat down. The house
stood high, and there was a very expansive and beautiful view of the
country from this window. She sat down by it and drooped, and looked
wistfully through the window, and thought of the past, and fell into a
sad reverie. Pity began to soften her pride and anger, and presently two
gentle tears dimmed her glorious eyes a moment, then stole down her
delicate cheeks.

While she sat thus lost in the past, jovial voices and creaking boots
broke suddenly upon her ear, and came up the stairs; they jarred upon
her; so she cast one last glance out of the window, and rose to get out
of their way, if possible. But it was too late; a heavy step came to the
door, and a ruddy, Port-drinking face peeped in. It was her father.

"See-ho!" roared the jovial Squire. "I've found the hare on her form;
bide thou outside a moment."

And he entered the room; but he had no sooner closed the door than his
whole manner changed from loud and jovial to agitated and subdued.

"Kate, my girl," said he, piteously, "I have been a bad father to thee.
I have spent all the money that should have been thine; thy poor father
can scarce look thee in the face. So now I bring thee a good husband; be
a good child now, and a dutiful. Neville's Court is his, and Neville's
Cross will be, by the entail; and so will the baronetcy. I shall see my
girl Lady Neville."

"Never, papa, never!" cried Kate.

"Hush! hush!" said the Squire, and put up his hand to her in great
agitation and alarm; "hush, or he will hear ye. Kate," he whispered,
"are you mad? Little I thought, when he asked to see me, it was to offer
marriage. Be a good girl now; don't you quarrel with good luck. You are
not fit to be poor; and you have made enemies: do but think how they
will flout you when I die, and Bill's jade of a wife puts you to the
door, as she will. And now you can triumph over them all, my Lady
Neville,--and make your poor father happy, my Lady Neville. Enough said,
for I promised you; so don't go and make a fool of me, and yourself into
the bargain. And--and--a word in your ear: he hath lent me a hundred
pounds."

At this climax, the father hung his head; the daughter winced and moaned
out,--

"Papa, how _could_ you?"

Mr. Peyton had gradually descended to that intermediate stage of
degradation, when the substance of dignity is all gone, but its shadow,
shame, remains. He stamped impatiently on the ground, and cut his
humiliation short by rushing out of the room.

"Here, try your own luck, youngster," he cried at the door. "She knows
my mind."

He trampled down the stairs, and young George Neville knocked
respectfully at the door, though it was half open, and came in with
youth's light foot, and a handsome face flushed into beauty by love and
hope.

Miss Peyton's eye just swept him as he entered, and with the same
movement she turned away her fair head and blushing cheek towards the
window; yet--must I own it?--she quietly moulded the letter that lay in
her lap, so that the address was no longer visible to the new-comer.

(Small secrecy, verging on deceit, you are bred in woman's bones!)

This blushing and averted cheek is one of those equivocal receptions
that have puzzled many a sensible man. It is a sign of coy love; it is a
sign of gentle aversion; _our_ mode of interpreting it is simple and
judicious: whichever it happens to be, we go and take it for the other.

The brisk, bold wooer that now engaged Kate Peyton was not the man to be
dashed by a woman's coyness. Handsome, daring, good-humored, and vain,
he had everything in his favor but his novelty.

       *       *       *       *       *

Look at Kate! her eye lingers wistfully on that disconsolate horseman
whose every step takes him farther from her; but George has her ear, and
draws closer and closer to it, and pours love's mellow murmurs into it.

He told her he had made the grand tour, and seen the beauties of every
land, but none like her; other ladies had certainly pleased his eye for
a moment, but she alone had conquered his heart. He said many charming
things to her, such as Griffith Gaunt had never said. Amongst the rest,
he assured her the beauty of her person would not alone have fascinated
him so deeply; but he had seen the beauty of her mind in those eyes of
hers, that seemed not eyes, but souls; and begging her pardon for his
presumption, he aspired to wed her mind.

Such ideas had often risen in Kate's own mind; but to hear them from a
man was new. She looked askant through the window at the lessening
Griffith, and thought "how the grand tour improves a man!" and said, as
coldly as she could,--

"I esteem you, Sir, and cannot but be flattered by sentiments so
superior to those I am used to hear; but let this go no farther. I shall
never marry now."

Instead of being angry at this, or telling her she wanted to marry
somebody else, as the injudicious Griffith had done, young Neville had
the address to treat it as an excellent jest, and drew such comical
pictures of all the old maids in the neighborhood that she could not
help smiling.

But the moment she smiled, the inflammable George made hot love to her
again. Then she besought him to leave her, piteously. Then he said,
cheerfully, he would leave her as soon as ever she had promised to be
his. At that she turned sullen and haughty, and looked through the
window and took no notice of him whatever. Then, instead of being
discouraged or mortified, he showed imperturbable confidence and
good-humor, and begged archly to know what interesting object was in
sight from that window. On this she blushed and withdrew her eyes from
the window, and so they met his. On that he threw himself on his knees,
(custom of the day,) and wooed her with such a burst of passionate and
tearful eloquence that she began to pity him, and said, lifting her
lovely eyes,--

"Alas! I was born to make all those I esteem unhappy!" and she sighed
deeply.

"Not a bit of it," said he; "you were born, like the sun, to bless all
you shine upon. Sweet Mistress Kate, I love you as these country boors
can never be taught to love. I lay my heart, my name, my substance, at
your feet; you shall not be loved,--you shall be worshipped. Ah! turn
those eyes, brimful of soul, on me again, and let me try and read in
them that one day, no matter how distant, the delight of my eyes, the
joy of all my senses, the pride of Cumberland, the pearl of England, the
flower of womankind, the rival of the angels, the darling of George
Neville's heart, will be George Neville's wife."

Fire and water were in his eyes, passion in every tone; his manly hand
grasped hers and trembled, and drew her gently towards him.

Her bosom heaved; his passionate male voice and touch electrified her,
and made her flutter.

"Spare me this pain," she faltered; and she looked through the window
and thought, "Poor Griffith was right, after all, and I was wrong. He
had cause for jealousy, and CAUSE FOR FEAR."

And then she pitied him who panted at her side, and then she was sorry
for him who rode away disconsolate, still lessening to her eye; and what
with this conflict and the emotion her quarrel with Griffith had
already caused her, she leaned her head back against the shutter, and
began to sob low, but almost hysterically.

Now Mr. George Neville was neither a fool nor a novice, if he had never
been downright in love before, (which I crave permission to doubt,) he
had gone far enough on that road to make one Italian lady, two French,
one Austrian, and one Creole, in love with him; and each of these
love-affairs had given him fresh insight into the ways of woman.
Enlightened by so many bitter-sweet experiences, he saw at once that
there was something more going on inside Kate's heaving bosom than he
could have caused by offering her his hand. He rose from his knees and
leaned against the opposite shutter, and fixed his eyes a little sadly,
but very observantly, on her, as she leaned back against the shutter,
sobbing low, but hysterically, and quivering all over.

"There's some other man at the bottom of this," thought George Neville.

"Mistress Kate," said he, gently, "I do not come here to make you weep.
I love you like a gentleman. If you love another, take courage, tell me
so, and don't let your father constrain your inclinations. Dearly as I
love you, I would not wed your person, and your heart another's: that
would be too cruel to you, and" (drawing himself up with sudden majesty)
"too unjust to myself."

Kate looked up at him through her tears, and admired this man, who could
love ardently, yet be proud and just. And if this appeal to her candor
had been made yesterday, she would have said, frankly, "There is one
I--esteem." But, since the quarrel, she would not own to herself, far
less to another, that she loved a man who had turned his back upon her.
So she _parried_.

"There is no one I love enough to wed," said she. "I am a cold-hearted
girl, born to give pain to my betters. But I shall do something
desperate to end all this."

"All what?" said he, keenly.

"The whole thing: my unprofitable life."

"Mistress Kate," said Neville, "I asked you, was there another man. If
you had answered me, 'In truth there is, but he is poor and my father is
averse or the like,' then I would have secretly sought that man, and, as
I am very rich, you should have been happy."

"Oh, Mr. Neville, that is very generous, but how meanly you must think
of me!"

"And what a bungler you must think me! I tell you, you should never have
known. But let that pass; you have answered my question; and you say
there is no man you love. Then I say you shall be Dame Neville."

"What, whether I will or no?"

"Yes; whether you _think_ you will or no."

Catharine turned her dreamy eyes on him.

"You have had a good master. Why did you not come to me sooner?"

She was thinking more of him than of herself, and, in fact, paying too
little heed to her words. But she had no sooner uttered this inadvertent
speech than she felt she had said too much. She blushed rosy red, and
hid her face in her hands in the most charming confusion.

"Sweetest, it is not an hour too late, as you do not love another," was
stout George Neville's reply.

But nevertheless the cunning rogue thought it safest to temporize, and
put his coy mistress off her guard. So he ceased to alarm her by
pressing the question of marriage, but seduced her into a charming talk,
where the topics were not so personal, and only the tones of his voice
and the glances of his expressive eyes were caressing. He was on his
mettle to please her by hook or by crook, and was delightful,
irresistible. He set her at ease, and she began to listen more, and even
to smile faintly, and to look through the window a little less
perseveringly.

Suddenly the spell was broken for a while.

And by whom?

By the other.

Ay, you may well stare. It sounds strange, but it is true, that the poor
forlorn horseman, hanging like a broken man, as he was, over his tired
horse, and wending his solitary way from her he loved, and resigning the
field, like a goose, to the very rival he feared, did yet (like the
retiring Parthian) shoot an arrow right into that pretty boudoir and hit
both his sweetheart and his rival,--hit them hard enough to spoil their
sport, and make a little mischief between them--for that afternoon, at
all events.

The arrow came into the room after this fashion.

Kate was sitting in a very feminine attitude. When a man wants to look
in any direction, he turns his body and his eye the same way, and does
it; but women love to cast oblique regards; and this their instinct is a
fruitful source of their graceful and characteristic postures.

Kate Peyton was at this moment a statue of her sex. Her fair head leaned
gently back against the corner of the window-shutter; her pretty feet
and fair person in general were opposite George Neville, who sat facing
the window, but in the middle of the room; her arms, half pendent, half
extended, went listlessly aslant her, and somewhat to the right of her
knees, yet, by an exquisite turn of the neck, her gray eyes contrived to
be looking dreamily out of the window to her left. Still in this figure,
that pointed one way and looked another, there was no distortion; all
was easy, and full of that subtile grace we artists call repose.

But suddenly she dissolved this feminine attitude, rose to her feet, and
interrupted her wooer civilly.

"Excuse me," said she, "but can you tell me which way that road on the
hill leads to?"

Her companion stared a little at so sudden a turn in the conversation,
but replied by asking her, with perfect good-humor, what road she meant.

"The one _that gentleman on horseback has just taken_. Surely," she
continued, "that road does not take to Bolton Hall."

"Certainly not," said George, following the direction of her finger.
"Bolton lies to the right. That road takes to the sea-coast by Otterbury
and Stanhope."

"I thought so," said Kate. "How unfortunate! He cannot know; but,
indeed, how should he?"

"Who cannot know? and what? You speak in riddles, Mistress. And how pale
you are! Are you ill?"

"No, not ill, Sir," faltered Kate; "but you see me much discomposed. My
cousin Charlton died this day; and the news met me at the very door."
She could say no more.

Mr. Neville, on hearing this news, began to make many excuses for having
inadvertently intruded himself upon her on such a day; but, in the midst
of his apologies, she suddenly looked him full in the face, and said,
with nervous abruptness,--

"You _talk_ like a _preux chevalier_. I wonder whether you would ride
five or six miles to do me a service."

"Ay, a thousand!" said the young man, glowing with pleasure. "What is to
do?"

Kate pointed through the window.

"You see that gentleman on horseback. Well, I happen to know that he is
leaving the country; he thinks that he--that I--that Mr. Charlton has
many years to live. He must be told Mr. Charlton is dead, and his
presence is required at Bolton Hall. I _should_ like somebody to gallop
after him, and give him this letter; but my own horse is tired, and I am
tired; and, to be frank, there is a little coolness between the
gentleman himself and me. Oh, I wish him no ill, but really I am not
upon terms--I do not feel complaisant enough to carry a letter after
him; yet I do feel that he _must_ have it. Do not _you_ think it would
be malicious and unworthy in me to keep the news from him, when I know
it is so?"

Young Neville smiled.

"Nay, Mistress, why so many words? Give me your letter, and I will soon
overtake the gentleman: he seems in no great hurry."

Kate thanked him, and made a polite apology for giving him so much
trouble, and handed him the letter. When it came to that, she held it
out to him rather irresolutely; but he took it promptly, and bowed low,
after the fashion of the day. She curtsied; he marched off with
alacrity. She sat down again, and put her head in her hand to think it
all over, and a chill thought ran through her. Was her conduct wise?
What would Griffith think at her employing his rival? Would he not infer
Neville had entered her service in more senses than one? Perhaps he
would throw the letter in the dirt in a rage, and never read it.

Steps came rapidly, the door opened, and there was George Neville again,
but not the same George Neville that went out but thirty seconds before.
He stood in the door looking very black, and with a sardonic smile on
his lips.

"An excellent jest, Mistress!" said he, ironically.

"Why, what is the matter?" said the lady, stoutly; but her red cheeks
belied her assumption of innocence.

"Oh, not much," said George, with a bitter sneer. "It is an old story;
only I thought you were nobler than the rest of your sex. This letter is
to Mr. Griffith Gaunt."

"Well, Sir!" said Kate, with a face of serene and candid innocence.

"And Mr. Griffith Gaunt is a suitor of yours."

"Say, _was_. He is so no longer. He and I are out. But for that, think
you I had even listened to--what you have been saying to me this ever so
long?"

"Oh, that alters the case," said George. "But stay!" and he knitted his
brows, and reflected.

Up to a moment ago, the loftiness of Catharine Peyton's demeanor, and
the celestial something in her soul-like, dreamy eyes, had convinced him
she was a creature free from the small dishonesty and lubricity he had
noted in so many women otherwise amiable and good. But this business of
the letter had shaken the illusion.

"Stay!" said he, stiffly, "You say Mr. Gaunt and you are out?"

Catharine assented by a movement of her fair head.

"And he is leaving the country. Perhaps this letter is to keep him from
leaving the country."

"Only until he has buried his benefactor," murmured Kate, in deprecating
accents.

George wore a bitter sneer at this.

"Mistress Kate," said he, after a significant pause, "do you read
Moliere?"

She bridled a little, and would not reply. She knew Moliere quite well
enough not to want his wit levelled at her head.

"Do you admire the character of Celimene?"

No reply.

"You do not. How can you? She was too much your inferior. She never sent
one of her lovers with a letter to the other to stop his flight. Well,
you may eclipse Celimene; but permit me to remind you that I am George
Neville, and not Georges Dandin."

Miss Peyton rose from her seat with eyes that literally flashed fire;
and--the horrible truth must be told--her first wild impulse was to
reply to all this Moliere with one cut of her little riding-whip. But
she had a swift mind, and two reflections entered it together: first,
that this would be unlike a gentlewoman; secondly, that, if she whipped
Mr. Neville, however inefficaciously, he would not lend her his piebald
horse. So she took stronger measures; she just sank down again, and
faltered,--

"I do not understand these bitter words. I have no lover at all; I never
will have one again. But it is hard to think I cannot make a friend nor
keep a friend,"--and so lifted up her hands, and began to cry piteously.

Then the stout George was taken aback, and made to think himself a
ruffian.

"Nay, do not weep so, Mistress Kate," said he, hurriedly. "Come, take
courage. I am not jealous of Mr. Gaunt,--a man that hath been two years
dangling after you, and could not win you. I look but to my own
self-respect in the matter. I know your sex better than you know
yourselves. Were I to carry that letter, you would thank me now, but
by-and-by despise me. Now, as I mean you to be my wife, I will not risk
your contempt. Why not take my horse, put whom you like on him, and so
convey the letter to Mr. Gaunt?"

Now this was all the fair mourner wanted; so she said,--

"No, no, she would not be beholden to him for anything; he had spoken
harshly to her, and misjudged her cruelly, cruelly,--oh! oh! oh!"

Then he implored her to grant him this small favor; then she cleared up,
and said, Well, sooner than bear malice, she would. He thanked her for
granting him that favor. She went off with the letter, saying,--

"I will be back anon."

But once she got clear, she opened the door again, and peeped in at him
gayly, and said she,--

"Why not ask me who _wrote_ the letter, before you compared me to that
French coquette?"--and, with this, made him an arch curtsy, and tripped
away.

Mr. George Neville opened his eyes with astonishment. This arch
question, and Kate's manner of putting it, convinced him the obnoxious
missive was not a love-letter at all. He was sorry now, and vexed with
himself, for having called her a coquette, and made her cry. After all,
what was the mighty favor she had asked of him? To carry a sealed letter
from somebody or other to a person who, to be sure, had been her lover,
but was so no longer,--a simple act of charity and civility; and he had
refused it in injurious terms.

He was glad he had lent his horse, and almost sorry he had not taken the
letter himself.

To these chivalrous self-reproaches succeeded an uneasy feeling that
perhaps the lady might retaliate somehow. It struck him, on reflection,
that the arch query she had let fly at him was accompanied with a
certain sparkle of the laughing eye, such as ere now had, in his
experience, preceded a stroke of the feminine claw.

As he walked up and down, uneasy, awaiting the fair one's return, her
father came up, and asked him to dine and sleep. What made the
invitation more welcome was, that it in reality came from Kate.

"She tells me she has borrowed your horse," said the Squire; "so, says
she, I am bound to take care of you till day-light; and, indeed, our
ways are perilous at night."

"She is an angel!" cried the lover, all his ardor revived by this
unexpected trait. "My horse, my house, my hand, and my heart are all at
her service, by night and day."

Mr. Peyton, to wile away the time before dinner, invited him to walk out
and see--a hog, deadly fat, as times went. But Neville denied himself
that satisfaction, on the plea that he had his orders to await Miss
Peyton's return where he was. The Squire was amused at his excessive
docility, and winked, as much as to say, "I have been once upon a time
in your plight," and so went and gloried in his hog alone.

The lover fell into a delicious reverie. He enjoyed, by anticipation,
the novel pleasure of an evening passed all alone with this charming
girl. The father, being friendly to his suit, would go to sleep after
dinner; and then, by the subdued light of a wood-fire, he would murmur
his love into that sweet ear for hours, until the averted head should
come round by degrees, and the delicious lips yield a coy assent. He
resolved the night should not close till he had surprised, overpowered,
and secured his lovely bride.

These soft meditations reconciled him for a while to the prolonged
absence of their object.

In the midst of them, he happened to glance through the window; and he
saw a sight that took his very breath away, and rooted him in amazement
to the spot. About a mile from the house, a lady in a scarlet habit was
galloping across country as the crow flies. Hedge, ditch, or brook,
nothing stopped her an instant; and as for the pace,--

    "She seemed in running to devour the way."

It was Kate Peyton on his piebald horse.


CHAPTER IV.

Griffith Gaunt, unknown to himself, had lost temper as well as heart
before he took the desperate step of leaving the country. Now his temper
was naturally good; and ere he had ridden two miles, he recovered it. To
his cost; for the sustaining force of anger being gone, he was alone
with his grief. He drew the rein half mechanically, and from a spirited
canter declined to a walk.

And the slower he went, the chillier grew his heart, till it lay half
ice, half lead, in his bosom.

Parted! oh, word pregnant with misery!

Never to see those heavenly eyes again, nor hear that silver voice!
Never again to watch that peerless form walk the minuet; nor see it lift
the gray horse over a fence with the grace and spirit that seemed
inseparable from it!

Desolation streamed over him at the thought. And next his forlorn mind
began to cling even to the inanimate objects that were dotted about the
place which held her. He passed a little farm-house into which Kate and
he had once been driven by a storm, and had sat together by the kitchen
fire; and the farmer's wife had smiled on them for sweethearts, and made
them drink rum and milk and stay till the sun was fairly out.

"Ah! good-bye, little farm!" he sighed; "when shall I ever see you
again?"

He passed a brook where they had often stopped together and given their
panting horses just a mouthful after a run with the harriers.

"Good-bye, little brook!" said he; "you will ripple on as before, and
warble as you go; but I shall never drink at your water more, nor hear
your pleasant murmur with her I love."

He sighed and crept away, still making for the sea.

In the icy depression of his heart his body and his senses were half
paralyzed, and none would have known the accomplished huntsman in this
broken man, who hung anyhow over his mare's neck and went to and fro in
the saddle.

When he had gone about five miles, he came to the crest of a hill; he
remembered, that, once past that brow, he could see Peyton Hall no more.
He turned slowly and cast a sorrowful look at it.

It was winter, but the afternoon sun had come out bright. The horizontal
beams struck full upon the house, and all the western panes shone like
burnished gold. Her very abode, how glorious it looked! And he was to
see it no more.

He gazed and gazed at the bright house till love and sorrow dimmed his
eyes, and he could see the beloved place no more. Then his dogged will
prevailed and carried him away towards the sea, but crying like a woman
now, and hanging all dislocated over his horse's mane.

Now about half a mile farther on, as he crept along on a vile and narrow
road, all woebegone and broken, he heard a mighty scurry of horse's feet
in the field to his left; he looked languidly up; and the first thing he
saw was a great piebald horse's head and neck in the act of rising in
the air, and doubling his fore-legs under him, to leap the low hedge a
yard or two in front of him.

He did leap, and landed just in front of Griffith; his rider curbed him
so keenly that he went back almost on his haunches, and then stood
motionless all across the road, with quivering tail. A lady in a scarlet
riding-habit and purple cap sat him as if he had been a throne instead
of a horse, and, without moving her body, turned her head swift as a
snake, and fixed her great gray eyes full and searching upon Griffith
Gaunt.




THE PARTING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.

FROM THE SIXTH BOOK OF THE ILIAD.


    So spake the matron. Hector left in haste
    The mansion, and retraced his way between
    The rows of stately dwellings, traversing
    The mighty city. When, at length, he reached
    The Scaean gates, that issue on the field,
    His spouse, the nobly dowered Andromache,
    Came forth to meet him, daughter of the Prince
    Eetion, who among the woody slopes
    Of Placos, in the Hypoplacian town
    Of Thebe, ruled Cilicia's sons, and gave
    His child to Hector of the beamy helm.
    She came, attended by a maid who bore
    A tender child, a babe too young to speak,
    Beautiful as a star, whom Hector called
    Scamandrius,--but all else Astyanax,
    The City's Lord, since Hector stood the sole
    Defence of Troy. The father on his child
    Looked with a silent smile. Andromache
    Pressed to his side, meanwhile, and all in tears
    Clung to his hand, and, thus beginning, said:--
      "Too brave! thy valor yet will cause thy death.
    Thou hast no pity on thy tender child,
    Nor me, unhappy one, who soon must be
    Thy widow: all the Greeks will rush on thee,
    To take thy life. A happier lot were mine,
    If I must lose thee, to go down to earth;
    For I shall have no hope, when thou art gone,--
    Nothing but sorrow. Father have I none,
    And no dear mother. Great Achilles slew
    My father, when he sacked the populous town
    Of the Cilicians, Thebe with high gates.
    'T was there he smote Eetion, yet forbore
    To make his arms a spoil: he dared not that,
    But burned the dead with his bright armor on,
    And raised a mound above him. Mountain nymphs,
    Daughters of aegis-bearing Jupiter,
    Came to the spot and planted it with elms.
    Seven brothers had I in my father's house,
    And all went down to Hades in one day:
    Achilles the swift-footed slew them all,
    Among their slow-paced beeves and snow-white flocks.
    My mother, princess on the woody slopes
    Of Placos, with his spoils he bore away,
    And only for large ransom gave her back.
    But her Diana, archer-queen, struck down
    Within her father's palace. Hector, thou
    Art father and dear mother now to me,
    And brother, and my youthful spouse besides.
    In pity keep within the fortress here,
    Nor make thy child an orphan, nor thy wife
    A widow. Post thine army near the place
    Of the wild fig-tree, where the city-walls
    Are low, and may be scaled. Thrice, in the war,
    The boldest of the foe have tried the spot:
    The brothers Ajax, famed Idomeneus,
    The two chiefs born to Atreus, and the brave
    Tydides: whether counselled to the attempt
    By some wise seer, or prompted from within."
      Then answered Hector great in war:--"All this,
    Dear wife, I bear in mind; but I should stand
    Ashamed before the men and long-robed dames
    Of Troy, were I to keep aloof, and shun
    The battle, coward-like. Not thus my heart
    Prompts me; for greatly have I learned to dare
    And strike among the foremost sons of Troy,
    Upholding my great father's fame and mine.
    But well in my undoubting mind I know
    The day shall come in which our sacred Troy,
    And Priam, and the people over whom
    Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all.
    But not the sorrows of the Trojan race,
    Nor those of Hecuba herself, nor those
    Of royal Priam, nor the woes that wait
    My brothers many and brave, who yet, at last,
    Slain by the leaguering foe, shall lie in dust,
    Grieve me so much as thine, when some mailed Greek
    Shall lead thee weeping hence, and take from thee
    Thy day of freedom. Thou, in Argos, then,
    Shalt, at another's bidding, ply the loom,
    Or from the fountain of Messeis draw
    Water, or from the Hypereian spring,
    Constrained, unwilling, by thy cruel lot.
    And then shall some one say, who sees thee weep,
    'This was the wife of Hector, most renowned
    Of the horse-taming Trojans, when they fought
    Around their city.' So shall some one say;
    And thou shalt grieve the more, lamenting him
    Who haply might have kept afar the day
    Of thy captivity. Oh, let the earth
    Be heaped above my head in death, before
    I hear thy cries, as thou art borne away!"
      So saying, mighty Hector stretched his arms
    To take the boy. The boy shrank crying back
    To his fair nurse's bosom, scared to see
    His father helmeted in glittering brass,
    And eying with affright the horse-hair plume
    That grimly nodded from the crest on high.
    The tender father and fond mother smiled;
    And hastily the mighty Hector took
    The helmet from his brow, and laid it down
    Gleaming upon the ground, and, having kissed
    His darling son, and tossed him up in play,
    Prayed thus to Jove and all the gods of heaven:--
      "O Jupiter, and all ye deities!
    Vouchsafe that this my son may yet become
    Among the Trojans eminent like me,
    And, with a might and courage like my own,
    Rule nobly over Ilium. May they say,
    'This man is greater than his father was,'
    When they behold him from the battle-field
    Bring back the bloody spoils of the slain foe,
    That so his mother may be glad at heart."
      So speaking, to the arms of his dear spouse
    He gave the boy. She on her fragrant breast
    Received him, weeping as she smiled. The chief
    Beheld, and, moved with tender pity, smoothed
    Her forehead gently with his hand, and said:--
      "Sorrow not thus, beloved one, for me.
    No living man can send me to the shades
    Before my time; no man of woman born,
    Coward or brave, can shun his destiny.
    But go thou home, and tend thy labors there,
    The web, the distaff, and command thy maids
    To speed the work; the cares of war pertain
    To all men born in Troy, and most to me."
      Thus spake the mighty Hector, and took up
    His helmet shadowed with the horse-hair plume,
    While homeward his beloved consort went,
    Oft looking back and shedding many tears.
    Soon was she in the spacious palace-halls
    Of the man-queller Hector. There she found
    A troop of damsels; with them all she shared
    Her grief, and all in his own house bewailed
    The living Hector, whom they thought no more
    To see returning from the battle-field,
    Escaped the rage and weapons of the Greeks.




WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.


This active, energetic, and in every way remarkable man, who was not
only the originator, proprietor, and purveyor, but the editor,--the
actual and only editor,--of "Blackwood's Magazine," up to the day of his
death, in 1834, has never been properly understood nor appreciated,
either abroad or at home, owing to circumstances the public are
unacquainted with.

While exercising despotic power, in all that concerned the management of
that bold and saucy and at times unprincipled work, in all that
concerned the management or the contributors, and never yielding even to
"Old Christopher" himself, who passed for the editor, where any serious
question sprang up, he was so careful to keep out of sight himself, and
to thrust that old gentleman forward, upon all occasions,--a sort of
myth, at the best,--a shadowy, mysterious personage, who deceived
nobody, and whom all were glad enough to take on trust, well knowing
that Professor Wilson was behind the mask,--that, up to this day,
William Blackwood, the little, tough, wiry Scotch bookseller, with a big
heart, and a pericardium of net-work,--interwoven steel springs,--has
been regarded as the publisher and proprietor only, and Professor Wilson
as the editor, and one who would suffer no interference with his
prerogative, and "bear no brother near the throne."

To bring about this belief, Blackwood spared no expense of indirect
assertion, and no outlay of incidental evidence. Never faltering in his
first plan, and never foregoing an opportunity of strengthening the
public delusion, what cared he for the reputation of editorship, so long
as the great mystery paid? Walter Scott had already shown how profitably
and safely such a game might be played, year after year, in the midst of
the enemies' camp; and Blackwood was just the man to profit by such
experience.

In the Life of Professor Wilson, by his daughter, Mrs. Gordon, edited
here by Professor Mackenzie, there might be found enough to disabuse the
public upon this point, if it were not read by the lamplight--or
twilight--of long-cherished opinions.

But as Blackwood, the shrewd, sharp, wary Scotchman, always talked about
"our worthy friend Christopher" as a real, and not a mythological
personage,--as if, in short, he were himself and nobody else,--and never
of Wilson but as one of the contributors, or as the author of "Margaret
Lyndsay" or "The Isle of Palms," and then with a look or a smile which
he never explained, and which nobody out of the charmed circle ever
understood, no wonder the delusion was kept up to the last.

"All I can say," he once wrote me, while negotiating for more
grist,--"all I can say is, that whatever is good in itself we are always
happy to receive; the only difficulty is, that our worthy friend
Christopher is a very absolute person, and therefore always judges for
himself with regard to everything that is offered." Now
this--considering that he himself, William Blackwood, was Christopher
North, in spirit, if not in substance, and that he himself, and not
Wilson, was the autocrat from whose judgment there was no appeal--might
pass anywhere, I think, for one of the happiest examples of persevering,
impudent mystification ever hazarded by a respectable man, while writing
confidentially to another, and quite of a piece with the celebrated
Chaldee manuscript.

And now for my acquaintance with the man himself. I was living in
Baltimore. I had given up my editorships. I had forsworn poetry and
story-telling, (on paper,) and had not only entered upon the profession
of the law with encouraging success, but had begun to settle upon my
lees.

One day, while dining with my friend Henry Robinson, who introduced gas
into Boston, after a series of disastrous experiments in Baltimore, and
the conversation happening to turn upon that subject, we wandered off
into the state of English opinions generally. He was an Englishman by
birth and early education, though his heart was American to the core.
Something was said about the literature of the day, and the question was
asked,--"Who reads an American book?" I blazed out, of course, and,
after denouncing the "Edinburgh Review," where the impudent question was
first broached, accompanied by the suggestion, that, so long as we could
"import our literature in bales and hogsheads," we had better not try to
manufacture for ourselves, I made up my mind on the spot, and within the
next following half-hour at furthest, to carry the war into Africa.

Mr. Walsh,--"Robert Walsh, Junior, Esquire,"--the "American Gentleman,"
as he called himself in the title-page of his Dictionary,--had
acknowledged, while undertaking our vindication, that our American
Parnassus was barren, or fruitful only in weeds; and by common consent
my countrymen had taken for the highest praise throughout the land what
I regarded as at best a humiliating admission from our friends over sea.
They had acknowledged, and we were base enough to feel flattered by the
acknowledgment, that, although we could not even hope to write English,
and were wellnigh destitute of invention, having no materials to work
with, and little or no aptitude for anything but the manufacture of
wooden nutmegs, horn gun-flints, and cuckoo-clocks, and being always too
busy for anything better than dicker and truck in a small way,--the
haberdashery of nations,--yet, after all, it might be said of us that we
were capital imitators, or thieves and counterfeiters, so that our
Brockden Brown was at least the American Godwin,--our Cooper, the
American Scott,--our Irving, just flowering in the "Sketch-Book," the
American Goldsmith or Addison,--and our Sigourney, the American Hemans.

That my blood boiled in my veins, whenever I thought of this, I must
acknowledge; and within three weeks, I believe, I was on my way to
London, with a novel in the rough, which, after undergoing many
transformations, appeared in that city as "Brother Jonathan,"--the
manuscript of "Otho, a Tragedy," wholly recast and rewritten, with
"_exit omnes_," and other monstrous Latin blunders corrected, and, on
the whole, very much as it afterwards appeared in "The Yankee,"--and
heaps of letters, which I could not well afford to deliver, and
therefore threw into the fire: leaving my law business to take care of
itself, somewhat after the fashion of that Revolutionary volunteer, "Old
Put," who, when he heard the sound of a trumpet and knew the lists were
opened, left his plough in the furrow, and the cattle standing in the
field. My law-library, and the building I occupied, I passed over to the
care of a young man of great promise, just entering the profession, who
not only burned up my supply of wood for the year, but failed to pay the
rent, and then took the liberty of dying suddenly, poor fellow! without
a word of notice to my landlord: so that I was fairly adrift.

On arriving in London, I took lodgings in Warwick Street, Pall Mall,
introduced to the landlady by Leslie the painter, and occupying the very
chambers where Washington Irving was delivered of the "Sketch-Book": my
windows on the first floor looking out on the back entrance of Carlton
House, by which the Princess Charlotte had escaped not long before, when
she ran away from her father, as my landlady took care to inform me;
adding, that, from the very window where we stood, she had seen the
little madcap get into the carriage--a common hack, by the way--and go
off at full speed.

I lost no time in looking about me, and preparing for a literary
campaign, where I might forage upon the enemy, beat up his quarters when
I chose, and, if possible, get possession of a battery or so, and turn
the guns upon his camp.

Being pretty well acquainted with the characteristics of all the
monthlies and quarterlies, I was not long in determining that
"Blackwood" was my _point d'appui_. The "Old Monthly" was dead asleep,
and smouldering in white ashes; the "New Monthly," with Campbell for
editor, was unfitted for the job I had in view; the "London," though
clever and saucy and stinging, wanted manliness and nerve, and would be
sure to fail me at a pinch, now that John Scott was disposed of. And as
for the quarterlies, even supposing I could secure a place and keep it,
they were all slow coaches, and much too dignified and stately, as they
lumbered along the smooth, level turnpikes they were built for, to allow
of any dashing or skirmishing from the windows. Even the "Westminster"
was untrustworthy, as I afterwards found to my cost.

And so I settled down upon "Blackwood," the cleverest and spitefullest
of the whole, with Lockhart, "the Scorpion," and Wilson, "the Leopard,"
for mischief-makers, and "Ebony" for the whipper-in, and "Christopher
North" "in golden panoply complete" for _collaborateur_, a puzzle and a
problem to the last. Before I slept, I believe, certainly within a few
hours, I wrote a sketch of our five American Presidents, and of the five
presidential candidates then actually in the field, and sent it off to
Edinburgh with a letter, not for the publisher, not for Blackwood, but
for the _Editor_, saying that I had adopted the name of "Carter Holmes,"
and writing as a traveller, pretty well acquainted with the United
States and with the people thereof. This mask I wore, not with a view to
escape responsibility, for I was ready to answer for all I said, but to
baffle the curious and the inquisitive. Had I come out boldly as a
native American, I knew there was no chance for me in that, or in any
other leading British journal.

After a few days, I received the following in reply from Blackwood
himself, the _Editor_, which I give at length.

                                              "April 20, 1824.

     "On my return from London a few days ago," says he, "I had
     the pleasure of receiving yours of the 7th March,--April, I
     suppose, as it only arrived here on the 10th current.

     "I am very sorry that there was not room for your spirited
     and amusing sketches in this number; but they will appear in
     our next.

     "You are exactly the correspondent that we want, and I hope
     you will continue to favor us with your communications, and
     you may depend upon being liberally treated. I do not wish
     to say much about terms, as I have a perfect horror at the
     manufacturing system of gentlemen who _do_ articles for
     periodicals at so much per sheet. I feel confident that you
     are none of these, but one who, like the friends who have
     supported my Magazine, writes upon subjects which he takes
     an interest in, and therefore handles them _con amore_. It
     is this system of _piece-work_ which has made most
     periodicals such commonplace affairs; and it is by keeping
     free of it that 'Maga' will preserve her name and fame.

     "Meantime, I am perfectly sensible that the laborer is
     worthy of his hire, and that no gentleman need refuse the
     remuneration he is entitled to. It gives me great pleasure,
     therefore, to send an _honorarium_ to all my contributors. I
     may also mention to you that this varies from seven to ten
     guineas, or perhaps more, per sheet, according to the nature
     of the articles.

     "By way of _arles_, (_Anglice_, earnest,) I annex a draft on
     Mr. Cadell for five guineas to account.

     "With regard to your name, you will do just as you feel most
     convenient and agreeable. All I shall say is, that whatever
     is confided to me I keep sacredly to myself.

                               "I am, Sir,

                                 "Your most obedient servant,

                                   "W. BLACKWOOD."

"Five guineas!" said I to myself,--twenty-five dollars cash, for a paper
I had flung off at a single sitting, and which at home would have been
thought well paid for with a "Much obliged," or, at most, with a
five-dollar bill,--even the great "North American Review" then paying,
where it paid at all, only a dollar a page in "that day of small
things"; and to work I went forthwith, preparing another article upon
another American subject, determined to be in season, and not allow the
blaze I had lighted up to go out for want of kindling-stuff. The
article, I may say here, created quite a sensation, and was copied into
the Continental journals and papers, and even reappeared in the great
"European Review," then just established at London, Paris, and Vienna,
under the editorship of Alexander Walker, a Scotchman, who began his
literary career by undertaking to supply the deficiencies of D'Alembert,
while he wrote me about _a jeux d'esprit_, with all seriousness.

One curious little incident occurs to me here in connection with the
signature I had adopted. Perhaps the Spiritualists may be able to
account for it. Having finished my second article, and folded it up, and
directed it, as before, to the "Editor," and being about to affix the
seal,--for wafers were not used by decent people in England, and
self-sealing envelopes were unheard of in that day,--I went below, where
I heard voices in conversation that I knew, to borrow a seal, not
wishing to use mine, which not only bore an eagle's head for a crest,
but my initials and the striped shield of my country.

There were present Humphreys, the engraver,--Lady Lilicraft, one of
Washington Irving's lay figures, and the cast-off _chere amie_ of
an English lordling,--Peter Powell, of whom a word or two
hereafter,--Chester Harding,--and the celebrated John Dunn Hunter, whose
portrait Harding had just under way.

When I had stated my request, two or three hands, with two or three
seals, were instantly reached forth. I took the nearest, and was not a
little surprised, on looking at the impression, to find the very
initials I needed, in old English. The seal belonged to Chester Harding;
and as my _nom de plume_ was "Carter Holmes," the "C. H." seemed quite
providential. From that time forward, I continued to use the same seal
whenever I found Harding within reach, until, one day, a still stranger
"happening" occurred. I was in a hurry, and could not wait. Any seal
would do, of course; and the mistress, pitying my perplexity, said there
was a seal up-stairs somewhere which might serve my turn, if she could
find it. After a short absence, she returned, and, handing me an
old-fashioned affair, which I did not stop to look at, I made the
impression, and was just about sending off the parcel, when my attention
was attracted by the very same initials of "C. H.," as you live! Her
husband's name was Charles Halloway, Harding was Chester Harding, and I
was "Carter Holmes"!

One word now about another of Irving's associates and playmates,--Peter
Powell, whom I often met with at Mrs. Halloway's. You will find him
frequently mentioned by name in the "Life and Letters of Washington
Irving," as a "fellow of infinite jest and most excellent fancy," and
full of the strangest contrivances for "setting the table in a roar";
and more than once, though I do not now remember where, I have met with
a grotesque shadow, under a fictitious name,--a sort of Santa Claus or
AEsop at large,--either in the "Sketch-Book" or in the "Tales of a
Traveller," which I saw at a glance, when I came to know the original,
could be no other than Peter Powell himself.

But as Irving did not particularize, I must. Peter would personate a
dancing bear; and with the help of a shaggy overcoat pulled up about his
ears, and a pair of black kid gloves, he being a small man, hardly
taller than a good-sized bear, when standing up with his knees bent, the
representation was not only surprisingly faithful, but sometimes
absolutely startling.

He would serve you out with passages from a new opera, taking all the
parts himself, either separately or together, and with feet, hands, and
voice, a table, a chair, and a paper trumpet extemporized for the
occasion from a sheet of music-paper, would almost persuade you that a
rehearsal was going on at your elbow.

He would tie a couple of knots in his pocket-handkerchief, throw the
rest of it over his hand so as to conceal the action, thrust his left
forefinger into the lowest knot for a head, while the uppermost would go
for a turban, spread out the middle finger and thumb, covered with the
drapery, and make the figure bow and salaam, as if it were alive, to the
unspeakable amazement of the little ones. Many years after this, I tried
the same trick with the Aztec children, and drove the little monsters
half crazy with delight.

He would imitate rooks in their noisiest flights, by putting on a pair
of black gloves, and spreading the fingers, and cawing; and butterflies
alighting on a flower, by pressing his two hands together where they
join the wrist, closing the fingers with a fluttering motion, and moving
them this way and that, until it was quite impossible to misunderstand
the representation; and he would give you a sailor's hornpipe at the
dinner-table, by striping two of his fingers with a pen, drawing a face
on the back of his hand, with vest and waistband to explain the
trousers, and set you screaming as he went through the steps and
flourishes on a plate, with the greatest possible seriousness and
propriety.

But enough. Let us now return to Blackwood. For my next paper he paid me
ten guineas,--fifty dollars,--and, in reply to certain suggestions of
mine, wrote as follows. I give this letter to show how much of a
business man he was, and how well fitted for the duties of editorship.

                                "EDINBURGH, 17 May, 1834.

     "DEAR SIR,--Yours of the 13th makes me feel very much
     ashamed at having so long delayed answering your two former
     favors. The truth is, that you have given me such a bill of
     fare of what you could furnish for our monthly
     entertainment, I felt it would be necessary to write you
     more at length than I had leisure for at the time I received
     your letter; and, like everything that is delayed at the
     proper moment, every day has presented excuses for
     procrastination.

     "If I had the pleasure of knowing you, I might have been
     able, as you say, to have given you some hints as to
     subjects; but in present circumstances, all I have to say
     is, that _whatever is good in itself we are always happy to
     receive_, [&c., &c., as hereinbefore quoted in relation to
     "Christopher North."] I shall only add, that anything of
     yours he will be disposed to view with a favorable eye. As
     to the theatre, exhibitions, &c., the daily papers are so
     stuffed with notices of them, that even what is good has but
     a poor chance. However, I do not mean to say that these
     subjects should be excluded from your communications; all I
     mean is, that you should just write upon what you yourself
     feel a strong interest in.

     "I _would_ be happy to see your novel, ["Brother Jonathan,"]
     but it is now too late of thinking to publish at this
     season. If you will send it, addressed to me, to Mr.
     Cadell's, with a note, desiring it to be forwarded by first
     mail-coach, I _will_ receive it quite safely; and I will, in
     the course of ten days after its reception, write you my
     sentiments with regard to it. No one shall see it; for in
     these matters I judge for myself. If you should go to the
     Continent, perhaps you could leave the manuscript in such a
     state that it could be printed in your absence.

                              "I am, dear Sir, yours truly,

                                  "W. BLACKWOOD."

Here was encouragement, certainly; and it was clear enough that he had a
willingness to be pleased, if nothing more.

I lost no time, therefore, in recasting and rewriting the whole of
"Brother Jonathan," which, as I have mentioned before, was blocked out
before I left America. But, having my board to pay, and not willing to
stake much on a single cast, though ready enough "to stand the hazard of
the die" after my washerwoman was satisfied, I kept on writing for the
magazines and quarterlies, and always about America, and by special
desire too, until my papers were to be found, not only in Blackwood
every month, but in the "New Monthly," the "Old Monthly," the "London,"
the "European," the "Oriental Herald," the "Westminster," and others.

On the 8th of the following November, Mr. Blackwood, having worried
through the manuscript of "Brother Jonathan," wrote me a letter of six
enormous pages, from which I give the following extracts, to show the
temper of the man, his downright honesty and heartiness, and great good
sense.

"My dear Sir," he says, "you will be blaming me for not writing you
sooner; and when I tell you that the delay was caused by my
unwillingness to write you"--(here I began to foresee what was
coming)--"so very differently from what I had so fondly and anxiously
expected, I fear you will blame me, not for the delay, but for my want
of taste and judgment in not properly appreciating the merits of
'Brother Jonathan.'"

Here he wronged me; for I was quite prepared to agree with him, having
spoiled the original draft by working it up too much, and overdoing and
exaggerating all that I was best pleased with.

"Never," he continues,--"never did I take up any manuscript with more
sincere wishes for its being everything that could be desired.
Unfortunately, my expectations have been disappointed." (Comfortable,
hey?) "While I admire the originality and talent and power which the
work displays,"--(I began to breathe more freely,)--"I must frankly tell
you, that, in my humble opinion, there are defects in your plan, and
there are incidents, as well as reflections, which, in this country,
would certainly injure any work, however great its talent.

"I wish I had the pleasure of seeing you for half an hour, as I could
explain by word of mouth so much better than I can by scribbling what my
ideas are, and such as they are. Distrusting my own judgment, after I
had carefully perused the manuscript, I gave it, in the strictest
confidence, to a friend whose opinion I value much, and begged of him,
without saying one word of my opinion, to give me his frankly and
without reserve. My mind was so far satisfied, when I received his
remarks, as I found, that, in general, he had taken the same view of the
work as I had done. I inclose his remarks, as they will save me from
going over the same ground."

The remarks referred to were by Professor Wilson, I have good reason to
believe. They filled half a dozen pages, and were eminently judicious
and proper, and, I may add, far from being unpalatable.

"I shall now, in a rambling way," continues Mr. Blackwood, "state
anything that has occurred to me, and I shall make no apology for
offering you my crude remarks; only you will suppose me to be speaking
to you, and telling you such and such things strike me so and so, that I
may be quite wrong," &c., &c.

And then he proceeds to say,--

"The character of the Yankees (Chapter I.) is too didactic, though
excellent anywhere else than in the commencement of a novel."

Here, too, he was right. I threw the whole chapter aside in rewriting
the book as it now stands, and sent the substance to Campbell's "New
Monthly," where it appeared forthwith.

After frankly stating a number of well-founded objections, and
suggesting two or three important changes in the plot, he finishes after
the following fashion: allow me to commend it to all who find themselves
obliged to "give the mitten," or to snub a respectable aspirant. By so
doing, they may keep life in him, if nothing more:--

"I have said a good deal more than I intended to, as to what things have
struck me as defects in your work. Its excellences I need not take up
your time with dwelling upon. With all the power, interest, and
originality, I regret most exceedingly, that, in its present state, I
would most earnestly advise you not to publish. It would be doing
yourself the greatest injustice. I feel perfectly confident, however,
that, with such materials as these, you could make a glorious book, if
you would set about it again in the proper way. I do not think it would
cost you much trouble, provided that the thing were to strike you."

By way of postscript, he adds,--

"I received your parcel, with No. 3 of the American Writers, and the
critique on Cadell's American work. Are you not giving us too much of
the _Vitae Virum Obscurorum_? There is a danger of palling the public
with too much even of a very good thing. This, too, terrifies me at the
length of your critique, as we have had so many American articles
lately. It is, in fact, as you say, a work, not an article. However, we
shall see what can be done."

The critique here referred to was a review of a book entitled "Summary
View of America," and published by Cadell, who was also the London
publisher for Blackwood. It was full of dangerous, though somewhat
plausible errors, and mischievous, though perhaps unintentional,
misrepresentations of our whole political and social system. I did not
spare the book, nor the author, nor the publisher; and notwithstanding
the great length of the paper, which grew up of itself, as I read the
work with pen in hand, into most unreasonable proportions, though
divided into brief paragraphs, it appeared, nevertheless, in the next
following month, as a leader, with a note from "C. N.," which has
already been given in the sketch of Bentham.

Meanwhile this indefatigable purveyor, who knew I was engaged upon
"Brother Jonathan," recasting and rewriting the whole,--not for the
second time, but for the twentieth time, I verily believe,--and that I
was beginning to write for other journals upon American affairs, wanted
me to furnish an occasional paper for the "Noctes Ambrosianae," to be
incorporated, warp and woof, into the dialogues which appeared month
after month and year after year; up to the death of poor Wilson in 1853,
and were afterward embodied in a book by Dr. R. Shelton Mackenzie, and
republished here.

This I could not bring myself to undertake, without first seeing the
interlocutors face to face, and looking into their eyes, and hearing
them laugh together "like a rhinoceros," or like the chorus in "Der
Freischuetz." Though I knew Wilson, and Lockhart, and Hogg, and "Old
Christopher," and "O'Doherty," and "Timothy Tickler," and "Ebony," by
reputation, it was only as a company of shadows, and not as creatures of
substantial flesh and blood. The lightning had struck; my guns were in
position; I had got the range of the enemies' camp, and meant to be in
no hurry, but "to fight it out on the line" I had chosen, if it took me
till doomsday. I refused, therefore. I was willing to wait. I knew, to
be sure, the Chinese could grow oranges from the seed in half an hour;
but then the oranges were peas, and I wanted to grow "some pumpkins." In
short, I would not

                                    "wear
    My strength away in wrestling with the air."

Next he wanted me to write a review of "Margaret Lyndsay," a charming
story by Wilson himself, of which I had incidentally expressed the
highest opinion, in our correspondence. Mr. Blackwood sprang at the
idea, like a half-famished pickerel at a frog. But no. Although such a
paper would be quite in my way, for I have always delighted in showing
off, and teaching grandmothers to suck eggs, I could not be persuaded,
for reasons which may be guessed at by the proud and sensitive and
foolish, so long as the question about "Brother Jonathan" was undecided.

On the 24th of November, having received my answer to his of the 8th,
he wrote again as follows:--

     "MY DEAR SIR,--I felt very anxious, indeed, till I had the
     pleasure of receiving your letter of the 11th, fearing that
     you might not, perhaps, take the remarks I sent you in the
     spirit of kindness in which they were honestly and sincerely
     made. Your letter has satisfied me that you will yet make a
     glorious book of 'Brother Jonathan.'

     "Let the better feelings and passions of our nature have
     freer scope and happier development and results. This is
     what your work wants; for mankind like better to see the
     bright side of the picture than the dark one. I do not think
     it necessary to say one word more to you on the subject.
     Your own taste and feelings must direct you as to what is
     necessary to be done. All that I hope and pray for is, that
     you may have set seriously to work with the revision and
     correction."

Are not these two extracts enough to show of themselves the leading
characteristics of "Ebony," or "Old Christopher"? How business-like, and
yet how friendly and judicious are the suggestions!

Meanwhile, I had furnished a paper for him, entitled "Men and Women; or,
A Brief Hypothesis concerning the Differences in their Genius." My
object was to show, that, although unlike, they were not unequal; that
each had a standard for itself. I did not urge that Arabs, who are
reckoned pretty good judges of horse-flesh, always give the preference
to mares for endurance and swiftness,--that the female bird of prey is
larger and fiercer than the male,--that the female body-guard of the
King of Dahomey are terrible Amazons,--nor that, where women reign, men
rule, and _vice versa_; but that, by endowing woman with a more
sensitive organization, our Father had given her what was better than a
mane for the lioness, a beard for the goat, or a voice and plumage to
the female singing-bird, etc., etc. This also appeared, and was
handsomely paid for.

"In this number," he says, "you will see, that, though we have given an
additional half-sheet, we have only had room for your 'American
Writers.'... I hope you are going on with the series; and that you do
not dwell more than is necessary upon the _Poetae Minores_, whom no one
cares about. This is what has sometimes been objected to your articles;
and among other remonstrances I have received, I extract the following
from the letter of a gentleman for whom I have a great respect. He says
your article contains 'misstatements, and some of them of a mischievous
tendency; but what mostly concerns you to know is the odium which is
likely to be thrown on your Magazine, in America at least, by the manner
in which (from malice or blundering) some meritorious individuals are
dealt with, _who have every claim to the shelter of private life_.'"

As the meddling gentleman from whose letter the passage was taken did
not particularize, all I could do in reply, and that I lost no time in
doing, was to give him the lie direct, and offer my name to the
publisher. I called for specifications and proof, which never came; and
have an idea that the writer was an artist--a great coxcomb--of whom I
had spoken too well, on paper, though not well enough to satisfy his
inordinate vanity.

"I make no apology to you," continues "Old Christopher," "for giving you
this extract from my friend's letter. He is, I trust, writing under some
strong feeling of something or other, which has concerned some one whom
he knows; but I am sure he is perfectly sincere in what he says. I hope,
therefore, you will be particularly on your guard against saying
anything which any one would be entitled on good grounds to say was
unfair or ungentlemanly. I regret that, in the hurry of the sheet going
to press, what is said of Hall (John E. Hall of Philadelphia) was not
modified. '_Blackguard_' is a shocking appellation; and had my friend
seen this number, I should not have wondered at his remarks. You will,
I am sure, excuse me," etc., etc.

"All very just and proper," said I to myself; but coming from a man who
not long before had said in "Maga," or allowed somebody to say for him,
with a chuckle of triumph never to be forgotten, that Canning had given
the lie to Brougham on the floor of Parliament, I must acknowledge that
I felt rather astonished at his sensitiveness.

On the 19th of February, 1825,--by which time I had completed the series
of "American Writers," pursuing my first plan without deviating from it
a hair's breadth, and introducing an American department into three or
four monthlies,--never, in fact, writing a word upon any other subject
than our literature, authors, manners, politics, and painters, except in
two instances, that I now remember,--he wrote as follows.

"MY DEAR SIR,--You have finished your series in capital style. The whole
is spirited and most original. Many may differ from you on some points,
but, beauties or blemishes, no one will pretend to say that they are not
your own. And may I add, that I hardly know any work except 'Maga' where
you could have felt yourself so much at your ease in most fearlessly
saying what you thought right of men and things." All very true; and it
was for that reason that I launched forth in "Blackwood," hit or miss,
neck or nothing, determined to make a spoon or spoil a horn. And then he
adds,--"Washington Irving once told me that he considered my 'Maga' as a
daringly original work. It was too much for his delicate nerves."

Undoubtedly; and it was for that reason that the papers I wrote in a
different style for the "European Magazine," New Series,--out of which
grew the famous controversy with Mathews for his admirable
misrepresentations of Yankee character,--were attributed for a long
while to Washington Irving himself; but he could not have written them,
any more than I could have written the "Sketch-Book" or "Bracebridge
Hall."

"I hope," continues our friend "Ebony,"--"I hope you are thinking of
something else for me, as you must have much to communicate with regard
to America, men and matters, which we know nothing of in this country,
both as to what has been done and what is now doing. Perhaps it might be
well to give anything of this kind just in separate articles, as one is
sometimes rather fettered in a regular series. However, all this depends
upon the subject-matter and the way in which it happens to strike
yourself.... I enclose you an order on Mr. Cadell for fifteen guineas."

Thus much to show, that, however absolute and arbitrary "our worthy
friend Christopher" was on ordinary occasions, he was a man of the
kindest feelings, delicate, magnanimous, and liberal.

In the course of the next following three months "Brother Jonathan" was
finished, read, accepted, and paid for at my own price,--two hundred
guineas,--the same that Murray paid Irving for his "Sketch-Book," with a
contingent proviso for another hundred guineas, which never amounted to
anything.

Meanwhile, however, we were in constant communication by letter, and I
give now the following extracts to show his exceeding carefulness, and
the consequences--the disastrous consequences, I might say--to both of
us. I have already mentioned, that, in the progress of revision, I had
probably written the book, not twice, but twenty times over; and this I
believe to be true. I had grown too fastidious, over-anxious, nervous,
and fidgety. I could not endure the coming together of the same or
similar sounds,--_d_s and _t_s, for example, or _v_s and _f_s,--and
wrote some pages or paragraphs at least forty or fifty times over to
prevent this, and thereby sacrificed all freedom and naturalness. When
Mr. Blackwood wrote me, therefore, as follows, it only served to confirm
me in my evil habit,--a disease, in fact,--and the result was further
alterations and corrections, so numerous and so troublesome, though
trivial in themselves, that, in going through the press, the printer
himself, Mr. Spottiswood, got alarmed, and charged accordingly.

On the 14th of April he writes me at length about the book. "I wished
also, before writing you, to be able to give you the opinion of my
friend whose remarks I formerly sent you. In some things I agree with
him, in others I do not; but I think it best you should judge yourself
as to all that he says. I also enclose you a note from another friend,
whose judgment I value more than that of any one I know, almost." Here
follows a string of suggestions, most of which I took advantage of, in
carrying this, my third complete copy of the work, through the press. No
wonder it grew more and more artificial, as it grew more and more
strange and euphonious.

He continues,--"I have read the manuscript again very carefully," (the
third time,--a manuscript of three volumes!) "and I do think you have
improved the work very much. I cannot again venture to suggest anything
to you, even if I could, (which I am very doubtful of,) because you give
yourself so much labor, and any crude ideas of mine may perhaps be more
injurious than useful. You must yourself feel best what is necessary,
and to your own judgment everything must be left. I have therefore put
up the manuscript with this, as it must be printed under your own eye in
London. All that I would advise you to do is, _to go over the manuscript
before sending it to the printer, and correct it as you would do a
proof_; for, should any material alterations occur to you, you can
easily make them on the blank pages....

"I suppose you would wish the work to be printed in post 8vo, like
'Reginald Dalton' and others that I have published. This is certainly
the most elegant form, but it is expensive, and it is perhaps worthy of
consideration whether or not it might be advisable to take the less
expensive form of 12mo, similar to my second edition of 'Adam Blair' (by
Lockhart, the 'Scorpion'). I am, I confess, in considerable doubt both
ways. If, however, you prefer the post 8vo, my doubts will be at an end.
I have written a few lines to my friends the Messrs. Spottiswood, (the
King's printers,) in order that you may at once put the manuscript into
their hands, as soon as you are ready. If you prefer the post 8vo, you
will get from Mr. Cadell a volume of 'Reginald Dalton' or of 'Percy
Mallory'; but if you like the 12mo, you will get a copy of the second
edition of 'Adam Blair,' and give your directions to Messrs. Spottiswood
accordingly....

"I do not think that the volumes should be less than three hundred and
sixty pages, for thin volumes look so catchpenny-like. At the same time,
it is better to have thin volumes than to keep in or add anything that
interrupts or interferes with the story....

"I have been quite overloaded with articles this month, and some of them
very long, which cannot for various reasons be delayed. I shall
therefore be obliged to keep both of your articles till next month. I am
vexed at not being able to get in your tale," (the original sketch of
"Rachel Dyer," and the first of a series which I had in contemplation,)
"which is very striking and powerful; but it was too long for this
number, having so many other long articles, and it would have destroyed
it to have divided it. The 'American Books,' too, is very interesting,
though you perhaps hit poor Cooper rather hard, and some of the Cockneys
will be apt to quote it when 'Brother Jonathan' comes into their
paws.... I enclose you ten guineas on account."

April 26th he writes,--"I am very much pleased with the appearance of
the sheet, and above all with what you have done to it. The work now
starts fair and straightforward, and you will feel your own way much
better and take a much firmer hold of your reader by allowing the
narrative to take its natural course."

In due time I had my pockets picked of my last shilling, and "Brother
Jonathan" appeared just in the nick of time and in the best possible
shape to keep me out of a sponging-house. For a while it created quite a
sensation, and led to many new engagements with different periodicals.
It was well received on the Continent, and reviewed in the leading
journals of France. It would have been republished in this country, had
not the sheets been suppressed, which I sent in advance to Wiley, the
publisher of Cooper's works, till it was too late. Other copies were
lost, I know not how, and I gave up the idea of astonishing the natives
here.

Meanwhile Mr. Blackwood and I had never met. Hindrances had happened,
month after month, when it seemed that we should certainly have a chance
for a grapple; and he had behaved so handsomely to me through all our
negotiations and correspondence, that I wanted to look into his eyes.

At last he came down upon me when least expected. Mrs. Halloway tapped
at my door to say that a strange gentleman was below, inquiring for Mr.
Carter Holmes; and then she handed me Mr. Blackwood's card. "Show him
up," said I, as a knowing smile drifted athwart her fine old-fashioned
English face,--for she had the secret under lock-and-key, and used to
collect my drafts and take charge of the letters to and from "Carter
Holmes." The girl who went to the door knew nothing of such a gentleman,
and so the landlady took the business into her own hands.

We met after a most agreeable fashion, and I was greatly pleased with my
visitor, though disappointed in his personal appearance. I found him a
short, "stubbed" man, of about five feet six, I should say, with a
plain, straightforward business air,--like that of a substantial
tradesman,--and a look of uncommon though quiet shrewdness. You could
see at a glance that he was a man to be trusted,--frank and fearless,
without being either boastful or aggressive. After talking over matters
generally, and getting my pay in cash,--guineas for pounds,--without
taking a bill or engaging my name for a discount in the usual course of
trade, he invited me to dine with him at an eating-house in the Strand,
saying that he had asked "Ensign O'Doherty" (Dr. Maginn) to meet me; the
man who wrote Hebrew and Greek and Latin poetry, and had begun for
"Blackwood" not long before with rendering the ballad of "Chevy Chase"
into Latin verse. I could see, that, although Mr. Blackwood had the
highest opinion of the Doctor's genius and scholarship, he was a little
shy of him, and I dare say saw through and through him, as I think I
did.

The dinner was a plain, substantial affair, without wine or
delicacies,--or even whiskey,--which may have been out of deference to
me; for when asked what I would "take?" I answered, "Nothing beyond a
glass of ale or porter." It may be that our friend the Doctor was a
little disappointed, or that "Ebony," knowing his weakness upon that
point, was unwilling to show him up altogether, on whiskey-punch, or old
Port, before a stranger; for, instead of talking freely and pleasantly,
and keeping up appearances, the Doctor grew shy and reserved, and
answered the simplest questions with an air of embarrassment, as if he
were afraid of being entrapped. In short, he disappointed me. There was
nothing in his language, look, or manner to justify his reputation as
"Ensign O'Doherty"; nor was there anything in the little that he said or
did to indicate the lamentable tendency of his gifted nature, which
ended within a few months, or a year or two at most, in his utter
degradation and ruin. He had the air and manners of a gentleman, though
not of one who had seen much of the world; with a mild, pleasant
expression of countenance, and a dash of seriousness. He seemed to be
about five-and-twenty, according to my present recollection, of middling
stature, and of a decidedly intellectual type; but he said nothing to be
remembered while we were together; and I have since had an intimation
that he was never himself when sober, and that Mr. Blackwood had just
taken him out of a sponging-house to meet me. Otherwise, our dinner
passed off in a very agreeable, unpretending fashion, and we separated,
never to meet again,--with a settled conviction on my part, however,
that I understood the characters of both as well as if we had been
dining together for a twelvemonth.

Soon after this, Mr. Millar, the first publisher of the "Sketch-Book,"
engaged me to write for the "European Magazine," New Series, without
allowing me to know that the "John Bull" newspaper and Theodore Hook
were at the bottom of the affair. I wrote for it month after month, upon
American matters, until I discovered the truth, and had just got through
a sharp controversy with Mathews, when I found it necessary to knock
off: the "John Bull" constantly abusing America, and Theodore Hook
losing no opportunity of saying the most offensive and brutal things of
us,--as, for example, that Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams both died drunk
on the 4th of July.

I had also contributed a series of papers to the "London Magazine,"
under the title of "Yankee Notions," and was showing up John Dunn Hunter
as he deserved, in which I was followed soon after by Mr. Sparks in the
"North American Review," about the time that the "Edinburgh Review"
adopted in the lump my theory of "Men and Women," already referred to,
saying in September, 1826, substantially what I had said in October,
1824. "We think it probable," says Mr. Jeffrey, "that some men have
originally a greater excitability or general vivacity of mind than
others, and that is the chief difference. But considering how variously
they may be developed or directed in after-life, it seems to us of no
sort of importance whether we call it a _temperament_, and say that it
is shown by the color of the hair and the eyes, or maintain that it is a
balance of active powers and propensities, the organs of which are in
the skull."

I had also written for the "Westminster," and, in short, was furnishing
about all of the monthlies and two of the quarterlies with American
_pabulum_; and yet the public were not satisfied. It seemed as if
"increase of appetite did grow with what it fed on." This, of course,
must have been very gratifying to "Old Christopher," though he did not
like the idea of anybody's knowing who wrote for the "Maga," and letting
the "delicious secret out." He wanted all his contributors to himself,
either in fact or in appearance; and when he found, from something I
said in the "London," or somewhere else, that I was known as the writer
of the "Blackwood Papers," he took me to task in a way that displeased
me. So we quarrelled,--or rather I quarrelled,--for he did not. He kept
his temper, and I lost mine,--for which, by the way, I ought to be
thankful; and the affair ended by my withdrawing the first of a series
of "North American Stories," which I was preparing for him, and
returning the fifteen guineas he had paid me for it. It was already in
type, and was the framework or skeleton of "Rachel Dyer."

On the whole, I must acknowledge that I was chiefly to blame, though not
altogether. I never wrote another line for him, and we had no further
correspondence.

About the same time, another misunderstanding arose between him and
"O'Doherty," who entered upon a rival enterprise, and became editor of a
new monthly, the title of which I do not now remember. It was of the
"Blackwood" type, though somewhat exaggerated, being ferocious where
"Blackwood" was only sarcastic, and utterly regardless of truth, where
"Blackwood" was rather cautious and circumspect in all that required
proof. In the very first number there appeared what was claimed to be an
extract from that "Life of Byron" which he had given to Moore, and which
had been suppressed, if not bought up. It was entitled "My Wedding
Night," and went into particulars so much in the style of Byron, that I,
for one, have always believed it faithful, and neither an imitation nor
a counterfeit. I have since been assured that Lady Caroline Lamb, and
two or three more at least "of that ilk," had the reading of these
memoirs, and of course portions of the whole might have been copied. But
however that may be, the publication by Dr. Maginn of the chapter
mentioned was either such a piece of heartless treachery or such an
impudent fabrication as no decent person would venture to encourage.
Though other chapters were promised, not another line appeared; the
magazine blew up, the Doctor was _tabooed_, and soon after died a
miserable death.

But enough. That William Blackwood was an extraordinary man is evident
enough from the astonishing success of his Magazine. Whatever may have
been its history, its faults, or its follies, it has maintained itself
now in the public favor of the world itself for nearly fifty years, and
most of the time at a prodigious elevation, in unapproachable solitude.
Burning and acrimonious, unrelenting, and at times deadly in its hatred,
full of desperate partisanship, and of judicial blindness toward all who
belonged to the other side in politics, it was always full of
earnestness and originality and tumultuous life, and often-times not
only generous, but magnanimous and forgiving.




THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.


XI.

THE WOMAN QUESTION: OR, WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER?

"What do you think of this Woman's Rights question?" said Bob Stephens.
"From some of your remarks, I apprehend that you think there is
something in it. I may be wrong, but I must confess that I have looked
with disgust on the whole movement. No man reverences women as I do; but
I reverence them _as_ women. I reverence them for those very things in
which their sex differs from ours; but when they come upon our ground,
and begin to work and fight after our manner and with our weapons, I
regard them as fearful anomalies, neither men nor women. These Women's
Rights Conventions appear to me to have ventilated crudities,
absurdities, and blasphemies. To hear them talk about men, one would
suppose that the two sexes were natural born enemies, and wonders
whether they ever had fathers and brothers. One would think, upon their
showing, that all men were a set of ruffians, in league against
women,--they seeming, at the same time, to forget how on their very
platforms the most constant and gallant defenders of their rights are
men. Wendell Phillips and Wentworth Higginson have put at the service of
the cause masculine training and manly vehemence, and complacently
accepted the wholesale abuse of their own sex at the hands of their
warrior sisters. One would think, were all they say of female powers
true, that our Joan-of-Arcs ought to have disdained to fight under male
captains."

"I think," said my wife, "that, in all this talk about the rights of
men, and the rights of women, and the rights of children, the world
seems to be forgetting what is quite as important, the _duties_ of men
and women and children. We all hear of our _rights_ till we forget our
_duties_; and even theology is beginning to concern itself more with
what man has a right to expect of his Creator than what the Creator has
a right to expect of man."

"You say the truth," said I; "there is danger of just this overaction:
and yet rights must be discussed; because, in order to understand the
duties, we owe to any class, we must understand their rights. To know
our duties to men, women, and children, we must know what the rights of
men, women, and children justly are. As to the 'Woman's Rights
movement,' it is not peculiar to America, it is part of a great wave in
the incoming tide of modern civilization; the swell is felt no less in
Europe, but it combs over and breaks on our American shore, because our
great wide beach affords the best play for its waters: and as the ocean
waves bring with them kelp, sea-weed, mud, sand, gravel, and even
putrefying debris, which lie unsightly on the shore, and yet, on the
whole, are healthful and refreshing,--so the Woman's Rights movement,
with its conventions, its speech-makings, its crudities and
eccentricities, is nevertheless a part of a healthful and necessary
movement of the human race towards progress. This question of Woman and
her Sphere is now, perhaps, the greatest of the age. We have put Slavery
under foot, and with the downfall of Slavery the only obstacle to the
success of our great democratic experiment is overthrown, and there
seems no limit to the splendid possibilities which it may open before
the human race.

"In the reconstruction that is now coming there lies more than the
reconstruction of States and the arrangement of the machinery of
Government. We need to know and feel, all of us, that, from the moment
of the death of Slavery, we parted finally from the _regime_ and control
of all the old ideas formed under old oppressive systems of society, and
came upon a new plane of life.

"In this new life we must never forget that we are a peculiar people,
that we have to walk in paths unknown to the Old World, paths where its
wisdom cannot guide us, where its precedents can be of little use to us,
and its criticisms, in most cases, must be wholly irrelevant. The
history of our war has shown us of how little service to us in any
important crisis the opinions and advice of the Old World can be. We
have been hurt at what seemed to us the want of sympathy, the direct
antagonism, of England. We might have been less hurt, if we had properly
understood that Providence had placed us in a position so far ahead of
her ideas or power of comprehension that just judgment or sympathy was
not to be expected from her.

"As we went through our great war with no help but that of God, obliged
to disregard the misconceptions and impertinences which the foreign
press rained down upon us, so, if we are wise, we shall continue to do.
Our object must now be to make the principles on which our government is
founded permeate consistently the mass of society, and to purge out the
leaven of aristocratic and Old World ideas. So long as there is an
illogical working in our actual life, so long as there is any class
denied equal rights with other classes, so long will there be agitation
and trouble."

"Then," said my wife, "you believe that women ought to vote?"

"If the principle on which we founded our government is true, that
taxation must not exist without representation, and if women hold
property and are taxed, it follows that women should be represented in
the State by their votes, or there is an illogical working of our
government."

"But, my dear, don't you think that this will have a bad effect on the
female character?"

"Yes," said Bob, "it will make women caucus-holders, political
candidates."

"It may make this of some women, just as of some men," said I. "But all
men do not take any great interest in politics; it is very difficult to
get some of the best of them to do their duty in voting; and the same
will be found true among women."

"But, after all," said Bob, "what do you gain? What will a woman's vote
be but a duplicate of that of her husband or father, or whatever man
happens to be her adviser?"

"That may be true on a variety of questions; but there are subjects on
which the vote of women would, I think, be essentially different from
that of men. On the subjects of temperance, public morals, and
education, I have no doubt that the introduction of the female vote into
legislation, in States, counties, and cities, would produce results very
different from that of men alone. There are thousands of women who would
close grogshops, and stop the traffic in spirits, if they had the
legislative power; and it would be well for society, if they had. In
fact, I think that a State can no more afford to dispense with the vote
of women in its affairs than a family. Imagine a family where the female
has no voice in the housekeeping! A State is but a larger family, and
there are many of its concerns which equally with those of a private
household would be bettered by female supervision."

"But fancy women going to those horrible voting-places! It is more than
I can do myself," said Bob.

"But you forget," said I, "that they are horrible and disgusting
principally because women never go to them. All places where women are
excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced,
there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order. When
a man can walk up to the ballot-box with his wife or his sister on his
arm, voting-places will be far more agreeable than now; and the polls
will not be such bear-gardens that refined men will be constantly
tempted to omit their political duties there.

"If for nothing else, I would have women vote, that the business of
voting may not be so disagreeable and intolerable to men of refinement
as it now is; and I sincerely believe that the cause of good morals,
good order, cleanliness, and public health would be a gainer, not merely
by the added feminine vote, but by the added vote of a great many
excellent, but too fastidious men, who are now kept from the polls by
the disagreeables they meet there.

"Do you suppose, that, if women had equal representation with men in the
municipal laws of New York, its reputation for filth during the last
year would have gone so far beyond that of Cologne, or any other city
renowned for bad smells? I trow not. I believe a _lady-mayoress_ would
have brought in a dispensation of brooms and whitewash, and made a
terrible searching into dark holes and vile corners, before now.
_Female_ New York, I have faith to believe, has yet left in her enough
of the primary instincts of womanhood to give us a clean, healthy city,
if female votes had any power to do it."

"But," said Bob, "you forget that voting would bring together all the
women of the lower classes."

"Yes; but, thanks to the instincts of their sex, they would come in
their Sunday clothes: for where is the woman that hasn't her finery, and
will not embrace every chance to show it? Biddy's parasol, and hat with
pink ribbons, would necessitate a clean shirt in Pat as much as on
Sunday. Voting would become a _fete_, and we should have a population at
the polls as well dressed as at church. Such is my belief."

"I do not see," said Bob, "but you go to the full extent with our modern
female reformers."

"There are certain neglected truths, which have been held up by these
reformers, that are gradually being accepted and infused into the life
of modern society; and their recognition will help to solidify and
purify democratic institutions. They are,--

"1. The right of every woman to hold independent property.

"2. The right of every woman to receive equal pay with man for work
which she does equally well.

"3. The right of any woman to do any work for which, by her natural
organization and talent, she is peculiarly adapted.

"Under the first head, our energetic sisters have already, by the help
of their gallant male adjutants, reformed the laws of several of our
States, so that a married woman is no longer left the unprotected legal
slave of any unprincipled, drunken spendthrift who may be her
husband,--but, in case of the imbecility or improvidence of the natural
head of the family, the wife, if she have the ability, can conduct
business, make contracts, earn and retain money for the good of the
household; and I am sure no one can say that immense injustice and
cruelty are not thereby prevented.

"It is quite easy for women who have the good fortune to have just and
magnanimous husbands to say that they feel no interest in such reforms,
and that they would willingly trust their property to the man to whom
they give themselves; but they should remember that laws are not made
for the restraint of the generous and just, but of the dishonest and
base. The law which enables a married woman to hold her own property
does not forbid her to give it to the man of her heart, if she so
pleases; and it does protect many women who otherwise would be reduced
to the extremest misery. I once knew an energetic milliner who had her
shop attached four times, and a flourishing business broken up in four
different cities, because she was tracked from city to city by a
worthless spendthrift, who only waited till she had amassed a little
property in a new place to swoop down upon and carry it off. It is to be
hoped that the time is not distant when every State will give to woman a
fair chance to the ownership and use of her own earnings and her own
property."

"Well," said Bob, "the most interesting question still remains: what are
to be the employments of woman? What ways are there for her to use her
talents, to earn her livelihood and support those who are dear to her,
when Providence throws that necessity upon her? This is becoming more
than ever one of the pressing questions of our age. The war has deprived
so many thousands of women of their natural protectors, that everything
must be thought of that may possibly open a way for their self-support."

"Well, let us look over the field," said my wife. "What is there for
woman?"

"In the first place," said I, "come the professions requiring natural
genius,--authorship, painting, sculpture, with the subordinate arts of
photographing, coloring, and finishing; but when all is told, these
furnish employment to a very limited number,--almost as nothing to the
whole. Then there is teaching, which is profitable in its higher
branches, and perhaps the very pleasantest of all the callings open to
woman; but teaching is at present an overcrowded profession, the
applicants everywhere outnumbering the places. Architecture and
landscape-gardening are arts every way suited to the genius of woman,
and there are enough who have the requisite mechanical skill and
mathematical education; and though never yet thought of for the sex,
that I know of, I do not despair of seeing those who shall find in this
field a profession at once useful and elegant. When women plan
dwelling-houses, the vast body of tenements to be let in our cities will
wear a more domestic and comfortable air, and will be built more with
reference to the real wants of their inmates."

"I have thought," said Bob, "that _agencies_ of various sorts, as
canvassing the country for the sale of books, maps, and engravings,
might properly employ a great many women. There is a large class whose
health suffers from confinement and sedentary occupations, who might, I
think, be both usefully and agreeably employed in business of this sort,
and be recruiting their health at the same time."

"Then," said my wife, "there is the medical profession."

"Yes," said I. "The world is greatly obliged to Miss Blackwell and other
noble pioneers who faced and overcame the obstacles to the attainment of
a thorough medical education by females. Thanks to them, a new and
lucrative profession is now open to educated women in relieving the
distresses of their own sex; and we may hope that in time, through their
intervention, the care of the sick may also become the vocation of
cultivated, refined, intelligent women instead of being left, as
heretofore, to the ignorant and vulgar? The experience of our late war
has shown us what women of a high class morally and intellectually can
do in this capacity. Why should not this experience inaugurate a new and
sacred calling for refined and educated women? Why should not NURSING
become a vocation equal in dignity and in general esteem to the medical
profession, of which it is the right hand? Why should our dearest hopes,
in the hour of their greatest peril, be committed into the hands of
Sairey Gamps, when the world has seen Florence Nightingales?"

"Yes, indeed," said my wife; "I can testify, from my own experience,
that the sufferings and dangers of the sickbed, for the want of
intelligent, educated nursing, have been dreadful. A prejudiced,
pig-headed, snuff-taking old woman, narrow-minded and vulgar, and more
confident in her own way than seven men that can render a reason, enters
your house at just the hour and moment when all your dearest earthly
hopes are brought to a crisis. She becomes absolute dictator over your
delicate, helpless wife and your frail babe,--the absolute dictator of
all in the house. If it be her sovereign will and pleasure to enact all
sorts of physiological absurdities in the premises, who shall say her
nay? "She knows her business, she hopes!" And if it be her edict, as it
was of one of her class whom I knew, that each of her babies shall eat
four baked beans the day it is four days old, eat them it must; and if
the baby die in convulsions four days after, it is set down as the
mysterious will of an overruling Providence.

"I know and have seen women lying upon laced pillows under silken
curtains, who have been bullied and dominated over in the hour of their
greatest helplessness by ignorant and vulgar tyrants, in a way that
would scarce be thought possible in civilized society, and children that
have been injured or done to death by the same means. A celebrated
physician told me of a babe whose eyesight was nearly ruined by its
nurse taking a fancy to wash its eyes with camphor, "to keep it from
catching cold," she said. I knew another infant that was poisoned by the
nurse giving it laudanum in some of those patent nostrums which these
ignorant creatures carry secretly in their pockets, to secure quiet in
their little charges. I knew one delicate woman who never recovered from
the effects of being left at her first confinement in the hands of an
ill-tempered, drinking nurse, and whose feeble infant was neglected and
abused by this woman in a way to cause lasting injury. In the first four
weeks of infancy, the constitution is peculiarly impressible; and
infants of a delicate organization may, if frightened and ill treated,
be the subjects of just such a shock to the nervous system as in mature
age comes from the sudden stroke of a great affliction or terror. A bad
nurse may affect nerves predisposed to weakness in a manner they never
will recover from. I solemnly believe that the constitutions of more
women are broken up by bad nursing in their first confinement than by
any other cause whatever. And yet there are at the same time hundreds
and thousands of women wanting the means of support, whose presence in a
sick-room would be a benediction. I do trust that Miss Blackwell's band
of educated nurses will not be long in coming, and that the number of
such may increase till they effect a complete revolution in this
vocation. A class of cultivated, well-trained, intelligent nurses would
soon elevate the employment of attending on the sick into the noble
calling it ought to be, and secure for it its appropriate rewards."

"There is another opening for woman," said I,--"in the world of
business. The system of commercial colleges now spreading over our land
is a new and a most important development of our times. There that large
class of young men who have either no time or no inclination for an
extended classical education can learn what will fit them for that
active material life which in our broad country needs so many workers.
But the most pleasing feature of these institutions is, that the
complete course is open to women no less than to men, and women there
may acquire that knowledge of book-keeping and accounts, and of the
forms and principles of business transactions, which will qualify them
for some of the lucrative situations hitherto monopolized by the other
sex. And the expenses of the course of instruction are so arranged as to
come within the scope of very moderate means. A fee of fifty dollars
entitles a woman to the benefit of the whole course, and she has the
privilege of attending at any hours that may suit her own engagements
and convenience."

"Then, again," said my wife, "there are the departments of millinery and
dress-making and the various branches of needle-work, which afford
employment to thousands of women; there is type-setting, by which many
are beginning to get a living; there are the manufactures of cotton,
woollen, silk, and the numberless useful articles which employ female
hands in their fabrication,--all of them opening avenues by which, with
more or less success, a subsistence can be gained."

"Well, really," said Bob, "it would appear, after all, that there are
abundance of openings for women. What is the cause of the outcry and
distress? How is it that we hear of women starving, driven to vice and
crime by want, when so many doors of useful and profitable employment
stand open to them?"

"The question would easily be solved," said my wife, "if you could once
see the kind and class of women who thus suffer and starve. There may be
exceptions, but too large a portion of them are girls and women who _can
or will do no earthly thing well_,--and what is worse, are not willing
to take the pains to be taught to do anything well. I will describe to
you one girl, and you will find in every intelligence-office a hundred
of her kind to five thoroughly trained ones.

"Imprimis: she is rather delicate and genteel-looking, and you may know
from the arrangement of her hair just what the last mode is of disposing
of rats or waterfalls. She has a lace bonnet with roses, a silk
mantilla, a silk dress trimmed with velvet, a white skirt with sixteen
tucks and an embroidered edge, a pair of cloth gaiters, underneath which
are a pair of stockings without feet, the only pair in her possession.
She has no under-linen, and sleeps at night in the working-clothes she
wears in the day. She never seems to have in her outfit either comb,
brush, or tooth-brush of her own,--neither needles, thread, scissors,
nor pins: her money, when she has any, being spent on more important
articles, such as the lace bonnet or silk mantilla, or the rats and
waterfalls that glorify her head. When she wishes to sew, she borrows
what is needful of a convenient next neighbor; and if she gets a place
in a family as second girl, she expects to subsist in these respects by
borrowing of the better-appointed servants, or helping herself from the
family stores.

"She expects, of course, the very highest wages, if she condescends to
live out, and by help of a trim outside appearance and the many
vacancies that are continually occurring in households she gets places,
where her object is to do just as little of any duty assigned to her as
possible, to hurry through her performances, put on her fine clothes,
and go a-gadding. She is on free and easy terms with all the men she
meets, and ready at jests and repartee, sometimes far from seemly. Her
time of service in any one place lasts indifferently from a fortnight to
two or three months, when she takes her wages, buys her a new parasol in
the latest style, and goes back to the intelligence-office. In the
different families where she has lived she has been told a hundred times
the proprieties of household life, how to make beds, arrange rooms, wash
china, glass, and silver, and set tables; but her habitual rule is to
try in each place how small and how poor services will be accepted. When
she finds less will not do, she gives more. When the mistress follows
her constantly and shows an energetic determination to be well served,
she shows that she _can_ serve well; but such attention relaxes, she
slides back again. She is as destructive to a house as a fire; the very
spirit of wastefulnes is in her; she cracks the china, dents the silver,
stops the water-pipes with rubbish; and after she is gone, there is
generally a sum equal to half her wages to be expended in repairing the
effects of her carelessness. And yet there is one thing to be said for
her: she is quite as careful of her employer's things as of her own. The
full amount of her mischief often does not appear at once, as she is
glib of tongue, adroit in apologies, and lies with as much alertness and
as little thought of conscience as a blackbird chatters. It is difficult
for people who have been trained from childhood in the school of
verities,--who have been lectured for even the shadow of a
prevarication, and shut up in disgrace for a lie, till truth becomes a
habit of their souls,--it is very difficult for people so educated to
understand how to get on with those who never speak the truth except by
mere accident, who assert any and every thing that comes into the heads
with all the assurance and all the energy of perfect verity.

"What becomes of this girl? She finds means, by begging, borrowing,
living out, to keep herself extremely trim and airy for a certain length
of time, till the rats and waterfalls, the lace hat and parasol, and the
glib tongue, have done their work in making a fool of some honest young
mechanic who earns three dollars a day. She marries him with no higher
object than to have somebody to earn money for her to spend. And what
comes of such marriages?

"That is _one_ ending of her career; the other is on the street, in
haunts of vice, in prison, in drunkenness, and death.

"Whence come these girls? They are as numerous as yellow butterflies in
autumn; they flutter up to cities from the country; they grow up from
mothers who ran the same sort of career before them; and the reason why
in the end they fall out of all reputable the moment employment and
starve on poor wages is, that they become physically, mentally, and
morally incapable of rendering any service which society will think
worth paying for."

"I remember," said I, "that the head of the most celebrated dress-making
establishment in New York, in reply to the appeals of the needle-women
of the city for sympathy and wages, came out with published statements
to this effect: that the difficulty lay not in unwillingness of
employers to pay what work was worth, but in finding any work worth
paying for; that she had many applicants, but among them few who could
be of real use to her; that she, in common with everybody in this
country who has any kind of serious responsibilities to carry, was
continually embarrassed for want of skilled work-people, who could take
and go on with the labor of her various departments without her constant
supervision; that out of a hundred girls, there would not be more than
five to whom she could give a dress to be made and dismiss it from her
mind as something certain to be properly done.

"Let people individually look around their own little sphere and ask
themselves if they know any woman really excelling in any _valuable_
calling or accomplishment who is suffering for want of work. All of us
know seamstresses, dress-makers, nurses, and laundresses, who have made
themselves such a reputation, and are so beset and overcrowded with
work, that the whole neighborhood is constantly on its knees to them
with uplifted hands. The fine seamstress, who can cut and make
trousseaus and layettes in elegant perfection, is always engaged six
months in advance; the pet dress-maker of a neighborhood must be engaged
in May for September, and in September for May; a laundress who sends
your clothes home in nice order always has all the work that she can do.
Good work in any department is the rarest possible thing in our American
life; and it is a fact that the great majority of workers, both in the
family and out, do only tolerably well,--not so badly that it actually
cannot be borne, yet not so well as to be a source of real, thorough
satisfaction. The exceptional worker in every neighborhood, who does
things really _well_, can always set her own price, and is always having
more offering than she can possibly do.

"The trouble, then, in finding employment for women lies deeper than the
purses or consciences of the employers; it lies in the want of education
in women: the want of _education_, I say,--meaning by education that
which fits a woman for practical and profitable employment in life, and
not mere common school learning."

"Yes," said my wife; "for it is a fact that the most troublesome and
hopeless persons to provide for are often those who have a good medium
education, but no feminine habits, no industry, no practical
calculation, no muscular strength, and no knowledge of any one of
woman's peculiar duties. In the earlier days of New England, women, as a
class, had far fewer opportunities for acquiring learning, yet were far
better educated, physically and morally, than now. The high school did
not exist; at the common school they learned reading, writing, and
arithmetic, and practised spelling; while at home they did the work of
the household. They were cheerful, bright, active, ever on the alert,
able to do anything, from the harnessing and driving of a horse to the
finest embroidery. The daughters of New England in those days looked the
world in the face without a fear. They shunned no labor; they were
afraid of none; and they could always find their way to a living."

"But although less instructed in school learning," said I, "they showed
no deficiency in intellectual acumen. I see no such women, nowadays, as
some I remember of that olden time,--women whose strong minds and ever
active industry carried on reading and study side by side with household
toils.

"I remember a young lady friend of mine, attending a celebrated
boarding-school, boarded in the family of a woman who had never been to
school longer than was necessary to learn to read and write, yet who was
a perfect cyclopedia of general information. The young scholar used to
take her Chemistry and Natural Philosophy into the kitchen, where her
friend was busy with her household work, and read her lessons to her,
that she might have the benefit of her explanations; and so, while the
good lady scoured her andirons or kneaded her bread, she lectured to her
_protegee_ on mysteries of science far beyond the limits of the
text-book. Many of the graduates of our modern high schools would find
it hard to shine in conversation on the subjects they had studied, in
the searching presence of some of these vigorous matrons of the olden
time, whose only school had been the leisure hours gained by energy and
method from their family cares."

"And in those days," said my wife, "there lived in our families a class
of American domestics, women of good sense, and good powers of
reflection, who applied this sense and power of reflection to household
matters. In the early part of my married life, I myself had American
'help'; and they were not only excellent servants, but trusty and
invaluable friends. But now, all this class of applicants for domestic
service have disappeared, I scarce know why or how. All I know is, there
is no more a Betsey or a Lois, such as used to take domestic cares off
my shoulders so completely."

"Good heavens! where are they?" cried Bob. "Where do they hide? I would
search through the world after such a prodigy!"

"The fact is," said I, "there has been a slow and gradual reaction
against household labor in America. Mothers began to feel that it was a
sort of _curse_, to be spared, if possible, to their daughters; women
began to feel that they were fortunate in proportion as they were able
to be entirely clear of family responsibilities. Then Irish labor began
to come in, simultaneously with a great advance in female education.

"For a long while nothing was talked of, written of, thought of, in
teachers' meetings, conventions, and assemblies, but the neglected state
of female education; and the whole circle of the arts and sciences was
suddenly introduced into our free-school system, from which needle-work
as gradually and quietly was suffered to drop out. The girl who attended
the primary and high school had so much study imposed on her that she
had no time for sewing or housework; and the delighted mother was only
too happy to darn her stockings and do the housework alone, that her
daughter might rise to a higher plane than she herself had attained to.
The daughter, thus educated, had, on coming to womanhood, no solidity of
muscle, no manual dexterity, no practice or experience in domestic life;
and if she were to seek a livelihood, there remained only teaching, or
some feminine trade, or the factory."

"These factories," said my wife, "have been the ruin of hundreds and
hundreds of our once healthy farmers' daughters and others from the
country. They go there young and unprotected; they live there in great
boarding-houses, and associate with a promiscuous crowd, without even
such restraints of maternal supervision as they would have in great
boarding-schools; their bodies are enfeebled by labor often necessarily
carried on in a foul and heated atmosphere; and at the hours when off
duty, they are exposed to all the dangers of unwatched intimacy with the
other sex.

"Moreover, the factory-girl learns and practises but one thing,--some
one mechanical movement, which gives no scope for invention, ingenuity,
or any other of the powers called into play by domestic labor; so that
she is in reality unfitted in every way for family duties.

"Many times it has been my lot to try, in my family service, girls who
have left factories; and I have found them wholly useless for any of the
things which a woman ought to be good for. They knew nothing of a house,
or what ought to be done in it; they had imbibed a thorough contempt of
household labor, and looked upon it but as a _dernier resort_; and it
was only the very lightest of its tasks that they could even begin to
think of. I remember I tried to persuade one of these girls, the pretty
daughter of a fisherman, to take some lessons in washing and ironing.
She was at that time engaged to be married to a young mechanic, who
earned something like two or three dollars a day.

"'My child,' said I, 'you will need to understand all kinds of
housework, if you are going to be married.'

"She tossed her little head,--

"'Indeed, she wasn't going to trouble herself about that.'

"'But who will get up your husband's shirts?'

"'Oh, he must put them out. I'm not going to be married to make a slave
of myself!'

"Another young factory-girl, who came for table and parlor work, was so
full of airs and fine notions, that it seemed as difficult to treat with
her as with a princess. She could not sweep, because it blistered her
hands, which, in fact, were long and delicate; she could not think of
putting them into hot dish-water, and for that reason preferred washing
the dishes in cold water; she required a full hour in the morning to
make her toilet; she was laced so tightly that she could not stoop
without vertigo, and her hoops were of dimensions which seemed to render
it impossible for her to wait upon table; she was quite exhausted with
the effort of ironing the table-napkins and chamber-towels;--yet she
could not think of 'living out' under two dollars a week.

"Both these girls had had a good free-school education, and could read
any amount of novels, write a tolerable letter, but had not learned
anything with sufficient accuracy to fit them for teachers. They were
pretty, and their destiny was to marry and lie a dead weight on the
hands of some honest man, and to increase, in their children, the number
of incapables."

"Well," said Bob, "what would you have? What is to be done?"

"In the first place," said I, "I would have it felt by those who are
seeking to elevate woman, that the work is to be done, not so much by
creating for her new spheres of action as by elevating her conceptions
of that domestic vocation to which God and Nature have assigned her. It
is all very well to open to her avenues of profit and advancement in the
great outer world; but, after all, _to make and keep a home_ is, and
ever must be, a woman's first glory, her highest aim. No work of art can
compare with a perfect home; the training and guiding of a family must
be recognized as the highest work a woman can perform; and female
education ought to be conducted with special reference to this.

"Men are _trained_ to be lawyers, to be physicians, to be mechanics, by
long and self-denying study and practice. A man cannot even make shoes
merely by going to the high school and learning reading, writing, and
mathematics; he cannot be a book-keeper, or a printer, simply from
general education.

"Now women have a sphere and profession of their own,--a profession for
which they are fitted by physical organization, by their own instincts,
and to which they are directed by the pointing and manifest finger of
God,--and that sphere is _family life_.

"Duties to the State and to public life they may have; but the public
duties of women must bear to their family ones the same relation that
the family duties of men bear to their public ones.

"The defect in the late efforts to push on female education is, that it
has been for her merely general, and that it has left out and excluded
all that is professional; and she undertakes the essential duties of
womanhood, when they do devolve on her, without any adequate
preparation."

"But is it possible for a girl to learn at school the things which fit
her for family life?" said Bob.

"Why not?" I replied. "Once it was thought impossible in schools to
teach girls geometry, or algebra, or the higher mathematics; it was
thought impossible to put them through collegiate courses: but it has
been done, and we see it. Women study treatises on political economy in
schools; and why should not the study of domestic economy form a part of
every school course? A young girl will stand up at the blackboard, and
draw and explain the compound blowpipe, and describe all the process of
making oxygen and hydrogen. Why should she not draw and explain a
refrigerator as well as an air-pump? Both are to be explained on
philosophical principles. When a school-girl, in her Chemistry, studies
the reciprocal action of acids and alkalies, what is there to hinder the
teaching her its application to the various processes of cooking where
acids and alkalies are employed? Why should she not be led to see how
effervescence and fermentation can be made to perform their office in
the preparation of light and digestible bread? Why should she not be
taught the chemical substances by which food is often adulterated, and
the tests by which such adulterations are detected? Why should she not
understand the processes of confectionery, and know how to guard against
the deleterious or poisonous elements that are introduced into
children's sugar-plums and candies? Why, when she learns the doctrine of
_mordants_, the substances by which different colors are set, should she
not learn it with some practical view to future life, so that she may
know how to set the color of a fading calico or restore the color of a
spotted one? Why, in short, when a girl has labored through a profound
chemical work, and listened to courses of chemical lectures, should she
come to domestic life, which presents a constant series of chemical
experiments and changes, and go blindly along as without chart or
compass, unable to tell what will take out a stain or what will brighten
a metal, what are common poisons and what their antidotes, and not
knowing enough of the laws of caloric to understand how to warm a house,
or of the laws of atmosphere to know how to ventilate one? Why should
the preparation of food, that subtile art on which life, health,
cheerfulness, good temper, and good looks so largely depend, forever be
left in the hands of the illiterate and vulgar?

"A benevolent gentleman has lately left a large fortune for the founding
of a university for women, and the object is stated to be to give women
who have already acquired a general education the means of acquiring a
professional one, to fit themselves for some employment by which they
may gain a livelihood.

"In this institution the women are to be instructed in book-keeping,
stenography, telegraphing, photographing, drawing, modelling, and
various other arts; but so far as I remember, there is no proposal to
teach domestic economy as at least _one_ of woman's professions.

"Why should there not be a professor of domestic economy in every large
female school? Why should not this professor give lectures, first on
house-planning and building, illustrated by appropriate apparatus? Why
should not the pupils have presented to their inspection models of
houses planned with reference to economy, to ease of domestic service,
to warmth, to ventilation, and to architectural appearance? Why should
not the professor go on to lecture further on house-fixtures, with
models of the best mangles, washing-machines, clothes-wringers, ranges,
furnaces, and cooking-stoves, together with drawings and apparatus
illustrative of domestic hydraulics, showing the best contrivances for
bathing-rooms and the obvious principles of plumbing, so that the pupils
may have some idea how to work the machinery of a convenient house when
they have it, and to have such conveniences introduced when wanting? If
it is thought worth while to provide at great expense apparatus for
teaching the revolutions of Saturn's moons and the precession of the
equinoxes, why should there not be some also to teach what it may
greatly concern a woman's earthly happiness to know?

"Why should not the professor lecture on home-chemistry, devoting his
first lecture to bread-making? and why might not a batch of bread be
made and baked and exhibited to the class, together with specimens of
morbid anatomy in the bread line,--the sour cotton bread of the
baker,--the rough, big-holed bread,--the heavy, fossil bread,--the
bitter bread of too much yeast,--and the causes of their defects pointed
out? And so with regard to the various articles of food,--why might not
chemical lectures be given on all of them, one after another?--In short,
it would be easy to trace out a course of lectures on common things to
occupy a whole year, and for which the pupils, whenever they come to
have homes of their own, will thank the lecturer to the last day of
their life.

"Then there is no impossibility in teaching needle-work, the cutting and
fitting of dresses, in female schools. The thing is done very perfectly
in English schools for the working classes. A girl trained at one of
these schools came into a family I once knew. She brought with her a
sewing-book, in which the process of making various articles was
exhibited in miniature. The several parts of a shirt were first shown,
each perfectly made, and fastened to a leaf of the book by itself, and
then the successive steps of uniting the parts, till finally appeared a
miniature model of the whole. The sewing was done with red thread, so
that every stitch might show and any imperfection be at once remedied.
The same process was pursued with regard to other garments, and a good
general idea of cutting and fitting them was thus given to an entire
class of girls.

"In the same manner the care and nursing of young children and the
tending of the sick might be made the subject of lectures. Every woman
ought to have some general principles to guide her with regard to what
is to be done in case of the various accidents that may befall either
children or grown people, and of their lesser illnesses, and ought to
know how to prepare comforts and nourishment for the sick. Hawthorne's
satirical remarks upon the contrast between the elegant Zenobia's
conversation and the smoky porridge she made for him when he was an
invalid might apply to the volunteer cookery of many charming women."

"I think," said Bob, "that your Professor of Domestic Economy would find
enough to occupy his pupils."

"In fact," said I, "were domestic economy properly honored and properly
taught, in the manner described, it would open a sphere of employment to
so many women in the home life, that we should not be obliged to send
our women out to California or the Pacific, to put an end to an anxious
and aimless life.

"When domestic work is sufficiently honored to be taught as an art and
science in our boarding-schools and high schools, then possibly it may
acquire also dignity in the eyes of our working classes, and young girls
who have to earn their own living may no longer feel degraded in
engaging in domestic service. The place of a domestic in a family may
become as respectable in their eyes as a place in a factory, in a
printing-office, in a dress-making or millinery establishment, or behind
the counter of a shop.

"In America there is no class which will confess itself the lower class,
and a thing recommended solely for the benefit of any such class finds
no one to receive it.

"If the intelligent and cultivated look down on household-work with
disdain, if they consider it as degrading, a thing to be shunned by
every possible device, they may depend upon it that the influence of
such contempt of woman's noble duties will flow downward, producing a
like contempt in every class in life.

"Our sovereign princesses learn the doctrine of equality very quickly,
and are not going to sacrifice themselves to what is not considered _de
bon ton_ by the upper classes; and the girl with the laced hat and
parasol, without underclothes, who does her best to "shirk" her duties
as housemaid, and is looking for marriage as an escape from work, is a
fair copy of her mistress, who married for much the same reason, who
hates housekeeping, and would rather board or do anything else than have
the care of a family;--the one is about as respectable as the other.

"When housekeeping becomes an enthusiasm, and its study and practice a
fashion, then we shall have in America that class of persons to rely on
for help in household labors who are now going to factories, to
printing-offices, to every kind of toil, forgetful of the best life and
sphere of woman."




THE FORGE.


CHAPTER IX.

It was not long before I was established in my new situation. Mr. Bray
said, roughly,--

"I s'pose new friends is better than them your father picked out for
you; leastways you must try 'em and see. I don't say as I wouldn't on no
account take you back, if I found you couldn't git along without me. You
mustn't have that look of bein' twenty mile away, when a hoss's leg is
in your hand, and you're ready to shoe him; for I sha'n't be by to bring
you back again."

Mrs. Bray said,--

"Well, it is rather a long ride for the grand folks 'way down to Lower
Warren, and Amos bein' a family man, of course they wouldn't expect him
to be a-movin' to suit them; and as he's had the trainin' of you, they
think it'll be all right. I hope it will, I'm sure."

Little Annie looked sadder than usual, but said nothing, until the
morning when I was to commence work at the new forge; then she followed
me to the door with her little straw basket, in which she had packed a
nice lunch, covered with lilac-leaves from the bush by the front door.

"You said you shouldn't have time to come home to dinner, as you go to
Hillside this afternoon, Sandy," she said, apologetically, as she
slipped it into my hand. "I hope it will be long before you go away
altogether, it would be so lonely without you"; and the tears filled her
blue eyes.

Why was that gentle, appealing beauty always luring me back to the
village life, whose rustic, homely ways I was learning to despise? I
could not tell; but she, part and parcel of it though she was, bound to
it by parentage and pursuits, had never failed to touch my heart. I
stooped and kissed her, as I so often had done before, and answered,
laughing,--

"Go away? Never, Annie, until I take you with me."

She blushed; the old happiness stole back into her eyes at the first
kind word from me, and she returned to her simple, daily tasks; while I,
filled with ambition and pride in my new life, soon dismissed her from
my mind.

I had meant to ask Annie to help me in arranging my new forge, as she
had helped me with my first picture; and when the necessary purchases
were made and in their places, when the woman living in the other part
of the building I occupied had swept my floor and washed my solitary
window, which was at one end and looked toward the hill, I resolutely
determined to delay the unpacking of a box of pictures and books, of
which the latter were to fill a small shelf above, and the former to
hang around the window, until I could bring Annie up the next day to
assist me. Deciding to read, therefore, until some custom should fall to
me, I knocked a narrow board off the top of the box and slipped out a
single book, when I heard the tramp of horses' feet, and, going to the
door, saw the party from Hillside returning from a horseback ride. Mr.
Lang, mounted on his magnificent horse, hurried forward and rode fairly
within the smithy.

"Why, Sandy, actually established? I thought it was but right that
Warrior should be your first visitor. See how he paws! He knows you, and
will be getting a shoe off for your benefit."

I patted my old friend, who arched his neck still more proudly, as
though hardly brooking the familiarity, when Miss Merton, Miss Darry,
and Mr. Leopold rode up.

"Are you entirely ready for work, Sandy?" asked Miss Darry, after the
first greeting.

"Ready for work, but not quite in order here," I replied.

"But if anything is lacking, why have a book there? Why not arrange
matters at once?" she continued, with her customary energy.

"What is that shelf for? and that old box? You may as well confess to
any little adornments at once."

"I _have_ a few books, and just one or two old pictures there," I
replied, reluctantly; "but I have made up my mind not to arrange them
until to-morrow: little Annie Bray can help me then, and the poor child
has seldom anything to amuse her."

"Nonsense, Sandy! Little Annie Bray cannot put the books on that high
shelf without your assistance, and very probably you will have other
employment to-morrow. Then you will make yourself late for Mr. Leopold,
and will begin wrong, which is about equal to going wrong all the way
through. I have half a mind to dismount and help you myself. It will be
a charming combination of forge and studio, won't it, Mr. Leopold?"

Mr. Leopold smiled, but assented, as though his interest in the matter
was by no means proportioned to hers; and I could but notice that both
Miss Merton and Mr. Lang looked as if quite enough of this sunny spring
morning had been spent in examination of the new forge. So I replied,
hastily,--

"Oh, well, Miss Darry, if it will give you any satisfaction, I'll finish
my work here at once."

"Thank you, Sandy. And now I think of it, Alice, a Madeira vine can be
trained from the shelf up over the window to make a delightful green
curtain. A man, you know, never understands exactly how to plan these
things."

"Ah, but I have planned, Miss Darry. This box will occupy the window;
but it is to be filled with water, aquatic plants, insects, and tiny
fish, for Annie's pleasure, when she makes me a visit."

"You mean to establish a kind of nursery, I see. I hope you won't waste
your time, Sandy," retorted Miss Darry.

I could not fail to see that her disapproval of my interest in Annie
Bray had not abated; for no plans formed with reference to her seemed to
meet with approbation. And so I was the more pleased when Miss Merton
turned to me, as they were about to ride away, saying,--

"I forgot to ask you the other evening to bring that sweet little girl
to Hillside some day, or let her come alone. I will find plenty of
amusement for her that shall not interfere with the work which Miss
Darry is so desirous should go on."

They all laughed merrily, as they rode away; but I felt in no gay mood.
I was provoked that I had yielded so readily to Miss Darry's wishes, and
irritated by her evident dislike to the only person in the world whose
affection I possessed.

"_Why not_ dismount and help me herself?" I muttered, impatiently, as I
broke open the cover of my box. "Far above me as she is, she has no
right to interfere with my friendship with Annie, if she does not give
me her own in its place."

However, as the morning wore on, I became interested in my new
arrangements; the decorations of my low attic bedroom were displayed to
greater advantage in the forge, where I should now pass so much more of
my time; and as for Annie, after all, she would enjoy seeing it far
better when completed. Before noon, too, I had opened an account with
one of the most prosperous farmers in the neighborhood, and in hard
manual labor my excitement passed away; and I presented myself at
Hillside at the appointed hour, as grateful to us inmates as ever.


CHAPTER X.

Perhaps no art differs more widely with individual mind and temperament
than that of teaching. I soon appreciated this under Mr. Leopold's
training. For the first few lessons, I was put to no copying, given no
verbal instruction; he showed me how to mix oil-colors, expecting his to
be prepared for him, when, in his eagerness to produce an effect, he
did not care to stop for the purpose himself; and for the rest, advised
me to watch him, which I did narrowly, while he worked sometimes by the
hour without speaking. When I commenced painting, therefore, I felt as
though I was making constant discoveries, and began to think, in the
conceit of my youth and developing power, that I was working without
other guide than my own intuition, until I found a number of serious
errors indicated. Miss Darry's teaching made me feel that I could not do
without her; Mr. Leopold's, that just so far as he carried me, I in turn
could take some one else.

The summer days wore on. My hands grew rougher and coarser with hard
work, yet just as surely increased their dexterity in holding the brush
with a firm grasp and giving flexible and delicate strokes to finer
work. My lessons and new forge left but little time for the cottage and
Annie Bray now. Moreover, she, too, changed as the months wore on. When
did I ever imagine, with all my growing plans and manhood, that she also
was to have her work and purpose in the world? Yet she had made her
visit to Hillside, had been not only amused and delighted, but
instructed, by all she saw there. I was too deeply engrossed in
self-development to continue my attention to her studies; but Miss
Merton, inspired by Miss Darry's example, or attracted by the modest
sweetness so congenial to her own womanly character, undertook the
unwonted occupation of teaching; and Mr. Lang, greatly to my surprise,
encouraged her in it. Three afternoons in the week Annie went to
Hillside to receive a course of instruction, barren of system and
conducted with supreme disregard of plainer and more useful branches,
yet bringing out in a graceful way all her peculiarly refined tastes.
Annie's hours rarely admitted of my walking home with her; and though
occasionally she stopped at the forge, on her way through the village,
it was only for a moment, and that often a busy one with me. She had
grown taller and paler, sadder in expression, too, I fancied,
notwithstanding the new interest at Hillside. But then she was leaving
childhood behind her; her father had been more rough than ever since I
left him; and with a momentary pity and wonder that she was more shy of
my fond and brotherly ways than formerly, I ascribed it to these
ordinary causes, and kept steadily at my work. It was not for me, the
_protege_ of so brilliant a woman as Frank Darry, and a rising genius,
to pause in my career for the pale cheeks of the village blacksmith's
daughter.

My intercourse with Mr. Leopold did not become more familiar with time.
The idea of his not looking like a genuine artist, the disappointment
and failure to comprehend his pictures, changed into awe of the inner
force of the man, as I beheld his patient, earnest labor. To my shallow
comprehension of the worth of genius, his persistent effort, after the
attainment of all I hoped to realize, was marvellous. He was rich,
famed, cultivated, yet the ideal excellence hovered ever above him,
waiting like a resurrection body to clothe the escaped soul of
inspiration; and for this he toiled more unremittingly than I in my
struggle for existence even in the world of Art. The secret of this
man's soul was not, however, revealed to my questioning. Ever
considerate and kind, he was no friend in any sense implying mutual
interchange of thought or confidence. With Miss Darry, on the contrary,
he was his free and natural self. Whenever I saw them together, I was
conscious that his great nature went out irresistibly to meet hers, a
fact of which it seemed to me she was far less aware than I. She walked
and drove with him, but merely because Miss Merton and Mr. Lang were
engrossed with each other, and as a side-play from the main object of
her life.

I had been employed for several weeks upon a picture of greater
importance than any before attempted. Miss Darry confidently declared it
would be accepted at the autumn exhibition of paintings in the city;
and Mr. Leopold briefly advised me to make the attempt, backed by his
favor to get it in. It was the working up of the odd fancy in which
Annie and I had indulged so long ago,--that the forest haunts were not
deserted, even though man did not invade them. In a clearing in the
midst of the woods I had assembled the familiar squirrels, birds, and
flowers, to play their part in the revels Nature takes on summer
afternoons; and from the gnarled trunks and twisted vines whose
grotesque involutions hinted the serpent-life within to the elves which
peered from beneath the broad dank leaves, I had reasserted the old
childish faith.

As I have said, Miss Darry approved my picture, though only as a
preliminary to better things, saying,--

"You must paint Chimborazo, or some of the mammoth California scenery,
Sandy. The microscope, not the canvas, is the proper instrument by which
to scrutinize the minute. Genius certainly need not forever be peeping
at Nature through her key-holes, but can enter her open door and dwell
amid the grandest scenes of the universe."


CHAPTER XI.

I hurried away from the forge earlier than usual one July day, and,
finding the studio vacant, worked a full hour before Mr. Leopold
presented himself. He came in hurriedly, glanced at my picture, pointing
out a fault or two, then seated himself at his easel for an hour longer
of silent work. At the expiration of this time he rose, put away his
materials, and said, as he turned toward the door,--

"Miss Merton and Mr. Lang are to be married this afternoon, Sandy. They
wished me to ask you down to the ceremony, which is to be private. An
unexpected affair, hurried on account of business which calls Mr. Lang
to town for a great part of the winter, and so would separate them much,
if she could not go with him."

I was extremely surprised. However, Mr. Leopold was so collected that I
felt called upon to refrain all expression of astonishment.

"You need not go home to make any alteration in your dress, Sandy," he
added. "Come up to my room and help yourself to all the minor articles
you need."

It was not long before I entered the drawing-room, where I found Miss
Darry, evidently expecting me.

"Well, Sandy, this is a hurried affair. Your presence was particularly
desired; and, by the way, Alice insisted upon dispatching a messenger to
Annie Bray with an invitation to the ceremony, but her mother sends word
that she is away on some excursion. Alice will be sorry, she has taken
such a fancy to her: you must explain that she was really wanted."

"Oh, no,--Annie will be so disappointed! I can hunt her up and be back
here before Miss Merton is prepared for the occasion"; and I started for
the door, but the will stronger than my own recalled me.

"Sandy, pray reflect a moment, and you will attempt nothing of the kind.
They leave in the eight o'clock train, and will be married some time
about sunset. In the interval you could never go and return from Warren
on any other horse than Mr. Lang's, and I suppose you would not expect
your little friend to ride before you. Besides, we have been busy to-day
planning other matters, and the final decorations have not been thought
of. You are the very one to make the proper disposition of light and
shade, flowers, etc."

"Miss Darry, do call in Mr. Leopold to gather flowers and pull the
shades up or down, and let me try at least to find Annie," I answered,
impatiently.

But she only replied,--

"Mr. Leopold! why, you innocent youth, he hasn't half your artistic
capacity. I can see how you reverence him; but trust me, it is only from
the innate modesty of your nature."

"He exhausted the fanciful region in which I dwell years ago, Miss
Darry, and has gone up higher. You surely must see you undervalue his
great nature."

"I see nothing just at present, Sandy, but the need of your assistance,"
she replied.

And by various devices she busied me until the arrival of the minister
and the few intimate friends banished all further thought of Annie's
regret at not being present. Miss Merton's loveliness and Mr. Lang's
manly beauty made a picture I would gladly have studied longer than the
time required to make them man and wife. I had long ago seen the
ceremony performed by Mr. Purdo for a rustic couple; but this was a new
and more fascinating phase of it. Impressed as I was apt to be by
anything appealing to my emotions or sense of beauty, I did not care to
join at once Miss Darry and Mr. Leopold, who engaged in their customary
repartee directly after the bride retired to prepare for her journey;
but Miss Darry, slipping away from Mr. Leopold, soon joined me on the
lawn, to which I had stepped from the French window.

"What a serious expression, Sandy! One might imagine you had been making
all these solemn promises yourself. You must learn not to be so easily
affected by forms and symbols. It is a weakness of your poetic
temperament. Their love has existed just as truly all these months as
now; yet I never saw you grow serious over the contemplation of it,
until a minister consecrated it by prayer and address."

I started.

"You do not give much of a niche to Cupid in your gallery of life, Miss
Darry."

"Now that is poorer reasoning than I should have looked for even from
you, Sandy. Because I laugh at your reverence for outward expression, do
I necessarily depreciate the sentiment?"

"No," I answered, bluntly; "I was thinking how you bade me set aside
Annie Bray,--how you always slight her claims upon me."

"Ah, it has a personal application, then," she replied, thoughtfully,
but frankly as before. "It is only because I want you to make the most
of your fine powers, that I would have you choose friends who can
appreciate you."

"I know that you have been disinterested, noble," I returned,
remorsefully. "But outward success would never atone to me for the lack
of love. Perhaps it is through my very weakness that I cling so to the
only human being who really loves me."

Miss Dairy's face changed color. For the first time in her intercourse
with me, she was strongly and visibly moved.

"Sandy," she said, after a pause, in a low, broken voice, strangely at
variance with its usual ringing tone, "without this love I, as a woman,
have lived all my life, until a week ago; and then, because it was not
the love I demanded, even though I could have taken it with
inexpressible comfort into my lonely life, I rejected it. I tell you
this merely as an encouragement. If Annie Bray is all you crave, forsake
everything else for her; if not, deny yourself the gratification of
being worshipped, and wait until you also can bestow your whole heart."

She stood there, in the waning light, plucking nervously the petals from
the rose-bush, and scattering them on the grass,--her dark eye filled
with a melancholy which I had never supposed could subdue its flashing
light, or relax the outlines of the thinly cut lips,--unsatisfied,--her
womanly nature rebelling against an unusually lonely lot. It needed just
this humble acknowledgment of human need and human love to make Frank
Darry irresistible, and my impressible fancy responded to the spell.
Impelled by a passion which from its very force forbade analysis, I bent
over her. Even then, as my hand fell upon her shoulder, and her eyes,
still lulled in their dangerous trance of sadness, met mine inquiringly,
my purpose was arrested by the voices of Nature around me, as if Annie
Bray, herself allied to them, were reminding me of claims which had once
held such power over me. I recall now the oriole whose nest swung like
a pendulum from the branch above, marking the passing of the summer day,
and whose clear note struck more sweetly than the cuckoo clock the
evening hour. I noticed a humming-bird nestled in its silver-lined
apartment, its long bill looking as though even the honeyed sweetness of
the flowers must be rendered more delicate before it could help to
nourish the exuberant and palpitating life of its little body. Then I
looked at the begonias and fuchsias in Miss Darry's hair, spilling their
precious juices on the stem, as they hurried to reveal the glowing
secret of their blossom; and while I yielded to the fascination of the
scene, the woman beside me was absorbed into its wonderful witchery,
Annie Bray and Frank Darry--timid, loving child and brilliantly
developed woman--both united to win from me the passion of my life. Had
I waited, the affinity of moods which drew us together would probably
never have been reproduced; but I exclaimed,--

"Miss Darry, I can never entirely love any other woman than yourself!"

She started almost convulsively from the contact of my hand, and met my
burning glance with one of such alarm and astonishment that I was stung
almost to madness. Undoubtedly, my anger was partly a reaction from the
period of dependence and tutelage, so galling to a proud and sensitive
nature.

"You have no right," I cried, passionately, "to despise the love you
have created. Listen; I do not expect any return. I know how theories
are practically applied,--how one may work for the poor and ignorant on
the broad table-land of perfect equality before God, and yet shrink from
contact with the befriended brothers and sisters at the same social meal
or in the same church. Shakspeare might have blackened Othello's skin by
toil, instead of nature, and the obstacles to a happy love would have
been in no degree lessened."

I paused; yet not a word did Miss Darry utter. Her face was so pale and
rigid that all my suspicion was confirmed; and I exclaimed, more
vehemently than before,--

"Remember, you cannot avoid the fact that I, a mere blacksmith, am your
lover; if rejected and despised, your lover still. I shall think of you
daily. You will not come to me alone the companion of my studio, one of
those delicate visions which flit through an artist's brain. You shall
stand beside my anvil. I will whisper your name when rough men are about
me. You shall be the one gold thread embroidered into the coarse garment
of my life,--my constant companion; yes, though you marry the first man
in the land."

Still she stood immovable, as if carved in her favorite marble.

"Miss Darry," I implored, "I know how unworthy my character is of your
love. Speak! If it is that you reject, I say no more; but what if your
prophecies are fulfilled,--if I become what you desire?"

Then my statue glowed with life,--a deep color on the cheek, a frank,
loving smile on the lips, banishing the doubtful, troubled expression I
had watched so narrowly.

"You do not understand the woman you profess to love, Sandy," she
replied, "if you suppose her capable of staking her favor on your future
distinction. Not as blacksmith or artist, but as the man I love, I think
of you to-night," she added, in a lower tone, returning to my side.

My happiness for the next few moments was complete. I held her closer in
that fading light, and studied with delight the sweet, half-yielding,
half-reproving expression with which she met my protestations of
gratitude and devotion, and which I fondly fancied my love had stamped
upon her face forever. Then I heard a quick step in the shrubbery, as of
some one sent to summon us, and reluctantly released from my hold the
embodiment at that instant of all I esteemed noblest and loveliest in
woman. With characteristic composure, Miss Darry answered the message by
gathering some of the roses beside us, and turning to reenter the
house. Afraid of my own lack of self-control, I would gladly have gone
home like a blushing girl; but my new pride of protecting Miss Darry
under all circumstances of difficulty compelled me to follow her. She
was, however, on returning to the house, the same bright, helpful person
as before. The scene on the lawn became, in half an hour, as the
baseless fabric of a dream; and thinking that Miss Darry's sentiment,
like that of the Colosseum, was best revealed by moonlight, I trusted in
the few parting words which I should seek occasion to speak to her on
the steps, as likely to restore her most captivating mood. When we
parted, however, she only said, with heightened color, to be sure,--

"Sandy, I am well aware, that, were you the 'mere blacksmith' you called
yourself in momentary passion to-night, bounded by narrow aims and
desires, I could never love you. We must not, therefore, allow our
affection to delay the destiny which, if you are faithful, most surely
awaits you."

The fervent nonsense which might naturally have disgusted or at least
wearied her she endured at first, as a necessary drawback; but it was
soon toned down by the consciousness that she was guiding me, as usual,
in paths best, if not always most agreeable to myself. She made no
stipulations of secrecy with regard to our engagement. Her frank nature
apparently admitted of no dim recesses to which only one must have the
key.

After a few days, therefore, I resolved to disclose my new relations to
the Brays, though I felt a most unaccountable reluctance to so doing.
Mr. Bray received the information with indifference; Mrs. Bray looked
surprised, and said she always knew Amos was respected, still she
shouldn't have felt certain that the "school-ma'am" (in which capacity
Miss Darry was spoken of in the village) would like to marry his
apprentice; and Annie stole from her seat at the breakfast-table, and,
laying her little hand on my shoulder, with a troubled look in her large
blue eyes, asked,--

"Do you really mean it, Sandy,--that you have promised to marry the
proud, handsome woman at Hillside?"

"Certainly, my little Annie," I replied; "I have promised to love and
care for her, and I suppose we shall be married by-and-by. Miss Darry is
not proud; it is only because you are too young to understand her that
you think so."

"But I understand Mrs. Lang, and I thought I understood you, Sandy. Are
you sure she will help you to grow happier and better?"

The tears were in her eyes. What induced these two--my betrothed wife
and little sister--to have such doubts of each other?

"Of course I am sure of her, Annie. She has helped me to grow more of a
man ever since I have known her; and as to being happier, two persons
loving each other must, of course, be happy together. Besides," I added,
smothering a sudden doubt, and assuming the philosopher, "we were not
placed in this world to be happy, Annie,--only to make of ourselves all
we can in every way."

"And to make others happy, Sandy," she added, in a wistful, tremulous
way, as though her heart were full.

"Yes, certainly; and when I have a wife and home, I will make my little
Annie so. She shall live with me, and confess that my wife is not proud,
but noble and kind."

"No, Sandy, I shall not leave my mother, father, and brother Tom, to
live with any one. I shall work with them and for them," she returned,
with a womanly dignity I had never before noticed in her.

"You do not love me, then, Annie?" I asked, selfishly grasping at the
affection I had so lightly prized.

"Yes, Sandy, as you love me; but not as we either of us care for our
own,--you for Miss Darry, I for my mother, father, and Tom."

This final, clear settlement of my claims was all that was granted,
though I lingered while she busied herself with her morning work, in
the hope of more hearty sympathy. I carried about with me all day a
restless, unsatisfied state of mind, quite strange in a newly accepted
lover, and scarcely to be exorcised by Miss Darry's bright cordiality in
the evening.


CHAPTER XII.

Mrs. Lang returned from her wedding-journey happy and beautiful, charmed
by all she had seen, and Mr. Lang was unusually demonstrative to every
one in the excess of his joy; but I had reason to suppose that the
announcement of our engagement reduced his exuberance considerably. Miss
Darry did not, however, admit the least disappointment in their manner
of receiving it; her own judgment was an estimate, from which, for
herself, there was no appeal. She was the most entirely self-sustained
woman I have ever met. Having decided that I was a genius, and that she
loved me, the opinion of others was of no moment in her eyes. Mr. Lang
merely offered his congratulations to me by saying,--

"Well, Sandy, my dear fellow, you are to obtain, it seems, what many a
man of wealth and position will envy you. You must pardon me for saying
that Miss Darry's choice is quite astonishing to her friends. If you
possess the genius of Raphael, I shall still regard you as two very
peculiar persons to come together; but I am in no mood to cavil at
love."

Mrs. Lang said, kindly,--

"We must see more of you than ever, Mr. Allen, if you are finally to
deprive us of Miss Darry. She has lived with me ever since the death of
her parents, who were old friends of my mother, and we shall miss her
very much. She is a splendid woman. You are sure you understand her?"
she added, naively; "I freely confess I don't."

My pride swelled at all this. Frank Darry's love was the most blissful
proof yet afforded of the personal power of the man who had captivated
her, and more vehemently than was perhaps natural under the
circumstances, I professed to comprehend, love, nay, worship Miss Darry.

The efforts for my culture were now redoubled. In order to demonstrate
the wisdom of Miss Darry's choice, I must give palpable proof of
superiority. I had earned enough for present support, and my forge must
be given up. I must cut off all my old connections, go to the city,
visit studios, draw from casts, attend galleries of paintings, have
access to public libraries, make literary and artistic acquaintances,
pursue my classical studies, and display the powers which Miss Darry, by
her own force of will, projected into me. Such were the business-like
plans which usurped the place of those mutual adulatory confidences
presumed to occupy the first elysian hours of an engagement. Miss
Darry's love was not of that caressing, tendril description, so common
with her sex, which plays in tender demonstrativeness around the one
beloved; it helped constantly to keep the highest standard before him,
and to sustain rather than depend.

About a week after Mr. and Mrs. Lang's return, Mr. Leopold, who had
accompanied them, came back; and Miss Darry intimated that it would be
well for me to inform him of our engagement. I said to him, therefore,
rather abruptly one afternoon, as I was about leaving to seek Miss
Darry, (who was never quite ready to see me, if my painting-hours were
abridged,)--

"Mr. Leopold, I have sold my forge to-day. I wanted to ask your advice
about the course to be pursued in town; but I am under orders now of the
most binding kind, I am engaged to Miss Darry."

Mr. Leopold was busy at his easel, his profile toward me. I was
certainly not mistaken; the blood rushed over his face, subsided,
leaving it very pale, and he made a quick, nervous movement which
overthrew his palette. He rose quietly and replaced it, however, saying,
in his usual tone,--

"Very well, Sandy. I am ready to help you in any way I can."

"But you do not--no one congratulates me," I said, deceived by his
calmness, and supposing the momentary suspicion that his was the love
rejected by Miss Darry must have been a mistaken one.

"If they do not, it is not because of any lack appreciation for either
of you," he answered slowly, "but that they fail to see the point of
union. I admire the pine; it is straight, strong, self-reliant, and yet
wind-haunted by many tender and melancholy sentiments; I like the
peach-tree, too, with its pink tufts of fanciful blooming in the
spring-time: but if these two should grow side by side, I am not sure
but I should wonder a little."

His smile, as he looked me full in the eye, had genuine good-will
mingled with its humor; and it softened the indignation I felt at the
implied comparison.

"You make me out the weaker vessel of the two, then?" I asked,
resentfully.

"No, Sandy, I don't say that; possibly, as whatever power we have runs
parallel with Providential forces or against them, it makes mortal
strength or weakness. But may you become a truly noble man, if you are
to be Miss Darry's husband!" he answered, rising and extending his hand.

I believe he was one to scorn a lack of self-control in himself; but I
do not think he cared either to reveal or to hide the love which I read
at that moment. I grasped his hand as cordially as it was given, and
hurried down stairs, out of the door, and over the hill, with a strong
conviction that Miss Darry was a mistaken and foolish woman, and a
prompting to disinterestedness not quite compatible with my relations to
her. I was in no mood for her society, so I resolved to delay seeing her
until evening, and conclude my arrangements at the forge, as I was to go
to the city the next week.

Approaching the village, I overtook Miss Dinsmore; and though my new
pretensions had not increased my popularity among the villagers, I had
reason to consider her my firm friend and advocate; so I was quite
willing to escape my unpleasant train of thought in listening to her.

"Well, Sandy, nobody gets a sight of you nowadays down this way. I never
was so set up as when I heard tell you was goin' to marry the
schoolmarm. Why, I was always certain sure you'd take to Annie Bray.
Such a sweet little lamb as she is; not a bit high-strung 'cause she's
made much of at the great house on the hill, though she does sing like a
bird in an apple-tree every Sunday, when Louisy Purdo doesn't drown her
voice with screechin'; but she's grown more sober an' quiet-like than
ever. Miss Bray says she helps a powerful deal about house, and Amos
don't swear so much now he sees it hurts her."

"She's a dear little thing," I interrupted, impatiently; "but, Miss
Dinsmore, do you know Mr. Bray may have all the blacksmith-work to
himself now? for I'm going to town for the rest of the summer and
autumn."

"You don't say so, Sandy! Well, old Dr. Allen wasn't one of us, as I
tell 'em, and there's no sort of reason why you should be; and your
mother was a real born lady, though she was so gentle-spoken 't wasn't
half the women could tell the difference between her and them."

"But, Miss Dinsmore," I said, "I don't expect to forget my old friends,
because I hope to do better somewhere else than here. I shall often come
down to Warren."

"Oh, yes, you'll come down, I don't mistrust that," she replied, slowly
nodding her green calash, "as long as the schoolmarm is at the Hill; but
Annie will look paler than ever. She thinks a sight of you, poor thing,
and it will never be the same to her. She loves you like--a sister,"
added Miss Dinsmore, the tears in her faded blue eyes, and her sense of
womanly modesty supplying the familiar title.

We were very near the Variety Store. If I could for a moment drift away
from this annoying theme!

"How did you like Mr. Leopold, that afternoon I introduced him to you,
Miss Dinsmore?" I asked, in desperation.

"Oh! ah! Well, Sandy, to speak plain, I've seen him a matter of three or
four times, may-be, since. He set down, quite friendly-like, to a bit of
supper, last time he come. I suppose he feels lonely; he seems
pleasant-spoken, and is liked by everybody round here; poor man, he
oughtn't to be without a mate. He's taken a great likin' to Annie Bray;
but then, of course, he's got some sense of what's becomin'; she's years
too young for him."

"Too young! I should think so," indignantly; "he's old enough to be her
grandfather."

"No, Sandy,--no, I think not," said Miss Dinsmore, pausing thoughtfully
at her door-step. "Old Mr. Bray would have been nigh upon eighty come
next harvest; but then Annie has nobody to look out for her now you
know, exceptin' Amos, who a'n't over wide-awake, between you and me,
though an honester man never lived."

I was very willing to part with Miss Dinsmore.

"Another afternoon experience like this will make a hermit of me," I
muttered, impatiently, as I strode away in the same direction from which
I had come.

Miss Darry, Mr. Leopold, anybody, was better than Annie Bray, with her
sweet, pale face, in my present mood.

"Annie has nobody to look out for her now, you know": many a day I
remembered with a pang that this was too true.


CHAPTER. XIII.

I sold my forge and went to the city. My name appeared in the catalogue
of the fall exhibition:--"Forest Scene, by Alexander Allen." I have no
reason to suppose that the genuine merit of my picture secured for it a
place in the gallery, though doubtless some as poor by established
artists found their way there; but these having proved they could do
better could afford to be found occasionally below concert pitch.
However, Mr. Leopold commended it as highly as his conscience would
permit, and I reaped the reward; while Miss Darry gloried over its
admission as an unalloyed tribute to ability, and treasured the
catalogue more carefully than my photograph. The same course of study
and labor which I had pursued in Warren was continued in the city, with
this difference: I had not the pure air, simple food, regular life,
manual exertion, or social evenings at Hillside. Miss Darry wrote to me
regularly, but I felt wearied after her letters. There were no tender
assurances of undying affection, so soothing, doubtless, to tired brain
and heavy heart; but they read somewhat in this style:--

     "MY DEAR SANDY,--Won't you begin at once a course of German
     reading? 'Das Leben Jesu' of Strauss will help you
     wonderfully. The old Platonic philosophers have done you
     some good; but you have a faith too childlike, a complete
     reliance upon Providence quite too unreasoning, for a man of
     your ability. Through your own developed self you must learn
     to find the Supreme Intelligence,--not to spell him out
     letter by letter in every flower that grows, every trifling
     event of your life. You began with belief in the old
     theological riddle of the Trinity; then with perception of
     the Creator in his visible world; but to your Naturalism you
     must add at least a knowledge of Mysticism,
     Transcendentalism,--mists which, veiling indeed the outward
     creation, are interpenetrated by the sun for personal
     illumination, more alluring by their veiled light, like
     those sunned fogs Mr. Leopold deals with occasionally, than
     the clear every-day atmosphere of beliefs sharply outlined
     by a creed. When you have sounded the entire scale of
     prevailing and past theories, even to the depths of
     unbelief, then alone are you able, as a reasoning being, to
     translate God's dealings with you into consistent religious
     faith."

And ended often with,--

     "I hope you work hard, intensely, in your art. Do not think,
     when you lay aside your brush, you lay aside the artist
     also. Genius is unresting. A picture may shape itself in
     your brain at any hour, by day or night; and don't be too
     indolent, my dear boy, to give it outward embodiment, if it
     does."

"I was sadly disappointed at the result of the last," she wrote once.
"Mr. Lang showed it to Mr. Peterson, the sculptor, who pronounced it
slightly below the average first attempts. Of course, from your devotion
to coloring, you did not feel sufficiently interested to put forth all
your powers; still I accept the trial as a proof of your affection.
Having greater genius for painting, you could certainly succeed in
sculpture, nevertheless, if you heartily labored at it. I could never
accept the definition of genius given by the author of 'Rab and his
Friends,' which limits it, if I remember rightly, to an especial
aptitude for some one pursuit. Genius is a tremendous force, not
necessarily to succeed only in one channel, although turned to one by
natural bent."

       *       *       *       *       *

Little Annie, at my earnest request, wrote to me occasionally. It was a
brief parting with her: she feared her own self-control, possibly. I
know I feared mine; for, had she showed actual grief, I might have
pacified it at the cost of my profession or my life. She wrote in this
wise:--

     "DEAR SANDY,--I know of course you are very busy, for Miss
     Darry told me at Hillside that your painting was in the
     Exhibition, and that you were rapidly becoming a great
     artist; and this makes me think I ought to confess to you,
     Sandy, that I was wrong that morning when I called Miss
     Darry proud. She has been very kind to me lately. She said
     it was not right that I should be taught music, and all
     sorts of lovely, pleasant studies, and not know how to write
     and cipher. So she teaches me with Mrs. Lang's sisters. She
     says I already express myself better than I did, and I can
     cast up father's account-book every Saturday night; but
     please forgive me, dear brother Sandy, I long for that stiff
     old work-hour to be over, that I may run up to Mrs. Lang's
     sun-shiny room, with its flowers, pictures, piano, and
     herself. Miss Darry, because of her very great talents,
     Sandy, is far above me. Do you know, though you are to be a
     great painter, she seems to me more talented than you, with
     your old home-like ways? But then we sha'n't have those
     home-like ways any more. Oh, Sandy, we miss you! but I do
     hope you will be good and great and happy. Miss Darry says
     you work night and day. But you must sleep some, or you'll
     be sick. I always fancied great men were born great; it must
     be hard to have to be made so. I guess you will be glad to
     hear tha

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