A Knickerbocker Anthology
Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A KNICKERBOCKER ANTHOLOGY:

SELECTED SHORT WORKS FROM THE KNICKERBOCKER,

BY VARIOUS AUTHORS

All works in this collection were published from 1851 to 1861 in The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine: Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor and publisher.

CONTENTS.

————

Part One: From the Life of Ralph Roanoke
by Edward P. Mitchell

- Random Leaf from the Life of Ralph Roanoke
- Random Leaf from the Life of Ralph Roanoke
- Random Leaf from the Life of Ralph Roanoke
- Reminiscences of Childhood
- My First Battle
- My First Speech
- Lights and Shadows of School-Life
- Punishment is a Science
- Periscopics

Part Two: From the Vault at Pfaff's

- The 'Walter Mapes' Poems — Charles Astor Bristed

- My Ghost — William North

- What Jedd Pallfry Found in the Coffin — Thomas Bailey Aldritch

- The Lost Soul — Richard H. Stoddard
- Jubal, the Ringer — Fitz-James O'Brien
- The Death of Virgil — Richard H. Stoddard
- The Jasper Signet — Richard H. Stoddard
- The Little Giant — Henry Clapp, Jr.

- Little Peddlington: Otherwise Called Bosville — Charles Taber Congdon

- The Taxidermist — Fitz-Hugh Ludlow

- The Wives of the Poets — Thomas Bailey Aldritch

- Bob O' Link — Fitz-James O'Brien

- A New Theory of Bohemians — Charles Astor Bristed

- The Bullfinch — Fitz-James O'Brien

[Vol. XXXIX, No. 4 (April, 1852)]

RANDOM LEAF FROM THE LIFE OF RALPH ROANOKE.

'IT takes all kinds of people to make a world,' and all kinds of people assemble in the city of New-Orleans. During the winter, or carnival season, the weather is delightful. On the Levee you meet with people of every language, nation, and color. It is just the spot of all others on the North American continent to study human nature. It was one of my most pleasing pastimes to rise in the morning, at five o'clock, and cultivate an appetite for the delicious breakfasts served up at the St. Charles hotel, by a stroll along the Levee to the market-place, while the perfume was fresh upon the newly-gathered bouquets of flowers which were ever and anon presented you, for the trifling sum of a Yankee shilling, by the dark-eyed brunettes of the sunny South. Oh, their manners were so bewitching, and their movements so graceful, that the veriest old woman-hater—pardon, ye old bachelors, I believe there are a few more such left—found them irresistible; and many were the gallant knights from Yankee-land, in search of a new market for their 'notions,' who were plundered of all their loose change, until they became sufficiently wary to leave their purses at home.

During one of my rambles, I was attracted by the soliloquy of a philosophical 'loafer,' who had spent the night under the broad canopy of heaven, with nothing but a cotton-bale for his pillow. As he sat rubbing his unshaved chin, contemplating with rueful countenance his last remaining 'levy,' which he had succeeded in chasing into the corner of his last un-hole-y pocket, be soliloquized: 'I 'm no longer decent; I 'm a disgrace to my cloth. I 'll be taken for a 'loafer,' if this beard is not shaven off. But I can't do without my julep, and this is my last shilling: what is to be done?' The struggles between the demands of decency and the cravings of a vitiated appetite appeared intensely absorbing; and there he sat, the picture of despondency, scratching his head for a new idea; until suddenly his dull eye lit up with a momentary flash of intelligence, and he continued: 'I have it! I have it! I 'll toss up. Here goes! Heads, a julep; tails, a shave.' Up went the levy, and, chuckling with the excitement, he leaned forward to see which side had it; when, seeing tails uppermost, his barometer was for a moment all stormy, and his high hopes lost their bearings; until another bright idea came across his vision, and he again 'sung out:' 'That's not fair; I 'll try it again. Here goes! Heads, julep; tails, shave.' Up went the levy the second time. This effort brought up heads, when, springing to his feet and rubbing his hands in ecstacy, he cried: 'Julep it is!' and off he ran, at full speed, to the nearest saloon, to cool his coppers with that delightful beverage called a julep.

Strolling on toward the market place, the smile which was yet playing over my countenance, in memory of my late adventure, was suddenly chased away by one of those tragic episodes in life which blanch the cheek and send the warm blood home to the heart. A noble ship had just been hauled in, and had her first gang-way plank run out as I reached the Levee. A tall, firmly-knit man walked on shore, and stopped a moment to look about him. This was his first visit. Every thing is strange and bewildering to him. His head is almost turned with the whirl and excitement which he sees going on around him, and he feels that he is indeed a 'stranger in a strange land.' But his revery is doomed to be of short duration. He has not been standing five minutes before he is seen and recognized by one who has been in search of him for many years, each year increasing the venom of his unsatisfied vengeance for injuries inflicted and unatoned for in other days. The victim stands totally unconscious of the presence of an enemy whom he had escaped for years; but the enemy, turning with rage, seizes the first weapon within reach, (a heavy stick of cord-wood,) and, before the by-standers have any idea of his intentions, has felled the stranger to the earth, and stands over him exulting in his fall. 'Who shall unravel this mystery?' 'who shall explain this daring act?' is the universal cry. It is clear to every one present that not a word has passed between the parties. One of them has just landed from a vessel entering port: what connection can there be between him and the man on shore? In a moment they were surrounded, and the belligerent man secured. Let him tell his own story: 'Gentlemen: ten years ago this d——d rascal and I resided in the city of St. Louis. We were both desperate characters. We crossed each other's path in many places, and many times we were on the eve of mortal combat, but he always shrank from a fair and open field and no favor. Finally he caught me helplessly intoxicated, and fell upon me with his bowie-knife, and left me for dead. He fled the country. I recovered slowly, and day after day, as I lay too much prostrated to turn on my bed, I vowed in my heart to follow him to the ends of the earth. I have at length found him. He is now in the condition he left me in, and I am revenged.'

After delivering this speech, in slow and measured accents, he folded his arms in conscious dignity and self-possession, awaiting his removal to prison.

'Such is life.' 'We are fearfully and wonderfully made.' What immense intellectual power was in this dreadful man! What capacity for good deeds! Alas! that in the inscrutable ways of PROVIDENCE such intellects should fall to the charge of parents totally incapable of appreciation and proper training. But methinks I see bright visions in the future. The subject of early training never before occupied so large a space in the thoughts of mothers—our only proper moral tutors—and may GOD give them light and strength!

The transition from the Middle and Western States to the city of New-Orleans, in days gone by, was as great as the change from an Atlantic city to one of the Old World. Indeed, the change was even more marked, inasmuch as no other city of the same number of inhabitants with that of New-Orleans could present such a varied and cosmopolitan population. My friend, the soliloquizing 'loafer,' was only one of a thousand strongly-marked characters to be met with by the close observer. Months might be spent in contemplation in the market place and on the Levee, and the new phases of character would be as continually changing as are the various colors in the rainbow-spray that floats in fantastic forms around the brow of Niagara.

But hark! a shrill, harsh, piercing, grating sound is floating upon the air, as if Mount Ætna had taken cold, and was indulging in the agony of a sneeze. It announces the arrival of one of those floating palaces from the upper country, a high-pressure steam-boat, freighted with the varied productions of the valley of the Mississippi: beef, in barrels and on foot; pork, ditto; horses, mules, sheep, corn, oats, flour, beans, tobacco, hemp, lead, eggs, butter, nuts, geese, turkeys, ducks, chickens; and last, though not least, sundry 'Hoosiers,' 'Buckeyes,' 'Suckers,' 'Pukes,' and 'Wolvereens,' representing this incongruous mass of live stock, all wide awake, and ready for business. Some there may be who have visited New-Orleans before, and have had some experience in the modus operandi of selling turkeys; and others whose only knowledge comes from wonderful stories of how a man must keep both eyes open to hold fast to what the law allows him. Unfortunately, such fellows fail to profit by advice, since they are too prone to look upon it as the manufacture of rival traders, who would like to keep all the market to themselves.

The arrival of a steam-boat from the upper country brings together the 'Poultry-Dealers,' a class of population unknown in any other city of the Union, and confined almost exclusively to the female sex; a motley crowd of the fag-ends and waste-pieces of humanity, so strangely amalgamated as to verify the old adage, that 'It takes a wise child to know its own father.' It is usual to place such freight as poultry in coops, on the hurricane-deck of the vessel; and in discharging the cargo, these coops are the first to be removed. Hence, the sale of such ventures generally commences immediately on the arrival of the vessel; and it very often happens that before the coops are entirely discharged, the group of poultry-dealers are assembled on the Levee plotting a grand 'coup de Louis Napoleon.' The usual process with traders who have experience, is to look out for some huge pile of cotton-bales or other produce, and so arrange their coops as to have them fortified on all sides from the advances of the poultry-dealers, whom they very properly regard in the light of enemies. By this means, with the aid of one or two assistants armed with knives and tomahawk, they can keep all hands off the coops but their own; and then they hand out their turkeys securely, one by one, taking good care never to let one go until they get the money in their fists. But alas for those who have never cut their eye-teeth on the penny whistle! I have seen them running the gauntlet after the following manner: The dealers are always on the look-out for 'green-horns,' and know them at a glance. As soon as they see one, they surround his coops and commence jabbering like monkeys, and just about as intelligibly. This confuses him; and, watching their opportunity, they press upon him, all wanting to pay for a turkey which they have managed to get hold of at the same time, and each offering a bill, which requires time to hunt up the proper change. He soon becomes absorbed, and loses sight of his coops, and the minions of the dealers are then as busy as bees, emptying them, and covering their plunder like magic under their long dresses. Thus he goes on swimmingly over one coop, and his visions are bright with the profits he is realizing; for every turkey that he gets the money for is bringing him treble what it cost him. But what is his horror when, on looking around for the next coop to commence operations on, he finds it entirely empty; and then another, and another, until, in a terrific agony, he cries out, 'Murder! murder! Stop thief! Every body run here! I 'm robbed! ruined! I had a hundred turkeys, and, before GOD, I 've only got the money for ten!' And, wringing his hands in anguish, he sinks down in hopeless despair.

In the days of which I write, there were 'gens d'armes' for the protection of life and property at night, and no city was more safe than New-Orleans; but experience had not then taught the efficiency of a day-police; and such robberies were frequent occurrences in the face of day; and the only protection the poor fellow had who ventured on shore with his coops of poultry was his own good right arm and mother-wit. Experience was then, as it is now, a good teacher, and no one ever suffered more than once; but strangers were continually pouring in with every arrival, and the unwary adventurer was 'done for' before he knew of the danger, and it was accomplished with such dexterity that redress was impossible.

But the New-Orleans of 1852 is not the New-Orleans of twenty years ago. The innovations of the Anglo-Saxon race have been steadily undermining the manners and customs of the aborigines of the country; and the lover of romance, on returning to the city after a lapse of years, sighs for the good old times that have passed away for ever. The Creole influence breathed its last breath in the late struggle against the amalgamation of all the municipalities under one government; and New-Orleans is now an Anglo-Saxon city. That her course is onward in the march of improvement, in wealth and commercial importance, no one can for a moment fail to perceive; but then, I cannot help regretting that this one spot should not have retained its primitive simplicity of manners as a reminiscence; an oäsis in the desert of this unromantic age.

But it is not with the New-Orleans of 1852 that I have any sympathy. I love to dwell upon its peculiarities in days of yore, when life was a romance, rather than a reality, the very antipodes to life in any Anglo-Saxon city. It is true, business had to be attended to in those days as well as now, for man is no where exempt from labor; but then there was no occasion for violent and wearing exertion, or rail-road speed to keep ahead of his neighbor. The fruits of labor were so well preserved and appropriated, that, 'enough was as good as a feast,' and all the work that was done was in reality more deserving the name of rational exercise than hard labor.

The proprietor of an establishment was on terms of close intimacy with his employées, and when the business of the day was over, night found them together in search of congenial amusements. On first observing this feature in society, I was forcibly struck with it, and could not but admit that the contrast between this course and that of ours of the Northern cities was manifestly against us, where the distance between the employer and his clerk is so great, and his disinclination to see him taking any amusement whatever is so well understood, that a young man has to tax his wits to find enjoyments that do not come under his displeasure.

How essential are pleasing recreations, both to health and happiness! And how much more certainly would the recreations sought by young men be instructive and honorable, when shared in the society of their employers! But it seems we are ever playing at cross-purposes. The youth who feels the injustice of his unsympathising employer, awaits the 'good time coming' when he is to assume the reins of government of an establishment, and find his redress in visiting his old experience, with compound interest, on the devoted heads of his employées.

[Vol. XXXIX, No. 6 (June, 1852)]

RANDOM LEAF FROM THE LIFE OF RALPH ROANOKE.

THE year 1837 will long be remembered in the annals of the mercantile world, for the many and heavy losses which were sustained by the merchants of the eastern cities, who dealt largely with the West. It was my misfortune to belong to that class of sufferers; and in the hope of retrieving some of my losses by a personal interview with my customers, I travelled on horseback, in stage-coaches, and on steam-boats, throughout the northern part of Missouri and Illinois. The only advantage I derived from this tedious trip was a more thorough conviction of the mistaken policy of the prevailing credit system, together with some insight into backwoods life, and perhaps some lessons which may prove useful hereafter. This trip was full of adventure, and now, whilst looking back upon it, I feel strongly tempted to buttonhole the reader, while memory recounts some of the incidents by the way.

I left St. Louis on the steam-boat 'Howard,' bound for Independence, Missouri, with the intention of taking horse at that point, and visiting the principal towns and settlements on each side of the river on my return. Owing to the character of the banks of the Missouri river, very many of the principal towns are located some distance back from the water, according to the width of the bottom-lands; and in such cases the town-site is chosen on the bluffs, and a landing made with one or more warehouses, representing such towns. We touched at one of those landings, and great was my surprise to see standing out on the muddy bank the pretty face of Mrs. Thrush, the former Miss Linnet, whose soft and sweet voice was familiar to all the concert and opera-goers of the day. I had seen her in Philadelphia, as the 'Elberta' to Mrs. Wood's Norma, and my astonishment may be easily conceived at finding her in the far West, standing on the banks of the Missouri river, surrounded by a few companions, and any quantity of trunks and band-boxes. At first sight, I scarcely recognized her, the change had been so great. When I saw her last, she was Miss Linnet; but as I scanned her rounded and more matured form, I saw that she was now Mrs. somebody, but I knew not who, having myself been buried in the wilds of the West whilst time had been working the change in her. The party was soon hurried on board, and the boat under weigh again, making the hills and valleys reëcho her high-pressure voice, as she struggled against the current. There were but few comforts in those days on board a western steam-boat for a delicate lady; and for one that was 'enceinte,' the deepest sympathies of man's nature would be awakened. The passengers all vied with each other in contributing to the comforts of this interesting lady, and I had the pleasure of giving up my berth to her, which was one of the best on the boat. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Thrush, and Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale. The gratitude of Mrs. Thrush for what was only a common civility, which every lady will receive in the West, soon led to an acquaintance with the party; and on my recalling the many times I had seen Miss Linnet in 'Norma,' and other operas, I was soon installed a friend, and was often favored with one of those delightful ballads which no one knew how to sing with more taste and feeling. The time passed pleasantly, and in the course of conversation, the cause of their visit up the Missouri river was explained to me. Mr. Nightingale and Mrs. Thrush were giving concerts together. They had visited St. Louis for that purpose, but finding Mrs. Thrush was too near her confinement to make her début before a city audience, they had been urged by her money-hunting husband to go into the interior, and give concerts in the small towns until her recovery. In carrying out this plan, they were on their way to Independence, at that time the extreme boundary of demi-civilization.

We were several days on the passage, and during that time I had abundant evidences of the fatal mistake Mrs. Thrush had made, in changing her name from the softer one of Linnet to that of Thrush. Indeed, he should have been called 'Cuckoo,' for, like that selfish bird, which always lays its eggs in some other bird's nest, and trusts to luck for the hatching, he was too lazy to make his own living, and had married her on speculation. We arrived at Independence without accident, and took up our quarters at the same hotel, (if a shanty can be honored with such an appellation.) Handbills were stuck up announcing a grand concert by Mr. Nightingale and Mrs. Thrush, from the New-York and Philadelphia theatres, Mrs. Thrush to accompany herself on the piano. The town of Independence had made a rapid stride in the march of progression. Owners of town-lots were dreaming dreams, and luxuriating in floating visions of wealth, at the thoughts of their embryo city having attracted the attention of 'artistes' from the great cities of the East. Curiosity was on tip-toe to see that wonderful thing, a 'piany.' There were a few among the aged inhabitants who could trace back in the deep recesses of by-gone days a time when they had heard a concert; but a concert accompanied by a 'piany' was an era to which, in their fondest aspirations, they had never soared. Imagine, then, the astonishment of the party, (who, in announcing the concert to have a piano accompaniment, were under the impression that any town could furnish half a dozen,) when they discovered that no such article could be obtained within fifty miles. A council was called, at which I had the honor to be invited. Mr. Nightingale suggested the propriety of announcing at once that, as no piano could be procured, the concert would go on without one. But Mr. Thrush, who appeared to be master of ceremonies, (Mrs. Thrush being the centre of attraction,) refused positively to make any such announcement until after the company had assembled, and then giving the privilege to all those who were dissatisfied to go to the door-keeper and get back their money, relying upon the curiosity and modesty of the audience preventing them from retiring. This course was adopted, contrary to my advice and that of some few of my acquaintances, who had formerly lived in St. Louis.

The evening came, and the bar-room, being the only one that was large enough for a concert, was crowded at an early hour. Unfortunately, they forgot that it was dark at seven o'clock, and appointed the fashionable city hour of eight for the commencement. The time hung heavily from seven to eight o'clock, and was filled up by various parties inviting each other up to the bar to take a drink; and this being frequently reciprocated, the steam was generated so high that it only wanted the announcement that the concert would have to go on without a 'piany,' to produce an explosion.

One large, shaggy-haired fellow, a Rocky-Mountain hunter, sung out:

'I 've hearn buffalo-bulls bellow, I 've hearn grisly bears growl, I 've hearn Blackfeet Indians yell, and now I 've come here and paid my quarter to hear the 'forty-piany,' and I 'm not goin' away till I hear it. So trot it out. Come up, boys, and take a drop of the juice of 'old corn;' and if that 'piany' ain't forthcomin', the way these fellows will have to make tracks won't be slow.'

Poor Mrs. Thrush was ready to faint with alarm, and the look she gave all those who appeared to be civilized was so deploring that I felt she must be protected at all risks. I whispered to my friends, and they promised their assistance. In the mean time, some of those who were equally disappointed with the Rocky-Mountaineer, but who were less violent, proposed that they get back their money, and made a rush for the door. Another fellow, who went by the name of 'Moderating Bill,' proposed that they should hold a meeting, and give them d——d 'impositioners' twelve hours to leave the town. This compromise met the approbation of 'Rocky Mountain,' who saw that the boys had not their dander up high enough to attack a woman; and with one Indian war-whoop the party broke for the town 'groggery,' there to concert measures of redress.

The worst opposition being thus disposed of, and order partially restored, the concert was opened by Mr. Nightingale's singing one of his operatic songs full of grand flourishes, and getting hissed for his pains; one fellow crying out:

'Why, look here, stranger, is that what you call singin'? Why, my black Tom can beat that all holler, if you give him a pint of the essence of corn to wet his whistle.'

And suiting the action to the word, he pulled out a long, greasy buckskin purse, and slamming down a quarter, said:

'If you do n't believe it, jist kiver that bet, if you dare.'

At this juncture, to create a diversion, I jumped up on a bench and shouted: 'Silence! the lady is going to sing.' At which Mrs. Thrush took the hint, and, trembling with anxiety, rose to sing. Her voice acted like a charm, and seemed to soothe the irritated demi-savages, and delighted the 'knowing ones.' At the close of the song there was considerable applause, with here and there a remark, 'That 's good; but I came here to hear the 'piany.' '

Our friend with the quarter, who had been listening in breathless silence, screamed out:

'Now that 's what I call singin';' and, turning to Mr. Nightingale, said: 'Now I say, stranger, bein' it 's your turn next, just try if you can't leave off your d——d hullabulloo, and give us somethin' nice and feelin' like; somethin' to take out the aggravation of not hearin' that piany.'

Mr. Nightingale, encouraged by the peaceable turn matters were taking, tried it on again, with another grand flourish; but it was no go: he had not gone through one verse, before our quondam friend cried out:

'Damnation! did n't I tell you to stop that hullabulloo? I say, boys, let 's hire this chap to call up the hogs of cold mornin's, when it 's so tryin' to crawl out from under our warm buffalo-skins.'

This interruption was quieted by another song from Mrs. Thrush; and here ended programme the first.

During the intermission of ten minutes, I took occasion to suggest to both Mr. Nightingale and Mrs. Thrush, that these people were not accustomed to hear scientific music, and that if they would introduce some of our national airs, and plain, old-fashioned ballads, they would doubtless turn the tide of displeasure, and make a favorable sensation on these natives.

My suggestion was thankfully received, and Mr. Nightingale opened the second programme with 'Hail Columbia,' without the fancy-work, and brought down rapturous applause. Mrs. Thrush sang, 'I 'm o'er young to marry yet;' 'Oh, I 'm in love, but I won't tell with who;' 'If a body meet a body comin' through the rye;' and these songs were sung with so much sweetness and naïveté, that, in the ecstacy of his delight, our gambling friend picked out a half-dollar and offered to bet that 'she could out-sing any woman in them parts;' ending his eulogium with the grand climax, 'that she was too good for any common man's wife, and should have been the helpmate of the great 'Old Hickory.' '

The evening's entertainment closed apparently to the satisfaction of all those who had heard the second programme, except, perhaps, the grasping Mr. Thrush, who had not yet recovered from the heart-breaking employment as door-keeper, of having to refund over one half the receipts on account of the absence of the 'piany.'

The next morning, 'Rocky Mountain's' party had posted up an order for the concert-givers to leave the county in six hours, or take the consequences; which order they thought it most prudent to obey: and never shall I forget the melancholy feelings of heart-felt pity I experienced for the once charming Miss Linnet, as she was dragged off in an open ox-wagon, in search of some more congenial and safe place for the display of her musical powers; nor of unmitigated contempt for her husband for his sordid avarice in forcing his accomplished wife through such degrading drudgery.

Thus ended the first concert in the town of Independence, in the year 1837.

[Vol. XL, No. 3 (September, 1852)]

RANDOM LEAF

FROM THE LIFE OF RALPH ROANOKE.

NEVER shall I forget my first visit to the city of New-Orleans. In the flight of time it was but yesterday; and yet how changed its aspects! It is one of the startling evidences of the growth of this western world, that on what side soever we turn our eyes, we behold all full of the vigor of life and progress. Take any point you will and compare its present condition with that of twenty years ago, and Imagination looks bewildered, as if Reality had outstripped her in the race, and put her prophecies in the back-ground. It is but thirty-five years since New-Orleans was only known to the inhabitants of the great valley of the Mississippi through the semi-annual reports of returning bargemen, who measured the fifteen hundred miles of the circuitous windings of the 'Father of Waters' step by step, to trading-posts at Kaskaskia and St. Louis. These hardy sons of toil and adventure, with their barges and tow-boats, formed the only connecting-link in the chain of communication and in the interchange of commodities. I have written fact, and not fable, when I declare that the imagination of that period stands confounded at the thousand floating palaces that are now daily ploughing the muddy waters of the Mississippi, and delivering the weekly papers of St. Louis and New-Orleans in due season to their numerous subscribers, with the same certainty as a modern dispatch-post. In the old world, the dazzled and delighted traveller may satiate his love of the grand and beautiful in the ever-varying display of palaces, and temples, and pyramids, built as it were by fairy hands; yet the age in which we live is one of thought, feeling, progress; and the humanity within us is startled at the saddening contrast between the general condition and destiny of mankind in the old world, when compared with the blessings that await him in the new world. In the former, man has reached a culminating point, where the problem of the government under which he lives has been solved; while in the latter, there is no aspect of old age and decrepitude, but on the contrary, a country just bursting into manhood, with prosperity, power, and glory for its inheritance; the chosen nation to push liberty and independence to its utmost capacity. Shall it not be esteemed a blessing to dwell in this favored land? Is it not cause for deep and manly gratitude to the 'GIVER of every good and perfect gift,' that a new home has been found without the pale of misrule and despotism, away from the depressing evidences of hopeless, down-trodden humanity?

It was a bright, joyous Sabbath morning in the month of December, when I first set foot on shore in the gay metropolis of Louisiana. I had left St. Louis but a few days previously, in drear and hoary winter, and the realization of my escape from the bleak winds, deep snows, and ice-bound shores of Missouri, to the green fields, perfumed bowers, and warm sunshine of Louisiana, was a tangible reality, which exceeded all my dreams of fairy-land. To one who had never visited a tropical climate, whose life had been passed in northern latitudes, no picture of the imagination could equal the reality, and the effect upon my spirits and temperament can be readily conceived. When we enter a new city, a new country, or a new society, with our inner life in harmony with external nature, we are ever ready to find the beauties, and to overlook the deformities around us. We have all felt this truth more or less frequently. Indeed, methinks we might trace most of our prejudices to some ill-timed or irritating cause, or some dyspeptic, bilious, or splenetic condition. I will even go farther, and venture to assert that first impressions are not always the result of instinct, but often of physical condition at the moment, just as courage is a matter of breadth of chest and size of lungs. I was therefore prepared to see the bright side of the picture, and how astonishingly easy it is to find beauties every where in nature when we set out, having obtained our own consent to see them!

The Sabbath in New-Orleans is a gala day; a day of rest, according to my understanding; a day wisely spent when spent in the cultivation of the higher sentiments. And here let us make no mistake by judging our neighbor from our point of view, but rather let us beg leave to take his arm, and ask the favor of a glance through his spectacles, and in nine cases out of ten we shall agree with him. To be turned out on a bright day in high health, at peace with all the world, and most especially with one's self, is, after all, no mean, unenviable condition; at least I did not think so when I found myself on the Levee at New-Orleans, twenty years ago. Like the joyous school-boy with a whole Saturday's holiday, and sundry fips and shillings in his pocket, the difficulty was where to go, and what to buy first, in order to make the best use of the 'little eternity' at my command. But hark! the spirit-stirring fife and drum, and the roar of cannon on the plaza, announce the hour for morning parade, and who stands still or stops to consider, with a bugle in his ear? The French legions of honor amongst the volunteer companies of the Crescent City might have drawn a smile from the stern features of a Napoleon; but to an untravelled youngster they were grand demonstrations; and I watched their evolutions, performed, I must say, with French precision and esprit du corps, with feelings of unalloyed admiration and delight. It was a beautiful sight to see 'poor humanity' decked out in holiday clothes, enjoying the bright day before them; and to the philosopher and philanthropist, it would have afforded a fine field for reflection to trace with the mind's eye this numerous throng to their individual homes; to see how necessary was this small effort at display, this show of pomp and military trappings, to keep up that equilibrium in the chances of human enjoyment, that leaves the preponderance on the side of life, law, and order. It may be that the pleasure of this one gala day in seven was, to many a poor struggler after an honest living, as the key that winds the monotonous circle of hours that make up his daily existence; his only incentive to live, and hope, and struggle on in the great battle of life. By way of episode to this tableau, the Catholic cathedral stood hard by, and ever and anon, between the loud thundering of the cannon, the grand and solemn peal of its organ came floating on the air, infusing a religious sentiment, breathing a solemn prayer, and echoing GOD'S blessing upon the assembled multitude. Who shall say there was sincere worship in the cathedral, and not on the plaza? Who shall decide from which point, church or plaza, the most human brotherhood and sympathy was awakened? Does worship consist in the pompous ceremonies of priests amongst the dead languages, or in the free and hearty response of brotherly sympathy?

There is nothing which has such a humanizing influence upon our minds and hearts as travelling. We see nature in all its various phases, and become more merciful to each other's faults, and more tolerant of each other's opinions. Once out of the atmosphere of home, and old habits, and fixed notions, in which we have been enchained all our lives, we begin to doubt our own infallibility, and finally discover that some of our time-honored opinions are not as self-evident to others as they have been to us. We lose our bigotry, and learn to see and to appreciate virtue in a Turk as readily as in a Christian; and in this appreciation we make the discovery that the Turk is our brother in the sight of GOD, and the creation of his hands. We grasp the great truth that GOD has implanted the sentiment of worship in every human heart, and that the golden rule of 'doing unto others as we would have them do unto us,' is the divine gift of GOD to every immortal soul. The world is constantly undergoing changes. Men believe according to their consciences. Those who profess to be Christians in the present day are not as intolerant and bigoted as were Christians of former days, and just as surely will not be as intolerant and bigoted as now in days to come. Change and progress are the results of natural laws, and it would be doubting not only the wisdom, but the goodness of GOD, to suppose for one moment that the world is not now nearer to the golden rule than it was in past generations. Yes! the golden rule promulgated by CHRIST finds a hearty response and a happy home in the conscience of every intelligent being, proving conclusively that true religion does not consist in outward forms and ceremonies, or stereotyped dogmas, but in a universal brotherhood, looking forward with confidence and affection to the sunshine of GOD'S eternal love to perfect us in HIS own image.

How frequently it happens that a sudden rencontre with a friend changes the whole current of our thoughts and feelings! It was preëminently so with me on this occasion. Hitherto I had been left to my own fancy as to where I should go, and to accident for the channel of my thoughts. But now, on meeting with a friend, a resident of the city, I put myself under his charge for a peep at the lions. A ride to Lake Pontchartrain was the first proposition. We were soon mounted on two 'good ones' from old Kentucky, and dashed away at a gallop. Our road lay along a curving line of high ground, (rather a scarce development in those parts,) which had been macadamized with shells instead of stone, and thus it received the poetical cognomen of the 'Shell Road.' There was but little to see on this road. The pleasure was all in the exhilaration in feeling rather than of sight, and reminded me of the modern philosopher who said, 'he did not drink liquor for the love of it, but because it gave him such princely feelings.' Our road ran through a heavily-timbered swamp, and could lay no claims to scenery, the view being entirely confined to tall cypress-trees that emerged from the murky water decked out in long scarfs, shawls and mantillas of wild moss, which grew in flowing, graceful, and fantastic forms around their ever-green boughs, with here and there an alligator luxuriating in the warm sunshine.

In half an hour we were at the lake. It was one of those quiet days with scarcely a breeze to win a rippling smile from the placid countenance of beautiful Pontchartrain. There she reposed in conscious beauty, like some winning siren awaiting the passion-storm to make the adventurous craftsman tremble for his temerity in daring to luxuriate upon her gentle bosom. To have seen the lake at that day was to have seen all that was interesting; and a peep at the watch reminded us that the hour of eleven was approaching, and we must put spurs to our horses to be back in time for a sermon from the Rev. Mr. Clapp, than whom few divines have enjoyed a more enviable reputation. Not all the terrific combinations of yellow fever and cholera could drive him from the spiritual consolation of his flock. We reached the church in time to hear him deliver one of the most able and stirring appeals to his congregation that it was ever my good fortune to listen to; and although I had no personal acquaintance with him, yet if this notice should ever meet his eye, he will, I trust, excuse the zeal with which I subscribe to the doctrine of 'giving honor to whom honor is due.'

Nothing could be more marked than the difference of temperament that characterizes the native Creole of New-Orleans, and the nervous, sight-seeing Yankee, in whom there is no repose of character. My chaperon was an acclimated northerner, and in doing the polite and agreeable to me, went at it 'con amore,' and left no grass to grow under my feet. After the sermon, he accepted an invitation to dine with me. Dinner over, I confess it would have been much more congenial to my feelings to have taken a seat out on the balcony of our hotel, with one of those delicious regalias we find in New-Orleans to set one to dreaming as he watches the smoke gracefully curling upward toward the deep-blue firmament. But no; my 'through-by-daylight' friend had no idea of wasting our precious sight-seeing moments in any such quiet visions of happiness. Beside, I had brought him a letter of introduction from his correspondents in St. Louis, and I must be properly attended to; and to wait until to-morrow would resuscitate the time-honored adage, ‘Business before pleasure.' He therefore forthwith prepared for a move. Mounting our hats, he ran his arm through mine, and dashed off for a visit to 'Potter's Field,' probably to restrain my rampant fancy, and to whisper a lesson of man's mortality. As we went along, he initiated me in the modus operandi of becoming acclimated; and as I presume one case is a fair sample of the majority, I cannot better instruct my readers than by allowing him to tell his own story:

'It is now five years since I waked up one morning to a sense of my own insignificance, in the small town of P., in Connecticut, and concluded that if I ever wanted to make a noise in the world, or a jingle in my pocket, I must plunge into the great world outside of home. I went down to New-York, and had scarcely landed before I saw a huge pile of linen bags, which they said had cotton in them, which a parcel of sailors and men in their pea-jackets and long trousers, with large, curious fish-hooks in their hands, were rolling away from a long, black-looking ship, and piling up higher than their heads, as if they never could get to the bottom. Thinks I to myself, 'It 's no use mincing matters; if I want any information it won't come to me, I must go to it.'

This is what they call in Yankee-land natural philosophy, and is one of the first lessons they teach their youngsters, as you have no doubt had occasion to observe. I soon got a fellow to point out the skipper of the vessel to me, and thus accosted him: 'I say, captain, that vessel of yours holds a killing lot of them cotton bales, and no mistake. It seems to me you 've put more out of her now than you could put back into her, and yet they tell me she 's half full yet.' Captains, you know, have the name of being a hard set; but their hearts are as tender as a woman's, if you only touch 'em in the right place. They do say that women always smile when you chuck their babies under the chin. Now for my part I 'm a bachelor, and always try to keep away from children; but this much I do know: if you want to make an old 'salt' take a fresh chew of tobacco, and thaw out, just praise his ship. This favorable beginning prepossessed me in favor of the captain, and in the course of conversation I soon found that he regarded New-Orleans as offering the best opening to enterprising young men, just at that time, of any city in the Union. I shall not stop to sift the matter now, but it did occur to me afterward, when I got to New-Orleans, that the captain might have been giving me advice not wholly disinterested, inasmuch as my taking it gave him another passenger on his next voyage. Mind, I do n't assert this for a fact; I merely throw it out as a kind of 'cud' for you to chew on as you go along in the world's experiences.

'Once in New-Orleans, I found it much the same as in all other places. Instead of the demand regulating the supply, there were twenty applicants for situations to one eligible vacancy. And yet I found another general proposition to be equally true, that no man need suffer if he has health and energy. But the greatest difficulty a northerner experiences in becoming permanently located in New-Orleans was now before me in the approaching sickly season, so generally fatal to strangers. As soon as the yellow fever was announced, I began to grow nervous and alarmed; and, as the epidemic was very severe on that occasion, very soon gave up all my chances of preferment in a staunch commission-house, and fled the city, much to the disappointment of my employers. I returned to New-Orleans in the fall, and had again to go through all the uncertainties of finding employment, with my chances materially lessened by the very knowledge that I had not the courage to face the danger. Under this condition of things it required but a short time for me to make the discovery that good business qualifications and good testimonials of character, although necessary here as well as elsewhere, were nevertheless insufficient without the 'sine qua non' of an acclimated citizen. I watched my small savings fade away day by day, leaving me still unemployed; and here, I may say, truly began my battle of life. I must sink back into my former insignificance in Connecticut, or risk all upon the chances of acclimation. I had faith in my courage if I could only get it screwed up. And now was the time or never. The struggle was long and wavering, for, disguise it as I would, it presented but two phases: life with prosperity, or death in the effort. Finally, Pride, Hope, and Ambition, threw their united forces into the crucible, and I came out a man. I returned to my former employers, and promised them I would remain with them the entire year, or perish in the attempt. My former conduct had established my character for veracity, and they readily closed with me on such terms as have continued to increase, until I am now a member of the firm. The sickly season again rolled round, and was ushered in with more than common violence and fatality. Thousands fled from the city, and hundreds fell victims to its ravages. There were many systems of practice and treatment. Every return of the epidemic brought with it some new feature, requiring a different practice from the last, and it was a part of the difficulty to make up one's decision calmly beforehand, after weighing all the various considerations bearing upon the case; and having made the choice, to meet the shock trusting to his constitution rather than his physician. The favorite dependence amongst the native population was good nursing, rather than upon medical treatment. Hence it was necessary to choose between hospital treatment and private nursing. The hospitals were attended by the best physicians, and the nursing was upon a general system. Private nursing involved a private room, either in some Creole family with an attendant physician, or a private room with a quadroon-nurse and physician. I scarcely had a choice. I had a horror of hospitals and crowds of sick and dying about me. I had no Creole family who took an interest in me, and as a consequence was left to the remaining alternative of a quadroon-nurse and physician. If any thing can exceed the panic of a city a prey to yellow fever, with thousands too poor to escape or to procure the necessaries of life, watching the mournful procession of hearses as they pass and repass from hour to hour, from day to day, and from week to week, and at night terrified into intoxication by the dread of becoming the next victims, filling the air with savage yells, and making night hideous, I hope never to witness it. To say that I was not terribly frightened would be to lie outright. Every hair on my head seemed to stand up, and counsel a retreat. But I had passed the Rubicon, and there was no escape. By a strange freak of good fortune, I escaped until a late period in the season, and had all the advantages of the latest experiences in the proper remedies. At length the well-known symptoms of pain in the small of the back and back of the head, and a greenish giddiness ever present to the vision, announced that I must prepare for the ordeal. I shall not dwell upon the painful struggle, nor indeed could I describe it; for in less than twelve hours I was delirious, and remained so during the fearful ravages of the fever, for three days and nights, when the crisis was pronounced over, and symptoms favorable. Thanks to my good, kind nurse, a few more days of her attention and all was well with me. I stood before the world with all the doubts and misgivings at an end. Victory had perched upon my banner; I was an acclimated citizen, and as such, received into full favor in the good city of New-Orleans, where they distrust every body, and call them non-residents, until they become endorsed by the yellow fever. And now, Roanoke, forgive this long yarn about myself. It does one good, you know, to live over his great battles.'

The time occupied in the narration of my friend's story brought us to the suburbs of the city and to the threshold of Potter's Field. This was a low, marshy piece of ground, enclosed by a common, dilapidated fence, quite inadequate for any purposes of protection, had any such precaution been necessary. On approaching nearer, my friend observed: 'You are in luck; they are just now going to dispose of last night's dead from the charity-hospital, and you will have the opportunity of seeing the ceremony.' A group of some half-dozen laboring men, with queer-looking forks, somewhat resembling harpoons, with here and there a spade and shovel, stood in waiting for the approach of a donkey-cart, in which were sundry wooden boxes, apparently made by one of those 'Handy Andys' who can do any thing. It was now the wet season, when it was impossible to dig a hole in the ground more than two feet deep any where back from the Levee without the water's rising to the surface. The object was therefore fully gained when the box containing the body was hidden from view. These boxes were tumbled out like old lumber, and quite unceremoniously chucked into the holes which had been dug to receive them, and were held down under the water with that extraordinary burying-hook, until the grassy sod was replaced. It was a sad sight to look upon, those lifeless bodies thus unfeelingly returned to earth, far away from friends and home, 'unhonored and unsung.'

But New-Orleans is a city of startling pictures and strong contrasts. Scarcely had I recovered from the shock which I had just experienced, when my friend introduced me into the cemetery where the favored few and the cared-for were deposited. This cemetery was surrounded by a high brick wall, into which vaults were inserted, giving the appearance of innumerable tiers of baking-ovens. These vaults were arched, and of just sufficient size to admit a coffin; and the process of burial was thereby rendered very simple and expeditious, it being only necessary to slide in the coffin and close up the arch. These arches were ordinarily walled up with brick, but here and there slabs of marble were to be seen, with names and appropriate inscriptions. There was an air of security in their method of burial when contrasted with the floating palaces to which the poor were consigned, that, while it surprised with its novelty, satisfied, to some extent, my ideas of propriety. The humblest individual might, for a comparatively trifling sum, secure one of these vaults; but, alas! no one came inside that wall without a consideration. Scattered throughout the grounds were monuments of various constructions and devices, and the whole air was redolent with the perfume of flowers, that the living had entwined around the homes of the dead. No sound was heard save the roll of the mocking-bird as he warbled his plaintive 'fantasia' over the city of the departed.

We turned to leave the spot with chastened hearts and feelings not easily described, when my eye rested upon one lone woman in the extreme corner of the enclosure, communing with the dead. Never shall the recollection of that Madonna-like face be obliterated from my memory. As she knelt upon a newly-made sepulchre, with uplifted eyes, from which the hot tears were gushing at every pulsation of her heart, and lips breathing in prayer, while her hands (as if unconsciously) were strewing fresh flowers over the tomb of her departed friend, she seemed an angel that had left her starry home to teach humanity the spirituality of tears.

It is in devotion like this that the true character of woman is developed, and her great moral power manifested. When the tears of anguish and despair are congealed into icicles on the manly cheek by the freezing glances of the world, the sunshine of woman's smile dispels them. When the wealthy clasp themselves closer in their mantles and pass the poor man hurriedly, as if to escape a contaminating atmosphere, woman opens her arms, presses him to her bosom, and warms his despondent heart with the pure fire of sympathy. Alas! that there should be those who are discontented with woman's mission, and are struggling to change her nature and vocation.

[Vol. XL, No. 4 (October, 1852)]

REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD.

FROM THE LIFE OF RALPH ROANOKE.

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WITH A PREFACE TO THE EDITOR.

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IT would do your heart good, Mr. Editor, to hear the triumphant shout which has gone forth from the glad hearts of the rising generation, on finding in your valuable number for June, that 'Old Knick.' has declared in favor of the 'Rights of Children.' That able and interesting article, from the author of 'Schediasms,' has done good service to the cause of education in its broadest sense. It has aroused those 'slow coaches,' the present generation of conservative fathers and mothers, and set them to thinking; and may the light so shine upon their benighted minds that, seeing their evil ways, they may straightway abandon them.

I very much doubt whether there is any greater phenomenon in nature than the subtle instinct and early appreciation of justice to be found in children. When we remember how lasting are their early impressions, and how craving are their young minds for the why and wherefore of every thing, we should not wonder at the apparently sudden perversity of their natures, at the moment when we begin to elevate them to the standard of intelligent and responsible beings. The truth is, they have long before had heart-aches almost to bursting, at the various 'snubbings' which their infantile curiosity has brought down upon them from inconsiderate parents, who had not time, forsooth, to lend a helping idea in the early mysteries which their active brains were trying to solve; not to mention the thousand acts of injustice imposed by brute force. A fatal mistake is made in supposing their minds, wills, hearts, to be, as it were, mere blank sheets of paper, ready for conservative impressions, when, by the law of progression, they were born into the world with instincts, in very many cases, far ahead of our experiences, and are therefore almost perverted and estranged by being regarded as stocks and stones, at the very moment when we turn to them as ready for mental and moral culture. In the humble hope of awakening farther thought, and eliciting other experiences on this most important subject, I send you a reminiscence from an early diary.

I commenced going to school at a very early age, and was doubtless sent for the very sage reason which operated upon the minds of most prudent parents in former days: 'to be kept out of mischief.' My first teacher was a young lady who bore the ominous name of Lynch, and I was the only male scholar in the school. The why and wherefore of this, when there were doubtless other schools in the village, I cannot attempt to explain; but I have a strong impression that my kind parents had no idea of subjecting their hopeful son to the strict discipline of the only boys' school, which was indelibly impressed upon my memory by the far-famed severity of its teacher. This worthy man went by the name of 'Old Flood;' and was so tenacious of primitive ideas, that he took his venerable name for his rule of action, so that whatever he did was not done in 'spots,' as the slang phrase of the day would have it, but in 'floods;' and if a boy got a scourging from 'Old Flood,' although it did not pour upon his devoted head for forty days and forty nights, yet, if he recovered from the effects of it in that time, he was esteemed a lucky urchin. I could not have learned much at Miss Lynch's school, not even to read, for I recollect my father's first attempt to teach me to read at a much later period. In fact, I brought away with me from that school only bitter reminiscences, one of which grew out of an early outbreak of gallantry, which I was egotistical enough to perpetuate in my veritable history.

The town of Liberty was built upon both sides of the main public road, which formed at that period the only street; and as each dwelling had its garden attached to it, the village partook of the long and thin form, rather than the broad and short, and extended over some two miles. The school-house stood exactly in the centre, on the democratic principle of equal rights; consequently the scholars residing on either end of the village had quite a long walk. It happened one morning that one of the girls forgot to bring her slate and pencil, and our strict disciplinarian was so enraged, that she ordered her to return home for them instantly. This unfortunate young girl was one of nature's tenderest flowers. Her father resided at the end of the village, and owing to the extreme cold weather and a heavy fall of snow, she had been sent to school in the family carriage, and the carriage had already been dismissed. At this command, some of the elder girls remonstrated, others declared it was enough to freeze the poor child to death, while the girl herself sobbed as if her heart would break at the harshness of the reprimand, without even realizing the task about to be imposed upon her. But in those days, no laws imposed by petticoat government could be disobeyed with impunity, on the retaliatory principle; for women were then so seldom entrusted with any brief authority, that it reminded one of the old adage of 'putting a beggar on horseback,' etc., to see one clothed with the baton of office. (I beg pardon, ladies, for this equivocal compliment; you will please remember that this is the age of progression, and women 'had n't ought to be' now what they 'used to was.') The novelty of my position, being the only young lord of creation in the school, called loudly for a display of my gallantry, and my indignation was with great difficulty kept in respectful subjection. How gladly would I have stepped forward her champion 'to the death,' and put my veto upon the barbarous order, had I been a few years older! But, the instinct of self-preservation whispered in my ear, that a box on the side of my head would send me rolling over the floor, to the evident amusement of all the school; for what child can check an impulse to laugh at any thing ludicrous? In this dilemma, I nerved myself for a middle course, and proposed a compromise, by suggesting that any other slate would do quite as well until to-morrow, to the no small admiration of the girls, who loudly seconded the motion with offers of slates all round the room. But alas! poor me; far better had I never been born than to have dared to interfere with Miss Lynch's brief authority. Alas! that I had not learned to reason from analogy, to comprehend cause and effect. Then, indeed, I might have suspected the temerity of the act. I might have known that the age of 'Lynch' law was only one degree removed from the 'Flood.' With the activity of an hyena she transferred her rage to me, and fairly screeched out, 'I 'll teach you to mind your own business, you impudent puppy you! Put on your cap, and be off with you, and if you do n't have that slate and pencil here in double-quick time, I ' ll make you remember me the longest day you live!' Now, by my troth, I feel it my solemn duty to record my testimony to the truth of her remark. The recollection of her ugly face and the hardships of the adventure are far more fresh and green in my memory than any remembrances of the laurels won and worn on that trying occasion. The cheerfulness with which I undertook the task had well-nigh commuted my punishment from banishment on a cold morning's walk to something more direful. I watched with anxious eye the struggle, the doubt, and finally the triumph of first resolves, as they passed rapidly through the mind of Miss Lynch, while, with door latch in hand, I stood awaiting her final commands. Off I bounded at a round pace, singing merrily, with heart as light as the fresh air that was whistling around me. What a glorious train of high hopes and aspirations took possession of me, and kept me warm! I hugged myself with honest pride. I made speeches to myself, such as my imagination pictured would be made to me by the astonished and delighted father. I grew hungry in my enthusiasm, and debated my chances whether the grateful mother would offer me a quarter-section of pie, or only bread and butter. Of one thing I was morally certain: I was acting nobly, and would receive an appropriate reward. Under this train of thought and delightful dream, I reached the house warm and buoyant. A rap at the ponderous lion-headed knocker on the outer door brought the sable usher to his post, and his kindly smile and bland manner gave renewed assurances of a hearty welcome if the servant was a faithful prototype of his master. To my inquiry, 'Is Mr. Grumpy at home?' he answered, 'Yes, young Massa; walk in. Ain 't you 'most froze? It am a berry cold mornin', and if I mout be so bold as to 'spress my 'pinion, I should kinder 'clude it must be 'portant business bro't you out dis raw day.' I told him my errand as quickly as possible, and was ushered into the presence of the father. Almost buried in an old armchair, lined with sheep-skin, sat the lord of this castle, warming his gouty shins at a dashing hickory fire, which would make one's heart laugh to gaze upon now-a-days, and reading some musty old book that must have awakened but little sympathy in his old gizzard—for he was destitute of a heart.

Our entrance into the room had no visible effect upon him, and he went on reading, and would probably have read on until Gabriel's trumpet sounded his réveille, if it had not been for a stream of cold air that played 'Paul Pry,' as we opened the door. But how shall I describe my indignation, when the first word he uttered to me was a reprimand! 'What do you want here? What did you come in at that door for?' instead of knowing at a glance that I was the noble boy that had risked being frozen to death to serve his daughter, and taking me in his arms to express his approbation of my conduct. Even when told my errand, instead of making the 'amende honorable,' instead of expressing his gratitude, to say to his servant: 'Get him the slate and pencil quickly, and let him be off with himself;' and to me: 'Boy, mind you shut the door after you, or I 'll teach you better manners.'

Oh, the agony of that moment! Oh, the chilling sensation awakened by such ingratitude! Never could it be forgotten; never could it be forgiven. The old brute! did he suppose it was my business to shut the door? What was his porter there for? The mortified look of the well-bred colored gentleman was some consolation, any how; and while my indignation lasted, I exulted in the ecstasy of an imaginary retaliation of leaving the door open, and breaking sundry panes of glass, to let the winds of retributive justice in upon his gouty old carcass.

With heart bursting with rage and mortification, every step I took back toward the school-house plunged the icicle of ingratitude deeper and deeper into my indignant breast; and the same winds that had whistled those buoyant melodies, and awakened those bright images as I went along, came back upon me on my return, freighted with dark and dreary thoughts, chasing away from my young imagination all the poetry of life, all the incentives to noble deeds. Long before I reached the school-house, instead of feeling the proud, high-souled, warm-hearted boy I started, I went moping along, a poor, half-frozen, weeping child. Thus in one moment, all those finer and nobler qualities of my nature that were just budding in the spring-time of life were outraged by a ruthless, unfeeling abortion of GOD'S image, and sent back to curdle around and ossify my youthful heart. I have said that the memory of that adventure had no contrast in the form of laurels won and worn. This was literally true. I returned to the school-house, delivered the slate and pencil, taking my seat, with a charge 'to be sure and have my lessons, if I did not want to catch it.'

I was left to philosophize on my sad disappointment, and to profit by my little experience.

But, Mr. Editor, with your assistance, who are a host in your own divine right, and with the aid of your long list of able contributors, I trust the reminiscences of the present generation may portray the lights without the shadows of by-gone days.

[Vol. XLI, No. 2 (February, 1853)]

MY FIRST BATTLE

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FROM THE LIFE OF RALPH ROANOKE.

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A LARGE spring, gushing forth in sportive bubbles from the base of a gentle hillock studded with walnut-trees, furnished an abundant supply of clear, soft water to the first settlers of the unpretending village of Belleville. Upon its grassy and beautifully-shaded banks the merry laugh of children was often heard, and many were the times when the love of fun and frolic wooed me to that bright spot, to join in the sports of my play-mates, or to listen to the gossip of the day, of which a never-ending supply was faithfully kept up by the loungers who congregated in that beautiful grove.

It was the custom of the washer-women to assemble on washing-days around this spring, and while they plied their clothes-paddies right merrily, they interchanged the 'on dits' of the past week, and many a stale joke or bit of scandal served to while away the time, and to soften the asperities of their hard life. I always had a great, respect for washer-women. There was such an energy of character displayed in their fierce encounters with the dirty old shirts, (which were always my abomination;) and then they were so very chatty and good-natured.

Among them was an old colored woman, who spent her days in washing and her evening in baking cakes and ginger-bread. I had a marvellous liking for this old lady, and our attachment was doubtless mutual, as nearly every picayune I got possession of was sure to find its way into her pockets. She was not only an original character, but a philosopher, and great deference was paid to her opinions, which, instead of running into the speculative, were always, according to her own account, founded on experience. But beside these, she had other claims upon society, for she had been born and raised among the F. F. V.'s, and shared the same propensity with the rest of that ilk to claim precedence over common people.

It was about my ninth year when 'a change came over the spirit of my dreams,' produced by an attack of the ague and fever. This scientific disease burst upon me with a grand flourish, and for a time was as regular in its shakes as a well-drilled orchestra, interspersing the entertainment with an every second day's solo, either upon the ague or fever, and winding up its engagement for the season with powerful and feeling variations on both every third day. If my readers have ever enjoyed the left-handed luxury of an ague, I shall expect them to fall into instantaneous communication with me, and follow me to the sunny side of the spring, where we may bask in the sun-shine and drink the cooling waters while our chill comes and goes, and listen to the words of wisdom and consolation as they fell from old Aunty's inspired lips.

'Roany; dear, what 's de matter, child?'

'Why, Aunt Rachel, the cold chills are running all over me, and I feel like leaning up against the sun awhile, to see if it won't thaw me out. I guess I 'm about to have a chill.'

'Nonsense, child! you ain't goin' to hab no sich t'ing dis heabenly day, when de gravy 's runnin' out ob dis old nigger by de pint 'fore I'se made any 'xertions most.'

'Yes; but, Aunty, just look at my finger-nails, how blue they are. Did you ever know this sign to fail? Answer me that, if you please.'

'Well, child, I'se 'clined to think you'se right dis time, for once, caze you see I ain't goin' to say nuffin' agin 'xperience. 'Xperience is my ph'losophy; I gits all my learnin' from 'xperience.'

'Now, Aunty, as you are a philosopher and a good Christian, and get all your knowledge from experience, can you tell me what use there is in a poor fellow's shaking every day for months with the ague? Did you ever know it to do any body any good?'

'Dar, now, it 's jis as I done told you long nuff 'go. De debbil done t'row dust in your two eyes, so you can't overcome de 'scrutable ways of Provumdence. Now I'se goin' to show you dat ebery t'ing dat ain't finisht hab to grow till him done. Do n't you see how 'tis, child? De LORD sends de rain an' de sun-shine upon de corn an' de 'taters, an' upon de clover-fields an' de honey-suckles, to make 'em grow, and why should n't HE hab de same wise purpos' in 'flictin' de children ob men wid de ager and feber? It 's my private 'pinion on dis 'portant subjec', which I done cum to arter many, many times scratchin' dis ole head, dat one ob de berry best t'ings dat could happen to a chubby feller de likes ob you, as broad as you'se short, is to hab a good shakin' wid de ager for moss a year.'

'Well, Mrs. Philosopher, I should like to hear how you are going to prove any such nonsense as that. I say, Aunty, you 're getting so smart I am afraid we 'll have to sit up with you, for fear it should strike in.'

'Yah! yah! yah! you do n't b'lieve it, do n't you? I did n't s'pose you would; as old Massa used to say, ' 'T ain't ebery fool dat can see into a mill-stone as deep as dis child.' Why, look here, young one, do n't you see dat dis am de only ph'losophy dat can 'count satumfactly for de great many tall folks in de west? Do n't de trees grow tall, an' de corn grow tall, an' ain't de longest man got de tallest chance, jis as de longest pole knocks down de most 'simmons'? Consumquently, how you goin' to keep up de glorious 'cratic 'ligion of 'me 's as good as you,' 'less when you find de boy 'clinin' to de broad an' squat you 'spose him to de ager an' feber, an' hab him drawed out? Dar, now, go 'long, child; dis nigger 's got somethin' else to do 'sides talkin' herself to deaf, 'splainen t'ings to ignorant white folks.'

Like a cunning politician, Aunt Rachel knew it was time to retire from the rostrum, look wise, and say no more, whenever she had reached her climax; and on such occasions, she generally imitated the snapping-turtle, and retired into her own august self; and if she came forth again on that day, it was only to snap at any thing that disturbed the mental laurels on which she was luxuriantly reposing.

Reader, did it ever occur to you how much we all resemble Aunt Rachel?

At the point at which we left her, she was certainly in a most enviable frame of mind. Uncontradicted and unrivalled, she was the picture of amiability; and so are we all, after having perpetrated some act for which we feel inclined to pat ourselves on the head, and imagine all the world is ready to follow suit; but crossed or contradicted, we are thrown down from our high estate, and are rarely ever so weak and ready to lose our self-command as at the very moment when our vanity makes us feel the most secure. By some strange fatality, it does seem as if our evil genius (if we have one; and, alas! who is exempt?) is sure to turn up.

Now, Aunt Rachel's 'John Jones' was embodied in the person and family of a rival cake-baker by the name of Cotton. Cotton was a Yankee, and took a notion to emigrate to the West. He was a peaceable, quiet citizen, and perhaps had as few faults as fall to the lot of most men. At least, such was the verdict of common rumor, and my limited observation and acquaintance with him does not admit of my protest. It is true, that in one sense Cotton was an interloper. Comparing dates with Aunt Rachel, he was a resident of but yesterday, and his advent in the cake-market greatly increased her difficulty in making both ends meet at the end of the year, and at the same time keeping up her wardrobe. It was, moreover, a subject of complaint on the part of Aunt Rachel, that Cotton did not carry on a fair and honorable competition on the merits of the article, but condescended to take mean and low advantages, by peddling about his cakes at all the country-gatherings and camp-meetings, and satisfying the public maw at home; so that when gala days and court-days and Saturdays came, the good old woman found the market glutted, and a large share of her bakings left unsold, to harden and grow stale on her hands.

As bad luck would have it, while I was lingering about the spring, and rendered irritable by the burning fever which had succeeded the chill of which Aunt Rachel had philosophized so originally, the hopeful heir of Cotton, in the person of his bony and lanky son Jim, made his appearance. It was the custom of those residing at some distance from the spring to keep barrels fastened on wooden sleds, for the greater convenience of hauling water whenever their supply was exhausted. The approach of any one of the Cotton family always put Aunt Rachel out of temper, by reminding her of her losses from competition in the cake business, and it needed but one word to arouse her indignation. Jim Cotton was an ill-natured, quarrelsome boy, and knowing the dislike of Aunt Rachel, returned her ill-will with interest, and never lost an opportunity of provoking her into a quarrel. He held undisputed sway and stood without a rival in the accomplishment of abusive slang, and consequently was always ready for a battle, in which he was sure to come out victor. On this occasion, he met her at the spring just as she had dipped up a pail of water, and accosted her, as usual, in no very complimentary terms:

'You d——d old black cat, how dare you muddy the spring just as your master comes for water?'

To which she replied, (always stuttering when very much excited:)

'Loo-loo-look here, boy, gu-gu-go 'way, an' le-le-lef me la-la-'lone. I a-a-ain't gu-gu-goin' to say na-na-nothin' to you, na-na-no how !' at the same time appealing to me with her eyes, as if she hoped there was pluck enough in me to defend the poor old injured cake-woman.

The feverish condition of my nerves rendered me more than usually susceptible of good and bad impulses. I felt that I could not remain a quiet spectator. Without waiting to reason the matter or calculate consequences, I commenced to lecture the fellow with:

'Ain't you ashamed of yourself, to be abusing dear old Aunt Rachel!'

I may safely say, that although his name was not Gun Cotton, yet he was very combustible, and fired up in a moment at the impudence of my interference, and manifested a strong desire to reward my temerity with a sound flogging. There was no great disparity in our sizes: Cotton was rather older and taller, but I was animated by a high fever and a good cause, and under the two excitements, made a very decided demonstration that I was ready to meet the gentleman, thus presenting to the washer-woman just the material out of which to make a fracas. In those days the news of a fight or a foot-race spread like wild-fire, and in a few moments we were surrounded, and a ring formed, with self-appointed champions to see fair play. This was done so naturally and so speedily, that before I was aware of it, and certainly without the slightest intention of a fight, I found myself in for one. I was not left long in suspense, for Cotton, anticipating an easy victory over a novice, came at me in a bullying manner, with fists closed, teeth gnashing, and foam collecting about his mouth like a wild boar. I was indebted to moral courage for nerve to stand my ground, and coolness to plant my feet firmly, to withstand the shock; for, from his attitude, I was in a trio of dangers, and had the apparent choice between being annihilated with fierce looks, trampled under foot, or swallowed alive. Although I had never had a fight, I had some knowledge of the art of self-defence, and as he came at me, I planted my left paw under his ear, which rolled him over in the dust; while the washer-women made the welkin ring with shouts of applause, and Aunt Rachel's voice was heard far above the rest:

'Guv it to him, Roany; guv it to him! dat 'll do him good de longest day him lives!'

Up jumped Cotton, and shaking off the dust with indignation, he roared out like a mad bull: 'Let me at him! let me at him!' On he came again in the same foolish manner, with his face all exposed, when I gave him another 'h'ist' just under the nose, which made the 'claret fly,' and floored him the second time, to the great amusement and delight of all the by-standers. Bully Cotton was evidently very much surprised by the nature of his reception, but evidently jumped up fully intent on resuming the contest, until he discovered the blood streaming down his face, when he was seized with a sudden panic, and yelled out: 'I 'm killed! I 'm killed! run for the doctor!' and ignominiously fled, leaving me 'cock of the walk,' and his old horse to drag home his barrel of water by his own instinct. Many were the evidences I received of Aunt Rachel's gratitude. For months afterward, whenever she saw me, she filled my pockets with cakes and ginger-bread, and never omitted an opportunity of showing me off as her champion whenever she could find any body to listen to her story.

Aunt Rachel was a rank federalist, and like a friend of mine, for whom I feel the affection of a brother, inherited her politics, married her religion, and eschewing all new-fangled systems, made up her mind to die like a lady by the United States Pharmacopœia.

Yankee Cotton, with his pedlar's cart, was a type of that progress which runs into, throws off the track, and upsets all good old-fashiondom. In my boyish days I was indignant, and espoused the cause of old Aunty con amore; and even now, while transcribing my youthful emotions, I am again touched with sorrow at the reminiscence of her wrongs. Yes, every day I am made to pity some old man or woman overtaken at the last stage of life, and obliged to yield their scanty subsistence to some modern Yankee invention. Alas! how inexorable is Progress! Twin brother to the tyrant Time, he sweeps the old and the infirm from the field of their labors, to perish and be forgotten.

[Vol. XLI, No. 4 (April, 1853)]

'MY FIRST SPEECH.'

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BY RALPH ROANOKE.

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'OFT has it been my lot to mark
A proud, conceited, talking spark.'

DOUBTLESS every man remembers some one among the number of his preceptors whose eccentricities made a lasting impression upon his youthful fancy. Such men have a separate and isolated individuality distinguishing them from all others. We delight in lingering over their memories, whether they flogged us for our delinquencies, or petted us for our faithfulness. There is an instinctive respect and veneration engendered in our bosoms for our teachers, akin to that we feel for our parents. Ay, how many of us are there who, in looking back upon our school-days, can remember how often we have sworn upon the altar of our high dudgeon, that if we ever grew to be men, we would revenge our injured innocence; and yet how few of us would not become benefactors if in our power! Let us thank Heaven for the sentiment of gratitude, and proceed.

In my tenth year, I commenced going to school to a very eccentric English gentleman by the name of Turner. He was well-educated, and had that ease and elegance of manner which are acquired by intercourse with the world. The public mind was greatly agitated, and many questions were asked in regard to the occupation in which he had been bred, but no reliable information was ever obtained. His familiarity with, and fine rendering of Shakspeare, induced many to believe him to be an actor. The truth of this conjecture remained buried in his own bosom.

To me he had the air of one who had retired from some great metropolis in disgust, choosing his temporary home among obscure country villages, where he could vegetate and take his ease. When his means gave out, and something had to be done to obtain a livelihood, he chose to have a gang of boys about him, and thus secured both amusement and support. He was extremely fond of children, and had many pets amongst the boys, and kept the school in an uproar on many occasions by the manner in which he employed them. One little incident will give an idea of his humor: Our school-house was situated at the outskirts of the village, surrounded by a large grove of trees. It was a wooden frame, fastened together with pins, weather-boarded on the outside, and lathed on the inside. The space between the outside boards and the inside laths was chinked with mud. In this mud all the numerous kinds of reptiles stowed themselves snugly away for the winter, and there remained luxuriating in torpidity until the genial sun of spring thawed them out. Wide boards were fastened against the stancheons supporting the frame-work, slanting at a convenient angle, and served for writing-benches. By the same law of cause and effect, the genial sun which thawed out a snake would also make a lazy boy drowsy; and when he wheeled around his face toward the wall and leaned his elbows upon the writing-desk his head came in close contact with the mud.

On one occasion, as one of Turner's pet-boys had fallen asleep, a large snake was discovered protruding his head from the wall, and was leisurely surveying his unconscious companion. The natural instinct of the snake made him fork out his tongue with fearful rapidity at the sight of an enemy. At this juncture the snake was discovered and immediately reported to Turner. Turner rose up from his seat, and walking over softly on his tip-toes, amused himself by poking straws in the boy's ear as he enjoyed his siesta. The boy snorted and rubbed his nose, as he half-unconsciously moved his head from right to left, until the frequent repetition of the tickling caused him to raise up lazily, rub his eyes, and finally to open them. The panic with which he was seized upon finding a huge snake glaring his fiery eyes upon him, can well be imagined, and he gave a yell that disturbed the peaceful citizens at a mile's distance. To add to his terror, Turner pounced upon him from behind as if in great alarm, crying out at the top of his voice:

'For GOD'S sake, Bill, do n't eat him; he 's not good raw!' whilst Bill, almost choked between fright and anger, turned round and replied:

'Who the d——l do you think 's going to eat him?'

It was at this school that one of the most amusing incidents of my boyhood occurred. The first examination in which I had to take a prominent part was about to come off, and old Turner's vanity was aroused to make a sensation. It was suggested to my father that in the approaching exercises I could figure largely by making a speech. This touched my good mother's pride, and she proposed to add interest to the occasion and incentives to the scholars, by presenting a pound-cake to the boy who was named victor in the coming contest. The idea was caught up as a good one, and I went to work night and day to commit to memory the 'Chameleon.' It must have been laughable to have seen me practising before the glass to make my gestures graceful and effective.

The citizens of our little village were all invited to attend the examination, and judges were appointed to award the prize. It was the original intention to give the whole cake to one boy; but Turner suggested that as my mother had presented it, and as I would most probably get it, it would appear rather selfish and vain-glorious. It was then decided that the cake should be divided into three parts, and given to the three best speakers. This decision was promptly acceded to by my mother, and the largest oven to be found was put into requisition, so that the one third of the aforesaid cake should still prove a very desirable prize.

Boys in those days, as well as now, were all fond of cake, the only difference being probably that they get it oftener now; and great was the ambition and the struggle to obtain a share of that famous big one. The woods around the school-house were echoing far and near with the sounds of voices in anxious preparation. Some of the competitors were mounted upon stumps and fallen logs, declaiming to parties of chosen friends and favorites. Others had their books propped open against the trees, to take a peep when at a loss for a word, and leaving both hands free to saw the air. All were displaying a degree of energy and activity that no amount of punishment could have elicited.

What a lesson to teachers and parents to employ rewards and not punishments in the government of schools and families! What noble and generous impulse of our nature was ever quickened by fear?

At length the days of preparation were over, and the time for action was at hand. The school was large, the day was fine, and the good people of both sexes turned out in great numbers. Many a fond mother's anxious heart beat high on that momentous occasion, as she donned her prettiest bonnet and newest gown to do honor to her darling son, who was to achieve immortal honors and prodigious profits.

Ah! what one of us who reads these humble reminiscences can restrain swift-winged Memory as she faithfully recalls our individual cases, causing each one to exclaim, in the sincerest prayer that his fond heart ever offered,

'God bless my mother!'

The first hour was spent in the recitations of the junior classes. Then came the examination in the higher branches. But in spite of the exertion to make the exercises interesting, the time wore heavily away, and every eye was a faithful needle pointing to the old-fashioned clock in the corner, and watching with manifest impatience for the sun to reach the meridian, when the young cocks were to begin to crow. As a still greater incentive to exertion, the quarter-section of cake was elevated upon a high stand, and to each parent's eyes loomed up like the expectancies in a rich uncle's will. Boy after boy delivered his speech. All received tokens of approbation from his relatives and friends, and many were honored with hearty cheers from the company. How well I remember my rapid glances at my father and mother, as each candidate ascended higher and higher in the scale of approbation, thus demanding still greater efforts from me to sustain my reputation and carry off the prize. As their faces paled before the resplendent geniuses, I pitied their anxiety, and longed for my turn to come to relieve their agonizing doubts. At length the name of Ralph Roanoke was called, and I arose with an amount of impudence and self-possession perfectly irreconcilable with my present well-known diffidence. All eyes were turned upon me, and, looking around with a kind of 'Veni, vidi, vici' air, I waited for my mother's quiet, approving smile, and my father's expression of triumph, and then began:

'OFT has it been my lot to mark
A proud, conceited, talking spark,
Returning from his finished tour,
Grown ten times perter than before,' etc., etc.

As I proceeded, there was a marked sensation, and I became so confident of getting the cake, that I fell into a reverie, which, although very charming in itself, was well-nigh losing me the cake. The thought would keep intruding itself, 'What shall I do with it? Must I hand it around, as my mother wishes me, or not?' Thus my castles kept on increasing, until my speech became a secondary thing, and I began to hesitate and stammer for the next line. Just then an ill-natured chap, who had no hopes of success, whispered quite audibly to his next neighbor: 'Jim, that fellow's got no bottom. His brass has gin out, and he 's goin to let down on the first quarter stretch.' This cutting remark and the sudden apparition of my father's anxious countenance, restored me to myself; and on reaching the point where the dispute about the color of the chameleon was to be determined, I delivered the following lines in my happiest manner:

' 'WELL, then, at once to end the doubt,'
Replies the man, 'I 'll turn him out;
And when before your eyes I 've set him,
If you do n't find him black, I 'll eat him!' '

then, dwelling upon the 'eat him' long enough to get my white pocket-handkerchief out of my bosom, ready for a grand flourish at the climax, I gave the last two lines with chilling effect:

'HE said—then full before their sight
Produced the beast—and lo! 't was white!'

Having thus delivered my speech to my entire satisfaction, I took my seat beside my mother, amidst rounds of applause, fully conscious that I deserved the whole cake, and half mad that I had been swindled out of it by the new arrangement of dividing it between three.

The judges put their heads together, and gave their award in a few minutes, and the village magistrate proceeded to divide the cake according to law. After its division, three boys were called up, amongst whom was Ralph Roanoke, and each one received a share amidst the cheers of the company. T' other fellows grabbled up their pieces, and with one bound out of doors into the woods, they ran to enjoy it on the same favorite spot where they had struggled in the preparation for it, whilst I acceded to my mother's earnest entreaties to act 'like a little gentleman,' and cut up my portion into small pieces, and proceeded to hand it round to the ladies. It was a great misfortune for me that the cake had been so long exposed to the gaze of the multitude. It was far too tempting to be resisted by any common effort of humanity. As I went round the room from bench to bench where the ladies were seated, my 'pile' was diminishing at every step, like the leaves of autumn before each blast of the pitiless storm, and my politeness was 'fast oozing out at my finger-ends.' An occasional sigh, growing louder and more frequent, could not be suppressed, and Melancholy might have marked my lengthened visage for her own, but for a new train of feeling which was suddenly awakened.

Pursuing my melancholy round, asking every lady to have a piece, and inwardly wishing every one who did take any at the d——l, my cake was reduced to but one solitary morsel; my heart concentrated all its hopes and affections upon that remnant which common politeness had rescued, and I felt determined to save it. But just as I was passing the last lady, who had kindly refused to rob me, her son sitting by her side snatched it from the plate. This was too much for any boy of ten years of age to bear, however well trained in the manners of 'a little gentleman;' and without a moment's reflection—in fact, as if all consciousness had deserted me—I gave him a blow with my clenched fist, which rolled him over and over, screaming and yelling under the benches. But he still clutched the cake as if in a death-struggle, whilst the company set up a shout of laughter whose merry echo reverberated through the woods, and brought back 'them t'other fellows,' wiping their mouths and sucking their teeth, (hungry lions as they were,) and reënraging the

'little gentleman,' who was just then mentally realizing the truth of the old adage, that 'the proof of the pudding lies in the eating.'

[Vol. XLII, No. 2 (August, 1853)]

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF SCHOOL-LIFE.

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BY RALPH ROANOKE.

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THE first specimen of a live Yankee I ever saw was a school-master. School-teaching in country villages is an up-hill business. I never knew but one man succeed in making money at it, and he was my friend, the Yankee. The uncertainty of such an occupation in affording the means of subsistence, renders it undesirable. As a consequence, many villages are left without schools for months together. On this account, parents are often compelled to send their children from home to learn even the first rudiments of an education.

In my eleventh year, the growing village of Belleville was left minus a teacher, and it was no part of my good father's system of education to allow his children to waste their youth in idleness. I was therefore sent to board in the country at my grand-father's, to have the benefit of a great eastern light who had recently made his appearance in that neighborhood.

With a restlessness somewhat akin to the pioneer who pulls up his tent and dives still deeper into the solitudes of the forest at the echo of a new axe, the lowing of a neighbor's cattle, or the bark of a strange dog, Elihu H. Howe found his New-England home too full of competition. He had read some where, that

'Westward the course of empire take its way,'

and his adventurous nature sympathized with the prophecy.

After 'trainin' around a good spell,' with that ready tact and quick perception which distinguishes the whole Yankee nation, he stuck his stakes at the romantic settlement of Turkey-Hill. This he did in defiance of the past experience of other teachers, who had never succeeded beyond one quarter. But Elihu was a far-seeing man, and it required but one glance of his eye to discover where had been the previous difficulty.

The residents of that township were a peculiar people. Many of them were men of property and education. Not unlike our Pilgrim Fathers, they had left their more comfortable and enlightened homes in the Middle States from conscientious scruples. They had manumitted their slaves, and sought the far west in comparative poverty, to enjoy humbler but more cheerful homes, out of sight of the 'degrading influences of slavery.' The above hint will suffice to show the tact of our friend Elihu, who lost no time in joining the church, in proffering his services to open a Sunday-school, and in doing all and severally those things best calculated to please a law-abiding and religious people. Elihu was a small man, with very black hair, large gray eyes, and tremendous heavy eye-brows. But I begin to feel alarmed lest, in his love of adventure, (not to say any thing of gain,) he may have become a spiritual rapper, and give me a whack for my temerity; or perchance that his angry ghost may appear, clothed in the same queer-looking stockinet pantaloons as tight as the skin, which he always wore, and which were such an innovation upon the fashions of that region. I shall never forget the figure he cut, and the many times I was tempted to ask him how long it took him to get in, or whether he had ever been out of them since he left Yankee land.

The school-house was located in the centre of a township, and the neighborhood in the circle of three miles furnished a sufficient number of scholars to make quite a respectable school. Like most country school-houses in the west, this was called the 'meeting-house' on Sundays; and I often amused myself by contrasting the scenes enacted therein by the solemn fathers and their progressive sons. Nothing could have been more delightful than this rural school. We got our breakfasts early in the morning, and taking our dinners in baskets, marched off leisurely, reaching the school-house by eight o'clock. Between studying and reciting our lessons, the time flew so rapidly that twelve o'clock was upon us before we were aware of it. This was the commencement of play-time, and then each fellow took out his basket, and seated himself on a green grass-plot, in the centre of which was a fine spring. We ate our frugal meals, and discussed the plans for spending the play-hours. Many and various were the games from which to choose, and the exercise was both healthy and refreshing. Play-time lasted for two hours, school again for three hours, and by five o'clock we were wending our way home again.

Elihu was a great economist, and in making his arrangements, provided himself a home free of expense, in the following manner: he took the rounds with his scholars, going each night with a different one, until he had made the circuit; then he began again, and so kept up his social calls, and secured agreeable quarters. In this manner he became familiar with both children and parents, and increased not only his usefulness, but his reputation. Like Goldsmith's Village Master,

'HIS words of learned length and thundering sound
Amazed the gaping rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
How one small head could carry all he knew.
In arguing too, the parson owned his skill;
For, e'en though vanquished, he could argue still.'

Ah! those were glorious days! But, some how or other, I was more mischievous at that school than at any other. I scarcely know whether it was because I was at a mischievous age, or for the reason that I was so very happy. My observation inclines me to the belief that all cheerful boys are more fond of what in school-boy parlance is called innocent amusement than gloomy, dispirited ones. It was my opinion, when a boy, that school-days should be protected by law from all disagreeable associations; that to make a school-boy miserable should be a capital offence; and I am pleased to find, now that I have boys of my own, I can conscientiously say, I have not changed my opinion. If we wish to bring up our children an honor and a solace to our declining years, we must make their childhood happy.

This, like most country-schools, was attended by both sexes; and while the boys were having their sports, the girls appeared equally delighted. They often joined in the games of the boys, beside playing many of the same kind among themselves, and many a young lassie would have put our swiftest laddies to the top of their mettle to lead them in a foot race:

'HAPPY days of childhood,
Where peaceful school days flew,'

and young ladies were allowed to breathe the fresh air, and their merry voices echoed unchecked through the sylvan groves. They had swings and play-houses; they had dinner-parties, and singing and dancing in the open air; and their ruddy and cheerful countenances gave the best evidence of their health and happiness.

I have had frequent opportunities of observing the growth and development of children taught in schools where both sexes were admitted, and I am not able to recall a solitary instance where evils resulted therefrom. And I am happy to find my opinion corroborated in a late article on education, from the pen of an able and distinguished lady, who says: 'The union of the sexes in schools stimulates to exertion, and imposes wholesome moral restraints; and were it but continued, instead of rudely broken in upon, it would prevent many unhappy marriages; for it would tend to moderate that inconsiderate passion which is often awakened by distance and imposed restraints.'

But, as a faithful chronicler of events, I must acknowledge that the harmony of this beautiful school was sometimes disturbed by little rows and riotings, in which I performed my full share. On one occasion, I was the cause of no little merriment, as I paid the penalty for insulting a young lady by giving her a nick-name. This young lady was most distressingly ugly, both in face and temper, and had a very tantalising name to make fun out of, when associated with her personal appearance. She was christened Irene Crawford. I forget why I outraged common politeness by giving her a nick-name, but I presume I must have espoused the cause of some other girl, and, in the absence of any other means of retaliation, I called her Irene Crawfish; a species of articulata which, by the way, she much resembled. This was very malicious in me, and I deserved even a more severe punishment than I received. But there was some little excuse for me, for no matter what disturbance occurred between the girls, Irene was sure to be mixed up with it. Doubtless the éclat that I obtained from the whole school of girls for espousing their cause was the ruling motive in my mind, to overbalance the injustice I was doing to one. Irene reported me to Elihu.

Among his other rare qualities, Elihu had an inventive genius, and disdained repeating himself or copying any body else. He would rather let a boy go unwhipped than punish two in the same manner. The many pranks that had been played requiring punishment, had already put his genius to the test for novelties, and the wonder now was, 'What new thing can he trump up?'

I saw his large, cold gray eye sweep the horizon, as if he were offering a prayer to the god of Invention, when suddenly it rested upon a stump of a tree in front of the door, which had been transformed into a stationary step-ladder for mounting ladies on horse-back. A sardonic smile, like a gleam of moon-shine, passed quickly over his imperturbable countenance, announcing, to one familiar with his manner, the birth of a new idea.

Having once formed his plan, no time was ever lost, but an immediate announcement was made in a drawling, monotonous voice:

'Ralph Roanoke will stand on one foot for an hour, on the horse-block in front of the door, bare-headed; and every time he falls off will add another half hour.'

An instantaneous roar of laughter followed this announcement, in which I joined as heartily as any. In general, this out-break would have brought condign punishment upon the head of every fellow who was caught laughing. But Elihu was eccentric withal, and would have been very much chagrined if his announcement had been received quietly. He would have felt it to be a failure. It was a tribute to his invention. Yes, the more his boys laughed, the more he inwardly chuckled, and the greater was the danger of a collapse to his stockinets. Thanks to good and well-developed muscles, I hopped upon the block, and went at it as cheerfully as a martyr. The old adage, that 'it is an ill wind that blows no body any good,' was again verified in my case. It was literally impossible for the boys to study with Ralph cocked up on one leg, making all kinds of grimaces when Elihu's eye was turned away, without shutting the door; and if the door was shut, it could not be seen whether he was in statu quo or not. Thus I had the penalty and the other boys had the fun.

At length the hour expired, and Elihu gravely made the announcement,

'Ralph Roanoke having stood an hour on his right leg, can now take his seat.'

But Ralph could not resist the temptation to show his bottom by flapping his wings, (arms,) and crowing like a fighting-cock.

Another roar of laughter, and then followed that monotonous voice:

'Ralph Roanoke will stand another hour on his left leg, and the first one who laughs shall keep him company.'

This second hour on t'other leg completely smoothed down all Ralph's impudence, and the latter clause took the grin off the faces of all merry-makers, and put another stripe on the shoulders of the great Captain Elihu H. Howe.

[Vol. XLIII, No. 3 (March, 1854)]

PUNISHMENT IS A SCIENCE.

————

BY RALPH ROANOKE.

————

PUNISHMENT, like many other subjects which have occupied the minds of philosophers and philanthropists, is not yet thoroughly understood. It is true that intelligent minds have long since determined the province of punishment to be the protection of society and the reformation of the culprit; and to these ends a large share of attention has been awakened. But it has never been regarded as a science, capable of being applied to the training of children with mathematical precision and accuracy. In the present progressive age, when the training and education of children are occupying so much more attention than formerly—when mothers have become aware of their larger influence over the tender minds of their offspring, and are aroused to a proper sense of their great responsibility—any thoughts on the question of punishment cannot fail to arrest attention.

What mother has not spent sleepless nights, almost despairing over her inability to impress upon the mind of some devoted child those principles which can alone secure happiness? How often has the painful thought arisen in her mind, 'Can I ever secure my child's obedience? To be constantly inflicting punishment upon this darling son, will break down every noble impulse of his nature. To let him go on in the indulgence of his selfish propensities, is risking not only his present but also his eternal welfare. Would to GOD I knew better how to discharge my duty under this fearful responsibility!'

The propensity to extremes, which has, in all ages, pervaded the human breast, but increases the difficulty. In one system of training we find a strictness of monotonous discipline enforced, irrespective of temperament, almost amounting to absolute tyranny. In another system we observe a degree of license allowed amounting to a total abandonment of all parental supervision. Here the mathematical idea of a just medium comes in, and theoretically solves the difficulty. But how shall the just medium be ascertained? Certainly not by adopting any fixed rules or uniform punishment for each and every child. The fallacy of this system must be readily acknowledged by recalling the various dispositions of children. How often are brothers entirely different in disposition! One is gentle and sensitive, with large veneration; the other is impulsive and selfish, with small veneration. The motives of action of two such dissimilar temperaments must be as wide asunder as the poles. In the one case, any resort to force would be unwise; and in the other, could scarcely be dispensed with. The difficulties of training are greatly increased by the natural tendency of the boy with small veneration to be constantly contrasting his treatment with that of his more gentle brother. His selfishness overshadows his sense of justice, and the moral force of parental love is weakened in the constantly-recurring doubts of its existence.

That a correct system is within the reach of every parent, can be satisfactorily shown in every reader's experience. My grandfather was one of the kindest and best parents in the world. His children grew up not only to love and obey him, but to idolize him. He taught obedience by one lesson, and rarely had to punish any child more than once. He never inflicted a punishment when his child was nerved for the consequences of a misdemeanor, or when he was himself under the influence of passion. He preserved his own self-command, and thoroughly understood when and how to take each disposition; and these were the secrets of his success, as they must be of every parent who will test them. He taught me a lesson which I shall never forget. It was practical and effectual, and I give it as an illustration in point.

The plantations of my grandfather and uncle were separated by a lane running between them, which served as a public road. Their respective houses were situated about a half a mile back from this road, so that it was a half-way place where my cousins and I often met on Saturdays and holidays, to join in the various games and exercises of the day. My grandfather never refused a child's request unless there was some particular reason against it. But it was always necessary to obtain his permission in any new proposition where his pleasure had not been expressed. On a certain bright morning, I glided softly into the room where he was reading, and asked his permission to join my cousins, which he gave without a moment's hesitation. Off I bounded with a light heart, for the game of ball, which we generally played, was my delight. We soon arranged our partners, and were in the full tide of enjoyment, when a servant came running after me with the following message:

'Massa Ralph, your grandpa wants you 'mediately.'

'Wants me? It can't be possible. I just now asked his consent, and he gave it cheerfully. Go away, Sol: that message of yours is all gammon!'

'I tell you him do want you! And what 's more, it 's my private 'pinion you's better trot along fast as your two legs can toat you.'

'Sol, I 've a mind not to go one step.'

'Look here, child, you knows jes as well as I does dat old Massa do n't talk no nonsens; what he say come mighty easy, but him do n't used to take any no's for answers when him 'spects yeses: you better b'lieve dis niggar.'

'Now, Sol, remember, if I find you have deceived me, I 'll never read another hymn over and over for you to learn by heart as long as I live.'

To this unworthy doubt the indignant Solomon disdained a reply; but as I walked away, the following soliloquy was borne upon the treacherous winds:

'Well, 'pon my word, now, dat boy know I never done told him an untruff in all my life; but for all dat, dere do n't seem to be no way to make white folks' children b'lieve nothin' what ain't 'greeable.'

Reader, judge of my surprise and mortification. What could my grandfather want? The boys were half inclined to laugh at my chagrin, but there was no help for it; go I must; and they were in for it, too, for the game had to wait. I promised to hurry back; and off I went, striving to recollect whether I had done any thing wrong. I could not remember any infraction of any known wish or law; and the mystery as to why he sent for me was inexplicable. On reaching the house, in I rushed, and there I found him sitting quietly reading in the same chair in which I had left him. I approached him with such a woe-be-gone countenance as would have almost provoked a smile from a stoic, and thus accosted him:

'Grandpa, did you want me?'

To which he replied with the most perfect good-humor:

'Yes, child, I sent for you to shut the door you left open.'

The cause was explained. I had hurried out in my selfishness and left him to shut the door after me; and he had waited patiently until I was fairly engaged in play to send for me, that the lesson might make a more lasting impression. It did make an indelible impression; and all I regret is, that all my bad habits had not been cured in the same practical manner.

I have said that punishment is a science. To be taught efficiently, the world must resolve itself into a large school-house, and the whole subject commenced de novo, and sifted to the bottom. It is not the work of a day, a month, or a year, but of a century. It is a Herculean task, but it can be accomplished. There must be an end to the criminal farce—I should rather say tragedy—which is daily being enacted in the marriage of boys and girls totally ignorant of the high duties and holy responsibilities of married life. There must be a just appreciation of the married relation, a thorough knowledge of each other, and a full and entire moral, mental, and physical sympathy. The children of such parents will have the elements of happiness in an eminent degree; and the watchful care of well-trained and appreciative parents will develope a generation which will ultimately realize the highest earthly progress.

[Vol. XLIV, No. 4 (October, 1854)]

[EDITOR'S TABLE.

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'PERISCOPICS:' BY DR. ELDER.—Our friend and correspondent, 'RALPH ROANOKE,' who is not only a reliable judge of good writing, but a most acceptable writer himself, sends us the following desultory epistle touching a volume which we have not as yet encountered. If we have occasion again to advert to the neglect of the publishers, we shall be convinced that the demand for the book exceeds their ability to supply it:]

MY DEAR KNICK: If I could persuade you to ignore the harness for a day with 'Periscopics,' by a kindred spirit, I feel assured you would acknowledge an oäsis in the wearing turmoil of managing 'Old Knick' in the dog-days.

When I was a little boy out in the far West, I often tore my 'unmentionables' in scrambling up the sides of the court-house to secure a 'squatter location' on a window-sill to see a fight between two great lawyers who were loudly abusing each other. But I was always disappointed. They did n't fight. They only walked arm-in-arm away, after the case was given to the jury, like a couple of pick-pockets who were going to divide their spoil, leaving each anxious client looking as wolfish as if he had been 'sold,' and the unsophisticated, honest boys bewildered and indignant at the brace of cowardly shams.

When I grew older and began to travel about, I never boarded a steam-boat without the anxious desire of finding some of our 'big folks' on their way to Congress, that I might sit down quietly and drink in the words of wisdom as they fell from their inspired lips. But here again another disappointment awaited me. They were only fluent in stale jokes and tobacco-juice.

Still later in life, when kind friends and good fortune threw me into the company of some of the literary lions of the hour, hope sprung up afresh at the prospect of enjoying in propria personæ one of those delightfully abandon sociables we read of in the lives of such men as GOLDSMITH, BURKE, SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, GARRICK, and JOHNSON, (with a 'chiel behind him takin' notes;') or at a later period, in our own good city of brotherly-love, when old Doctor WISTAR was wont to collect about him those genial spirits of the last century. But it was all a mistake. The lions would n't roar. They were only good at eating and drinking. The fountains from which their great thoughts emanated were too shallow to undergo the wear and tear of the social board. Their stock in trade consisted of the meagre extracts which could be pumped up under a heavy pressure, and these were wanted for publication.

Perhaps you will ask, What has all this to do with 'Periscopics?' I will answer your question Yankee-fashion, by asking another. Have you read the preface? If you have not you will find the author tells you that 'WEBSTER defines the word Periscopic, 'A viewing on all sides, etc.' ' However, do n't be impatient; for I am now about to tell you what it has to do with it. I have been a frequenter of public demonstrations, political, literary, and religious, and Doctor ELDER is one of the few roaring lions who have never disappointed me. For originality and freshness, for wit and sentiment, for length, breadth, depth, and height of reach, if he has any superiors among us they are holding back for future demonstration.

'Periscopics' was lying on my table, when a country friend came in and picked it up, saying, ' 'Periscopics,' by ELDER! what ELDER? I wonder if it can be the ELDER I once heard make a speech in his shirt-sleeves out in Western Pennsylvania?'

'I would n't be surprised if it was, my friend,' I replied; 'he is a real democrat, and would never swelter in his coat if it was too hot to wear it. Beside, jump him up when you will, and you'll find him a 'full team' at any thing. But just open the book any where, and if it is him it will stick out in the first sentence.'

My friend's eye fell upon the following passage from 'A Character:'

'GENERAL OGLE was not one of a litter. He was made on purpose, and his kind was complete in him. He was of that breed which leaves no heirs and needs no successors. Out of time and place he would himself have been only an oddity, or perhaps a monster; but in his actual surroundings of men and things there was the happiest possible fitness of relations, and every thing in him, accordingly, had its full force and virtue.'

This was quite enough, and tossing back his head a shade beyond the perpendicular, he said:

'Percisely; where can I find the book?'

Being a man of a quick perception of what is original, and a fine appreciation of what is good, I 'll venture he 'll not be at home to any loafer, or 'douse the glim' at night, until he has made a string of the pearls which are strewn with such a lavish hand throughout the book.

The departure of my friend threw me into a reverie running somewhat after this fashion:

'Every man should be practical in his friendships. Whoever brings people together who are in search of each other to do each other good, is a benefactor. It won't be a bad idea to leave 'Periscopics' on my table. Every fellow who comes in will pick it up, and if he has a vital spark in him it will ignite as soon as he opens it. If he reads a chapter he will buy the book, and thus both parties will be benefitted. One volume has sold already. Suppose I try what a day may bring forth.'

Here my reverie was broken by the entrance of a valued friend, whose rueful countenance proclaimed him a victim to that dreadful epidemic which is daily attacking the commercial community between the hours of nine A.M. and three P.M., with a violence unknown to the 'oldest inhabitant.' As he walks back to my desk, care is riding him with whip and spur, and visions of bankruptcy and ruin are looming up before him at every step. As the winds of heaven eddy around his care-worn brow, they carry away upon his faint breath that honest wish of his heart so touchingly expressed by COWPER:

'OH! for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of depression and delay,
Of unsuccessful and successful trade
Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,
My soul is sick with every day's report
Of stops and protests with which earth is filled.'

But let him speak for himself:

'Ralph, my dear boy, I 'm in great distress. I 'm one thousand short, and it 's now two o'clock. I 'm ruined if you do n't help me out of this scrape. I offered for discount in two banks and got kicked out at both. Have you any thing over?'

It is astonishing how cool and tantalizing one feels on odd days, when there are no notes to pay, and 'till to-morrow' is a little eternity. Under this delightful sensation, which should be indulged for the sake of recuperation, especially if one has the means to grant the favor asked, it was just the most natural thing in life for me to answer: 'Sit down, GEORGE, and take it easy. It is n't healthy to become excited. The weather is entirely too hot for violent exertion. By the way, here is a most delightful and instructive book I want you to read. It will scatter the horrors to the four winds of heaven.'

'Do n't talk to me about reading when my mind is so harassed I can hardly say my prayers.'

'Yes, but just read this exquisite picture of the heroine in that wonderful story of 'ELIZABETH BARTON,' while I see how much I can loan you.'

The habit of employing every moment induced him to comply:

'THE controlling quality of ELIZABETH'S mind was very plainly in its intense religious devotedness, which in her not only sublimed, but strengthened her natural affections, held them well and wisely to their office, and gave to the simplest duty which had any thing of sacrifice in it, the tone and determination of a sacred obligation.

'Her ideal of a religious life is called, in the phrase of her church creed, sanctification, perfect love, or Christian perfection. This conception was her standard. The instant aspirations of her heart were for angel purity and excellence. Her understanding, in its enthusiasm, rejected the logical manœuvring by which the requirements of the highest law are reconciled to habitual delinquencies of life; nay, she felt weakness itself like a crime. Her meekness bore without apology the burden of her offences; and self-justification, on the ground of natural infirmity of nature, would have felt to her the very boldness of an appeal from the law of conduct prescribed for her by her Divine Father. The soul, held in such a frame, grew and gushed like the flowers and fountains, under the kindliest influences of heaven. In the calm of her holy reveries, blessing lay like dew upon her affections, and in its exultant movement, the divine presence flooded her whole being with its light and life, like a sun-burst on a mountain top. It needed only a clear insight to perceive that her essential life was 'hid with CHRIST in GOD;' that there was a constant rapture in the soul under that tranquillity of the senses—a fullness of the diviner life sustaining a level of perpetual calmness on the surface, which the forces of the outward and accidental had no power to disturb. This supremacy of the central took nothing from the wonted energy of the loves she owed to the world without; it rather adjusted, steadied, and supplied them with a recreating strength, a constant freshness, and untiring patience. If her faith and fervor bordered on fanaticism in sentiment, they nevertheless, in all the verities of use, flowed like life-blood through her moral system, feeding with vital force all the faculties which perform the benign offices of love and duty. A deep peace ruled her spirit, and wove its quiet into all the solicitudes which she sustained for others, and holy rest within compensated and repaired the waste of toil without.'

After reading this, he turned over the leaves and examined the title-page. The workings of his mind were quite perceptible. He had already determined to buy the book, and although deeply interested, still remembered he was pressed for time. With the feeling that he would just finish that paragraph, he went a little farther, until the waters of Lethe closed cautiously and silently over the affairs of the day, and banks and bills payable were to him, for the time being, ogres of the night, vanishing before the bright god of day. If the author could have witnessed how the interest of this fresh and truthful picture of life had power to awaken an all-absorbing sympathy in this honest brother's heart, he would have felt abundantly repaid for the writing. He read on to the close, and drawing a long-sustained breath, looked up at the clock.

'Gracious heavens!' he exclaimed, 'it wants but twenty minutes to three o'clock!'

A moment's delay or a word of badinage at this climax, would have been an insupportable agony, and I quietly placed a check for the required amount in his hand, and hurried him off to take up his note.

The next visitor was a Western physician. I called upon him to sit down and read 'Calomel,' an article from which I have only room for an extract:

'QUACKERY! If a fellow's head is a fog-bank, it is n't in a diploma to make a physician of him. The man that can't tell the time of day by a clock till he hears it strike, has no use for a watch; and the physician that does not know whether calomel is producing its effect until his patient is salivated, should never touch the drug; he is not fit to use it.'

He complied, and the reading gave him 'fits.' (By the way, a newly-discovered symptom of calomel.) But notwithstanding, he saw fit to purchase the book.

Here space admonishes me that I am trespassing; but I must not omit the most amusing act of the drama. I have the good or ill fortune to number among my list of bores, of which every man has a goodly number, a consequential and crusty old bachelor, on the shady side of fifty, who considers no man's opinion or judgment entitled to any weight in the community who was not a looker-on at the birth of the present century; who imagines the wisdom of the world garnered up in his wonderful cranium, to be cautiously administered in broken doses during his morning perambulations; who is too conservative to accept any new isms, and who is annoyed beyond measure by the propensity of the present generation to coin words, the meaning of which he can have no clue to; who delivers himself in that slow and oracular manner which, while it admits of no argument, makes mountains out of mole-hills.

Happening to walk in during my experiment with 'Periscopics,' I accosted him in the following off-hand manner:

'Good morning, Mr. WARWICK. I hope I have the honor of seeing you very well this fine morning?'

The familiarity of my manner would have been sufficient to wound his dignity without the presence of company, before whom such a liberty must be rebuked. He, therefore, straightened himself up to his full height, and replied:

'By what train of reasoning, Sir, or by what rule of logic, do you call this a fine morning, when the thermometer stands at ninety, Sir, at eight o'clock in the fore-noon, Sir? When I was a young man, Sir, we had no such weather as this; neither had we boys—yes, boys, Sir—who would have hazarded such a remark in the presence of their seniors, Sir. But, Sir, I presume the rationale of the affair is, that men having changed, the weather had to change also.'

Having delivered himself after this wise, and waited a few moments to enjoy its astounding effects, he continued, ' I have the honor, Sir, to take my leave.'

Now, such a display of galvanized dignity and pomposity had been submitted so good-naturedly so often, that I felt like taking him down a peg, and I was sure that the book before me with its modern name would furnish a fine opportunity. I therefore remarked:

'Mr. WARWICK, allow me to ask you one question before you go. Have you seen 'Periscopics?' '

The question confounded him. I presumed it would. I repeated again:

'Have you seen 'Periscopics,' by ELDER?'

By this time he had got the handle of the question, and tried to extricate himself after this fashion:

'No, Sir, I have neither seen nor heard of the book, or the author, Sir; if a man who can take such liberties with the English language can be called an author, Sir.'

'But, my dear Sir, you will find the word 'Periscopic' in WEBSTER.'

'Well, Sir, suppose the use of it to be technically right, Sir, do you not see it is a modern innovation, Sir?'

At this point I 'squared myself' to confound him with the force of my arguments and the fluency of my language; and seizing my opportunity while he was taking breath, I began:

'You, Sir, who perambulate the city as a walking encyclopedia of knowledge—as the connecting link which dovetails all that is worth knowing of the present century with the past—haven't read 'Periscopics,' and do n't know Doctor ELDER!

'Do n't know the man who was born on the top of the Alleghany Mountains, at his own particular request!

'Do n't know the man who made the KOSSUTH speech!

'Do n't know the man who edited 'the Republic!'

'Do n't know the man who 'threw physic to the dogs,' and went to law for an honest living!

'Do n't know the man whose heart is so kind he won't take a prosecuting fee!

'Do n't know the man whose wife never allows him to go to market, for fear he may meet a beggar on the way, and give him all his money; or failing to meet him while his basket is empty, gives him its contents on his return!

'Well, upon my word, Mr. WARWICK, you come a little the nearest to being a 'Know-Nothing' of any man I ever saw in all my life.'

This rollicking speech confounded the old gentleman, and caused a silent and speechless retreat on his part, and roars of laughter from the company.

Such a book as 'Periscopics,' abounding as it does in characters and tales, things slashy and things fanciful, things politico-economical and things religious, is a public benefaction, and, judiciously used, might furnish young editors, aye, and old ones, too, with original material for a year's work. It will serve as a sort of intellectual grindstone, upon which young aspiring authors may try their metal; and if they will only profit by the test, the public will be saved many dull inflictions.—Yours ever,

RALPH ROANOKE.

[Vol. XXXVII, No. 4 (April, 1851)]

THE 'WALTER MAPES' POEMS.*

[*The Latin Poems commonly attributed to WALTER MAPES. Collected and edited by THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq. London: printed for the Camden Society. 1841.]

FRIENDS AND READERS OF 'OLD KNICK.':

LAST May I submitted to your notice a certain translation, promising at the same time to present you, in the very next number, with some observations explanatory of it, and of the collection of poems whence it was taken. But 'man proposes,' and it is otherwise disposed for him: since then I have been terris jactatus et alto, and moreover, so much mixed up in the quidquid agunt homines, that honest Walter and I have been strangers from that time to the present. Ten months!—it is a long while in Magazine history; almost long enough for the completion of a 'serial' romance; quite long enough for you to have forgotten PHILLIS and FLORA, even supposing you read their dispute. But I do not thus hold myself excused from my promise; especially since, if you should happen to have read the translation in question, that very slovenly version standing by itself must have given an unfair idea of the Oxford Archdeacon, which it is my duty to correct. Would that all mistakes of the pen could be as easily corrected!

It is a very pleasant thing for a quiet man, who has been knocking about in general society, to get back once more into his library; to feel post tot naufragia, if not tutus, at least securus; careless of what is going on out of doors; to live in a world of his own, far pleasanter than that with which he associates every day. An intelligent and highly accomplished friend of mine, who has a predilection for using long words without being particular about their meaning, is wont to call himself a misogynist, intending thereby to signify that he dislikes the majority of men. Now I do n't call myself a misogynist, but I avow a strong preference for books. When it is remembered that you choose your companions not from your own little age and locality, but from all countries and all times; that you can be with them just when you please, and just as long as you please; that you can vary them at will; that there is no risk of your talking them out and exhausting their capacities; no fear of their boring you or your boring them; in view of all this, I really marvel that any man who has the education to enjoy, and the means to procure a library, can be tempted out into the world to seek amusement or relaxation, unless on the principle of D'Israeli's exquisite, who found good wine such a bore because he had it every where, and wanted a little bad, by way of change.

The above incipient flourish is not altogether due to Walter Mapes. I had many older and more valued friends—Greek, Latin and English classics—to shake hands with first, and then after a pleasant time with them, I bethought me of my promise to 'Old KNICK.,' and came down to the Archdeacon; who after all is not to be despised, for though no remarkable poet, he was a stout satirist, and the school of verse which he founded valuably illustrates the popular movements in England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Walter Mapes (the orthography of his name is uncertain: we find it written Map, Mape, Mahap, and Mahapp,) was an ecclesiastic of Henry the Second's time, and a favorite with that monarch, from whom he received various preferments, ending with the Archdeaconry of Oxford. He had studied at Paris and travelled to Rome; was esteemed for his learning and celebrated for his wit. He died early in the thirteenth century. His satires on the clergy generally appear in manuscript under the name of Golias or Golias Episcopus, and even his friend and biographer Giraldus Cambrensis talks about this Golias as if it were the name of a real personage. But the appellation is so clearly a pseudonym, having reference to the goliards, or clerical buffoons of the time, that there is reason to suspect that this mistake of Giraldus, which much surprises our editor, was really a mistake made on purpose, and that prudential considerations induced him to ignore the real authorship of the satires. In the extract given by Mr. Wright from the Speculum Ecclesiæ, GIRALDUS quotes all the bitterest parts of the attack on the Romish Court, (Golias in Romanam Curiam,) just as a fashionable lady repeats a scandalous story: 'It 's very shocking—I do n't believe a word of it—very improper for people to invent such things—but here it is;' and the story, being much more spicy than the contradiction, goes deeper and travels farther. It is not till more than a century after that we find the best known of these poems, such as the Apocalypsis, the Confessio, and the De Conjuge, generally attributed to WALTER MAPES. This popular opinion is supported by some slight internal evidence in the poems themselves, by the absence of contradiction, (for Giraldus may have been deceived himself, or, as we think more probable, have endeavored to deceive others,) and by the knowledge derived from Mapes' contemporaries, that he was of a satirical disposition, and lampooned the Cistercian Monks. But the original satires of Mapes gave rise to many imitations during the half century succeeding him, and it is not possible now to discriminate accurately between the productions of the master and those of his scholars.

The metre employed in these poems is chiefly of two kinds: one, the stanza of four (accentual) trochaic lines all rhyming; the other having properly neither rhyme nor assonance, but a correspondence of the unaccented syllables in the (accentual) dactylic terminations: E. G., the first stanza of the Apocalypsis:

'A TAURO torrida lampade Cynthii,
Fundente jacula ferventis radii,
Umbrosas nemoris latebras adii,
Explorans gratiam lenis Favonii.'

As if we were to end four English lines with unity, charity, jollity, density. It is hardly necessary to observe that quantity has nothing to do with the versification of either metre.

There are a few specimens of different stanzas, some of them after the model of the monkish hymns, as the one de Ruina Romæ, which commences thus:

'PROPTER Syon non tacebo,
Sed ruinas Romæ, flebo
Quousque justitia
Rursus nobis oriatur,
Et ut lampas accendatur
Justus in ecclesia.'

The subject-matter of the poems is chiefly the corruption of the Romish church. Sometimes we find other topics introduced: a few of them discuss serious theological points: some are gross satirical attacks on the whole female sex. These libels were exceedingly common in the middle ages. Nous avons changé tout cela, and are become much more refined: witness the Caudle Lectures. But the great majority have for their theme the vices and hypocrisy of the clergy, exposed sometimes with playful raillery, sometimes with ferocious invective. After the Reformation many of them were printed, and translated into French and English. The satire is carried out in a variety of ways, direct and indirect: here for instance is a burlesque anathema pronounced by Golias on a thief:

'RAPTOR mei pilei morte moriatur,
Mors sit subitanea nec provideatur,
Et pœna continua post mortem sequatur,
Nec campis Elysiis post Lethen fruatur.

'Raptor mei pilei sæva morte cadat,
Illum febris, rabies et tabes invadat,
Hunc de libro DOMINUS vitæ sanctæ radat,
Hunc tormentis ÆACUS cruciandum tradat.

'Ei vita brevis sit pessimusque finis
Nec vivat feliciter hinc diebus binis:
Laceret hunc CERBERUS dentibus caninis,
Laceratum gravius torqueat ERINYS.

'Nunguam diu bajulet illi colum CLOTO,
Cesset filo LACHESIS tracto nondum toto,
Filum rumpat ATROPOS, nec fruatur voto,
Et miser presbytero corruat remoto.

'Excommunicatus sit in agro et tecto!
Nullus eum vident lumine directo!
Solus semper sedeat similis dejecto
Hunc pœnis Tartareis cruciat ALECTO.

'Ille rebus omnibus quas habet emunctus
Nec confessus occidat, oleo nec unctus,
Morte subitanea palleat defunctus
Judæ traditori sit inferno conjunctus.

'Hoc si quis audierit excommunicamen
Et non observaverit præsulis examen,
Nisi resipuerit corrigens peccamen
Fuerit anathema! fiat, fiat. Amen!'

Will the reader accept this version, in which the quadruple rhyme of the original is not attempted:

ARCHDEACON WALTER'S CURSE

ON THE MAN WHO STOLE HIS PURSE.

MAY the man who stole my purse perish in a twinkling,
By a sudden death of which he shall have no inkling!
After death immediately may he find damnation,
Nor in fields Elysian get an habitation.

May the man who stole my purse die a very sad death!
Fever, madness, pestilence, every sort of bad death;
May his name be blotted from the book of life eternal.
Him may ÆACUS, the judge, doom to pains infernal.

May his life be very short and his end his warning;
May he not live happily through another morning!
With his fangs may CERBERUS lacerate and tear him,
May the FURIES with their snakes scourge and never spare him!

May not CLOTHO in his case long uphold life's distaff,
LACHESIS before 'tis spun cease the thread to twist off;
ATROPOS cut short the thread and his prayer deny him;
May he perish wretchedly, not a parson by him.

Out of doors and in the house may the curse be on him,
No one with propitious eye ever look upon him;
May he mourning sit alone, by his friends forsaken,
Till he dies—and then may he not preserve his bacon.

Spoiled of all his earthly goods, stripped of each possession,
May he die without extreme unction or confession.
When in short and shallow grave, his pale body laid is,
May his soul with JUDAS sit down in lowest Hades.

Whosoever heareth this excommunication,
And observeth not the priest's pious proclamation,
Unless he repent him in time for expiation,
May he be anathema and go to damnation!

A very fair sacerdotal anathema, is n't it?—not quite equal to that immortalized by Tristram Shandy, but still sufficiently catholic, comprehensive and terrible. The admixture of Pagan mythology is amusing: it was not uncommon in writings of the time.

In the Apocalypsis Goliæ Episcopi, which enjoyed great popularity during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the poet represents himself as carried up into heaven in a vision, where the vices of the popes and clergy are revealed. Parts of the Apocalypse and of Ezekiel's vision are closely imitated, the application being always made to the present state of the church. Thus he sees four beasts full of eyes, exactly corresponding to those seen by the prophet, and this explanation is given of them: the lion is the pope:

'EST leo Pontifex summus qui devorat,
Qui libras sitiens libros impignorat,
MARCUM respiciens, MARCUM dedecorat,
In summis navigans in nummis anchorat.'

The calf is the bishop, fattened on other men's goods; the eagle is the archdeacon, scenting the prey and flying to it from a great distance; the 'fourth beast with the face of a man' is the dean, full of craft, and working mischief under the mask of justice. They are full of eyes all round, because they look out for money from all quarters.

The De Conjuge non Ducenda, which was also very popular, is one of the scurrilous satires on women to which we have already alluded. But the most remarkable poem in the collection is the Confessio Goliæ, from which in the fifteenth or sixteenth century was extracted the so-called 'Drinking

Song,' by which the name of Walter Mapes is principally known in modern times. Yet it gave the archdeacon a bad reputation unjustly, as if he composed the lines for a bacchanalian ditty expressing his own sentiments, whereas they are put into the mouth of Golias, the representative of the shameless and dissolute priest, when he confesses (in a semi-exculpatory sort of way) his many misdeeds. 'Boiling inwardly with great anger, he will commune with himself in bitterness;'* and then he goes on to bewail his inconstancy and his proneness to succumb to the three standard temptations of the enemy: wine, women, and gaming. One fancies those old ecclesiastics playing pretty deep for want of better occupation. We know that they invented back-gammon, which after all, however, is not a very fast kind of gambling, and they had no lack of valuables to stake. But Golias says very little about his passion for play, only that he is cold without and warm within when playing, and—what we should hardly expect—that he makes verses better for the excitement. Of the ladies he has more to say:

[*'ÆSTUANS intrinsecus ira vehementi,
In amaritudine loquar meæ menti.']

'PRÆSUL discretissime, veniam te precor
Morte bona morior, dulci nece necor;
Meum pectus sauciat puellarum decor
Et quas tactu nequeo, saltem corde mæchor.

'Res est arduissima vincere naturam
In aspectu virginum mentem ferre puram;
Iuvenes non possumus legem sequi duram
Levium corporum non habere curam.

'Quis in igne positus igne non uratur?
Quis in mundo demorans castus habeatur?
Ubi VENUS juvenes digito venatur
Oculis illaqueat, facie prædatur.'

Bishop, most discreet of men, hear me cry for quarter!
Of a pleasant death I die, slain by a sweet slaughter.
Every pretty woman's face melts my heart like water,
Till I love—and fain would have—every mother's daughter.

Nature is to overcome harder than you reckon:
Pure of heart 'tis hard to be when the damsels beckon;
Youths like us so hard a yoke cannot put our neck on,
And this flesh of ours, so frail, cannot keep a check on.

Who can in the fire be put so the fire won't burn him?
Who that 's living in the world can from beauty turn him?

The old common-place excuse of the sinner; but there is pretty writing in the above, however false the sentiment. The italicized line has always seemed to me very sweet and expressive. Still there is nothing in them equal to the rollicking verses afterward made into the drinking song, and so quaintly translated by Leigh Hunt. The author evidently understood, however much or little he may have sympathized with, the feelings of a jovial toper. Golias knows himself to be more inspired by the bottle than by beauty or the dice-box. As he says:

'SUUM cuique proprium dat natura donum,
Ego versus faciens vinum bibo bonum.'

NATURE giveth every man his own speciality;
I, when writing verses, drink wine of the best quality.

The language of these poems is about equal to the current Latin of the period. Of course we find in them various barbarisms and slang words, and some queer spellings. Effimera for ὲϕήμερα is curious, as showing that the Reuchlinian (modern Greek) pronunciation then prevailed. Words like somnum, damnum have always an epenthetetical p, sompnum, dampnum. QU.: Did this come in through the French pronunciation?* The same letter somewhat similarly inserted in Christopher once mystified an etymologist not a little. Mr. Fox Talbot, a bold pursuer of mares' nests in the way of derivation, deduced the name from Christ—opfer, (German,) Christ's sacrifice. But this p has clearly no connection with the vowel of the preceding syllable, and only serves to modify the aspirate following it. Is not the Latin name older than the German word? I suspect so.

[*It will be observed that the letter is not introduced gratia euphoniæ, like the p in Sampson for Sam's son, or the β in many Greek contracts, for its presence is absolutely invita euphonia, we may say.]

As to the style of the poems, it is very varied, at times coarse and familiar in the extreme, at times lofty and elegant. We occasionally meet with pretty bits of landscape and description. The Phillis and Flora has several of these, and here is one from another poem :

'Hic est locus regius paradisi flore,
Quem FLORA multiplici suo ditat rore
Arborum quem CYBELE venustat honore,
Qui IOVINO cœlitus fovetur odore.

'Hic resudat balsamus, hic myrta liquescit,
Hic cypressus redolet, et palma frondescit,
Fago nubunt ederæ, coctanus pallescit
Surgit gigas abies, populus albescit.

'Ulinas hic extenditur vitibus amica
PHILLIS flores parturit et DAPHNE pudica
Lenta salix redolet et vana myrica,
Late ramos explicat platanus iniqua.

'Rupes tenet hysopus, et papaver plana,
Clivos montes edera et siler montana,
Lilium suboccupat vallium arcana
Arida jusquiamus, narcissus fontana.'

One can tell easily enough whence this enumeration of trees comes. It is a direct classical imitation. Ovid first gave such a catalogue:

'NON CHAONIS abfuit arbos
Non nemus Heliadum non frontibus esculus altis,
Non tiliæ molles, nec fagus et innuba laurus.
Et coryli fragiles, et fraxinus utilis hastis
Enodisque abies curvataque glandibus ilex,
Et platanus genialis, acerque coloribus impar
Amnicolæque simul salices, et aquatica lotus
Perpetuoque virens buxus, tenuesque myricæ,
Et bicolor myrtus et baccis cærula tinus.
Vos quoque flexipedes hederæ venistis et una
Pampineæ vites et amictæ vitibus ulmi;
Ornique et piceæ pomoque onerata rubenti
Arbutus, et lentæ victoris præmia palmæ;
Et succincta comas hirsutaque vertice pinus;
*  *  *  *  *  *
Adfuit huic turbæ metas imitata expressus.'

—Met. X. 90.

That was when Orpheus played to the woods. Parallel passages are to be found in Seneca and Statius, but the best imitation is Spenser's:

'The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall,
The vine-prop elme, the poplar never dry,
The builder oak, sole king of forests all,
The aspen good for staves, the cypress funeral.

'The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors,
And poets sage, the fir that weepeth still,
The willow, worn of forlorn paramours,
The yew, obedient to the bender's will,
The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill,
The myrrh sweet bleeding in the bitter wound,
The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill,
The fruitful olive and the platane round,
The carver holme, the maple, seldom inward sound.'

—Fairy Queen, Book I. I. 6.

In some respects Spenser has improved on his original, having fitted off each tree with its appropriate epithet, which Ovid has not done in every case. But some of Ovid's adjectives are very happy: the 'cone-like cypress,' the 'virgin laurel,' (so called from Daphne,) the 'stream-cherishing willows, the 'winding-footed ivy.'

Returning from this digression, it remains for us to speak of the poem Phillis and Flora. It is the last in Mr. Wright's collection, and probably the latest in date; at any rate, it is not attributed to Mapes in the MSS., and seems to belong to a subsequent era. It belongs to a class of poems, which, beginning as early as the tenth century with the Anglo-Saxon versifiers, were first transferred to rhyming Latin by Mapes and his contemporaries, and continued long after them, becoming especially popular in France under the title of Débats. They are indeed debates or discussions between two parties, who are sometimes mere personifications, as wine and water, the body and the soul; sometimes real mortals of different classes or opinions. Two 'amorous ladyes,' one admiring a soldier and the other a scholar, hold a contention 'which one's lover loveth most,' and ultimately refer the matter to Cupid himself, who decides in favor of the scholar; for so we must translate clericus, his position being much like that of an English college Fellow, well supplied with the desirabilities of life, a lover of learning and good cheer, and having little to do with preaching and other peculiar functions of a modern priest or clergyman. The poem, which probably dates nearly as late as 1300, was very popular in the sixteenth century. It is comprised in some continental collections, and we learn from Ritson that George Chapman translated it into English in 1595. His version would be worth having, but Mr. Wright was not able to find a copy, and therefore it is not likely that any of us ever will.

Although the aspect of the poem is perfectly serious, I have sometimes thought there was a latent satire intended in it. The reasons which Flora gives for preferring her scholar love are mostly of a very mercenary character, and his own learning is rather thrown into the back-ground compared with his wealth and luxury. If the vow of celibacy had been strictly observed by the clergy in those days, the very argument of the piece and the final decision, 'that the scholar is by far the most ardent lover,' would be a bitter satire in itself. But we know that numbers of the English priests were virtually married: these left-handed marriages were formally condemned in council in 1215, but the papal ordinances on the subject were enforced with difficulty. Several of the poems in this collection, written immediately after Mapes's time, handle the question with great boldness, and display much good sense and sound protestant doctrine.

Feb. 18th. CARL BENSON

[Vol. XL, No. 6 (December, 1852)]

MY GHOST.

THIS is not a tale of spiritual rappings. I never heard any. Possibly I am not worth a rap, being only an artist. My table does not hop, or rear up, or fly. Between you and me, it is lucky it does not. If it did, the claw would come off, to a dead certainty. I think it right to mention this, and to warn any playful young ghosts or ghostesses of the fact. Now to my tale.

Aurelia Garford and I loved one another passionately, so passionately that at the age of seventeen we resolved to marry. Both our parents opposed the scheme. We had neither of us any money, and though I thought myself a Titian, the portraits I daubed were poor things even for sign-painting. But we could not wait. We grew desperate. We determined to run away into the wide world.

The wide world! How narrow it is, after all! A gimlet eight thousand miles long would bore a hole right through it. And what is eight thousand miles? Less than most people walk in a couple of years. 'What is any thing compared to every thing?' as the editor down east observed.

Aurelia's parents lived in Two-hundred-and-twenty-second street. Their house is near the corner of Fourth Avenue. It is a long way 'up town.' Some say there is no such street. But that of course is nonsense, because I know Aurelia lived in it. Many people, no doubt, have started off in the cars to look for the street, and never found it. It is not easy to find; though, as it is the next street to Two-hundred-and-twenty-first street, it is not so difficult, after all. But I knew the street like a book. There was only one house in it, and that was only half built, owing to the owner's want of funds. I need not add that that house was the house of Aurelia's parents.

There was a large garden to the house. People can afford space for gardens up in Two-hundred-and-twenty-second street. It was a very nice garden. Only one thing grew in it, and that was grass. But, give me grass to walk on. Trees are all very well for climbing, and timber is useful for building. Fruit is a capital thing if you want to eat, and flowers are very pretty if you care to look at them. But Aurelia and I only wanted to walk about with our arms round one another's waists; and we preferred grass to trees, as we did not want to climb like squirrels, or build like carpenters. We valued grass even more highly than flowers, because we preferred sitting down upon it, and looking into one another's eyes, to gazing at all the roses and magnolias in creation. And as for fruit, we scorned to think of earthly peaches or apricots, when our lips could be so much more sweetly occupied in exchanging celestial kisses, of which no amount could possibly give us a surfeit.

It is my deliberate conviction that the garden of Eden was a grass-grown bit of land, with good high fence round it to cast a shade in hot weather. The rest was love, which makes a paradise of any place.

We resolved to run away. And we did. We met one afternoon behind the wall of the grass-grown garden, and made for the cars. As we went along, I summed up the items of my happiness, drew a line, and calculated the total. The items were:

1. An angelic disposition.

2. The softest black eyes in the world; silken tresses to match.

3. A complexion pure as the whiteness of a pearl.

4. A mouth which beat all the Greek statues to fits.

5. A neck and shoulders of human though quite equal to vegetable ivory.

6. A slender, graceful figure, that would have destroyed St. Anthony's saintship to a dead certainty, and so much the better for him if it had tempted him.

7. Love for a certain individual, (who, like Mr. Ferocious in 'Tom Pepper,' shall be nameless,) carried to the confines of hero-worship.

Total: Aurelia Garford.

I was in a state of tremendous exhilaration. My soul cut capers and threw up its hat inside my breast; at least so I conjectured from the thumps I felt against the walls of that portion of my body. Aurelia and I took one long-drawn, champagnish sort of kiss, just before we turned the corner of that, to many, apocryphal Two-hundred-and-twenty-second street, and in another minute we were at the rail-way station.

So was old Garford!

He had come home two hours before his time from his office down town, where he was supposed to make money somehow. Not that he ever made any. His wife had a small income of her own, and that supported the family. Mr. Garford, at least so it appeared to me, was allowed to play at business just to keep himself out of mischief.

'Hollo, young people!' he cried, jovially, 'taking a walk, hey! Where are you off to? and what does my pretty Aurelia carry in that confoundedly bulgy basket there?'

'Oh, papa!' cried Aurelia, whose self-possession was upset by the sudden rencontre, and the dear girl burst into a passionate flood of tears; tears of disappointment and vexation, I conscientiously believe.

'Hollo! what 's this, what 's this, young gentleman?' said old Garford sternly, smelling a rat for the first time.

'Why, Sir,' said I, perhaps stupidly, impelled by an irresistible impulse, 'if you had not met us so unluckily, we should have run away and got married.'

'Hum!' said old Garford, looking at me fixedly; 'is there any particular reason for your getting married in such a hurry?'

'Yes, Sir,' said I.

'And pray what is it?' said old Garford, severely.

'We love one another!' said I, looking him boldly in the face.

'Oh, is that all? Very well. You need not run away; I have not the least objection to your being married.'

'Oh, Sir——'

'Stop a moment. I have a great objection to your marrying without any thing to live on. Much as I was attached to Mrs. Garford, Sir, I should never have dreamed of marrying her unless we had had between us sufficient to support a respectable establishment, Sir.'

'But, Sir——'

'But, Sir,' resumed Mr. Garford, who evidently took a pleasure in playing his part of heavy father in the drama; 'but, Sir, you perhaps imagine that I can give my daughter a fortune. You anticipate——'

'Not at all, Sir,' I interrupted, eager to disclaim all interested motives 'I know very well that you cannot give your daughter any thing.'

'Indeed, Sir, indeed? And pray how do you know that I cannot give my daughter a fortune? Are you aware, Sir, that the business I am engaged in is one by which some of the largest fortunes in this city have been realized, Sir?'

To use a somewhat worn but expressive phrase, I had hit my intended father-in-law 'in the raw,' and all attempts to conciliate proved fruitless. Nor did a hint from Aurelia, that 'papa knew very well he had not made the rent of his office for the last two years,' at all mend matters.

Finally, Mr. Garford positively forbade my farther visits or correspondence with his daughter, until I could show him that I was worth five thousand dollars clear, and making an income of at least two thousand a year.

Thus we parted. I made several attempts to see Aurelia, but failed. In the end I resolved to set to work to make the required sum and income with the least possible delay.

Luckily I made friends with a very clever painter, who undertook to put me in the right way. I had to begin again. The fact was, I had a tolerable dexterity in the blending of colors, but I drew like a Chinese, or a Yankee as I was. My master was a Frenchman; he had studied at Paris under Delaroche. He opened my eyes. I was quick. In a few months, with considerable labor, I could produce a portrait at any rate tolerably correct in outline and perspective. This at once raised me above the majority of my rivals, and I soon procured considerable custom.

I had just laid the first stone of my fortune in the shape of a hundred dollars deposited in a bank, when an overwhelming blow destroyed the whole edifice of my hopes.

I received a letter announcing the death of Aurelia from her father. She had been dead three weeks when the news reached me. My friend the painter was present. He saw me turn pale and cover my face with my hands.

'What is it?' he asked, kindly.

'She is dead!' I replied, in a shaken voice.

He knew my history, and needed no farther explanation.

I threw myself on a sofa and wept convulsively. When I had exhausted the first violence of my grief, my friend approached me, and in a tone of grave sympathy asked me of what I was thinking.

'Of death!' I replied.

'Of suicide?' said he.

I made no answer.

'Do you not possess her portrait?' said he.

'Yes, a daub of my own, but which reminds me at least vividly of the original. I have also a daguerreotype, but daguerreotypes have always a cold, ghastly look.'

'You should paint her.'

'Paint her?'

'Yes, paint her as an angel of heaven; realize your memory of her beauty on the canvas. Leave a monument of your love and talent behind you. Then die, if you please.'

The artist's suggestion pleased me. No youth of eighteen is in a violent hurry to die, even for love. I resolved to adopt my friend's idea, and a gloomy sort of ambition seized me to make this work a work of art worthy of its model. Nay, I even dreamed of posthumous fame; of going down the stream of American art-history, as the man who painted a real angel, and then pursued its prototype into the world of angels.

I commenced my task that very day, and labored as long as the light allowed, without cessation. My master aided me by his counsels; and when the work was complete, he laid his hand affectionately on my shoulder and said, 'Truly you are a pupil worthy of a greater master!'

We had the picture framed and sent to the exhibition of the Academy. On the very first day my triumph was unquestionable. 'An Angel' was decidedly the attraction of the exhibition. The same afternoon an offer to purchase it for a large sum arrived from one of the richest merchants of New-York. I sat with this letter in my hand trying to read it by the already waning light in my studio, when I heard the door open and some body enter. Supposing it to be the painter, I did not look round.

Presently I raised my eyes, and beheld to my horror a shadowy figure in white, with a face of unearthly pallor.

The face was Aurelia's!

I confess that fear seized me. My shattered nerves, my recent over-exertion, my fasts and vigils, had increased my nervous sensibility to an alarming degree. I tried to reason with myself, and account for the vision on grounds of mental delusion, when I was startled out of all reasoning by the figure saying in a low but distinct tone:

'Frederick! do you not know me?'

'Yes, I know you,' was my solemn answer.

'And you still love me?'

'Now and for ever!'

'Then why do you not embrace me!' said the figure, gliding nearer.

'Can ghosts embrace?' I cried, rising dubiously, and gazing more assuredly at the pale phantom.

'Try!' said the ghost.

And I did try; but it was no spectre; it was a living, breathing angel I folded in my arms.

'What is the meaning of this? I thought you dead!'

'And I believed you buried. They told me so at home. I have had a fever in consequence; see how pale and thin I am!'

'But I am alive; so are you!'

'That is evident.'

'What could have been your father's motive for such conduct and such falsehood?'

'An insane wish to marry me to his partner, Mr. Smithson.'

'His partner?'

'Yes; he has caught a partner with money, as mamma says, and she thanks GOD she will not have to pay the rent of the office out of her own income any longer.'

'But how did you know I was alive?'

'Dead men do not paint pictures.'

'Then you know?'

'Yes, I have seen—oh! you flatterer!'

'Flatterer? not at all. But look at this—an offer of seven hundred dollars for the picture. An hour ago I would not have sold it for seventy thousand. But now—suppose we take the seven hundred dollars and run away at once?'

'It is not necessary; my father gives his consent—and here he is.'

Old Garford entered.

'Well, Sir,' said he, 'I congratulate you on your success. We shall be happy to see you at Two-hundred-and-twenty-second street this evening, if you are not otherwise engaged.'

Shortly afterward I was married. As soon as Aurelia and I were alone in the carriage that bore us from the church, I said to her, smiling, 'My dear little ghost, I sincerely trust you will haunt me to my dying day!'

'I will try,' said Aurelia, looking full at me with beautiful and fathomless eyes, 'to be your ghostly comforter as long as I live.'

It is my opinion that a ghost is very much improved by having a body attached to it.

W.N.

[Vol. XLIX, No. 1 (January, 1857)]

WHAT JEDD PALLFRY FOUND IN THE COFFIN.

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A CHRISTMAS STORY, BY T. B. ALDRICH.

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I.

CHIMES OF MEMORY.

MERRY Christmas?

Ah! but it used to be. It used to be, before the dreamy mood of boyhood melted away like a silvery mist. Merry, merry Christmas, then! The very words tinkled musically. I can hear them trembling yet, in memory, like that faint jingling of sleigh-bells which steals up from the street and in through the snow-muffled casement.

It was fine, then, to loiter in the crowded streets, gazing in the shop-windows—the El Dorados of 'fancy articles,' the Australian lands of bon-bons and rock-candy! What stereotyped visions I had of kind St. Nick, with his reindeer equipage on the house-top, and his huge pack filled with trumpets that would n't blow well, and carts that would n't go well, and dear old Hans Christian Andersen's story-books, which never failed of being Arcadies of delight. Then at home, when the apples and nuts were disposed of, my grand-sire, GOD love his white hairs! would take me on his knee, and read about 'CHRIST in the Manger,' with such quaint pronunciation!

Touched with these memories, and sitting once more, as it were, in the happy sun-rise of life, I am moved to write a Christmas story for Ida Maye, and little Carrie, and tiny-fingered Mabel, who are sleeping in the next room. I will put it in the most diminutive of the three mimic stockings—it is all the poor author can give to the little dreamy angels! And some of these days, when this weary pen is quite tired out, when there is nothing left of me but two or three volumes in some out-of-the-way book-case, their mother, some Christmas eve may-hap, will call the darlings to her side, and read the time-worn, yellowed manuscript to them. And Ida Maye will listen thoughtfully, with the long ebon lashes resting on her cheeks; and Carrie's roguish eyes will laugh out-right, though the story is a sad one, and Mabel will clap her little hands together like two white rose-leaves!

All this may be.

But before I write, I will steal softly into the next room and look at their sweet young faces. Oh! but they are newly from Heaven, their tiny mouths are made up for prayer! An infantile glory is only half shrouded by the drooping eye-lids, and those sweet faces light up the shadowy room as the tulips do some shady nook of the summer woods. I shall be better for looking at them. I will kneel at the bed-side—perhaps I shall be weeping, for to-morrow night, when the children dance round the Christmas-tree, a little boy, with wonderful blue eyes, will not be there! and in all the presents hung upon the emerald branches, in among the red and blue candles, there will be none found for 'Charlie!' And when we think of 'the little boy who died,' our lips will quiver, though laugh and jest go round, and the music be as gay and wild as the melody of Shelley's Queen Mab!

II.

THE ANCIENT UNDERTAKER.

OLD Jedd Pallfry turned down the gas a little, glanced nervously at the sombre row of coffins on each side of him, locked the shop-door and stood in the street.

It was Christmas-eve, and the snow-flakes, like tiny white birds from Paradise, were lighting on the chimney-tops and roofs, and in the long streets of the city.

Every night at that same hour, eight o'clock, for ten years, the under-taker had turned down the gas, locked the door, and placed the same key under the same mat, and stood in the same position for a moment by the window before turning into the narrow zig-zag street which, to him, ended at his supper-table.

But this time he was not going home. The antique Mr. Hans Spuyten Duyvel, whose death his amiable relatives had been impatiently awaiting for the last quarter of a century, had died that day; and old Jedd had been sent for to put the habiliments of the grave on Mr. Spuyten Duyvel's body, and two bright half-dollars on his eyes, the which small-change was afterward transferred to the pocket of the ancient undertaker.

Now old Pallfry had made coffins ever since his youth, and for thirty years really had more intimacy with the dead than dealings with the living. There was nothing in the whole world so beautiful to him as a coffin—unless it was an order for one. He had worked at his trade at all hours of the night: he had made little coffins—O such touching little coffins!—and fat ones, and slim ones; and by the ghastly flickerings of a lamp at mid-night, he had laid the cold white dead in the varnished boxes without feeling one throb of sympathy in that old iron-bound heart of his.

But that Christmas-eve he shuddered as he turned down the gas, and the long wooden tenements, with their covers off, seemed like so many satin-lined gate-ways leading to perdition. He felt as if a thousand strong currents of air were blowing him toward them! He could hardly keep from stepping into one; and it required all his strength to reach the door and lock it. Jedd drew a long breath.

'It 's always so—every Christmas-eve: she does it!'

As old Jedd Pallfry muttered this between his thin, bloodless lips, he flattened and whitened his nose on the window-glass, and looked into the gloomy shop suspiciously. He saw nothing at first but the accustomed number of coffins, and the velvet pall folded on the counter, and those two slim black stools which we all have seen in our homes, GOD pity us! But as he looked, his dim almond-shaped eyes grew suddenly to orbs. A strip of the flooring had commenced swelling, and bulging, and warping! Little by little it grew into the shape of a mound: tiny emerald spears of grass shot out of it in every direction: then it was dotted all over with yellow-eyed daisies, and a rose-bush, with a single white bud, sprung up from the centre. Jedd Pallfry's sight became so acute that he could see the perfume of the rose floating up in beautiful soft folds like the fumes from a censer!

Jedd rubbed his eyes, as well he might. When he looked again he saw the shadow, then the skeleton of a tree: then this took miraculous form, and a willow trailed its green lengths over the mound. And he saw the moted sun-shine falling upon the place, and heard the robins singing—singing in his shop!

Jedd looked and looked; but when the grass and the daisies grew tremulous as in a sudden wind, and the grave begun to open, Jedd could look no longer; and he shut out the strange sight by placing two lank, bony hands over his eyes.

'Merry Christmas, Sir!' said a hesitating voice at his side.

Jedd started.

'Merry Christmas, Sir!' repeated the voice dolefully.

And then Jedd turned his eyes on the speaker. It was a very shabbily-dressed lad. He had on a felt hat of no color whatever, a round-about jacket, and a pair of white duck trowsers, much too well ventilated for the season. His physique was as delicate as a girl's; and if it had not been so dark, Jedd could have seen a face in which there was a strange mixture of the Madonna and the devil—the expression of boyhood and manhood contending, and a sad experience written all over it.

But the snow was falling heavily, and he only saw a very little fellow surmounted by a very shocking hat.

'If you please, Sir,' said the boy pleadingly.

'Humph !'

And Jedd was about to bid him go his way, when it struck Jedd that after what he had seen, not even the love of his charming coffins could tempt him to turn on the gas again in his shop; and to leave it burning until morning was a bit of extravagance not to be thought of. It occurred to him to hire this promiscuous wisher of merry Christmases to sit in the shop till he should have returned from the Spuyten Duyvel's: then he could turn on the gas and turn off the boy at the same time. So he changed his brusque manner, and inquired, in a tone which was intended to be extremely conciliatory:

'What 's your name, bub?'

'The last one, Sir ?' asked bub, looking up.

'The last one, Sir ?' repeated Jedd, mimicking the lad. 'How many have you?'

'A good many, Sir. In Nantucket they used to call me poor Tommy, and orphan Tom, and Tomtit. But on board ship the sailors called me Nantuck—and they called Nantuck very often, and made him work a good deal.' And the boy shivered with cold, as the keen north wind swept around the corner with evident predatory designs on his tattered jacket.

'Nantuck?' said his interrogator, turning up his pinched nose with disapprobation, as if the name filled his venerable nostrils with a 'very ancient and fish-like smell.'

'Well, Tomtit—I like that best, you know—if you will keep shop for me an hour or so, I 'll give you a shilling.'

'I do n't know how much a shilling is,' said Tomtit, alias Nantuck, eagerly; 'but I 'll do it, and thankfully.'

'The key is under the mat. Unlock the door, and do n't touch any thing. Do n't jar those lovely coffins; they might fall on you and kill you, you know.' Jedd never once looked toward the shop. 'If you see a grave in the middle of the floor, you must n't be frightened, you know. I 'm not.'

And Jedd shuddered.

'I do n't see any grave,' said Tomtit, throwing open the door.

The undertaker summoned all his courage and glanced into the room; but the mound with its daisies and the weeping-willow had vanished.

'Dev'lish strange,' he muttered. 'It was there.' Then, facing his clerk pro tem.: 'You won't steal any thing, because there isn't any thing to steal, you know.'

The boy looked wearily around him, and seemed to think that the temptation was n't very strong.

'But he might take a lid, though,' thought Jedd.

However, there was no alternative but to trust him. Some how or other, and GOD wills it so, the most suspicious are sometimes obliged to place confidence in a fellow-mortal. Not you and I, gentle reader: we would do it willingly, for it is good to believe in humanity. Among other things, the old man of three-score years had not learned this.

Tomtit glanced over the apartment.

There was only the ghost of a fire in a small stove; all sorts of grotesque shadows peopled the room, and the dim blue light, which fell like an imitation of moon-rise on the long, narrow houses of the dead, made them look frightful. A coffin is an ugly-looking thing any way one can fix it, and twenty coffins are, of course, twenty times uglier.

'Queer place,' soliloquized Tomtit. 'I rather like it, though.' And the boy smiled a sickly smile. 'He thought I 'd be afraid. A man who has been on a whaling voyage—' here little thirteen-year-old drew himself up to his full height—'is n't likely to be scared by two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty, empty boxes! I guess not.'

The child must have been exceedingly weary, for he had no sooner located himself on one of the tall black stools, than he sunk into a profound slumber. His body swayed to-and-fro in a very undecided manner. At last it gave an extra curve, and Tomtit fell. He broke neither his slumber nor his neck—heroes never break their necks, I believe. The critics, however, sometimes do it for them. I know an instance.

Tomtit lay at the foot of his perpendicular bed, and there we will leave him—leave him sleeping with one of his thin, brown hands grasping the leg of the stool, and one foot in a coffin—the first time, I think, that such a fact has been recorded of any body, though we often hear of people having 'one foot in the grave.'

But while I whisper in your ear, let him sleep.

III.

THE SKELETON.

THERE is a curious skeleton in Jedd Pallfry's heart, and every Christmas-eve it turns and twists, and makes the old man feel queer pains and see strange sights.

These skeletons are very common to the human race generally. They are the phantoms of evil deeds and malignant thoughts—mental afrites that grow up in a single night, like toad-stools. Be wary, that you may not have one growing in your bosom. It will show itself. Mrs. Mac Elegant cannot drape hers with all the silks and brocades in Stewart's, nor old Three-per-cent his: it goes to the very bed-chamber with him and rides in his cushioned carriage. It walks with him in Wall-street and sits beside him at church.

But the undertaker's skeleton for the present.

There was never any body prettier than Nannette Pallfry. Indeed it would be hard to find in any woman's eyes a more enchanting light than that which lay in Nannette's. Her voice, like the poet's western wind, was sweet and low. She was as lovely and natural as a summer wild-flower, and so good that sin in her was not evil.

Mr. Theologician, you would interrupt me.

I will explain: if she had been less worthy of heaven, if she had been more worldly wise, cautious instead of loving, artful instead of sincere, in short, any thing but the very angel she was, Nannette's life would have seemed purer in the world's eyes; but not in GOD'S. I know that.

Nannette's history is an old story, told every day. For shame, man! that it is told every day! She lived, and loved, and trusted, and that is all of it, or nearly.

One December night she came in the snow to her father's door, and he turned her away—Nannette, the only thing in all GOD'S world he loved with a human love. She did not weep, she did not even murmur: she only pressed the hand of a child who walked wearily beside her, and passed on.

Her life from that time was so full of suffering, yet so womanly and true, that the angels might sit and listen to a narration of it with delight. Nannette went far away from the city, and in a little town by the sedgy sea-shore, taught her boy to pray.

Year after year went by.

The world rolled on like a great wheel: men, and women, and children dropped off like flies, and Jedd Pallfry's hammer was busy—oh! so busy! Now while shrouds were being made, and coffins varnished, and the old world was turning on its axis, Nannette died.

The night of her death, just as old Jedd was fitting the lining to an infant's coffin, a grave grew up at his feet—a willow and a rose-bush, and he heard the singing of birds! He knew what it meant. He knew that somewhere—he could not tell where—there was another mound just like the one beside him. Oh! how blithely the little birds sang to Jedd. There were a new heaven and a new earth for some body that night, and how merrily the robins sang about it! All this happened while the snow-flakes were running nimbly over the house-tops like little white mice!

Every Christmas-eve, at the same hour, Jedd sees this phantom mound with its sighing willow-tree, and its lovely flowers, and its fairy birds, flitting here and there like the fragments of a broken rainbow! And at night he has a fearful dream. He fancies that four Fever-fiends are tossing him in his best velvet pall. Yellow Sack, with his great jaundiced visage, Brain-fever, shouting deliriously, Scarlet-fever, with red-hot eyes and putrid lips, and Typhoid, still and dreadful—he sees them all! and they paw him with their disgusting hands, and kiss him on the mouth till poor old Jedd is near going mad with agony and fear.

Nannette's child was adopted by a fisherman's wife, and very badly adopted; for when poor Tom was not busy catching fish, he was catching something else. So between boating and beating, the child was not as happy as he might have been with more of one and less of the other, or a gentle sufficiency of both. Having indulged in four years' experience in being whaled, he took it into his head to have a hand in the business himself. 'To be, or not to be,' was a question in the boy's mind; and 'not to be' beaten any more was his decision: so one fine morning, without as much as the cognizance of his beloved mother, Amphitrite, he placed his name on the books of 'the good ship Marie Theresa,' and sailed out of port with a light heart, one suit of clothes, and a prospect of hard work, which is all the 'rig out' a true sailor needs, HEAVEN bless him!

But Tom was too delicately made for a whaling voyage, and after wasting three years of the golden part of his life, he found himself in our great city one night, without money, or friends, or a place to die in. He wandered from street to street so charmed with the mad wrangling of sleigh-bells—a new music to him—and so dazzled by the shop-windows, that he forgot his hunger and the web of difficulties which Time and Fate, the busy monsters! were weaving for him. But hunger under such circumstances, like a renewed note, only spares one for a little while. It came back to him with interest, his hunger, and he grew disconsolate.

The city, with all its strange newness, was forgotten in turn. The snow chilled him, and the happy children buying toys in the grand shops, and the merry sleighs darting through the street like swallows, gave him an acute sense of loneliness. There were no mother and sisters to put gay presents in his stockings. Indeed, if there had been, they might have bought the stocking too, for never a one had Tom on those cold little feet!

Tom looked in Maillard's window at the rare pastry and confections, and his hunger grew maddening. He turned from the heaped delicacies, fearing that he might be tempted to thrust his arm through the thick plate-glass and help himself. He turned away in gastronomic agony, did Tomtit, and hearing the children cry 'Merry Christmas!' wondered what it was and where it could be!

Poor Tom, I have been looking for it these five years!

Nantuck passed rapidly up Broadway, and then, to avoid the heedless throng, crossed over to the western part of the town. Fate led him, for Fate deigns even to shape the lives of such estrays as Tomtit.

Once he paused at a baker's door and looked so longingly at a waiter of fresh tarts on the counter, that the shop-girl gave him one, and her glossy curls shook all over with delight at the ravenous way he devoured it.

'Poor fellow,' said the girl, sobering, 'he must have been fearfully hungry.'

He was ratherish, and he annihilated two tarts with enthusiasm.

As he turned out of one of the cross-streets which lead into Sixth Avenue, he beheld an old man looking in an undertaker's window, as if he were weary of life, and a desire to accost him and beg shelter, or directions for finding it, overcame his pride, which was but a remnant of its former self. He approached the man, who took no notice of him whatever, but continued to glare at the window with a wildness that almost startled Tom from his design. Now our humble hero was never blessed, or afflicted, as the case may be, with great colloquial powers, and he was somewhat at loss as to how he should open a conversation with the eccentric and unique individual before him. In this dilemma the words he had heard spoken a thousand times that night broke musically over his lips:

'Merry Christmas, Sir!'

Then it was that Jedd Pallfry turned and looked at him, and said:

'Humph!'

IV.

POOR TOM 'S A-COLD.

WE left Tomtit floored, literally, at Chapter II.

The hours went by like shadows, and he still lay under the charmed influence of sleep—Sleep, the little sprite, from the land of Nowhere, that sits upon tied eye-lids and weighs them down so kindly. Erratic and coquettish Sleep, that will and won't, and is so very like a woman! so hard to win, so exquisite and true when won.

Tom lay dreaming of ships, anchors, and ambergris, of Nantucket and fish, and silent fields,

'WHERE calm end deep
The sun-shine lieth like a golden sleep!'

In the midst of this the fire in the diminutive stove went out: and now commenced a combat between the warmth of the dreamer's fancy and the coldness which was gradually taking possession of the room. The alarm of a conflagration in the next street, the muffled sound of the engine, dragged furiously past the door by men who seemed like demons red-hot from Pandemonium, and the jubilant clash of sleigh-bells now and then, had failed to move the sleeper. But the silent, invisible lips of the Chill-fiend were eating into his slumber, and he dreamed of icicles! His little embrowned hand lost its hold of the stool, and after one or two involuntary turns, he opened his eyes—to the fact that it was growing intensely cold.

It was in vain that he drew himself together, like a turtle: the cold touched the outer circles of his body, and sleep deserted him. He spied the velvet pall on the counter, and in a moment he had enveloped himself in its dreadful folds. But the death-cloth warmed him no more than if he had been dead. In fact, it threw a chill over him, and he seemed covered with a black frost, colder than the snowy tracery which grew like magic over the shop-windows! He threw the pall from him as if it had been a pest, and tried to warm his hands by the jet of gas which burned azure, and yellow, and all colors. But it only aggravated his coldness.

The idea of freezing to death took hold of Tom, and out of this grew a strange act. His eyes fell on a coffin which he thought would hold him comfortably. It nearly exhausted his strength to lay the silk-padded box on the floor. This being done, he settled himself into it without hesitation, and once more made a coverlid of the heavy pall.

Then Tomtit fell asleep again and commenced dreaming of dreary oceans and lonely isles, and 'fairy lands forlorn,' of cross-bones and eyeless skulls, church-yards and epitaphs, and GOD knows what! Just then a brazen-lipped sentinel in a neighboring belfry solemnly told out the hour, and, unseen save by GOD'S own eye, high up the steeple in the snow, and wind, and sleet, a ghostly finger pointed to the cabalistic figures XII.

V.

LIFTING THE PALL.

JEDD PALLFRY was detained at the Spuyten Duyvel's longer than he had anticipated—two hours longer; and the clock struck twelve as he whirled round the corner, and brought himself up against the wind in front of his shop. The long tails of his thread-bare over-coat were flying all ways, and he looked like a great hideous owl lost in the night.

When Jedd threw open the door, he started back.

There, in the middle of the shop, just where the spectral grave sprang up yearly, lay a pall-covered coffin, the gas going out, and the boy gone! The place seemed chilly and damp like a vault, and Jedd shivered so, that the snow-flakes flew from him in every direction like sparks from a scissor-grinder's grind-stone. The stiffness in his knees gave out, and he supported himself against the counter.

Now one of those changes came over Jedd Pallfry which happen to us all at times, and for which philosophy's self cannot account. With resolute and fearless steps he approached the coffin and lifted the pall. The light, which seemed to brighten up a little, fell aslant on Tom sleeping. The strange young face, shaded by tangled curls of nut-brown hair, and lacking the soft influence of his closed eyes, was almost wild in its beauty. The parted lips seemed ready to speak, but they moved not; the eye-lids twitched, but were not lifted: and he lay a double picture—Life and Death!

Jedd started, but not with fear. He felt something trembling, throbbing, warming in his bosom. It was only his heart melting! The nature and humanity of the man had broken their fetters like reeds, and the love which had lain in a trance for a dozen years, rose up within him, and would be heard! His heart knew the little stranger in the coffin, and he bent over him with a tenderness that belongs to woman.

'Nannette!' he said softly; 'oh! so wonderfully like Nannette!'

The boy opened his eyes and looked about him confusedly. He attempted to rise, but his strength had succumbed to cold and hunger; and he sank back with a sickly smile.

'I 'm so very hungry, Sir!'

'Only speak to me!' cried Jedd, hoarse with emotion; 'only say if you are Nannette's child!'

'Nannette, Nannette,' said the boy dreamily. 'Is some one calling my mother?'

The old man said not a word at this, but knelt down by the coffin and wept.

The clock struck one as Jedd Pallfry passed through the blinding sleet with something heavy in his arms—something wrapped in a pall. A drowsy policeman, ensconced in a door-way out of the storm, hailed him, and the drifted snow was more than knee-deep—but Jedd, heeding neither, struggled on with his burden.

Then a brilliant coal-fire threw a lurid and pleasant glow over old Jedd's sitting-room. The elderly house-keeper—completely dressed, with the exception of a night-cap which she had forgotten to remove—hurried to-and-fro in 'a state of mind,' collecting more jugs of hot water than would be required to warm the feet of all her Majesty's subjects in the Crimea. Close by the grate, in a Daniel Lambert of an easy-chair sat the unconscious Tom, with Jedd soothing one of his hands and gazing anxiously in his face. So an hour went by, and then the child's eyes unclosed; and Jedd Pallfry took him in his arms, and the old man's whole heart was a prayer—a prayer to HIM who 'tempers the wind to the shorn lamb!'

When I have said that terrible dreams and strange visions never haunted Jedd Pallfry after that night, I have said all. So is my story done.

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THE snow has ceased falling, and through my window I can see the crisp stars twinkle like bits of chrysolite. The city bells are ringing a requiem for the dying mid-night, for the dying year. Silver voices from dizzy turrets are calling to each other mournfully, dolefully. A chill and a foreboding hang over all! And now the bells clang merrily:

'RING out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

'Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

'Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

'Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife:
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

'Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
And ring the fuller minstrel in.

'Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite:
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

'Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold:
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

'Ring in the valiant men and free,
The larger heart the kindlier hand:
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the CHRIST that is to be.'

And of all Christian souls! I pray GOD. GOD be wi' you!

[Vol. LI, No. 4 (April, 1858)]

THE LOST SOUL.

MY dear lost ELMA!

I write her name with tears, and lay down my pen, and think. My mind drifts off into a sea of love and sorrow. I feel the presence of a spirit near me. I close my eyes, and see a sweet but pallid face, a vague but beautiful form. I hold them by my will, and live over a thousand solemn recollections. Stay with me a little longer, Elma, if only in a dream. Remain, I implore you! In vain, in vain! The figure vanishes: the dream is past. I awake, and find myself alone.

I have been thinking of my past life a great deal lately, and trying to understand it: but I cannot. It is a strange, dark mystery—an appalling night-mare. My friends try to persuade me that I am ill, and melancholy. 'You have lived and thought too much,' they say: 'you need repose and society. What seems to you a reality, is only a dream. You have but dreamed: nothing more.' You mean well, my good friends: but you are mistaken. I am not the man you think me:

'My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have uttered: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word, which madness
Would gambol from.'

No: I am not mad; I am sane: too sane, alas! to be happy.

I foresee a difficulty in writing this narrative: it faces me on the threshold of it, and thrusts me grimly back. I am to recount my past life: but which life shall I recount? For I have lived two lives: one common to the race, the other peculiar to myself alone. Shall I describe my inner or my outer life? If I describe my outward life, I fear I shall be too common-place: if I describe my inward life, I shall be too subtle and metaphysical. If I blend the two, I may be successful.

The book of my youth opens in a city by the sea. I behold in the neighborhood of the wharves an antique dwelling, of yellow brick. It stands at the end of a paved court-yard, with its front facing the street, and its back the wharves and ships. From my back-window I saw tall masts and black spars, with here and there a half-furled sail, and, beyond, the bright belt of the sea: from my front-window, I saw the paved court, the stony street, and the brick walls opposite.

My favorite walk lay among the wharves. I loved to stroll past the coils of rope, the pyramids of rusty chains, and the tar-barrels which cumber the side-walks of maritime neighborhoods, and past the great anchors, and the noisy forges, luminous with red-hot iron. The streets were filled with heavy drays, loaded with casks and bales: and around the doors of groceries and taverns stood groups of sailors, just come home from sea. I often picked my way down the crowded wharves, jostling authoritative stevedores and sweaty laborers, and reaching the water, sat down on the edge of the pier, and dreamed. In thought I unmoored the black hulls of the ships, and drifted out to sea, piloted by the winds. I tried to imagine the mysterious sea—an illimitable waste of waters, under a brooding sky and hanging clouds, and conjured up the winds that drove the billows. I saw the sky black with thunder, the forked lightning cleaving the air, and the billows, mountains high, crested with hissing foam. Anon the moon came, and the good ship sailed by its light. I pictured the tropic islands that sleep on the ocean like sea-birds: their coral reefs, their graceful palms, and the dusky savages that inhabit them, paddling their long canoes through the roaring wall of surf, or basking in front of their huts. But I soon came back to the pier, and the strata of civilization around me.

From my earliest years, I loved my fellow-men. I felt that they were my brethren, and my heart longed to embrace them. I peered curiously into the faces that I passed in the streets, and wondered who they were, and where and how they lived. I wondered whether the men had sweet-hearts and wives, or were alone on earth. Whether the women had husbands and children, or only lovers. Whether the children had parents, or were orphans, like myself. There was no end to the questions that flitted through my mind in my city walks. I have hardened my heart since then, and now I can look on mankind coldly. I passed a beggar on my way home to-night—an old, gray-headed man. Did I help him? I fumbled among the small change in my pocket, and withdrawing my hand, left him sitting there penniless in the rain.

Night has always been a happy season with me—a season of calm and peace. Year in and year out, I have sat for hours by my solitary lamp, plucking my thoughts as they budded, and binding them into little posies of song. Or I have pored over quaint old folios, until my eyes blinked with sleep. Having but few books in my youth, I used to while away my night hours at the open window. My favorite seat was at the back-window, which looked out on the harbor. Opposite the city was a small town, the lights of which were reflected in the water. When the night was calm, and the waves were smooth, their long golden lines stretched clear across the harbor: when it was windy, they were broken into a thousand fragments. It was the custom then for the bells to ring every night at nine o'clock. The bells of the city began, and before they ceased, they were joined by those of the town opposite. There is something weird in the sound of a bell at night, and it always moves me strangely. It was sweet to sit at the window and hear the rich clangor of the city bells, softened and mellowed by distance, stealing over the dark water, and dying away in the dewy air. Peal followed peal, slowly and solemnly, stately mourners at the funeral of Music. The music was not of the earth, but of the air—the winds—the clouds. It seemed to me the music of the spheres.

I buried my face in my hands, and leaned my head on the window-sill, and dreamed dreams, and saw sights. Sun-set was my dream-hour, when I was a child: like secret writing held before a flame, my nature was revealed by its dying fires. In youth and manhood, I read the cipher of my soul at night. Its darkness was my light. My nature broadened and deepened. I discovered in it powers which I had not dreamed of before: new and strange feelings—mysterious and unearthly thoughts. I seemed to expand, and to pervade the room. I floated in the still night-air. I brooded on the dark water. I rose up to the stars. I knit my brow and closed my eyes; and, striving to concentrate my mind, the blank of my thought slowly became a face! It was as if the invisible moisture that fills the air should gradually become a mist, and then a cloud; or as if the light should gather and orb itself into a star. The face was vague and undefined, rather a dream of a face than a reality: still it was real to me. Was it the memory of a face that I had seen, or the hope of a face that I was to see?

I remember the time when I first beheld that face. It was in summer, and I stood in an old wagon in front of my grand-father's house. I saw the sky over my head as I had never seen it before. I heard the sound of voices in-doors, and caught a glimpse of a face at the window. The face was a picture, the voice an echo. The sky was, I knew not what, perhaps GOD! The universe seemed to stand still, to give me an opportunity of looking into my being. A moment, and the divine chance was past: my eyes were sealed again. The face was gone: the voice was heard no more!

Not far from my home in the city stood an ancient Episcopal church. It was probably named after some saint in the calendar, and known to the goodly as Saint Jude's, or Saint John's: but to the majority of the citizens it was merely the Seven Bells. It had seven great bells, and they were known the country over. On Sabbath mornings they lifted up their sonorous voices, and poured a seven-fold peal from the ivied belfry. They were sweet-toned, and in perfect tune; and the sexton, or whoever played upon them, was a rare musician. He never seemed to ring them loudly, yet we always heard them distinctly, even when the neighboring bells were loudest. Their soft, low voices filled the pauses of the brazen anthem, and soared divinely above the tempest of sound.

It was a delight to sit at my front-window and hearken to their Sabbath chime, watching the while the church-going crowd below. I had read in an old school-book the story of an Italian bell-founder, who died in exile, in a foreign land, within the sound of some bells that he had cast. The story was nothing, but there were four lines of poetry in it which sang themselves in my memory whenever the seven bells rang. They were these:

'THOSE evening bells, those evening bells,
How many a tale their music tells,
Of youth, and home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime!'

Hearkening to the seven bells one balmy Sabbath morning, a sudden impulse seized me to go to church. I dressed myself in my best clothes, and joining the multitude in the street, in a short time arrived at the old church. The bells ceased ringing as I crossed the threshold. While I waited for the sexton to show me a seat, my eye roamed over the dusky interior. The pews were already filled. A dim light struggling through the long windows, lay in squares across the sombre aisles. Over the windows which ran nearly up to the ceiling, were the heads of cherubim and seraphim. The rector sat in the pulpit, looking over his sermon. In a minute the sexton led me to a pew under the left gallery. I was hardly seated when the organ opened the morning service, rolling its heavy base through the trembling pile. It was as if a river of thunder were slowly rising, flowing along the aisles, and eddying around the pillars, mounting higher and higher, until it reached the roof, and drowned the whole building. The voices of the choir were heard at intervals, battling with the noisy waves. I folded my hands, and gave myself up to the music, which bore me along on its bosom, I knew not whither.

After the morning prayers were read, the minister began his discourse. It was one of a series based on the text: 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' Commencing, as I did, in the middle of the series, I had but a dim idea of the plan and unity of the whole: but what I had heard interested me greatly, not only for its beautiful ethics, but for its strangeness and novelty. The minister of the Seven Bells, I afterward learned, was a remarkable man. A profound theologian, he held the dogmas of theology in contempt: of the purest morals, and rigidly ascetic in his life, he was tolerant of the sins of others. He could beat a dialectician with his own weapons, and suit himself to the meanest understanding. He was as wise as a serpent, and as harmless as a dove. His scholarship was great, in all departments of knowledge, ranging from the spiritualism of Swedenborg to the materialism of the physical philosophers. He studied man's physical nature and needs, as well as his spiritual ones: he gave the poor food and clothing before he gave them tracts. 'We must save their bodies,' he would say; 'before we can save their souls.'

His sermon that day was on the nature and essence of the soul. He adverted to his sermon of the previous Sabbath, in which he dissected, so to speak, man's body; and then examined the doctrine of the materialists, who maintain the soul to be the result of his organization. Seeming to admit the truth of that icy creed, he ended by proving it a lie—the invention of the enemy of souls. He analyzed the instinct of the animals, and compared it with the reason of men; showed its limited range, and its radical difference from thought; and glanced at the phenomena of Mind, in its various manifestations. The substance of his discourse, as I have stated it here, wrongs the discourse itself sadly: from my resumé the reader may conclude it to have been metaphysical and obscure; but it was not. It was remarkably clear and simple. He was a perfect master of his subject; and, for the time, he made his hearers masters also. Forgetting his process of reasoning, they could not forget his deductions. When he taught them most, he appeared to teach them nothing which they did not already know. He made them know themselves.

' 'What shall it profit a man,' he said, repeating his text, like a refrain: ' 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' But before a man can lose his soul, he must first find it. For he cannot lose what he does not possess. It is a common belief that all men have souls. I shall not controvert it. What I insist upon is this: that, soul or no soul before, there is a period in the life of man when his soul reveals itself to him; when he no longer guesses, or believes, that it exists, but knows and possesses the bright stranger. How many here,' said he, casting his eyes over the congregation, 'how many here to-day have found their souls?'

His doctrine was new and strange; yet it bore on its face the authentic seal of truth.

'Have you found your soul?' asked he, addressing an imaginary person in the church. I put the same question to myself; and lifting up my eyes, I saw in the opposite gallery a face that startled me. It seemed to me that I had seen it before; but where, I knew not. I gazed at it steadfastly and silently, and wondering where I could have seen it, unconsciously recalled my nightly dreams. I sat again at my back-window, and looked out on the dark water. I heard the clangor of bells, and saw in the heaven of thought a mysterious face. It was the face before me! Nor did I merely see a face, but a form; the beautiful form of a woman. She was in the front seat of the right gallery, directly opposite the pew in which I sat. The gallery was dusk at the time, so dusk that I could scarcely see the faces of the congregation there; nor had I seen hers, but for a window, whose half-opened blinds let in a stream of religious light. It poured in from the upper half of the blind, I remember, and, passing over the heads of those behind her, fell around her in a golden shower. She was dressed in white, neatly and simply, and her bonnet was off. Her hair fell down her neck in ringlets, and the ringlets glistened and threw out a halo. Her brow was high and pale, a dome of meditation and thought. Her face was pale, very pale; but some unwonted emotion had slightly flushed it. Her eyes were closed; her lips moved, as if in prayer. 'Pray for me, sweet one,' I murmured: 'oh! pray for me.' She hearkened a moment to my whispered words, and then her lips moved again. I clasped my hands, and prayed with her. 'Have you found your soul yet?' inquired the rector solemnly. His question thrilled me like a voice from heaven. I coupled it with the woman before me, and shuddering with awe and ecstasy; I shouted, 'I have found her!' and sank back in a swoon. When I came to myself, she stood beside me. I stared at her wildly, caught her hand and pressed it to my lips, and allowed her to lead me away like a child.

I kept a firm hold of her arm as we walked through the streets, for I was fearful of losing her in the crowd.

'I am better now,' I said at length, 'and able, I think, to find my way alone. Instead of your going with me to my house, I will go with you to yours. Show me the way.'

'At present, our ways are the same,' she said with a smile.

'I am glad of that,' I answered warmly, pressing her arm to my breast.

'And I, too,' she replied, casting her eyes on the ground.

We walked in silence until we reached my home.

'I live here,' I said.

'And I, too.'

It was even so. Elma dwelt in the same house with me, and I knew it not. How blind I had been!

I look back upon this part of my life with a sweet but melancholy joy. I would fain describe the growth of my love for Elma: how it flashed up in my heart like an electric fire when I saw her in the church: how it broadened and deepened, filling my life with light and music and beauty: but, alas! my words are weak. They refuse to bear the burden of memory, even when that burden is a perfect bliss!

I was no longer the man that I had been. A change had come over me, or over the world and men. I walked the world like one in a dream. I was in a new world; a brighter and better world than the old creation of my childhood. Unknown to myself, I had drawn gradually near it, step by step approaching its shining borders, when suddenly there came an angel to me, and in a moment I was in Paradise! Old things had passed away, and all things had become new.

I loved!

What a heaven lies in that little word—LOVE! It is unfathomable: it cannot be defined. It is too noble for words: its subtle essence escapes even the clutch of Thought. We feel it, but we cannot describe it. The inspiration of poets for thousands of years, it flies their sweetest songs. The spices and the sepulchre are there, but the LORD is flown. But I will not rhapsodize. It is enough to say—I loved.

The Providence which had thrown me in Elma's way was kinder to us than to most lovers; for after we had once met, we were seldom parted. We met as strangers; but we did not part as such. We were friends the moment we met; old friends, it seemed. The friendship between us was of ancient date. Our love was not so much a new bond, as the renewal of an old one. It was the most natural thing in the world that we should meet and love, as we did: the wonder was, that we had not met and loved before. We compared our recollections of childhood, and I was amazed at their many resemblances. Elma, I gathered from her conversation, had been in the village where I was born, and knew all its localities. In certain moods she had a singular gift of memory; a magnetic power over the Past. I have heard her describe in trances the landscape of my childhood, grouping scene after scene on a mental canvas, painting with words as picturesquely as an artist with colors. I have known her to repeat my very thoughts.

'I know your secrets,' she would sometimes say; 'you cannot hide them from me.'

Elma and I were seldom apart. Sometimes she would come and sit in my room, and read to me; but oftener I went to her chamber, and feasted my eyes with her beauty. I have watched her for hours in silence, scarcely breathing, hanging on her lightest look. I loved to sit at her feet, and feel her fingers on my throbbing brow. Her white hand fell upon me like a benediction from GOD. The walls of her chamber were the boundaries of my world. I could have been content to live there forever.

'In this little room,' said I one day to her, 'you and I sit and love. Beneath and around us lies the city: houses that shut out the light of heaven, and stony streets where the noises of life roar. Men and women go to-and-fro on their earthly errands, wasting the golden moments of the never-returning day. But we, dear Elma, are wiser; we are happy in each other's arms. You push the dark hair from my eyes, and press your lips to my forehead; I gaze in your eyes, and dream of heaven. Pass on, ye crowds, pass on! we have no business to transact with you. Your aims and interests are not ours. You work for bread, and gold, and power. We only live for love.'

The chimes of the seven bells summoned us to the old church every Sabbath morning. Apart from its sacred character, it was dear to us, because it was there that we first met. Elma would tap on my door at day-break, and I would rise and dress myself, and read the morning-prayer in the stillness of my chamber. Though I have long ceased to pray, I love to recall those solemn seasons of prayer. They lifted me above the Earth and Time. I seemed to knock at the gate of Heaven, and the LORD of Heaven seemed to answer me.

At last we were married.

We plighted our faith one beautiful spring night, under a whole heaven of stars. We were married the next winter, on a bright December morning; not as I could have wished, in the Seven Bells, but in a dingy little church in a distant city. I never pass that church without a thrill at my heart. Only last Sunday I made a pilgrimage to it in the rain. It stands in a narrow and crooked street, in a poor neighborhood—a plain, low edifice of common gray stone. When we reached the church, the minister was waiting for us. He slipped on his robe and band as we entered, and led us to the altar. We followed him up the aisle, wrapped in solemn thought. I dared not look at Elma, my heart was so full. I saw the minister reading the marriage service; I heard the words as they came from his lips. I responded, I believe, in the right place; but my brain whirled, my heart beat, and the blood left my cheeks. It was over at last. The ring was on her finger: she was mine—mine! I gave her my arm, and led her down the aisle, and into the street. Neither spoke. We parted at the door, as we had agreed; and she went home alone—to weep, perhaps to pray! I wandered about the city till noon, drunk with the wine of love. She was mine—mine! Elma was my wife!

Not long after our marriage, we moved from the city to a cottage on the seashore. We were just far enough from the city to be out of its distractions, and yet near enough to it to feel its influence on our lives. The best and happiest life, I have always thought, should alternate between town and country. Our cottage stood in a curve of a little bay. It was built on a narrow neck of land, with the sea on one side of it, and a belt of woods on the other. It was spring when we moved there, and the trees had just begun to leaf: a delicate greenness was visible in their dark entanglement of boughs. Tender blades of grass were shooting up in the fields, and a few early birds twittered along the road-side.

Elma's chamber looked out on the woods and the sea; but mine looked only on the village. I could never write well in sight of a noble landscape, because I could never sufficiently abstract myself from it. Unlike the painter, whose genius needs the form and color on which his eyes feed, the poet works best when he communes with his soul alone. I was a poet, and I gave myself up to my art. I loved it better than any thing in the world, except my sweet Elma. It was she who made me a poet. She taught me to read my nature, its desires and powers, and showed me that I was set apart for song. I was inspired by her. I saw with her eyes; I sang to the music of her voice. For a long time I had but one theme—Love. It was the spirit of all my songs, the bloom and aroma of my thoughts. It moulded itself in a thousand different forms, seizing upon every fresh creation of my mind. I lived, moved, and had my being in an atmosphere of love. I could not write in the room with Elma, or where I could see her, so all-absorbing was my passion; but when I locked myself up in my own room, and let my impassioned memory have its way, I wrote with ease the most perfect poems. I had only to remember what I felt, and the rhyme and the rhythm came. I read my poems to Elma as I wrote them: she rewarded me with smiles and praises. Sometimes, however, she chided me.

'Your poems are sweet,' she would say, 'but limited in their range. Your walk is too narrow. You must see more of the world and life.'

'You are my life and my world, Elma; I desire no other.'

'I know you love me now; but hereafter, who can say that you will not change? I mean not that you should love me less, but that you should love others more. The poet must not isolate himself from the world. He must have a warm, large heart, and quick sympathies, and must suffer and rejoice with mankind. Not otherwise can he know them, and help them.'

'But I do not wish to know them,' I would answer: 'it is enough for me to know myself, and you.'

The great defect of my nature has always been a feeling of self. I feel my own personality too strongly. I am not so much selfish, as tenacious of my individuality. I will not sacrifice myself. It was years before I learned that this was my bosom sin; for I used to think I was a martyr to others. Elma undeceived me on that point before our marriage. With all her love, she saw me as I was, not as I imagined myself to be, and she was courageous enough to tell me of my faults. I acknowledged them, and promised, by her help, to purify my nature. How could I refuse her any thing? She was the soul of sweetness and goodness—a pure and perfect woman. I realized in her my idea of an angel. She was religious; but she was good, also, else I had not loved her. Her religion was an accident, the result of circumstances; her goodness was herself. She was a member of the Seven Bells, where we met, and she practised the forms and ceremonials of the Episcopal Church. Their solemnity and beauty impressed her. The simple grandeur of the Episcopal prayers, the finest specimens of our good old Saxon tongue out of Holy Writ: the grave reading of the service; the music of the chants; the voices of the singers blending with the roll of the organ; the heavy pillars; the stained windows; the broad aisles; the dark fretted roof; all these things are powerful to a young and imaginative mind. I am no longer young or imaginative: but I feel them still.

The window of my study gave me a view of the village. Looking westward along a little curve of the bay, I saw a score of cottages, new and old, some standing out sharply and boldly, offending the eye with their glaring white fronts and green blinds; while others, that were old and weather-stained, were scarcely to be distinguished from their dusk back-ground of woods. A lane led from our cottage to the road. The road ran along the shore a short distance, till it made a turn, and was lost in the village. On its hither side was a blacksmith's forge and a carpenter's shop; farther on were two ship-yards, in one of which a ship was being built: the sky shone through its mammoth ribs. Here and there were glimpses of orchard-trees. Beyond, in the heart of the village, stood a little church with a square belfry, whose corners were crowned with towers. In this unpicturesque place Elma and I buried ourselves after our honey-moon.

We were never tired of walking in the woods, and listening to the wind among the leaves. When the wind was still, we heard the dash of the waves. Near the edge of the wood there was a tall rock, on whose top we used to sit and watch the sea. I loved the sea on sunny days, when its dancing surface dazzled my eyes: but Elma liked it best when the sky was clouded over.

'Give me,' she would say, 'the dark green water: it rests me, and makes me strong.'

In the distance we saw the sea-gulls swooping from their airy heights, and skimming the foam; and, now and then, the white gleam of a sail, flitting into dimness. The open horizon enlarged my mind: the sea lent its freedom to my songs.

We brought with us from the city a goodly collection of books, among which were translations of Plato, and the French philosophers. My favorite reading was the great masters of song: but Elma gave herself up to philosophy. It was her passion. She had a divine thirst for knowledge, which nothing could quench or satisfy. No science was too abstruse for her, no speculation too mystical. I wanted something that I could see and grasp: sensuousness, and the picturesque in poetry, and the practical in philosophy. Elma yearned for the abstract: for ideal beauty and truth. She understood me much better than I understood her. I felt that, even when our pursuits separated us most. Sometimes when I was satiated with poetry, I would ask her to read to me; and she would open Plato, and strive to illuminate my darkness. I acknowledged the beauty of the writing; but I could not understand the thought with which it was freighted. She tried to make it clear by simile and illustration; but I could not follow her: she spoke an unknown tongue. I was of the earth, earthy: she, of the heavens, heavenly.

We attended the village-church every Sabbath: Elma, through a sincere spirit of Piety; I, rather from habit than devotion. The minister was a good man; but he was dull and common-place. He taught me nothing new: he tired me. I remembered the intellectual discourses which I had heard at the Seven Bells, and shrugged my shoulders. I mused the impressive reading of the Episcopal service, the solemn music of the organ. I drew unfavorable comparisons: was exacting, contemptuous, witty. Instead of being humbled by Religion, I was exalted by Intellect. Not so Elma. She humbled her intellect, and exalted her religion. Though I had ceased to share her religious raptures, I did not cease to respect them: they were genuine and noble in her. I never loved her more than when I saw her at prayer: the whisper of her silent lips, and the droop of her serious eyes, touched me like mournful music. And when her ecstatic soul lit up her pallid cheeks, and the tears gushed from her eyes, I could have fallen down and kissed her feet.

In our conversations, Elma and I discussed the problem of man's life.

'Why was he sent on earth?' I would ask.

'To glorify his MAKER,' she answered.

'But he does not glorify HIM, Elma, and will not, while the earth stands. He comes of a bad stock. The centuries may turn him from the evil Past; but an evil Future is before him. He travels in a circle. If he glorifies GOD, it is through ignorance, or under compulsion. It is wrested from him. He lives his little day, like a May-fly in the sun, buzzing and glancing about till evening, when he dies. He works in the earth, like the blind mole that he is, digging his own grave. Look on mankind to-day: picture to yourself all the kingdoms of the earth, the continents, and the islands of the sea, peopled with human beings: mark their daily lives, the nothings that they pursue; their thirst for gold and power; their petty loves and hates; their ungovernable lusts and sins: are they worthy of the world in which they live?—worthy of GOD their Maker? They are not worthy of themselves. They are below even their own standard, which is low enough, GOD knows. We are knaves, fools, all of us and there's an end of it.'

My bitterness saddened Elma: she shook her head, and was silent. I felt that she could have answered me had she chosen to, and I was angry with her because she did not.

Little by little I began to neglect my wife: slightly and unconsciously at first, but wilfully and persistently afterward. I ceased to notice her closely. I forgot the way she wore her hair; her favorite colors and flowers; her little likes and dislikes. No longer the aroma of my thoughts, she passed out of my mind for hours at a time. She came into the room where I sat without my seeing her, and departed as she came. When I did see her, it was as if I saw a portrait, not a person. My eyes were hard and cold: she made no impression on me. There was a lack of sympathy between us. It was my fault, I know, but I insisted that it was hers.

'You do not love me,' I said.

'I do,' she answered, sadly: 'but you do not love me. You love yourself.'

She was right: I loved myself alone.

I hugged my personality to my heart, like the most precious thing in the world. I withdrew into myself, and shut the gates against mankind. I gave up poetry for a season, and devoted my days to philosophy, plunging head-long into the sea of speculation. Turn whichever way I would, the mystery of life faced me. I could not shut it out.

'Why am I here?' I asked Elma one day.

'To live,' she answered.

'I suppose so,' I replied testily; 'but to live how? What must I do to be happy?'

'Be good.'

'But what is goodness? As the world goes, I am good. I obey the moral code, and wrong no man. I pay my debts: am neither a thief nor a liar. I do not commit adultery or murder: still I am not happy.'

'You are too proud,' she said.

'I did not expect that from you, Elma; from you, who, I fancied, knew me so well. But grant me proud, as you say, have I not reason to be so? I am not like common men, made of the clay of the earth, but a Poet, a Thinker, an Intelligence. There is one law for the lesser, and another for the greater: their orbits are not the same. I cannot revolve happily in the sphere of my inferiors: their pleasures are pains to me; their goodness evil. I must have a broader and larger life: my enjoyments must be less limited, my knowledge more profound. My senses are keen, my passions eager: I will follow them. To know life, is the mission of the poet. But to know it, he must drain it to the dregs: he must taste the bitter as well as the sweet. I know what you would say,' I continued, for I saw she was about to speak: ' 'There is sin in this:' but you are wrong. There is no such thing as sin. It is not our actions which are good, or bad, but their consequences. The consequences may affect ourselves, but they cannot affect our MAKER. HE sits enthroned on the inaccessible heights of the universe, and the world revolves before HIM. HE hears the thunder of cannon from battle-fields, and the roll of organs from cathedrals: the prayers of those who worship—the curses of those who fight. They disturb not HIS eternal calm:

' 'FILL the can and fill the cup!
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
and is lightly laid again.' '

I saw by Elma's looks that she was shocked beyond measure. To her pure and simple nature, my skeptical sophistries were blasphemy; She sighed deeply, and left me. I heard her go to her own room and pray. I smiled, and commenced a poem!

The life that we had led in the city, in the first flush of our happiness; the fervor of our impassioned hearts, and the earnestness and depth of our religion, were too much for one so delicate as Elma. She began to droop and fade. The spring, however, revived her: and what with our calmer thoughts and feelings, and our walks by the wood and sea, her eye recovered its brightness, and her cheek its bloom. But now she began to fade again. Her cheek grew pale and thin, and her eyes shone with an unnatural brilliancy: the lids drooped heavily, as if they ached with weeping. An indescribable languor oppressed her. She would sit for hours with her hands folded, and her eyes closed, seemingly in a dream—lost to every thing around her. Then she would start suddenly, as if something had touched her, open her mournful eyes, and heave a profound sigh. I pushed from my heart the feelings of pity which she awakened: I shut remorse from my thoughts. 'She is nervous and whimsical,' I said, 'and not over strong. But she will be better soon. I will not yield to her fancies.' So I went on writing my poems.

Occasionally we took long walks in the woods, as we had been accustomed to do, but the old pleasure was gone. There was a coldness and constraint between us, which marred our enjoyment of nature. We saw every thing with different eyes. We spoke but little; chiefly on indifferent topics; like friends about to become enemies. I hid my thoughts from Elma, for I fancied she could not sympathize with them, and she hid hers from me. It was a pretence on both sides, for we knew each other thoroughly. I remember but one of our woodland walks, in which we were our old true selves. It was at the close of a calm afternoon in the last days of autumn. We had sauntered on for a time in silence, hearkening to the rustling of leaves, when we reached the edge of the wood. Through the last ranks of the trees we saw the village illuminated by the setting sun. The windows of the nearer cottages burned redly, while a tender and pensive light lingered on their walls. Something sweet and melancholy in that light recalled the smiles of my wife. I turned and gazed in her face. We looked at each other long and sadly. A flood of tender memories swept over my soul. We rushed into each other arms, and wept.

I was dejected and melancholy all the evening. My mind was full of regrets for the past, and apprehensions for the future. 'If I should die to-night?' I thought. I went to bed early, leaving Elma up, reading. I had a great mind to kneel down and pray before I slept; but pride and shame prevented me. I undressed myself forgetfully, and crept into bed. 'As I lie here now,' I said, 'I shall one day lie in the grave.' I closed my eyes, laid my hands on my breast, and tried to imagine myself dead. My brain grew drowsy. I heard Elma come in the room where I was, but before she could undress, I was asleep.

As she was the last thing in my thoughts, she passed into my sleep, and peopled my dreams. At first my dreams were too vague and dim to remember; rather the unrest of the body than the activity of the mind; but they perplexed and troubled me, nevertheless. I was haunted with a sense of danger somewhere. Wandering from one dusky realm to another, passing shadows and phantoms and shapes, I found myself at last in a land that seemed familiar to me, walking side by side with Elma. We cheered our journey with pleasant talk and songs, now and then plucking the flowers from the road-side. I was seized with a desire to loiter, but Elma was for going on to our journey's end. 'We will stay here,' I said, and stretched forth my hand to detain her. 'I must go,' she replied, and glided from me. I clutched her robe angrily, but it slipped through my fingers like mist! I clutched at it again, but failed to reach it. 'I must leave you,' she said. I was alarmed. My heart leaped: I awoke, and sat upright in bed. The room was intensely dark: I could see nothing. I heard the muffled tick of the clock in the next chamber, and the sea washing on the shore. All other sounds were hushed: the night was breathless. The stillness and darkness frightened me: my blood froze in my veins. I stretched forth my arms and felt for Elma. She was gone! I sprang out of bed, and groped for her, overturning the furniture in all directions, as I rushed about the room. I found her at last, lying on the floor senseless. I lifted her in my arms—a cold, dead weight, and bore her to the bed. I chafed her hands and temples, and finally succeeded in restoring her to consciousness. Then I lighted a lamp and held it up to her face. It was haggard, ghastly; death-like.

'Are you dying, Elma?' I whispered.

She shook her head. I dared not believe her. I threw myself on my knees, and stormed the gates of Heaven with prayer. 'Give her back to me, O GOD!' I said: 'she is my life, and I cannot lose her!' I burst into tears, and sobbed like a child. While I wept, I felt a light touch on my head—a hand that caressed and soothed me. I pressed it to my lips reverently, and rose with a lighter heart. She motioned me to remove the lamp. I placed it on the floor, and shading the light from her eyes, seated myself by the bedside in an arm-chair. The rest of the night was spent in watching.

A few days afterward, Elma seemed to have regained her strength, and I started for the city alone. She gave me a parting kiss at the door, and watched me till I was out of sight. I looked back as I went down the road: she waved her hand to me as long as I could see her.

It was twilight when I reached the city; the dusk of a sober autumnal day. The last beams of evening had faded, and the lamps were being lighted. The streets were crowded with men who were hurrying home after their day's work. The tide set so strongly in one direction through the principal thoroughfare, that I was carried with it, whether I would or no. Seldom merry in a city at any time, I am always melancholy in one at sun-set. I never feel so much alone as when I am jostled by a crowd at night. 'They are going,' I think, 'to their wives and children, to the comforts and joys of home. Bright eyes will grow brighter when they come; love-words and kisses will be exchanged; and tiny little hands will be outstretched, eager to clasp their neck. I have no children, no wife, no home.'

A feeling of lonesomeness came over me as I was borne along by the crowd. To rid myself of it, I stopped at the theatre. The curtain was up when I entered, the play was just commenced. It was that strange and dark attempt to solve the riddle of life, the old story of Faust. Faust was on the stage, bewailing the nothingness of knowledge. He pored over his books of magic, and summoned the demon to his aid. 'He should not have done that,' I said; 'he should have trusted to himself alone. We are strong when we rely upon ourselves, weak when we rely on others.' Suddenly the demon appeared, rising from the stage at his feet. 'I wonder how a man would feel,' I said, 'if the devil should appear to him? It would depend somewhat on the form the devil took, I fancy; but more on the man's nerves. It would terrify most men: it would shock even me, but not so much as to prevent my speaking to his Highness! But pshaw! there is no devil. I might believe in an angel now, could I only see one; but a devil, that myth is exploded.' In the mean time, Faust and the demon had come to an understanding. The demon was to give Faust all the pleasures of the world, in exchange for which he was to have his soul. 'Faust,' I said, 'was a great fool to buy what he could have had for nothing; but the devil, a greater fool still, to buy what he could not have at all. The world belongs to man, and man to GOD. Now, the world belonging to man, the devil has no right to sell it to him. And man belonging to GOD, he has no right to sell himself to the devil. And, having no right, of course the bargain is null. So you see, devil, you are cheated.'

While my brain was spinning this web, the scene had changed, and instead of the study of Faust, I saw a street at Nuremberg. On one side of it was a tavern; on the other, the entrance to a cathedral. The back-ground was made up of quaint old houses, with pointed gable-roofs. Three or four roysterers sat in front of the tavern drinking, and bands of grave citizens, burghers and their wives, filed into the cathedral. The musicians of the theatre were behind the scenes playing a mass. While my eye was taking in the picture, and my ear the music, Faust appeared again, no longer the haggard student in his thread-bare suit, but a young and gallant cavalier, arrayed in mantle and plume. Mephistopheles dogged him like his shadow. They stationed themselves behind the roysterers, who had come to the bottom of their tankards, and watched the last of the church-goers. The procession ended, the stage business paused a moment, and then Margaret entered, on on her way to church. She moved across the stage slowly, apparently lost in thought. Her garb was neither that of a peasant-girl nor a gentlewoman, but something between both—a simple but graceful gown, fitting tight to the waist, and ending in a small train. She wore a quaint little cap on her head, and carried a prayer-book in her hand. Faust lifted his cap as she passed him, and gazed after her admiringly. Mephistopheles shrugged his shoulders. She reached the threshold of the church, bowed her head reverently as she crossed it, and was lost in the music within. 'How sweet and pure she is!' I said; 'how tragic too! Poor child! poor child!' I forgot that I was looking at an actress, who was playing a part; I seemed to behold the real Margaret. She was no poetic abstraction, but a sweet and touching reality. Pursuing the thought, and hearkening to the music which was still playing behind the scenes, it flashed across my mind that the meeting of Faust and Margaret was like that of Elma and myself. 'He met Margaret outside of the church,' I added mentally, 'while I met Elma inside.'

Up to this moment I had taken an interest in the play, however slight, but now it was gone: my thoughts ran on Elma. I lived over the last few months of my life, and regretted the change that had taken place in my feelings toward her. I recalled her patience and gentleness, her sincere and earnest piety; I recalled her genius and her loveliness. 'She is too good for me,' I said, shaking my head mournfully. I closed my eyes and pictured her in our little cottage by the sea. It was night, and she was in her room. She sat by the round table, in the light of the astral lamp, writing a letter. I peeped over her shoulder and read the word, 'Return!' The music was still playing, but its spirit had changed, for the curtain had fallen on the first act, and the musicians were again in the orchestra. These were playing one of Strauss's waltzes. Elma laid down her pen when the waltz commenced, and went to the window and looked out into the night. She stood there a moment, straining her sight through the pane, and then took down her hood and cloak. She opened the door, and glided out into the lane. The wind blew back her hood, and I saw her pale face in the darkness. The sickly moon had been shining through a ragged cloud, but it set now, and the sky began to drop rain; it was intensely dark. The waltz went on merrily; whirling and whirling, but it grated on my ear. I could not keep Elma out of my mind; her leaving the house so late, alarmed me. 'What a fool I am,' I thought, 'to be cheated so by my fancy;' but I could not reässure myself. My heart beat rapidly, my eyes filled with tears. I rose and left the theatre.

It was a dark and rainy night without, but the streets were crowded still, and the shop-windows were bright. I lingered awhile on the steps of the theatre, looking up and down the city, uncertain where to go. 'I will walk off my melancholy,' I said at length, 'and then go to a hotel and sleep.' I wrapt my cloak about me and plunged into the crowd again. There is something strange and grim in a city at night, and I never felt it so profoundly as I did then. The long avenues of lamps that stretched away in the distance; the broad window-plates, roughened and dimmed by the rain; the shining, sloppy pavement, that muffled the noise of my feet; the shadowy figures that jostled me in the light, and disappeared in the darkness. How unreal they all seemed, how lonesome they made me feel! 'I wish I had some body to talk with,' I said. 'I am heartily sick of myself. Won't some body speak to me? ask me a question, or let me ask one? any thing for a few pleasant words. The sound of a friendly voice would do me good. Friendly; forsooth! There is not a soul in this great city that cares whether I live or die! I might throw myself under the feet of the horses in the street, or go down to the river and plunge into the black water—who would save me?' I stopped the next man that I met and inquired the way to a hotel. He cursed me for stopping him, and hurried on without giving me an answer. 'I thought these dusky figures were men,' I said, 'but I was wrong; they are evil phantoms. If I believed in devils I should say they were abroad to-night; but the only devils are men.' As I said this, I was seized by the arm. Before me stood a woman, a brazen creature, bedecked with flowers and feathers, and deeply rouged. She cast a leer in my face from her bold black eyes, and attempted to take my hand. I shook her off, and passed on.

I could not shake off my melancholy; it deepened every moment. My nerves were irritated, my heart was as heavy as lead: I was very wretched. And, to add to my discomfort still more, I found that I was wet through. Shivering with cold, and reckless with wretchedness, I entered a saloon, and called for a bottle of wine. It was brought me. I poured out a brimming glass, and drank it. 'It is the true vintage,' I said, and filled again. I held the golden sweetness to the light, and watched the little bubbles as they rose to the surface. 'There they go, the tiny jewels, shining and wavering upward, until they are lost in the bed of jewels above them. The wine is a perfect Golconda. It will enrich my sluggish blood and kindle my brain. It is like drinking the sun-shine to sip it. I taste the flavor of summer, the light and warmth of the south. I will fill again.' I drained the glass, and leaned back in the box. 'I wonder I did not think of this before: what a fool I was! This is comfort now, solid comfort. My blood begins to run warmly in my veins; my heart grows as light as a feather. I 'll have another bottle.' I remember drinking the second bottle, but after that, my memory was confused. I paid some body something; walked somewhere in the dark; was dazzled by a great chandelier; danced a waltz to the sweetest saddest music, (but perhaps that was a dream;) took a coach: I can remember no more till morning.

It was a dull day when I rode home; cold without wind, and damp without fog. The roads were miry from the rain over night; puddles of muddy water had fallen in the wagon ruts, and in the prints of the horses' feet. The woods through which I journeyed were bare; all bare skeleton forests of withered trees, whose dead leaves were rotting on the ground. There was no heaven above me; only a dim gray roof of mist, an indistinct dreariness, that weighed upon my soul. The sky was pitiless.

I rode on in a strange mood, perplexed with a double consciousness. I saw the dull sky, the dead trees, the stagnant water, not as in a real landscape, but as in a picture. They passed before my sight, but left no impression on my brain. There was another picture on my mind, and for my life I could not banish it thence; it would not depart. As a picture, it was beautiful, and instead of troubling, it should have delighted me, but it did not. The thought that it was not so much a picture as a remembrance, filled me with apprehension and grief. I tried to persuade myself it was but the creation of my heated fancy, but something told me it was a reality all the while.

I saw in my dream a richly-furnished chamber. The walls were lined with yellow damask, and hung with voluptuous paintings. The mantle was loaded with bronze and alabaster vases. The chairs and couches were rose-wood and satin. A Turkey carpet of the deepest dyes covered the floor. The window-curtains were crimson and lace. On a small mosaic stand were two Bohemian goblets and a flask of wine. In one of the goblets I spied a woman's bracelet. Beside the stand, thrown carelessly across a chair, was a rumpled ball-dress; on the floor lay a wreath of flowers.

The chamber was dusk at first, but by-and-by the fierce light streamed in, and I saw, what I had not before noticed, a sleeping woman! Her bed was in a small alcove, behind a half-drawn curtain. She lay, with her face to the light, fast asleep. One arm was doubled under her head, the other was thrown outside on the quilt. It was a miracle of symmetry I saw, and the little taper fingers were loaded with rings. Her heavy black hair was unbound, and its long tresses straggling over the white pillow, had crept into her whiter bosom. But her face, her beautiful voluptuous face; the ripe curve of her lip; the fresh little rose-bud in her cheek; the delicate droop of her eye-lid—I cannot describe them. She was youth, beauty, passion! 'These,' said I to myself, with a bitter smile, 'these be the devils that lead men to their ruin.'

It was evening when I drew near the village. The sun had set behind a mass of dark clouds, piled one upon another, like ruins; between their ragged rifts, the crumbling walls of temples and palaces, his lurid light was spreading rapidly. In a short time the whole west was a red core of fire. A turn of the road brought me in sight of home. I strained my eyes through the dusk, hoping to see Elma coming to meet me; but she came not. I spurred my horse into the lane, and galloped up to the house; still she came not. I dismounted and ran to the door. It was open; I entered; still she came not! I went to her room; it was empty. I ran to mine; that was empty too. 'Elma, where are you?'

I ran back to her chamber. 'Perhaps she is hiding,' I said. I looked behind the door; she was not there. I threw open the window-curtains; she was not there. Neither was she under the table, nor on the bed. I could not find her. 'Elma! Elma! where are you?'

I ran to my own room again, and searched that, peering into every nook and corner; I could find her nowhere. 'Great GOD! what has happened? Perhaps she has gone out to visit a neighbor. I will go and see.' I mounted my horse and galloped through the village; but no one had seen her!

I went back to the house, determined to know the worst. I was calmer than I had been, my distraction had given way to apathy. The blow had stunned me. I walked about quietly; rather like a guest in a strange mansion than a man in his own house. I noticed every thing. My curiosity was roused; I was piqued to get to the bottom of the mystery. I lighted a lamp, and went into my room. It was exactly as I had left it. My books were piled on the table; my paper and pens were untouched. There lay the draft, of my great poem, 'The Bridal of the Soul,' ending abruptly in the middle of a stanza! I went to Elma's room again, and scrutinized it closely. Every thing seemed to be in order: the chairs were in their places; the guitar hung on its peg, and on the little marble stand lay her work-basket and scissors. Her chair was drawn up to the round table, and on the table stood the astral lamp, just as I had seen it in my thoughts. I started. 'There should be a letter,' I murmured. There was a letter! I tore it open and read. It said, 'Return!' I threw myself in the chair, and buried my face in my hands. 'I have returned,' I muttered bitterly, 'and this is what awaits me!' I rocked to-and-fro in my misery. 'You asked me to come back to you, Elma, and I have come. I ask you now to come back to me.' I spoke to the vacant air; there was no reply. 'Come back,' I moaned, 'come back! I am not worthy of you, I know. I have sinned, and wronged you deeply. But if you give me up, I am lost. Come back! come back! come back!' I sobbed aloud.

The letter was still in my hands, and after my first wild burst of grief, I read it again. How imploring it looked on the paper, that mournful word, 'Return!' 'There may be something else written over leaf,' a faint hope whispered; I clutched at the suggestion, and turned the leaf. Something else was written there, and it was blotted with tears. 'IT IS TOO LATE!' I pored on the awful words until they multiplied themselves and covered the page. I crumpled them up in my hand, but I saw them still. They hovered in the air before me; they danced on the chamber wall. They were written every where. 'IT IS TOO LATE!' It was the burden of every sound. I heard it in the chirp of the cricket on the hearth, the tick of the clock in the corner, the moan of the wind in the chimney. And the sea without, creeping stealthily over the sands: the exulting dark sea hissed it in the ear of Night: 'IT IS TOO LATE!'

'I shall go mad,' I shrieked, 'if I stay in this cursed room!' So I rose and fled.

That night I locked up the house and threw the key into the sea.

Years have passed since then, and I have changed in heart and brain; but I have not found my dear, lost wife. I may have grown better; who knows? I may have grown worse; I have certainly grown wiser; but I have not found my lost wife. Elma has not come back. I am care-worn and wrinkled, and my hair is becoming gray. I have a stoop, too, in the shoulders, and I need some one to lean on. I begin to totter in my walk. But Elma does not come back. I was very sick last spring: they did not think I would live. I lay weeks and weeks at Death's door. But Elma would not come back. She will never come back. For did she not say in her letter: 'IT IS TOO LATE! IT IS TOO LATE!'

I passed the old house by the sea a few days ago. It was blackened by rain, bleached by sun, shattered by wind and lightning. The chimney had blown down; part of the roof had tumbled in; and the shutters were off their hinges. A bloated toad sat on the door-step; the garden was a wilderness of weeds. It was as great a wreck as its master. I wonder if Elma has ever gone back there since that fatal night?

Elma! still Elma! Her name is ever on my lips. I cannot banish her from my mind. She haunts me like a ruined soul. If she would only return once more; if I could only see her face, and hear her whisper, in the sweet tones of old, 'You are forgiven,' I would lie down and die with a smile. I would give the world to regain my beautiful Elma. For what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

I have lost my soul.

[Vol. LII, No. 3 (September, 1858)]

JUBAL, THE RINGER.

I.

HIGH in the brown belfry of the old Church of Saint Fantasmos sat Jubal the Ringer, looking over the huge town that lay spread below. A great black net-work of streets stretched far away on every side—the sombre web of intertwisted human passions and interests, in which, year after year, many thousand souls had been captured and destroyed.

Sleeping hills with clear-cut edges rose all about the dark town, which seemed to be lying at the bottom of a vast purple goblet, whose rim, touched with the whiteness of approaching day, looked as if they were brimming with the foam of some celestial wine. Deep in the distance rolled a long river, musical through the night, and shaking back the moon-beams from its bosom as if in play.

It was an old belfry, the belfry of Saint Fantasmos. It sprang from a vaulted arch with four groinings, which hung directly over the altar, so that one above in the bell-room could see, through the cracks in the stone ceiling, the silver lamps that lit the shrine, the altar-railings, the priest, the penitents below. Old flat mosses clung to the weather-beaten sides of the belfry, and the winds went in and out through it wheresoever they willed. From the very summit, which was pointed, there arose a tall iron rod, on which stood a golden cock, with head erect to catch the morning breeze, with feathers spread to bask in the morning sun. A golden cock, I said: alas! golden no longer. Wind and weather had used him badly, and he had moulted all his splendor. Battered, and gray, and rusty; with draggled tail and broken beak, he was no more the brave cock that he had been of yore. He had a malevolent and diabolical aspect. He looked as if he had made a compact with the demons of the night.

How blame him, if he had ceased to be an amiable cock? For years he had done his duty bravely to the town in all weathers, telling the points of the wind with unerring sagacity. The winds furious at having their secrets betrayed, would often steal softly down upon him in the disguise of a delicate breeze, and then burst upon him with the roar of a lion, in the hope of tumbling him from his sentinel's post. But they never caught him, for he was then young and agile, and he glided round at the slightest breath, so that the winds never could succeed in coming upon his broad-side, but went off howling with anger to sea, where they wrecked ships, and buried them under the waves.

But the town neglected the poor cock, and he was never regilded or repaired, so that in time his pivots grew rusty; and he could no longer move with his former agility. Then the storms persecuted him, and the Equinox came down on him savagely twice a year, and buffeted him so that he thought his last hour was come; and those who passed by Saint Fantasmos on those tempestuous nights heard him shrieking with rage, through the wild aërial combats, till thinking it the voice of a demon high up in the clouds, they crossed themselves, and hurried home to bed.

So the cock, and the belfry, and Jubal the Ringer grew old together; but Jubal was the oldest of all, for the human heart ages more quickly than stone or copper, and the storms that assail it are fiercer and sharper than the winds or the rains.

II.

JUBAL sat in the window of the belfry, looking over the black town, and moaning to himself. The day had not yet risen, but was near at hand.

'This morn,' he said, shaking his long hair, which was already sprinkled with gray, 'this morn she will be wed. This morn she will stand in front of the altar below, the light from the silver lamps shining on her white forehead, that I love better than the moon; and her lover will put the gold ring upon her finger, and the priest will bless her with lifted hands, while I, through the cracks in the vaulted ceiling, will behold all this: I, who adore her: I who have loved her for years, and followed her with my eyes as she wandered through the fields in May, toying with the hawthorn hedges, herself more fragrant, whiter, purer than the blossoms which she gathered. I, who used to spend the early dawn traversing the woods, gathering the red wild strawberries while the silver dews still lay upon them, in order that I might place them secretly at her door! Ah! she never knew how in the cold winter nights I sat in the fork of the apple-tree outside her chamber-window, watching her light, and gazing on her shadow as it fell upon the blind. Sometimes the shadow would seem to lengthen, and come across the walk and climb the tree, and I would strive to fold it in my arms, as if it was my beloved in person; but it would suddenly recoil and elude me, and I could do nothing but kiss the branches where it had fallen, with my cold lips.

'One day, she went to gather white and yellow water-lilies, that swam on the surface of a pond. She held a long crook in her hand, with which she reached out and endeavored to bring them to shore. But they were cunning and slippery, and did not wish to be captured, by even so fair a maid as she; so when her crook touched them, they ducked their pearly and golden crests under the waters and escaped, coming up again all dripping and shining, and seeming to laugh at the eager girl. Being vexed at this, she stretched out her crook still farther, when the treacherous bank gave way, and my Agatha went down into the deep pond. I was near—I was always near her, though she knew it not—and I plunged in, and sought her amid the loathsome weeds. I brought her to shore, and chafed her fair forehead, and revived her. Then when she had recovered, I said to her: 'I am Jubal, the Ringer: I love you Agatha: will you make my lonely life happy forever?'

With a look of wild horror she broke from me, and fled to her home.

'And I am despised, and she weds another. While the blessings are being given, and the church is white with orange-wreaths, and the poor wait in the porch for the nuptial bounty, I, who adore her, must sit aloft in this old belfry, and ring out jubilant chimes for the wedded pair.

'Aha! they know not Jubal, the Ringer. I can work the spells my mother worked, and I know the formulas that compel spirits. Agatha, thou false one, and thou, smooth-cheeked lover, who dreamst perhaps of her now, and thou, sacred priest, who givest away to another that which belongs to me, beware, for ye shall perish!'

Then Jubal laughed horribly, and spread his arms out as if he would embrace the night, and muttered certain strange sentences that were terrible to hear.

As he muttered, there came from the west a huge cloud of bats, that fastened themselves against the sides of the old belfry, and there was one for every stone, they were so numerous. And presently a ceaseless clicking resounded through the turret, as if myriads of tiny laborers were plying their pick-axes; a hail of falling fragments of mortar tinkled continually on the tin roofing of the Church of St. Fantasmos; and the bats seemed to eat into the crevices of the old belfry, as if they were about to sleep forever in its walls.

Presently the day rose. The sun-beams poured over the edges of the hills as the molten gold pours from the caldron of a worker in metals. The streets began to pulse with the first throbs of life, and Jubal, the Ringer, laughed aloud, for not a single bat was visible. The entire multitude had buried themselves in the walls of the belfry.

III.

THE street leading to the Church of St. Fantasmos was by nine o'clock as gay as the enamelled pages of a pope's missal. The road was strewn with flowers, and the people crushed the tender lily of the valley and the blue campanula and the spiced carnation under their feet. In and out between the throng of loiterers ran persons bearing boughs of the yellow laburnum in full blossom, until the way seemed arabesqued with gold. The windows on either side were filled with smiling faces, that pressed against the panes, like flowers pressing toward the light against conservatory casements. The linen of the maidens' caps was white as snow, and their cheeks were rose-red; and each jostled the other so as better to see the wedding procession of the fair Agatha and her gallant lover on its way to the altar of St. Fantasmos.

Presently the marriage cavalcade came by. It was like a page from a painted book. Agatha was so fair and modest; the bridegroom was so manly; the parents were so venerable with their white locks, and their faces lit with the beautiful sun-set of departing life.

As the procession passed beneath the windows, bunches of ribbons and flowers and bits of gay-colored paper, on which amorous devices were written, were flung to the bride and bridegroom by the bystanders; and a long murmur swelled along the street, of 'GOD protect them, for they are beautiful and good!' And this lasted until they entered the gates of the church, where it was taken up by the poor people of the town who awaited them there. So, with benedictions falling upon them thick as the falling leaves of autumn, they passed into the Church of St. Fantasmos; but as they gained the threshold the bride looked up to the belfry, and there she fancied she beheld a man's head glaring at her with two fiery eyes, so that she shuddered and looked away. The next instant she looked up again, but the head was gone.

The people who were not invited to the ceremony loitered in the yard without, intending to accompany the bride home when the sacred rite was concluded, and cheer her by the way with songs composed in her honor. While they waited, the chimes in the belfry began to peal.

'How now!' cried, one. 'It is too soon for the chimes to peal. The couple are not yet married.'

'What can Jubal be dreaming of?' said a second.

'Listen,' cried a third; 'did you ever hear such discords. Those are not wedding chimes. It is the music of devils.'

A terrible fear suddenly fell over the multitude as they listened. Louder and louder swelled the colossal discords of the bells. The clouds were torn with these awful dissonances; the skies were curdled with the groans, the shrieks, the unnatural thunders that issued from the belfry.

The people below crossed themselves, and muttered to one another that there was a devil in the turret.

There was a devil in the turret, for Jubal was no longer man. With his eyes fixed on the crack in the vaulted ceiling, through which he saw the marriage ceremony proceeding, and his sinewy arms working with superhuman strength the machinery that moved the bells, he seemed the incarnation of a malevolent fiend. His hair stood erect; his eyes burned like fire-balls; and a white foam rose continually to his lips, and breaking into flakes, floated to the ground.

Still the terrible peals went on. The tortured bells swung now this way, now that, yelled forth a frightful diapason of sound that shook the very earth. Faster and faster Jubal tolled their iron tongues. Louder and louder grew the brazen clamor. The huge beams that supported the chimes cracked and groaned. The air, beaten with these violent sounds, swelled into waves that became billows, that in turn became mountains, and surged with irresistible force against the walls of the turret. The cock on the summit shivered and shrieked, as if the equinoxes of ten thousand years had been let loose on him at the same moment. The stones in the walls trembled, and from between their crevices vomited forth dust and mortar. The whole turret shook from base to apex.

Suddenly the people below beheld a vast cloud of bats issue from between the stones of the belfry and fly toward the west.

Then it appeared as if the bells spent their last strength in one vast accumulated brazen howl, that seemed to split the skies. The turret rocked twice, then toppled. Down through the vaulted arch, crushing it in as if it had been glass; down through the incensed air that filled the aisle, on priest and bride and bridegroom and parents and friends, came a white blinding mass of stone and mortar, and the next instant there was nothing but a cloud of dust slowly rising, a splash of blood here and there, that the dry stones soaked in, and one battered human head with long hair, half-visible through the mass of ruin. It was Jubal dead, but also Jubal avenged.

When on the ensuing October the wild equinoxes came like a horde of Cossacks over the hills, to make their last assault upon the golden cock, they found neither bird nor belfry, and the mischief they did that night at sea, out of mere spite, was, the legend says, incredible.

[Vol. LII, No. 3 (September, 1858)]

THE DEATH OF VIRGIL.

A PHILOSOPHICAL FANTASY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

IN a spacious mansion in the suburbs of Rome, at the twilight of the day preceding the nones of March, in the year of the city 734, sat two noble and thoughtful men. The eldest, who was about fifty; was clad in a white tunic. He was thin and tall, with a scholarly stoop in the shoulders; his face was pale and worn, but more, it seemed, with sensibility than time. His companion, who was some five or ten years younger, was wrapt in a purple toga. Between the two was a small table of citron-wood, the legs of which were of ivory, and curiously wrought. Upon this table stood a basket of fruit. The walls of the apartment were covered with pictures and statues; the spaces between were filled with carvings in wood, some of cypress and box, others of ebony, inlaid with tortoise-shell and pearl. The floor was of different colored marble; the ceiling was adorned with ivory, and richly painted and gilded. It was the Corinthian room of Virgil, the poet and magician, who was conversing with the knight Publius, his friend. They had finished the cœna a few minutes before, and adjourned from the triclinium, bearing their frugal desert.

'I have been looking at the sun-set, and thinking of my past life,' said the poet, after a brief pause. 'It has not been altogether wasted, like the lives of so many; still, I cannot but reproach myself, I have accomplished so little. A tree bears in its time hundreds of baskets of fruit; the great deeds of the greatest men can be counted on the fingers. Why should men be so sterile, and Nature so prolific?'

'The lower the life,' the knight answered, 'the more lavish its issue. The oak sheds a thousand acorns, each one of which contains a germ of itself; the bird that sings in the oak lays but a few speckled eggs. Life narrows as it ascends. Birds and trees, the grass of the fields, the sands of the seashore—these are the base of the pyramid, the apex of which is man.'

'So we flatter ourselves, Publius. But did we know what the birds and trees think of us, we might not be so proud. 'I can fly over land and sea,' methinks the bird sings; 'over miles of field and wood, and the long, long leagues of water. I soar in the great arch of the sky, up, up to the clouds. What is this thing called man, who creeps so slowly on the ground, and is so driven about by the waves?' 'I grow broad and high,' the oak murmurs with its oracular leaves; 'ever broader and higher, wedding the years with my rings. I hold out my great brawny arms, and wave my green flags in the sun-shine. I laugh at the wind and the rain, and fear nothing, not even Jove's thunder. It is a fearful bolt that slays the mighty oak. But these pigmies around me, who cannot span my bole with their arms, I outlive whole generations of them.' Then there are the rocks and hills, Publius, and the seas and skies. They could tell a tale of longevity which would humble us, their betters. Your figure of the pyramid is not a happy one. But if you must use it, let it be inverted. Life should not narrow, but broaden as it ascends.'

'I was not thinking of man's body,' said Publius, 'when I placed him above the lesser intelligencies, but of that mysterious something which we call his soul. That he should have that, and not have the hardy life of the animals, which he needs so much more than they, puzzles and saddens me. Why should the inanimate oak endure a thousand years, and the most god-like man scarce three-score and ten?'

'There are reasons, Publius,' said Virgil, handing the knight a peach from the basket on the table before him; 'many excellent reasons why the life of man is so short. And not the least is this: we eat too little fruit. The animals follow their instinct, and it leads them to their proper food; we follow our debauched appetites, and gorge ourselves with poisons—the fore-runners of disease and death. Thou hast supped with Lucullus, and know what beasts we Romans can make ourselves. We drag the sea for its fish, and empty the air of its birds. We bake and roast and boil them, and huddle them together, course after course, washing the compound down with draughts of fire. Instead of cooling our parched throats with grapes, we press out their juice, and hoard it away in our cellars until it becomes maddening and murderous. I loathe our Roman banquets; there is nothing innocent or natural about them, except the roses which crown our cups. And they, poor things, soon fade, blasted by the foul breath or fouler jests of the drinkers.'

'It is easy,' Publius replied, 'for you poets and philosophers to live on fruits, delicate and spiritual thinkers that ye are; but the tillers of the soil, the ploughmen of the waves, the stout harvesters of battle-fields, the workers of the world, need, methinks, a stronger diet—something that will make blood, and bone, and sinew.'

'The vitality of flesh,' the philosopher answered, 'is weaker than that of grain, because it was originally derived from grain. It is life at second-hand. We know nothing of grain. It germinates mysteriously in the soil, quickened in the bosom of our Universal Mother. She brings her life to bear upon it in darkness; it is fed with secret moisture, warmed with internal fire. Is it not reasonable that it contains more of the life of the earth than the beasts which feed upon it? There is a slave on my farm at Mantua, an old man, whose years more than equal our two lives, who has never tasted flesh, but has lived on fruit from his birth. There are no signs of age about him, except his white locks; he stands as straight as a man of thirty; and is as broad-shouldered as the Grecian Hercules. Match him for bone and sinew among thy flesh-fed athletes. I have seen him fell an ox with one blow of his fist. We are degenerate fellows, we Romans of to-day; even our slaves excel us. If this continues much longer, what will become of Rome? Ah! Rome! Rome!' he murmured, 'if I should never see thee again!' He threw himself back on the couch and gazed upon the scene before him.

It was a grand and beautiful sight, that sun-set picture of Rome. A wilderness of roofs, palaces, temples, and baths, with glimpses of gardens and groves. Here was the palace of Cæsar, built of white marble, and adorned with statues and porticoes; there the forum of Augustus and its gilded pillar, at the base of which all the roads of Rome ended; and there the steep ascent of the Capital and the temples of Jove, Juno, and Minerva. Beyond were the theatres of Pompey and Marcellus, the stadia and hippodrome, and the Circus Maximus, a city in itself. Here and there rose a triumphal arch, dedicated to some great general or emperor; the public squares were peopled with colossal statues, and lifting its shaft serenely in the air stood the great obelisk which Augustus had brought from Egypt—a gigantic needle of granite, covered with hieroglyphics. On the north lay the Tiber, a dark and sluggish stream; and around all was the great wall of Rome, with its multitude of gates. Beyond this, stretching into the country on every side, were the public roads, the great highways of the empire. And over all, like a low-hung dome, was the deep blue Italian sky. The west was red with sun-set, but the veil of darkness was descending in the east, where a few faint stars were twinkling.

'Is not Rome beautiful, Publius?' exclaimed the poet in rapture. 'I am never weary of gazing upon it. I know every inch of its soil, every stone in its streets. I have travelled in foreign lands, in Greece, Egypt, and India; have seen Athens, and Alexandria, and the famous cities of the desert, but nothing like old mother Rome. She is the queen of cities, the mistress of the world. Her atmosphere is divine.'

'That Virgil should love Rome, is no marvel,' said the knight, with a smile, 'for all the world knows what he has done for her. I have heard the barbarians of Gaul speak of his statues. 'The magician has made,' said they, 'as many statues for Rome as there are kingdoms tributary to her. And around the necks of these statues hang bells of magical power. For when a kingdom revolts, the statue which represents that kingdom strikes the bell, and summons the Roman legions to arms. And these statues are called The Preservers of Rome.' I have heard, too, of his lamp, by which the whole city is lighted, (Per Bacche! but there have been nights of late in which it was needed,) of his blooming orchards on the banks of the Tiber; and of the palace he built for the Emperor—that dangerous but convenient palace in which Augustus sees and hears whatever is said and done in Rome.'

'It is not by things like these that I would show my love for Rome. I have written a poem, Publius, in honor of Æneas, our great ancestor, and, unless I deceive myself, it will preserve her glory when my statues shall have crumbled into dust. Follow me to the library, and I will show it to thee. Thou shalt read it, if thou wilt: if not, we will converse till mid-night. I have something I would say to thee.'

He summoned a slave, who entered with a bronze lamp, and led the way into the atrium. The oiled log was blazing on the hearth, and by its flickering light they saw the Lares and Penates. From the atrium they proceeded to the library, which was already lighted. From the centre of the gilded ceiling swung a massive silver lamp, of a fantastic pattern. It was shaped somewhat like a boat, with the head and fore-legs of an ox on each side. On its deck were a couple of swans, looking to the prow and stern, which were slightly raised; through their arching necks ran the chain by which the lamp was suspended. Under this lamp was a couch, and a table of Egyptian marble. The floor was inlaid with mosaic, and here and there were mats of grass, brilliantly dyed. Statues of marble and alabaster stood on the shadowy niches, like ghosts, and in the corners of the room were dusky figures of bronze.

But the glory of the library was its manuscripts, which were lying round in all directions; strewn on the couches and the floor, and piled up in their cases. Here were the writings of the Greek poets and philosophers, and there the mysterious lore of Egyptian and Indian sages: volumes of papyrus and parchment rolled on ebony cylinders, and sheets of vellum fastened with leather thongs. The name of each work was emblazoned on its back in red letters. The voluminous authors were bound with ribbons, and preserved in boxes and cases. Upon a small desk by the window stood a silver ink-horn, and beside it lay an Egyptian reed, and some half-written sheets of parchment.

'I sent for thee to-night, Publius,' said the poet, when the pair had seated themselves, 'as a man sends for his friend when he feels that his end is near. Start not when I say that my last hour is at hand. It will be here at mid-night.'

'Thou art to die at mid-night?' inquired his companion anxiously.

'I said not that.'

'True: I had forgotten. To us, philosophers, there is no such thing as death. It is merely change. We change our bodies as we do our garments, putting off our old, worn-out robes for a new suit, fresh from the wardrobe of the gods. You assume the spiritual toga at mid-night then? I am sorry for it. You will doubtless gain by the change, for they say we have nothing in Rome like the Elysian fields. Still, I prefer Rome, and, Jove willing, I do not mean to quit it for many a long year.'

'In my new epic,' said the poet, 'I take Æneas through the kingdoms of the dead. I follow the priests in my description of his journey through the shades, partly because it would not be safe just now to question their stories, and partly because I have nothing better to offer in their stead. Invention is a rare gift, even among the poets. But, under the rose, dear Publius, Hades and Elysium are fables. That the soul of man exists after this change which we call 'death,' I believe; but beyond that, I know nothing. We may guess, but we cannot know; knowledge is the fruit of things seen, not of traditions and dreams. You will see what I have written as a poet; what I shall write as a philosopher thou wilt know hereafter.'

'I doubt not, Virgil, but that thou wilt walk with Plato in the world of souls, and interpret his wisdom cunningly. But the dead know already what thou wouldst teach them. It is not the dead, but the living, from whom the secret of death is hid.'

'Listen, Publius, for what I am about to say to thee has never been breathed to man. From my earliest youth, as thou knowest, I devoted my life to philosophy; not merely studying what the philosophers have written, but travelling in many lands. I have listened to the Greek philosophers in Athens, in the very grove where Plato taught: questioned the priests of Egypt in the shadow of the Pyramids, and even traced the stream of thought back to its fountain-head in the East. I have learned something from all, but more, Publius, from myself. I studied at first the nature of the gods, for upon that, I was taught, all knowledge is based. I mastered all the known systems of mythology—a thousand different charts of the same sea. I could track my way through the pathless forest of Error, under which the Truth lies buried, and erect its fallen columns with a semblance of their ancient beauty. I saw the gods of the world, Jove, Osiris, Brahma, sitting above the clouds, in the serene regions of the air, but I could not worship them, majestic though they were, for I felt there was something beyond them. As they did not go back to the beginning, they could not endure to the end. There was another GOD to whom the end and the beginning were one. Of this GOD I knew nothing. HE was, is, and ever will be, THE UNKNOWN. Unlike Jove, whom we figure to ourselves as a bearded, majestic monarch, we cannot embody or conceive HIM. HE is a Cause, a Principle, an Essence.

'Here I stopped, and wisely, for this is a shoreless sea, and turned my thoughts to man. It matters little in this world, I sometimes think, whether our conceptions of gods are true or false, but it is essential to us to understand men. We have but one life in which to do our duties to ourselves; we shall have many to worship the gods in. I studied man profoundly in his spiritual and physical nature, and much that was before obscure became clear.'

'What a strange dream,' said Publius musing, 'this life of ours is! Yesterday we were children in our nurses' arms, to-day we are strong-limbed men: to-morrow we shall totter about on our staffs, the next day all will be over. The life of man is the buzzing of a summer fly.'

'It was not so in the early ages,' answered Virgil. 'There was once a time, we read in the poets, when men lived a thousand years. The world considers this a fiction, but I hold it to have been true. When I was in India I saw a Yogi who was said to be two hundred years old. He lived on fruits, and drank from a brook that ran past his hut: his bed was the bare ground. The earth strengthened him, as it did Antæus. You should be initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis, Publius, if you would learn the virtues of the earth. There is a deep meaning in the myth of Ceres and Proserpina. Would men but live on grain instead of flesh, they would live longer; could they but know themselves and their powers, they need not grow old and die. Our bodies grow old in a few years, because we break the laws which govern them. The matter of which they are composed takes a new form, because its old one will endure no longer. The guest that violates the mansion that harbors him, as we do our bodies, must be ejected. The slaves that have hitherto obeyed him (I mean his passions) grow riotous, and thrust him from the banquet; away from the lights, and the wine, and the laughing faces of his friends, out into the terrible night. Such is the doom of the fool, but the wise man can escape it. The truth which has baffled the world for thousands of years, will one day appear suddenly, and remain forever. It is this, Publius: Men need not die!'

The knight started at these wild words as if a thunder-bolt had fallen at has feet.

'Thou thinkest me mad,' said Virgil with a pitying smile, 'but thou art mistaken. I repeat it: Man need not die. The UNKNOWN, of whom he is an emanation, makes him at his birth the lord of the body in which he is inclosed. This body has its laws which cannot be broken, (for matter, Publius, is not created, as many think, but is eternal and self-existent;) but to obey these laws is to master them, and render them powerless. 'But what are these laws?' I asked myself. 'That is Nature's secret,' my soul replied, 'and we must wring it from her.' Then I began to study the Earth. I planted my garden, and watched the germination of seed. I stocked my ponds with fish, and watched their spawn. I filled my aviaries with birds, and watched their incubation. I learned much, of which our naturalists are ignorant, (I believe my pastorals are praised,) but not the secret of life. It evaded me for years. But my pursuit of this Proteus was not without fruit. For out of my baffled studies, my sleepless nights and days—now prying into the earth in the gloom of caves, and now filtering the rivers at their source—burning in the hot noon sun on unsheltered plains, and freezing on the tops of mountains in the cold nights of winter—in my library poring over ancient scrolls, or in my laboratory melting rocks and metals; from all this, Publius, and from dreams which were vouchsafed to me in answer to my prayers and fasts, came glimpses of what I sought, like flashes of lightning at night. But how stands the clepsydra? The slave of the night has neglected to give me the time.'

'It will not be mid-night for an hour.'

'Much may be done in that time. I will give thee a specimen of my knowledge.'

He opened a casket and took out a handful of seed which he planted in a vase. Then he sprinkled the vase with water, and muttering an incantation, waited for the charm to work. In a few seconds the seed germinated, and a tuft of light green shoots pushed its way through the soil. At first the stalks were single, like spears of grass, but ere long they put forth branches and leaves, rising and spreading the while until they reached their full growth, and were crowned with buds. 'Behold this flower,' said he, plucking a blowing rose, and handing it to his wondering companion.

'It is indeed marvellous, if it be not a delusion; but I dare not trust my eyes.'

'Trust them, they do not deceive thee: the rose is real. Smell it.'

'Its odor is delicious. But what else canst thou do? Turn the rose back into a seed?'

'Nothing easier, as thou shalt see. But since thou hast doubted the naturalness of this flower, step into the garden and pluck one. I am no priest that I should juggle with thee.'

The knight soon returned with a lilly.

'Thou hast selected a flower whose virtues are potent at night; so much the better for my art.' He shut the lily up in his hand, and muttered the charm backward. 'What is it now?'

'By the gods, Virgil, it is a seed!'

'This is only child's play to an adept in the art of magic. Our necromancers can do this, and more. There is one now in Rome, I am told, (he is probably an Egyptian,) who can instantly turn an egg into a bird. I can do better than that.'

'Canst thou change a bird into an egg?'

'Better than that even. I can kill a bird and bring it to life again. But how is the clepsydra now?'

'It is still half an hour to mid-night.'

Behind a screen in a corner of the library hung a cage, tenanted by a pair of sleeping sparrows. Virgil opened the cage-door softly, and taking one of the birds from its perch, bore it to the light where it awoke with a sudden chirp. 'Kill it, Publius.' The knight wrung its neck, and handed it to the magician. He sprinkled it with water, and breathed into its bill. The bird starred and opened its eyes: at last it rose and flew about the room. A peculiar chirp brought it to the hands of its master, who kissed it and placed it back in the cage.

'Canst thou recall the dead?'

'No, Publius, I cannot restore the dead to life, but I can save the living from death. Or rather, they can save themselves, when they learn the laws of their being. What the Universe is to its MAKER, man's body was meant to be to him—not a garment which waxes old with time, but a palace built for Eternity. That we have ruined these noble palaces of ours, is the sorrow which burdens the world. But there are means of rebuilding them, Publius, and making them immortal. We can repair the ravages of our passions, the decay of time. Did not the enchantress Medea restore her father to youth, in the infancy of the art? I know the herbs that she used, and much beside that she was ignorant of. I met a Brahmin in the East in my travels, who could die and come to life again. He let me shut him up in a tomb once for thirty days, without food or water; at the end of that time he was alive and merry. He taught me his secret so that I too can die at my pleasure. I mean to die to-night, this beautiful spring night, when the earth is full of life. It rises from the rich, damp mould, and falls from the mists and clouds. It breathes in the scented wind, heaves in the swelling river, throbs in the far-off stars. What the Soul of the World is doing with the world around us, my soul can do with my body. As I have preserved it from decay for years, I can preserve it still. As I moulded it once from dust, I can mould it again and into a diviner form. It will be plastic in my hands. Follow me to my laboratory, and when I bid thee, depart and shut the door. Then seal it with wax so that no one may open it. When nine days are past, (it will then be the Ides of March,) I will rejoin thee.'

'But if thou shouldst not?'

'Then I have deceived myself, and deserve the death I shall have found. Bury me in the tomb of my ancestors at Naples, or throw me into the Tiber, I care not which: I shall not be worth a thought. Burn my manuscripts, especially my epic. In the mean time read it. It is yonder in that cedar scrinum: the last sheets are lying on the desk. If it prove tedious, turn to Homer instead. When I shall have corrected my story of Æneas, it will rival the Wars of Troy. But we shall see. I have commanded my slaves to obey thee in every thing. Thou shalt have banquets, if thou wilt, even of flesh, although I detest them. There is still some Marsian wine in the amphora. Eat, drink, and be merry. But see, the last drops of the clepsydra proclaim the mid-night. Come.'

He lighted a taper at the lamp of swans, and they proceeded to the laboratory. It was in the cœnaculum, or upper story of the house. They passed through a range of chambers crowded with furnaces and crucibles, and stopped at a small door. It was made of iron, and seemed to have been let into the wall after the house was built. As Virgil touched a secret spring, it flew back, and showed a dark room beyond. This room was without a roof, for on entering, Publius felt the night air, and saw the stars above him. The floor was strewn with earth, and exhaled a rich, damp smell. What with the unexpected sight of the stars, and the uncertain light of the taper trembling in the hands of the poet, it was some time before the knight could realize where he was. He stood in a circular chamber representing the celestial spheres. The wall was divided into twelve compartments—the number of signs in the Zodiac—and adorned with astronomical figures. Between these compartments were ciphers, composed of numerals, and the letters of various alphabets, and above and below were belts of mysterious signs—the lotus of India, the winged globe of the Egyptians, and the sacred triangle of the Cabbala. If the figures on the wall were calculated to astonish Publius, what must have been his bewilderment when the wall itself seemed to move! He rubbed his eyes to make sure that he was not dreaming, and looked again. Again it moved! He was in a revolving chamber! Looking at the floor, which he feared would open beneath him, he saw at his feet a sarcophagus. It was half full of earth, and beside it was a basket of plants and two large braziers for burning incense.

'My hour is come,' said Virgil faintly. 'Place me in the sarcophagus, and cover me with the magic herbs. Light the braziers and stand them at my head and feet. Then leave me. Seal the door, as I commanded, and expect me on the Ides of March.' A sudden tremor ran through his frame, and he sank back in the arms of his friend.

He was placed in the sarcophagus and covered with the plants, and the braziers were lighted. 'Vale! Virgil, vale!' said Publius, and retreated from the chamber. In the laboratory he found a jar of wax, with which he sealed the door. He stamped the seal with his signet-ring, and retraced his steps, starting from his own shadow which the dying taper threw on the wall. At last he reached the library, and, to distract his mind from what he had heard and seen, he took the manuscript epic and began to read it. He fell asleep in the sixth book, leaving Æneas in the infernal regions, and wandered in a labyrinth of dreams. Now he was in the Chamber of the Zodiac, lying in state in the sarcophagus, drenched with the dew, and stifled with the smoke of the incense; anon he was a ghost in the awful world of the dead. He stood on the farther bank of the Styx beseeching Charon to carry him back to the earth, but the grim old ferryman was inexorable. He was awakened in the morning by the sparrows. 'The bird that was dead is singing,' he said; 'and the rose, I see, is living. There is hope for Virgil.'

————

ON the third of the nones there came a message for Virgil from the Emperor. The messenger was admitted into the atrium, where Publius received him. 'The poet,' he said, 'cannot be seen.' He was followed by a second messenger, and then Augustus came.

'How is this,' he demanded, 'that Virgil denies himself?'

'Be not angry, Cæsar, it was I who dismissed thy messenger. I told the truth. Virgil cannot be seen till the Ides of March.'

'But where is he? and why do I find thee here in his stead?'

Then Publius related to the Emperor all that had happened; Virgil's conversation in the Corinthian room; the marvels that he performed in the library; and his immolation of himself in the Chamber of the Zodiac.

'This is a strange tale,' said Augustus thoughtfully. 'Where is the room in which you say he lies?'

'I dare not show it, Cæsar, for I have sealed the door for nine days.'

'Show me the room; I must see him.'

'He will appear on the Ides of March.'

'Slaves!' shouted Augustus to the domestics of Virgil, who came hurrying at his call, 'lead me to the laboratory of your master. I am the Emperor.'

The terrified slaves obeyed him.

He tore the wax from the door, and not finding the spring which opened it, he bade them break it down. They battered it with beams until it gave way, and drew back for the Emperor to enter. He found the chamber as the knight had described it: there were the signs of the Zodiac on the wall, and there the braziers and the sarcophagus. The Zodiac, however, had ceased to revolve, and one of the braziers was overturned. The sarcophagus was empty! 'He is not here, after all,' he thought. 'It must be that Publius hath murdered him.'

But now one of the slaves drew his attention to a pile of withered plants on the farther side of the chamber. He ordered him to scatter it that he might see if there was any thing beneath; but before he could do so, he was suddenly confronted by the figure of a naked child. It stamped its feet, and tore its hair, and shrieking, 'Lost! Lost!' disappeared. At that moment the wall fell in. The Emperor sprang through the door and escaped, but the slave was crushed in the ruins.

When Augustus returned to the library of Virgil he found Publius burning a roll of parchment. 'I am obeying the last wishes of the dead' he said sternly; 'as thou shouldst have done. Hadst thou but hearkened to me, the dead would soon have been living, and Rome would not now deplore her poet. But it is too late, and I have burned his manuscripts.'

'Madman! thou hast not destroyed them all?'

'No! I could not destroy this, it was so beautiful,' and he held out the cedar scrinum.

It contained the Æneid.

[Vol. LII, No. 4 (October, 1858)]

THE JASPER SIGNET.

IT was the dusk of a summer evening. I sat in my chamber, puffing my segar, and gazing listlessly into the street. I saw the flitting figures of the passers-by, and my neighbors over the way on their stoops, with their children playing around them. The air was full of confused sounds—fragments of conversation, the patter of feet, and the rumble of distant wheels. It was not an unpleasant evening, I owned, but I was not in the mood to enjoy it. I took up my pistol, which lay on the table before me, and handling it curiously, wondered if any thing would ever drive me to shoot myself.

It was a dark time in my life, the darkest, I thought, that I had ever seen. I was out of money; out of friends, out of hope. And, worst of all, my child, my darling little Ambrose, was sick. He lay in the next room in a raging fever; the folding-doors between us were closed, but his low moans reached me, and struck a pang to my heart. From time to time through the day I had sat by his bed-side, holding his burning hands, but when evening came I could bear it no longer: I was sick with pity. I took up a book to forget myself, but I could not make sense of what I read; my mind would wander off in the middle of a paragraph. How indeed could I forget the child, when every thing in the room reminded me of him? Within reach stood his rocking-horse; his toys were scattered over the sofa. Under the edge of the bookcase I saw the toes of his little shoes, and on the table lay a withered posy, which he had gathered a day or two before. It was only a bunch of wild flowers, and they were withered and dead, but I could not throw them away; I would have preserved even a weed, if his hand had touched it!

I sat and smoked until it grew too dark to see distinctly. The neighbors withdrew into their houses, and lighted the lamps. The sounds in the streets died away; but the air was noisier than ever, for innumerable crickets were chirping. 'Ah! well,' said I with a sigh, 'there is no use in my sitting here idle any longer: I may as well go to work.'

I turned on the gas, and drew my table up to the light. I have not mentioned, I believe, that I was an author, but, as I said I was poor, the acute reader may have guessed it. Yes, I was an author then, a poor author, a miserable literary hack, turning my pen to every thing. I was equally good (or bad) at prose and poetry. I wrote heavy articles for the reviews, and light paragraphs for the journals, to say nothing of sensation-romances for the weeklies; and poetry for every thing. I had a poem to write that night, a comic poem; the cuts with which it was to be illustrated, and which were supposed to be drawn for it, (of course at a great expense!) lay before me, not yet transferred from Punch, touching the faded flowers of my sick child. I pressed the posy to my lips, and breathing a prayer for his recovery, took up my pen and began to write. The contrast between my circumstances and what I was writing—a panegyric on wealth—sharpened my wits. I rioted in a world of fantastic creations, scattering jokes and puns broad-cast. 'There,' said I after one of my brilliant coruscations, 'that will delight the editor of the Barbarian. The poor man thinks me funny.' I remembered the last poem that I had offered him, and smiled bitterly. It was a stately and noble piece of thought, yet he declined it, and ordered the trash which I was then writing. I would not have touched it but for my little Ambrose, but a sick child must have a physician and nurse. 'And happy shall I be,' I thought, 'if it ends there!' Walking out that day I had seen a little coffin in the window of an undertaker hard by, and now it came back to my memory, and filled me with solemn forebodings. I imagined that I saw it on the table, with my child in it, holding the withered flowers in his folded hands! I laid down my pen and listened, but I could not hear him. 'Perhaps he is dead,' I whispered. The thought gave me a shock, and the tears rushed to my eyes. I was certainly in fine trim for writing a comic poem!

At that moment there was a tap at the door. 'Come in,' said I, drying my eyes hastily. The door opened, and in walked Arthur Gurney. I did not recognize him at first, for I had seen him but once before, and that was at a large party; beside, my eyes were dim with writing. But when he came to the light, I remembered his face, and shook him by the hand.

'I see you are at work,' he said. 'If I am de trop, say so frankly, and I 'll be off at once.'

'Do n't,' I replied; 'I can spare an hour or two as well as not.'

He seated himself in my arm-chair, and cast his eyes around the chamber. I could not tell whether he was taking a mental inventory of my worldly goods and possessions, or whether he was collecting his thoughts before commencing conversation. I looked at him intently for a few minutes, I knew not why, but I felt a strange fascination drawing me toward him. There was a subtle communication, a mesmeric telegraph, as it were, between us. His soul flashed messages to mine—mysterious messages in cipher, which I received and read, but could not understand. Had he been a woman instead of a man, I should have understood his power over me. His face was pale and delicately cut; his eyes were large and black. There was something Spanish in his appearance, but no Spaniard could have been so fair. A sentimental young lady would have called him romantic-looking; but he would have scorned that cheap distinction. He was a gentleman, a noble gentleman in grief.

'Well,' said he, 'have you finished staring at me?' I was not aware that he had noticed me, he appeared so oblivious of my presence.

'I beg your pardon, but I could not help it. But pray, Mr. Gurney—I am sure you will not think me rude—to what am I indebted for the honor of this visit?'

'Like you, I could not help it. I sat alone in my room thinking of many things, when suddenly you came into my mind, and I thought I ought to come and see you. It seemed to me that you could do something for me, or I for you, I knew not which. Can you help me?'

'But what is the matter with you? You appear well, and well to do—one of the sleek darlings of the world; as Evelyn says in 'Money.' I will give you advice, if you insist upon it, which I take to be a pretty good proof of friendship. I will even write you an acrostic, if you think your lady love can be won by poetry. In short, I will do almost any thing but lend you money; that I cannot do. But that, I fancy, is the last thing that you would expect from me.'

He shook his head. 'Have you any thing to drink?' The suddenness of the question made me smile in spite of myself.

'What will you have, Monsieur Gurney? Chateau Margeau, or Verzeney? But perhaps you would like some Hungarian wine, or a bottle of Johannisberg?'

'Whatever you have, Sir, whatever you have.'

I remembered that I had a bottle of schnapps in the next room, and rose to get it. I passed out into the hall, and groped my way along the entry until I reached the door that led into the sick-chamber. There was a candle burning in the corner when I entered, but it was shaded so effectually that I had to light a match. The flask for which I came, standing in a little cabinet at the head of the bed, I moved on tip-toe to the bed-side, and bent my face close down to that of the child. I could not see him distinctly, but I felt his short, quick breath: it was like the blast of a furnace. I touched his hand; he was consumed with fever. 'He is no better, Sir,' the nurse whispered, 'but he is sleeping soundly, and so is his mother: she is worn out.' Turning my eyes in the direction of the lounge, I saw my wife stretched upon it. I stole softly toward her, and kissed her forehead. She moved her lips, but no sound came: she was breathing in sleep a silent prayer for her darling.

When I reëntered my chamber my heart was sad, and so, seemingly, was that of Arthur Gurney, for his face was buried in his hands.

He roused himself with an effort, and taking a segar-case from his pocket, offered me a segar. I placed the bottle and glasses on the table, and proceeded to twist a paper-lighter, but he anticipated me with the blank side of a letter, which, I noticed, was edged with black. As he bent forward to light it at the leader which hung between us, I saw a large ring on his finger—an engraved seal-ring, with a curious setting.

'That is a strange ring of yours, Mr. Gurney,' I observed, after we had lighted our segars; 'may I look at it?'

'Certainly,' and he handed it to me.

It was a jasper signet of large size. The stone was remarkably fine, and apparently clear, but on scanning it closely, I saw that it was flecked with red spots. They were small and dim, except where the stone had been engraved; there they were larger and brighter. It was as if the stone had been inserted in a bloody foil, which had been pierced by the cutting. I could not make out the cutting, whether it was a crest or merely an initial letter. It was probably a cipher. The workmanship of the setting, which was of red gold, betokened an early state of the art. It was fantastic and rude, but quite in keeping with the stone, the cipher of which it repeated amid a variety of cabbalistic characters. Had I met with it in the cabinet of a collector, I should have said it was the seal of some magician of the middle ages.

Mr. Gurney had moved the bottle toward him, and was filling his glass when I made a motion as if I would slip the ring on my finger. 'Stop!' he said suddenly; 'what are you about?'

His tone was so abrupt and fierce that I stared at him in surprise. 'You object to my trying it on?' I asked.

'Indeed I do; it is unlucky.'

I handed him back the ring, a little piqued by his manner.

'Fill your glass, and I will satisfy your curiosity concerning it. You must not be annoyed with me because I prevented you from trying it on. It was on your account, not my own.'

We touched our glasses, and he began.

'This ring has been in our family for generations. I know not when, or by whom, the curse was entailed upon us, but as far back as our records reach—and we have authentic documents reaching back five or six hundred years—we find it mentioned as one of the heirlooms of the race. It has come down from father to son with all our broad lands and possessions, being frequently specified in our ancient wills. Our lands and possessions have passed away, as such things will, but the ring remains, as you see. It has belonged at times to various branches of the family—men of widely different minds and temperaments. Some lived in peaceful days, and died at a ripe old age; others perished young, slain in battles or broils. Many fell by their own hands. But it mattered not what was the fortune of its possessor, he was the slave of the ring.'

'But in what sense?' I inquired. 'What you have related may be plain to you, but I must confess it is vague to me. In what manner, and to whom, has the ring been a curse?'

'To all who have worn it, myself among the rest. As to the manner of the curse, it has taken a thousand shapes. Some of us have been hurled from the pinnacle of wealth and power, others have been raised to almost regal dignities. This was in the old time, when we ranked among the nobility. In these later years of buying and selling, our fortunes have been more stable: the majority of the Gurneys are rich.'

'Then you have one thing,' I said, 'to counterbalance the curse of the ring. I would I had your wealth; I lack nothing but that. I have health and strength, a light heart, and a clear head. I have no inordinate desires, no impossible longings. I possess myself thoroughly, my heart, my brain, my will.'

'And yet you sigh for wealth! You must be mistaken in yourself; you are not so strong as you think. What could money give you that you do not already possess?'

'Many things, Sir,' said I bitterly, thinking of my past privations and present sorrows. 'It would give me the books that I need, the pictures that I love. I could build myself a cottage in the country, or, if I were fool enough to desire it, a palace in Parvenu Square. I could go to Europe, to London, Paris, or Rome.'

'Any thing else?'

'Yes,' I answered sharply, provoked by his coolness, 'I could probably save the life of my child.'

'I had forgotten that you were married, Mr. Tracy. Tell me of your wife and child.'

He spoke kindly, tenderly even, but I repulsed him. 'There is nothing to tell, save that my child is sick, perhaps dying.'

'Poor fellow.' He fell into a brown study, twirling the jasper signet in his fingers.

'I gather from what you say,' I resumed, 'that you think the Gurney family an unlucky one, but you have not told me what the ring has to do with it. I am not disposed to admit in human affairs either the capricious interference of Fortune, or the iron despotism of Fate; still less can I admit the influence of so trivial a thing as a jasper signet. I can imagine that your ancestors were fooled or terrified into such a superstition in the age of astrology, but it is unworthy of you, and this age of enlightenment. If your family has been unfortunate, Mr. Gurney, it is because some member of it has transmitted some weakness to his descendants.

'THE fault, dear BRUTUS, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.'

'As you please: I did not expect you to believe me. But the facts are the same nevertheless. None of our family have ever been happy, or ever will be. Wretchedness is our doom. Our motto should be 'Miserrimus,' our crest a bleeding heart. We are rich, but we take no pleasure in our riches. We are loving, but we are seldom loved, or what we love dies. In short, we are miserable, thanks to the jasper signet.'

'In the name of common-sense, then,' I exclaimed, 'why keep it among you? Why not destroy it, or give it away? You can powder it in the fire, I suppose, or throw it into the sea? It will burn, or sink.'

'It will do neither, sagacious poet. For one of my ancestors who dabbled in alchemy a century or two ago, baffled in his search for the Philosopher's stone, the impossible Aurum Potabile, wreaked his vengeance on the ring, which he conceived to be the cause of his disappointment, and threw it into his crucible at a white heat. It would have melted granite, but it failed to consume the jasper signet, for when the fire died out it was found uninjured; the setting was not even tarnished. Another member of the family—my Uncle Bernard—dropped it into the Tiber, but it came back to him, like the ring of Polycrates.'

'But you could give it away,' I persisted.

'It has been given away many times, but it has brought so much misery on its new owner, that he has always returned it to the giver.'

'Suppose you should give it to me, how would it affect me?'

'You would not believe me if I should tell you.'

'Try me.'

'It would make you rich.'

'Come, I should like that.'

'But it would rob you of your identity.'

'That is impossible.'

'I said you would not believe me.'

'Do you mean to tell me, Arthur Gurney, that if I should wear this jasper signet, I should cease to be Richard Tracy?'

'So runs the tradition.'

'I have no faith in traditions, and to show you that I have not, I will, with your permission, wear the ring until we meet again. Shall I?'

'By no means. If not for your own sake, for that of your wife and child, beware of the jasper signet. You could not help me by knowing and sharing my lot. It would increase your misery, while it would not lighten mine. I must meet my doom alone. Be content as you are, for no exchange that you could make would benefit you. Leave all to GOD and time.'

It was late that night when we parted. I followed him to the door to get a breath of air. The night wind was sweet and fresh, breathing of the green woods and the salt sea. It flowed around us [as] we stood on the stoop, laying its cool fingers in benediction on our heated brows.

'Good night, and pleasant dreams, Arthur Gurney.'

'Farewell, and a long life, Richard Tracy.'

We shook hands and he departed. I lingered a moment and watched his retreating form. It was a bright night, and I saw him for some distance, now growing dim as he entered the shadows of the trees, and now becoming distinct as he crossed the spaces of moonshine. He turned the corner, and I saw him no more, save in his shadow, which trailed like a dark pillar behind him. It disappeared, and the sound of his steps died away; I locked the door and returned to my work.

The visit of Arthur Gurney, unexpected though it was, was of service to me. It kept me from thinking too much of my sick child, and it rested my weary mind. I could not have finished my task that night but for his interruption. I matured my plan as I talked with him, and worked it out as I listened. When he rose to depart I was within a few lines of the end. There was nothing to do but to write down what I had composed—some twenty or thirty lines in all—and give the whole an epigrammatic turn. I seized my pen and dashed it hurriedly across the paper, making a series of hieroglyphics, which would have delighted Champollion or Layard.

It was soon finished, and I proceeded to put the table in order, piling up the books and arranging the papers in my portfolio. In so doing, I happened to move my pistol, when I discovered the jasper signet, which Arthur Gurney had left, whether through forgetfulness or design I never knew. I took it cautiously between my thumb and finger, as one might take some strange instrument of death, and held it close to the light. It looked quaint and curious, as an old signet-ring should, but by no means dangerous or formidable. The ciphers in the setting were unchanged; the stone was as clear as ever. I saw no difference in it, except that the blood-spots appeared a little redder and larger, but that might have been my fancy. It is true that I felt somewhat nervous as I handled it, but any imaginative person would have felt so after listening to the strange narrative of Arthur Gurney.

'How absurd that poor fellow was,' I said, 'to talk as he did about this poor, old harmless ring. It must have been the Byronic beverage that he drank, for certainly no man would believe such nonsense in his sober senses. 'If you wear the ring,' he said, 'you will lose your identity.' I 've a good mind to try it.' And I put it on my finger.

As it slipped down, joint after joint, the most singular sensation came over me. At first a sharp thrill ran through my frame, beginning at my heart, and pulsing outward like the waves of an electric sea. This was followed by a sudden tremor of the nerves, which ended in an overpowering faintness. What took place next I knew not, for when I recovered I had no remembrance that any thing unusual had happened. How could I have, when my identity was gone?

I awoke in a richly-furnished chamber. The light of the chandelier was turned on full, and I saw every thing as clearly as if it had been day. The walls were hung with beautiful pictures—the master-pieces of the finest modern masters, Scheffer, Delaroche, and Horace Vernet, with here and there a choice impression of the rarest engravings of Raphael Morghen. But the gem of the collection was a pair of Turners—a morning and evening at sea. In the one you saw a noble barge, crowded with lords and ladies, flying before the wind, with her sails all set and her streamers flying; in the other, the fragments of a wreck, drifting over a measureless sea: the sun was just plunging in the gloomy waves, a world of fire and blood! The mantle was loaded with Sevres vases, and rich ornaments in ormolu and bronze, and tables of rose-wood and ebony were strewn with objects of virtu. High-backed Gothic chairs, covered with royal brocade, were scattered around. I might describe the soft carpets and the tufted rugs; the heavy-hanging damask curtains, with their fluted, pillar-like folds; the brilliant mirrors reaching from floor to ceiling; but to what end? It is enough to say that I was in the chamber of the rich and voluptuous Arthur Gurney. I was Arthur Gurney!

I sat in a fauteuil, holding in my hand a lady's miniature. It was that of my Cousin Beatrice. She was as fair as an angel, but a deep sadness had settled on her face, shading its beauty and brightness. She was pale and ghost-like, with thin, spiritual lips, and earnest but melancholy eyes.

'How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than beauty's self.'

I took from my pocket a letter. It was the fatal letter from England, telling me of my cousin's death. 'Here,' I murmured, poring over the miniature, 'here is my dear Beatrice as I saw her a little month ago, the sweetest soul that ever tabernacled in clay; and here,' looking at the letter, 'is that which tells me I shall see her no more! How could she die, when I needed her so much? She was my hope, my life, the only thing that I loved. How weak and unmanly Tracy was, to repine as he did to-night! He has a wife that loves him, and a child—his child, and hers—a little angel, still in the light of Heaven. But I am alone, alone! Were Beatrice living, my Beatrice, my beloved, my betrothed, my wife, I would not shrink from poverty as he does but would battle with it royally, crowned with the great diadem of Love! But it is too late! it is too late! There is nothing left me but to die!'

I crumpled the letter in my hand, and kissed the miniature of Beatrice for the last time. As I rose I caught sight of my face in the mirror. It was haggard, and ghastly pale. 'Come, come, Arthur Gurney, be firm; it will not do to play the woman now.' I strode up to the mirror, as I have seen men do when excited by wine, and took a long look at myself. How black my hair was! and what a wild light glared in my sunken eyes! 'Good-by, Arthur Gurney!' I smiled and walked to the window. The sky was sown with stars, and the full moon hung over the tops of the trees. 'Farewell, O moon, and stars, and summer night! a long farewell!'

I cocked my pistol and placed it to my heart. 'Beatrice,' I shrieked, 'I come.' My finger was on the trigger—another second and I would have been in Eternity. But suddenly my hand was seized, and a woman's shriek rang in my ear: 'Richard!' I struggled violently, determined not to be balked in my purpose. 'Richard! Richard!' I heeded her not, but tore off, the hand that held me. At that moment the jasper signet dropped from my finger, and the charm was broken. I was no longer Arthur Gurney; but Richard Tracy! I was saved from death by my wife, who came into the room to tell me that my child was better. 'The doctor has been here, dear husband, and he says that the crisis is past. Our little Ambrose will live,' I threw myself into her arms and burst into tears.

'Look at the watch, Bessy' said I, trembling at my narrow escape, 'and note the time carefully, for Arthur Gurney is dead. He died to-night, and by his own hand.'

It was even so. For in the morning he was found in his chamber dead, with a bullet through his heart! His watch was in his pocket, stopped! It pointed to the very minute when Bessy arrested my hand!

[Vol. LII, No. 5 (November, 1858)]

THE LITTLE GIANT.

DURING the winter of 1838, while stopping at the St. Charles Hotel, New-Orleans, there used to sit opposite me at table a curious little man, about thirty-five years of age, whose appearance was so striking, that it was impossible not to notice him. His most remarkable characteristics were a long, narrow head, rudely thatched with red hair; a low, ill-bred forehead, bulging out above a pair of large no-colored eyes, like a new and original species of fungus; and a huge, expansive beard, as coarse and stiff as a side of sole-leather, and of about the same color.

But despite these deformities, and a strangely sinister expression of countenance, there was that in the man's general air which caused him to be singled out at once, by every body, as what is called 'a character.' He was evidently conscious of this, and always deported himself like one who knew he was observed, and knew, also, that it was not because of his good looks.

A lady who sat next to me for some weeks, used to say that he was the most hideous-looking man she ever saw, and that she should really like to become acquainted with him. A truly feminine caprice!

The fact was, that his whole carriage indicated a self-conscious strength, which could carry off not only his bad looks, but even his negligent and eccentric apparel; for he was the worst-dressed man who ever seated himself at a respectable table, even in New-Orleans. The probability is, that he was studiously so; for I have never known a man of intelligence to dress in a slovenly manner, (when he had the means of doing otherwise,) except with a view of producing a certain vulgar effect; we have all seen examples of this inverse dandyism even in New-York, where—though this tells poorly for our sense of refinement—it will sometimes procure for a man an otherwise unattainable reputation as a man of genius. In the case in question, however, I fancied that the secret of such bad taste, was a defiant determination not to neutralize the effect of repulsive features by any of the common-place tricks of art.

I was confirmed in this opinion by the fact that, on close observation, I found that though slovenly, the man was any thing but untidy; for his hands, which were very small, were always scrupulously clean, (rather a rare occurrence at our public tables) and his linen, though sometimes buttonless, was invariably spotless.

My fair neighbor and myself used often to talk together about this strange personage, and, still oftener, to 'nudge' each other, to call attention to something in his look or manner, which was peculiar; and it is now my firm opinion that he heard every word that passed between us, and observed every sign.

One day, I asked her if he ever made his appearance in the drawing-room; she replied that he was there nearly every evening.

I went there myself that evening, for the first time, and he was not present. But he was there a few evenings later, when, going in late, I was fortunate in having a good opportunity to study him under a new aspect.

What I had heard meanwhile, only increased my curiosity to know more about him; and, if possible, to make his acquaintance; and now that he was before me, I resolved, if necessary, to force myself upon his notice. I found him in a retired part of the room, conversing with, or rather listening to, a garrulous old lady, whom I recognized as Madame Hibon, the widow of a Louisiana cotton-planter, and an old friend of my father.

Being tolerably well acquainted with the Madame, I resolved at once to approach her, in which case, I was certain that her notions of politeness (which I beg to observe are not mine) would lead her at once to introduce me.

I was right; for I had no sooner addressed her, than, with great formality, she presented me to him as her friend, Mr. Linton, a legal gentleman from New-England, and the son of one of her oldest correspondents—laying emphasis on the word 'correspondents,' as if to impress us both with the fact, that she was a woman of business. He, on the other hand, was introduced to me as Mr. Francis Corbeau, of the highly respectable firm of Thibault and Company, commission merchants, New-Orleans.

This ceremony was hardly over, when Madame Hibon exclaiming, 'Oh! here comes one of my St. Louis correspondents,' abruptly disappeared, and Mr. Corbeau and myself were left to entertain each other as best we might.

'And so,' said he, at once broaching a conversation, 'it seems you have known Madame Hibon a long time.'

'Yes, Sir: about five years.'

'And are you acquainted with her niece, Miss Lolotte?'

'I have that honor.'

'Do n't you think her very handsome?'

'I do, indeed.'

'And intelligent also?'

'She is said to be uncommonly: what is your opinion?'

'I have had no opportunity of judging: I have only met her four or five times, and the last time was in this room, when she cut me.'

'Cut you! How so?'

'I asked her to dance with me, when I knew she had no other engagement, and she declined.'

'Courteously, I presume?'

'No: very curtly.'

'That surprises me, in a lady who appears so well-bred.'

'So it did me; and not only that, but delighted me.'

'Is it possible! I should never have forgiven her.'

'Neither shall I.'

'No?'

'No: I intend to marry her.'

'You are pleased to be sarcastic.'

'Not in the least: I speak the simple truth. Good evening, Sir.'

And Mr. Corbeau, after taking a hasty glance round the room, as if in search of some one, took his abrupt departure.

The correspondent from St. Louis having been disposed of, Madame Hibon now came up to me in great haste, and asked what had become of her friend Corbeau.

'He has just left, Madame.'

'Indeed! he promised to stay all the evening. Did he leave a document for me—a cotton circular?'

'No, Madame. I think he was a little irritated at not finding some one here whom he expected to meet.'

'Do you think so?'

'I am sure of it: he was looking for your niece.'

'Did he tell you so?'

'No, Madame; but, being a Yankee, I guessed as much from what he did tell me.'

'The scamp! I am afraid he is in love with her.'

'Why afraid? I imagined he was fortunate enough to be a favorite with you.'

'Well, so he is; but not with my niece: she do n't appreciate his business qualities.'

'I do n't wonder at it: he looks like a sharper.'

'You mistake him, my dear Sir. He is one of the most liberal men in the world—where he takes—and also (though you would n't think it) one of the most susceptible. Why, the moment he saw my niece—by the way, you remember her?'

'Certainly, Madame: how I could fail to, once having seen her——'

'Well, the moment he saw my niece, he was a changed man. Poor fellow! he could hardly attend to business for weeks; why, in settling a little account with him the other day, he made no less than three mistakes in subtraction.'

'Indeed! that is remarkable. And what does your niece think of him?'

'She can't bear him: she says he is the ugliest little monster she ever saw.'

'That's encouraging!'

'Well, so it is, notwithstanding your sneer. The worst thing you have to fear from a woman is her indifference.'

'Is that so?'

'Certainly it is. Her hate is the next best thing to her love, which a suitor can begin with. I do n't know but it is even better than her love; for a woman's first impressions—notwithstanding all that is said about her fine intuitions and quick perceptions—are rarely ever just, and still more rarely enduring. Not one woman in ten marries or wishes to marry her first love. The fact is, that until she is thirty or thereabout, (unless she is a woman of business) her judgment of you men is just good for nothing. If

Leila should take an instant liking for a man like Corbeau, his case would, in my opinion, be a very hopeless one. As it is, I think he has a very fair chance of success.'

'But surely, you are not on his side?'

'Why not?'

'Well, if you will excuse my saying it, he strikes me as having neither the appearance (here I straightened up a little) nor the education of a gentleman.'

'It would be hardly safe to say that to his face, Mr. Linton.'

'Why, Madame? would he call me out?'

'No, Sir: that is not his style.'

'I thought not: it would be unbusiness like. But pray, what would he do?'

'He would ruin you.'

'Ruin me! How!'

'Every way.'

'I flatter myself, Madame, that would not be a very easy task.'

'If it were, he would not undertake it. But his resources are infinite, and if they were not, his invention would make them so. He is a man who never leaves an injury unrevenged, nor an end unattained. I have never known him to fail in any thing. He went into the house of Thibault and Company a poor boy, and resolved, from the first week, to become the managing partner, which in less than six years he was. There were several men in his way, but he—well, he disposed of them: in a word, they were all ruined.'

'You do n't mean to say that he ruined them.'

'Not exactly; but the fact is, one of them—the cashier for many years—was exposed as a defaulter; another was killed in a duel with Corbeau's cousin; and a third died of delirium tremens, etc.'

'But do you mean to say that he effected all this? If so, he must be, not a little monster, as your niece calls him, but a great monster.'

'That depends upon how you look at it. Do you ever judge your great generals in that way? Read Abbott's Napoleon, or any body's Wellington. Corbeau's theory is, that he is a man of destiny, and that every thing that interposes between him and his end, is sure to be got rid of in some way. This is what he calls Providence—an 'over-ruling Providence,' I think his term is.'

'And so you think that if I interfere with this very pious and providential young man, I shall be got rid of too? Zounds! I 've half a mind to try it, by making love at once to Miss Lolotte; by the way, there she is, as beautiful as ever.'

And at this moment, the young lady in question approached her aunt, and after saluting her French fashion, on both cheeks, (the lips being considered too sacred for common use,) was about to give a lively account of what she had seen at the opera, when Madame Hibon interrupted her by saying that she was a very naughty girl, for staying away so long, as all the young men in the room—especially Mr. Linton and Mr. Corbeau—had been dying for her all the evening.

Here Miss Leila, turning to me, whom she had apparently observed for the first time, (a favorite but not particularly brilliant manœuvre of young ladies,) remarked:

'I do n't see that Mr. Linton is quite in a dying condition, aunt; and as for Mr. Corbeau, since he is not here, it is to be hoped he has actually died out.'

'You are cruel, Miss Lolotte,' I replied; 'but I am sure your presence would revive him as much—well, as much as it does me.'

'You flatter, Sir. Your visit to New-Orleans has done you good. Pray, how did that New-England heart of yours get thawed out?'

'That is hardly a fair question for you to ask, Miss Lolotte.'

'Dear me: another compliment! how charming! Pray, Mr. Linton, take a seat.'

Having obeyed the request, and her aunt having gone on a business-tour to the other end of the room, our conversation was resumed.

'And so you have seen Mr. Corbeau?'

'Yes, Miss Lolotte.'

'Tell me, then, what you think of him.'

'Well, to tell you the truth, I have hardly had time to think of him at all: wait till I have seen a little more of him.'

'Oh! no, your judgment at this moment is the only one I would give a fig to have. I want to know how he struck you at first sight. Second impressions are worthless.'

'That may be true, as a rule, Miss Leila; but I think it hardly ought to be applied to a person so unprepossessing in his outward appearance as Mr. Corbeau.'

'But do n't you believe that external appearances are indicative of internal character, Mr. Linton?'

'Not always. A sinister expression of countenance, for example, is often the result of accident.'

'And so, Mr. Linton,' said my charming companion, after a moment's pause; 'and so this is your apologetic, round-about, lawyer-like way of saying that Mr. Corbeau impressed you very unfavorably. How much easier and braver to have said at once, that he seemed to you to be a very bad man!'

'But that would have been unfair. I do n't think we have a right to trifle in that way with each other's character.'

'Well, Mr. Linton, we won't discuss that matter just now, but I am free to say; that, in my opinion, your impressions were exactly right. I am almost certain that Mr. Corbeau is a bad man. But here comes a gentleman with whom I must dance, so you must excuse me. By the way, I believe my aunt intends to invite Mr. Corbeau and yourself to dine with us day after to-morrow. You will come, of course: we shall dine in her room, Number Twenty-five, at six o'clock.'

'With the greatest pleasure, Miss Leila.'

'Do: to save me from being bored to death by Mr. Corbeau. How glad I am he is not here, now, for my aunt made me promise to dance with him this evening, to pay for having refused to, on a former occasion.'

Here, the gentleman alluded to interposed, and led Miss Lolotte to the floor, while Madame Hibon, having finished her business-tour, approached, and repeated the invitation of her niece, which, as before, I cordially accepted.

'You will thus,' said she, 'have an opportunity of seeing Mr. Corbeau again, and I want you, some day, to give me your opinion of him.'

'I will do so, of course, Madame, if you require it; but you must keep the opinion a secret, if it should prove unfavorable; for, to tell you the truth, I have not the least desire, especially at present, (casting an eye over to Miss Leila,) to be 'ruined.' '

The next day, somewhat to my surprise, Mr. Corbeau called on me. It was immediately after breakfast, and I was seated in my room enjoying the unspeakable luxury of my first pipe, which, with me as with all confirmed tobacconalians, is a very serious event—what the French call a 'solemnity.' It was as unpleasant to me to be disturbed during this ceremony, as for a devotee to be disturbed during his morning devotions. My friends generally understood this whim, and had the good sense to respect it; for a man has as much right to his whims, if they do n't interfere with his neighbor, as (under the same restriction) to his virtues. But Mr. Corbeau, knowing nothing of my habits, could not be blamed, and I accordingly received him with the courtesy due to a friend of Madame Hibon.

'Pray, do n't let me prevent your smoking,' said he, as I was about laying aside my pipe.

'I feared it might be disagreeable to you; but perhaps you smoke yourself.'

'Never,' said he; 'but then nothing is disagreeable to me.'

'Nothing?'

'Nothing that a gentleman can do.'

'Have n't you even the common prejudice against pipes?'

'Not at all: I have no prejudices.'

'None?'

'Well, one, perhaps.'

'And, pray, what may that be?'

'A prejudice against prejudices.'

'Excuse me, but from a remark I once heard you make, I inferred that you had a prejudice, and a very strong one, too, against New-Englanders—Puritans, as you unjustly called us.'

'Dear me, no. I should n't like to be one myself, if you will excuse me for saying so; but then, I should n't like to be different in any respect from what I am.'

I was tempted to ask the man if he would n't like to be a little taller; but he detected my thought (what a splendid 'Detective' he would have made!) in an instant, and said:

'You are thinking, perhaps, that I would like to add an inch or two to my stature. If so, you are mistaken, and I do n't think my case a peculiar one. I do n't believe, in fact, that with all our grumbling, there is a man in the world who would like to change his physical, or even his moral conformation in the least. Now, as for you New-Englanders, you are certainly a curious, notional kind of people, full of bigotry and pride, though not (he condescendingly added) without some virtues, and looking upon every body not born in one of your six (I think there are six) little States, as persons eminently to be pitied. Now, I do n't object to this all, but only state the matter as it strikes me. I recognise every man's right to his opinions, and even to his 'isms,' and I call you Northerners, if you will excuse the pun, regular Ism-alites. But I did n't call upon you, Mr. Linton, to discuss disagreeable topics, but merely to ask the pleasure of your more intimate acquaintance. I am not a man who seeks companions, as a rule, nor have I ever been accused of flattery; but the fact is, there is something about you which pleased me from the moment I first saw you at table, and I said to myself this morning: 'I will call upon Mr. Linton at once, and see if we cannot become friends.'

After such a speech, how could I do otherwise than make myself as agreeable as possible? Accordingly, I gave myself up to the feeling of the moment, and we chatted together on the most friendly terms for over two hours, during which time, as I have had occasion to remember, he wormed out of me my opinion on every subject and person alluded to, while, though this did not occur to me till he had gone, I was no wiser as to his opinions than before. On the whole, however, I found his society agreeable, and resolved to cultivate it. I felt that, for the first time in my life, I had met a man who appreciated me. And it is so delightful to be appreciated! He had listened to every word I uttered, as though I were an oracle, and yet had deported himself toward me all the while as a superior, which, in fact, he was. Still, I had my doubts in respect to the man. There was a subtlety about him which embarrassed me beyond measure.

But what struck me particularly, was his geniality of manner as compared with what I had observed in him before. And somehow, this did n't affect me agreeably; it did n't seem to be natural to him. In fact, I almost said as much, and intimated a suspicion I had that he was playing a part.

'Well, suppose I am,' was his characteristic reply, 'would there be any thing wrong in that?'

'Well, no: I should hardly say it would be wrong; but if you will excuse my frankness, it would certainly be small.'

'Small! how so? are we not all acting parts? Do you not act one every time you have a new client, (I thought to myself, that if this were all, I should never make a very good actor,) and every time you enter a new drawing-room? Are not all the conventionalities of life a species of acting? It strikes me they are; and if sometimes I appear rude, unsocial—discourteous, if you please—it is because, for the moment, I do n't choose to be a conventionalist. But do not mistake me. If I am any more sociable than usual today, it is because you are the only person I have met with for months, with whom I cared to converse. In fact, you exercise a certain power over me, which I find it impossible to resist, even (as is not the case ) if I had the inclination to.'

'Indeed!' I exclaimed, feeling very much flattered at the idea of exercising any influence over such a genius; 'and how can you explain it?'

'Well, Sir, I can't explain it at all. Nothing can be explained in this world which is worth explaining. And of all mysteries, the most subtle and inexplicable, is that of human affinities. Your character, one would say, is as opposite to mine, in every respect, as can be conceived; and yet there is a magic about it, to me, which is as charming as if I had just been endowed with a new sense.'

In reply to this fascinating compliment, which was delivered with great appearance of sincerity, I had to acknowledge something of the same feeling toward himself. And so we went on, a long time, in a strain which, over-heard by a third person, would have led him to think (and perhaps he would not have been far out of the way) that we were two as conceited young coxcombs as could be found in the country. My new friend discovered in me, and I in turn discovered in him, the most marvellous qualities of mind; and what time we were not dwelling upon them, and complimenting one another upon them, we were wondering at the stupidity of the world in general.

A sense of the ludicrousness of all this came over me, now and then; but a hurried word from Corbeau restored me at once to my self-conceit; and when we finally separated, I own up that it was with the feeling that we were two of the most brilliant geniuses of the age. A stupid delusion, without doubt, but one which was far from being disagreeable.

The next day, as I was preparing to go to Madame Hibon's, I wondered what she and her niece would think of our sudden intimacy, for we had agreed to go together, and they would see in an instant that we were on the most familiar terms. Moreover, after a night's reflection, the new state of things embarrassed me. I felt that I had gone too fast and too far; in a word, that I had yielded my confidence too suddenly. It seemed to me just possible, too, when I reviewed all the circumstances, that I had been caught in a trap; and that, so far from caring any thing about me, Corbeau's only object in courting my society, might have been to use me in his designs upon Miss Lolotte. He knew that she had a high opinion of me, and that if she saw I had formed a favorable opinion of him, it would be a strong argument on his side. In fact, it looked as if he had retained me, unconsciously to myself, as his special counsel. I then began to feel, more than ever, that I had been out-witted; and when he called, at the appointed hour, I was sure that he saw all this in an instant, and felt that my friendship for him was of far too sudden a growth to last.

On arriving at Madame Hibon's, however, the ladies received us very graciously, and if they were surprised to see us together, they had the politeness not to let us know it. The usual civilities over, Miss Lolotte commenced upbraiding me with mock severity for not calling oftener, and then invited me to take a seat with her near the window, that her aunt, as she said, might have one of her famous business conferences with Mr. Corbeau; whereupon that gentleman, not at all disconcerted at this quiet way of disposing of him, said that he was always pleased to converse with Madame Hibon, on any subject, and then retreated with that very business-like lady, to another part of the room, and left her niece and myself to our tête-à-tête.

I was hoping that Miss Leila's first allusion would be to Mr. Corbeau, for at this moment he was the only subject about which I felt disposed to talk. But in this I was disappointed, for during a conversation of half-an-hour, she not only made no reference to him, but skilfully avoided every topic in which he might in any way be involved. Meantime I never caught him looking once in our direction; and when dinner was announced, he offered his arm to Madame Hibon, and without so much as glancing at Miss Leila, left that young lady to be escorted to the dining-room by me. Matters were so arranged, however, that he was seated face to face with her, while I was placed opposite her aunt, an awkward arrangement, but one which naturally suggested itself.

The dinner was as good as could be expected at a hotel; and on the whole, we had a merry time of it. Miss Lolotte had got her Creole blood up, and was resolved not to be out-witted by Mr. Corbeau; while as for the Madame and myself, we amused ourselves watching their manœuvres. To our great delight, before we had come to the second course, and so on to the end of the repast, the sprightly combatants were engaged in a series of lively repartees, in which, with consummate skill, Corbeau, apparently doing his best, succeeded always—in coming off the worst. I fancy that she herself had a suspicion that he had been trifling with her, for on retiring to the drawing-room, it was evident to me, as I watched the play of her countenance, that she had a kind of fear for him bordering on respect. He was too strong for her, while there was that in his audacity calculated to over-awe, if not to overcome, any woman. And this was all he wanted. I saw as much by a certain wicked expression of his eye, which seemed to say: 'I have her completely in my power; and now, gentlemen rivals, come on and do your best.'

After spending a tedious evening in that dullest of all amusements, long-whist, which Madame Hibon insisted should be played throughout according to Hoyle, any other method being unbusiness-like, Corbeau and myself adjourned to my room, and passed most of the night drinking and gossiping. To my surprise, I found him very anxious, apparently, to know what I thought of Miss Lolotte's conversational powers.

'Do n't you think,' said he, 'that she was very smart at dinner?'

'I certainly do; in fact, you seemed to have had rather the worst of it all the while.'

'I am glad you think so, for such was my intention. It is a strict rule of mine never to humiliate a lady.'

'You mean in conversation,' I said, perceiving, now that it was not so much my opinion of Miss Lolotte he wanted, as an opportunity to develop some favorite theory.

'Exactly. It does them so much good now and then to be recognized as reasoning beings that I am disposed to indulge them, especially when I have an object to gain. Did n't you see what a triumph it was to Miss Lolotte this evening to be considered by her aunt and yourself, as having got the better of me? I would n't have robbed her of that pleasure for the world; for it makes her think better of me and better of herself—two great things. Another such a triumph and she will begin to love me: for nothing elates a young woman like being considered intellectual, especially when she is n't so. Do n't you remember when phrenology first came in vogue, how many women used to comb the hair back from the forehead, so as to show their bumps of 'causality,' 'comparison,' or what not? I do, and it gave me a good deal of fun.'

'You are severe, Mr. Corbeau.'

'Not at all. We all aim to be, or rather, to seem different from what we are. And since the world requires it of us, why not? What harm is there in it?'

'The harm of insincerity.'

'I do n't see that. We are sincere enough, but our sincerity consists in a sincere desire to pass with other equally sincere persons in the same fix, for something else besides what we really are. There is no deception in this, for every body understands it. By general consent, we all go disguised. The merchant has his mask; the lawyer his; the minister his; the woman, of every condition, hers. Life, in fact, is nothing but a great masquerade; that is the beauty of it. Were it otherwise, there would be no mystery in human intercourse, and the whole charm of society would be gone. Do you suppose that Miss Lolotte has ever seen me? or that I have ever seen her? Not once; nor shall we ever, unless—well, unless we marry each other; and then the masks will be dropped as being no longer of use, and the whole romance and poetry of our lives will be swallowed up in that prosy égoism à deux which we call matrimony.

And we continued philosophizing in this dreary style, or rather Corbeau philosophizing and I drinking, till broad day-light, when with many protestations of friendship, (not at all weaker for the potations of the evening,) we separated, having first, however, tossed off a final bumper to the 'Health of Leila Lolotte!'

The next day, and the next, and in fact nearly every day for a fortnight, I called upon Madame Hibon, and found myself at last (I can find no other word to express it) furiously in love with her niece, who, at any rate, was not very furiously in love with Mr.

Corbeau. Meanwhile my position toward that inexplicable person was a very embarrassing one, for I spent a good deal of time in his society, and we were generally looked upon as intimate friends. More than once I had been warned against him, but my reply had uniformly been, that doubtless he had his deficiencies of character, his bad traits as well as his good ones, but then that every body had, and in this wicked world I had learned to take people as I found them, and make the best of it.

Now I admit this was rather a damaging defence of my new friend, but it was the best I could offer. Moreover, I must confess that when speaking of him to Leila, my tone was somewhat different; but this was natural, if not unavoidable.

Another difficulty in my position was, that I had become to some extent the legal adviser of Madame Hibon, and had several times had the misfortune to differ from Corbeau—who was her business adviser and agent—in opinion, and my advice was sometimes though not often preferred. Things had been going on between us in this equivocal way for some weeks, before he had the least idea of our relative positions. But one day it seems he had over-heard a conversation between Madame Hibon and myself, in which, though no direct allusion was made to him, I had advised her, in a certain important business matter in which Miss Leila's interests were involved, to adopt a course exactly opposite that which he had recommended as absolutely necessary. Reference was also made to previous opinions I had given her; and at the close of our interview she had urged upon me the importance of not mentioning the matter to him.

We were neither of us aware for some time that we had been over-heard, and should never have discovered it, perhaps, had not Corbeau in a moment of excitement let the secret out in his next interview with her, on which occasion Leila was present, and warmly took my part.

As soon as I had heard of this circumstance, I felt that the friendship between Mr. Corbeau and myself was at an end. But not so. Though he had discovered that I was in a double sense his rival, and had heard both from Madame Hibon and her niece the most flattering statements (doubtless much over-colored) as to my character and ability, he continued, nevertheless, to court my society and to make me all kinds of proffers of service.

And now comes an incident which, though trifling in itself, was the one which did more than all others to determine both his fate and mine.

A week or so after he had discovered my relations to Madame Hibon and her niece, he came to my room, with his face beaming with joy, and gave me some information respecting a client of mine m New-York, by which—as it turned out before night—I saved several thousand dollars. Now, as a curious coïncidence, Leila had that very day warned me to be on the look-out for him, lest he should spring some trap upon me and cause my ruin; for she was as firm as her aunt in the belief that he could 'ruin' any body he pleased, from the President down. As an act of justice to my friend, therefore, I hastened to Madame Hibon's in the evening to communicate my good fortune and to rally her niece about her 'instincts,' 'presentiments,' etc., all of which had told her that Corbeau was now my deadly enemy.

Judge of my surprise to find that the news made so deep an impression upon her that in a few moments she made some vague excuse for leaving the room, and did not return.

In a moment the whole truth flashed upon me. Leila's noble sensitive nature had been shocked by the consciousness of her injustice to Corbeau, and she had suddenly resolved to make ample reparation. This was in keeping with her whole character.

Of course I was not so blind but I saw that this was a great triumph for him; nor so dull as not then to see that it was in a manner pre-calculated, and that he would make a masterly use of it. It was a favorite saying of his, that he liked to be abused, because it gave a man the only decent excuse he could ever have for speaking a word in his own favor.

And the word was soon spoken.

Indeed from that day he commenced a series of personal attentions to Miss Lolotte—starting from his new vantage-ground; which attentions she at least did not discourage. She danced with him at parties, went with him to theatres, rode out with him, and in fact, rushing to extremes, as she did in every thing, made more than thousand-fold amends for her past distrust.

Seeing this, I became disgusted, and resolved to retire from a field in which my prospects, never perhaps very brilliant, seemed now to be completely 'ruined.'

Matters rested in this way about a month, during which time I had lived in almost absolute seclusion, when I suddenly decided to return North. I then called upon Madame Hibon to 'make my adieus.' The old lady was alone, her niece, as she said, being indisposed. I expressed my regret at this, as I had come to bid them good-by.

'Good-by?' said she, getting quite excited; 'but pray where are you going?'

'To Boston, Madame.'

'But are you not going to stop to the wedding?'

'The wedding?' I exclaimed, losing at once all my self-possession; 'whose wedding?'

'Why Leila's, to be sure. Have n't you heard of her engagement?'

'Me? why, no, indeed. But—but—to whom is she engaged?'

'Why, to Mr. Corbeau, to be sure; whom did you think?'

'Really, Madame, I had n't the least idea; but (and here I made a great effort to appear cool) do pray tell me all about it.'

'Ah!' said she, looking uncommonly grave, 'it is such a long story.'

'And you speak of it as if it were a sad one,' said I, quite alarmed, and then added gayly, 'it strikes me, however, it must be a very sentimental one.'

'I should hope not; if there is any thing in this world I hate, it is a sentimental match. Leila's is one based on simple prudence and common-sense.'

'A regular business operation.'

'Exactly. But tell me, hasn't Mr. Corbeau told you about our affairs?'

'Not a syllable, Madame; I have hardly seen him for a fortnight.'

'Well then, in a word, he made a formal proposal to me for the hand of my niece about ten days ago, stating that unless the proposal was accepted he should resign his position as my agent, and spend the next three years travelling in Europe. Now, on examining into my accounts, which he rendered at the same time, I found them in such a complicated condition, that without his aid it was impossible for me to go on with my business. To be brief, I represented these facts to Leila, who, after three days' consideration, decided——'

'To become Madame Corbeau!'

'Precisely.'

'And pray, when is the ceremony to take place?'

'The day is not fixed, but it will be some time within a month, that is, if nothing happen to prevent.'

I found on making further inquiries, that Corbeau, like Madame Hibon, looked at the whole thing as a mere matter of business, and that so far from persecuting Leila with his addresses since the engagement, he was assiduously non-attentive to her. And this line of conduct seemed to please all parties. Indeed, Leila had once said that if Corbeau (she never called him Francis) only proved to be as considerate as a husband as he had been as a lover, she should have nothing to complain of; for if there was any thing in this world which she dreaded more than another, it was being bored.

Just before leaving Madame Hibon, she asked me, in an apparently unconcerned way, whether I would n't stay in New-Orleans and attend her niece's wedding; to which I promptly replied, having suddenly changed my resolution: 'I shall be there, if I am alive.'

The next day, to my great astonishment, I received a curious note from Madame Hibon, to the effect that at the particular request of her niece, she wished me to examine and audit the accounts of Mr. Corbeau, which, without further ceremony, she took the liberty of forwarding to me. The same day I received another note, by post, from Miss Lolotte herself, saying that she had just had a communication from one Mr. Thompson, formerly cashier to Thibault and Company, and who had been dismissed from their employ some fifteen years before as a defaulter, warning her against Mr. Corbeau as a dishonest man. She placed no faith in the statement, but had advised her aunt to consult with me about it. She begged, also, to send me Mr. Thompson's address.

Any attempt to describe my state of mind at the receipt of these documents would be futile.

In less than an hour Mr. Thompson, whom I found to be engaged in the business of general accountant, was in my office, and we were busily engaged examining with terrible scrutiny, the long and complicated account of Madame Hibon with Mr. Corbeau for a period of over five years. But before commencing our work, the old accountant (for he was a man over sixty years of age) had told me, with tears in his eyes, the story of his disgrace, saying that it was owing to the perfidy of Corbeau, who had effected it by falsifying the books of the firm in so injurious a manner that he (Thompson) had found it impossible at the time to detect the fraud, though he was sure if Mr. Thibault would give him the chance, he would do so now. I promised him that I would do my best to serve him, and that if any dishonesty was detected in the accounts then before us, he should have a chance to justify himself before the house of Thibault and Company, and Corbeau should be either sent to prison or driven from the country.

We then proceeded actively with our work, and at last had decided, after the more patient and thorough examination, to report that all was correct, when it suddenly occurred to Thompson, as if by inspiration, to examine into the authenticity of the 'vouchers.' This, alas!—I say alas! though it was with a certain secret and almost hideous delight, which no human heart will fail to understand—proved to be a fatal examination. False vouchers were found to the extent of over thirty thousand dollars!

And now, why prolong a story, the sequel of which the reader, always so sagacious, has already anticipated?

The good old accountant turned out to be right; the knavish Corbeau was exposed; his match with Miss Lolotte was broken off; that lady now rejoices in the name of Mrs. Linton. Madame Hibon has finished her business in this world; the firm of Thibault and Company is changed to 'Thibault and Thompson;' and the late 'junior partner,' instead of allowing himself to be sent to prison, or driven out of the country, turned politician, and is now a thriving government officer in San Francisco, and occupies a prominent place in the books of the Vigilance Committee as Corbeau, alias Corbett, alias Callcott, 'The Little Giant.'

[Vol. LIV, No. 3 (September, 1859)]

LITTLE PEDDLINGTON: OTHERWISE CALLED BOSVILLE.

AND so called, I suppose, quasi 'Boswell,' because every citizen thereof is his own Boswell,[1] and so, eminently and emphatically his own 'Autocrat,' seeing autopsically into his own abdomen, and into the interior of his fellow-creatures by no means autoschediastically.[2] There are those who derive the word from 'bos,' signifying a master, because every inhabitant of the city is a Master of Arts, except the women and children, and has received a neat sheepskin from the neighboring University of Oxbridge: which is connected with Bosville by the Pons Asinorum, a horse-railroad, (so called in Bosville,) and a stage and two—so that the literary facilities of the city are very complete.[3] The name of 'Little Peddlington' is never used by the natives, as any thing little is supposed to be necessarily low; whereas Bosville is not only a city set upon a hill, but upon three hills; this being, however, four less than Rome could boast, and the only endowment in which Bosville is inferior to the Eternal—city, we mean, of course.

As an urbane settlement, Bosville is uncommonly rustic, which fact is by some authorities attributed to the use of beans and brown-bread by the inhabitants.[4] This diet, however, is varied by the avidity with which the inhabitants devour the codfish, (Oniscus Salitus,) which is caught in great numbers by the hardy seamen of the Lacus Ranæ, a great inland sea, stretching for more than a quarter of a mile through the Ager Compascuus. This territory extends from the Templum Vivarii Vici on the north, to the uncultivated regions of the Public Garden.[5] The rustic character of the inhabitants has led to the constant performance, by day and by night, of the Pastoral Symphony of L. V. Beethoven, whenever the necessary number of fiddlers can be obtained. Walking through the quiet and secluded streets of Bosville, we may imagine an enraptured citizen of that hamlet exclaiming, in the language of Erasmus: 'Cum omnia nunc vernent, et rideant in agris, demiror esse qui fumosis urbibus delectentur.' Who would not, like Cowley, seek such a retreat, 'where no more business nor cares of life could come near him,' and where he might still associate with the wisest, most learned, most virtuous, most polished, most sweet-souled, most civilized of men?[6]

For it must be understood, that if there are found the joys of rustic life, there too are to be observed the triumphs of art;[7] the fascinations of the drama;[8] the pleasures of society;[9] the myriad graces and weighty profit of good conversation[10] the finest, most flourishing, most virtuous, enterprising, witty; sarcastic, and best-printed newspapers;[11] the bravest and most chivalrous militia.[12]

It must have been made evident to the least intelligent reader of this article, which was originally prepared for The New American Encyclopedia, and declined by the learned supervisors of that work, for reasons which were satisfactory to themselves, if not to the author, although he has made no complaint in the newspapers, and is still, unlike some other aspirants for a niche in a wonderful edifice, upon speaking terms with the erudite editors—I say it must have been made evident, that the people of Bosville doat upon mind. The whole secret of their felicity is condensed in the maxim: 'Be wise, and if you cannot be wise, be as wise as you can.' Thus we find Irenæus Krantzovius in his 'Thoughts on Happiness' observes, 'Happiness is the state of a being in Bosville,' that is, of one whose intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature has been cultivated to the highest degree. Of the intellectual nature of Bosville, mention has been made already. It is, as we have seen,

subtle,
intuitive,
erudite,
normal,
unambiguous,
cabalistical,
hydrological,
megapolitan,
ornamental,

perspicacious,
sagacious,
cognoscitive,
primogenial,
translucent,
sinewy,
cathartic,
metropolitan,
medicamental,

craniological,
astute,
many-sided,
predominant,
logical,
tralucent,
chaste,
cosmopolitan,
argumental.

Of its moral perfectibility; Bosville continually reminds us. Not one of the more delicate lapses from virtue can be discovered within its borders without receiving from the newspapers solid columns, and we may say, whole regiments of rebuke. The 'where, how, and when' are punctiliously published, to the unspeakable edification of youth upon the watch for opportunities of exhibiting similar prowess, and who do, not unnaturally, when the way is demonstrated, incontinently abscond in the same direction.

The present commentator, being a great lover of courtesy, good-feeling, and gratitude, has, at much pains and an expense not inconsiderable, made the researches required by this memoir. For the people of Bosville are so modest, so little conscious of their own perfections, and so ready to accord their valuable approbation to others, that is really quite a pleasure to do for them that which has here been done. But, better than any thing this poor pen can indite, are the following testimonials from various writers, which we have culled with an affectionate hand, and with which we conclude these fascinating researches:

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

HERE the Muses nine
With the Virtues meet:
Find to their design
An Atlantic seat.

HERODOTUS.

It is so magnificent a city that none can be compared with it. HEROD. i. 178.

ALEXANDER POPE.

OH! when shall Gotham, conscious of her claim,
Stand emulous of Bosville and of fame?
When see—how distant is the time, alas!
Her great ones shining in historic brass?

SANNAZARIUS.

——QUIS BOSVILLÆ miracula proferat urbis
Una instar magni quæ simul Orbis habet?

OLD PROVERB.

Vidi Bosville, e poi mori!

GOLDSMITH.

SWEET smiling village, loveliest of the lawn!

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

HERE alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain
And one boundless reach of sky.

HILLHOUSE.

——THOU art fair and turret-crowned,
Wet with the choicest dew of heaven, and blessed
With golden fruits and gales of frankincense.

ANCIENT POEM — AUTHOR UNKNOWN.

JOHN BROWN to Bosville went,
And wore his striped 'trowses,'
And said he could n't see the town
There were so many houses.

————

[1]Vid. op. Doct. DULC. DOM. in Atlant. Apothec. Menst. Lit. Art. et Reb. Devot. Num. i—xii. et q. s. (D.V.) in sec. seculo. appel. 'Jentac. Tyrannus.' Angl. 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.' Bos. i. e. Taurus castratuc. Vid. 'Tris. Shand.' tit. 'Obadiah's Bull,' pro gravitate insig. sed. impot. Sic Ov. Met. i. 76:

'Sanctius hic animal, mentisque capacius altæ
Deerat adhuc.'

Ovid animal. vulg. dict. Bosvillian hic signif.

'A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet: Bosvillians were designed.' —DRYDEN.

[2]This word will appear in The New Bosville Dictionary. This will contain 1,328,576 new words, not found in any other dictionary. An application to SHAW, C. J., for an injunction against the book upon grounds of public policy and in accordance with his recent rulings in regard to nuisances, was fruitless; but the learned Justice expressed great regret at his limited powers, and a trust that the volume might be kept from the young gentlemen of the bar.

[3]Among these may be mentioned the remains of the Alexandrian Library, and the private collections of several eminent dealers in codfish, who have signified their intention of bestowing upon the city their account-books—both those kept by double and those kept by single-entry—whenever buildings—fire-proof, and not less than two stories in height—have been provided for their reception.

[4]Those who are curious in dietary philosophy will notice that the inhabitants (while they abstain to a certain extent from flesh, in accordance with the teachings of PYTHAGORAS, who was born at Samos, but—such is the salubrity of the atmosphere—is still living in Bosville at a very advanced age) disregard altogether the precepts of the philosopher concerning beans. These were introduced A.U.C. 200, by the erudite SYLVESTER GRAHAM, who, while he adhered to the Grecian in respect of pork, rejected his anti-leguminous theory. Beans, which are invariably eaten upon Sunday, have imparted, it is supposed, a peculiar ventosity to the theological literature of Bosville.

[5]The beauties of this delightful region, which no writer can describe, or will attempt to describe, unless he was born upon its margin, have led many Bosville commentators to infer that it was originally the Garden of Eden, and that the venerable tree in the centre is the original Tree of Knowledge; which would account for the great learning of Bosville at the present day. But there are reasons for cautiously receiving this theory. It is stated that the 'river went out of Eden to water the garden.' (Gen. 2:10.) Now the Pond does not, at least at the present time, go out of the Common to water the Public Garden, which does not need watering, because there is nothing growing in it. So the river in Eden 'had four heads,' which would be a large allowance for even a Bosville stream, however sage. On the whole, we must reject these speculations as hopeless, however flattering to Bosville pride.

[6]I must, however, in justice to populous cities, quote Dr. SPRATT'S comment upon COWLEY'S resolution of retirement. 'I cannot,' says the Doctor, 'applaud it in him. This ought never to be allowed to good men, unless the bad had the same moderation and were willing to follow him into the wilderness.'—Life of Cowley.

[7]The passion for statuary which was exhibited by Lord TIMOTHY DEXTER, is also found to exist in Bosville. The brass image of FRANKLIN in Court-street is already erect. Between two and three hundred others, including those of about one-tenth of the distinguished men who have died in Bosville during the half-year last past, are projected, each of which will 'enchant the world,' and will certainly enchant the artists who receive orders therefor, and the orators who will emit all they know—and something more—at the christenings. Care will be taken to have these images indelibly inscribed, in order that future antiquarians may not be uselessly perplexed. In painting, we need but refer to the Asineum Collection, in which will be found the master-pieces of the following artists:

1. MICHAEL ANGELO,
2. AND. DEL SARTO,
3. CORREGGIO,
4. POUSSIN,
5. CUYP,
6. REYNOLDS,
7. LANDSEER,

8. RAPHAEL,
9. CARAVAGGIO,
10. TITIAN,
11. SALVATOR ROSA,
12. ADRIAN BRAUWER,
13. MARTIN,
14. WILSON,

15. LEONARDO DA VINCI,
16. REMBRANDT,
17. VANDYKE,
18. MURILLO,
19. A. KAUFFMAN,
20. TURNER,
21. GAINSBOROUGH,

together with the chief productions of J. TOMPKINS SMITH, of Bosville, for whom the ladies held a fancy fair, and who will draw in Italy—for the proceeds thereof. It is in contemplation to add to this Gallery the collection of the Pope whenever the money can be obtained.

[8]Among these must be reckoned the pleasure with which the lion-hearted manager of the Bosville Theatre finds himself once in a year, if not oftener, with his pocket emptied by his devotion to THALIA and her sad sister, and the other goddess—whatever may be her name—who presides over the original plays produced by him, and translated from the French to the English of New-York, and thence into the Bosville dialect. Here, for the first time since it was played in London under the eye of the author, was produced the beautiful drama by W. SHAKSPEARE, Esq., called The Tempest. The following pecuniary statistics illustrating this noble reproduction, have been purchased by the present commentator, of the Treasurer of the Theatre:

COST OF REPRODUCTION OF 'THE TEMPEST.'

DB. |
By new hide for Caliban, |
Three pots of green paint for scenery, | $5 00
Shortening Ariel's tunics by request of the Press, | 1 50
Elongating " " " " Clergy, | 1 50
Bottle with real rum for Stephano, | 1 00
Extra thunder and thunderer, | 1 00
" blue fire, | 50
" fife for Orchestra, | 1 00
Man to play it, | 2 50
| ——
| $14 00
CR. |
By receipts for twelve nights, | 12 00
| ——
Profits, | $2 00

Out of this the manager ran in debt for rent, gas, advertising, and extra beer for the company, to the amount of $1250, leaving a net profit which it is impossible to compute.

[9]It was at a very early period in its history that TIBULLUS asked, in speaking of Bosville, 'Dulcius urbe quid est?' referring, in using 'urbe,' less to the magnitude of the town than to the extreme polish of the inhabitants. Dr. PECK, P.D. Harv., will have it that the passage should read 'Dulcius Herba (that is, Col G——, of the Bosville Pillar) quid est?' I think, however, that the reference is plainly to the city itself; and this is rendered more probable by another passage of the same poet, namely, 'In solis sis tibi turba locis,' in which there is an unmistakable allusion to Bosville. So MONTAIGNE, who was certainly speaking of Bosville, says: 'Let us not, then, fear in this solitude to languish in an uncomfortable vacancy of thought.' If the fear was needless in the time of MONTAIGNE, it is surely so now, thought being the principal commodity of Bosville—the production too large for domestic consumption and the exportation considerable and constant. This alone can explain the proclivity of clever men to leave the hamlet for less favored parts of the country. There is, in fact, a glut of genius. Prudence is, in Bosville, a prominent characteristic of the general mind. Hence a distinguished traveller has remarked: 'When a Bosvillian gets into the predicament of asking himself what he shall say, he says nothing.' This banishes empty garrulity. Hence, too, the exhilarating and eminent gravity so often accorded to them by themselves, and the exhibition of which is especially to be noticed upon festive occasions. Hence, too, the expression 'awful mirth,' applied to their feasts by Dr. I. WATTS—nothing seeming to provoke them into an approximation to joviality except the obsequies of their great ones, who are the most considerable of mankind while living, and instantly 'hoary seers of ages past' when dead; this complimentary allusion having been made to them by the author of 'Thanatopsis.'

[10]This is of a solid, serious class, exhibiting, to use the language of CUMBERLAND in his Apology for his 'Henry,' 'virtue triumphant over the most tempting allurements.' The rule of Mr. ADAM SMITH, 'never to talk of what he understood,' is here commonly adopted and easily adhered to. The literary conversation is generally of PLATO, PLOTINUS, LEIBNITZ, DESCARTES, LOCKE, KANT, COUSIN, Mr. RALPH WALDO EMERSON, and other great but as yet unknown philosophers. It is always finely funereal. Nothing is more common in Bosville, than to hear a young woman, hardly arrived at a marriageable age, or an elder sister, who may long ago have passed it, both having fed freely upon ancient files of 'The Dial,' prattling prettily enough of 'objectivity,' 'subjectivity,' 'pure reason,' and the like. Some years ago, talking matches or passages-at-palaver were quite common, but have now been superseded by chess-dinners and base-ball clubs. At the first-mentioned, it is not necessary to know any thing of the game, all that is required being proficiency in eating as if you never ate before, of drinking as if you never expected to drink again, and of talking as if you could give MORPHY the odds of all your pawns and three of your knights, and then foolsmate him.

[11]No newspapers equal to those published in Bosville have been compiled since the Acta Diurna of the Romans. They are remarkable for minuteness, accuracy, invective, and wood-cuts. Nothing, however insignificant, escapes their notice, and as a rule, the more insignificant the event the larger notice it receives, it being not uncommon to find a space not inconsiderable devoted to the fact that Mrs. JONES'S cat has kittened, and that Mrs. SMITH'S favorite poodle is missing. The modesty of the editors of these sheets has been alluded to by 'Squire Tupper, A.M., Christ Church, Oxon., who says:

'——Use meekness with discretion, casting not pearls before swine.'

There are, however, exceptions to this rule. Thus we find that one of these journals announces itself as 'a first-class paper,' upon which The Daily Dwarf retorts in the sarcastic language of the poet:

'SELF-praise
Goes but little ways.'

This does not by any means floor the respectable paper alluded to, for it immediately pays itself the following neat compliments:

1. We are 'larger-sized.'
2. We are conducted with care.
3. Our type is new.
4. Our standard is high.

5. We are fresh and accurate.
6. We are copious.
7. We write ourselves.
8. We are perfect.

Upon this The Daily Dwarf retorts:

1. We are low, (for cash.)
2. Our press cost money.
3. D—— the expense!
4. We have the largest circulation.

5. We are alive.
6. We have faithful carriers.
7. We are printed night and morning.
8. We are printed daily and weekly.

[12]Many legitimate descendants of Captain JOHN GILPIN, born train-band warriors, exist here. The most perilous marches are frequently executed through desert regions in the very heart of the city, and an army of twenty has been known to achieve the distance from 'N. eend to S. eend' without the loss by sun-stroke or desertion of more than eight officers and ten men. In times of peace, the army is usually engaged in presenting goblets to the officers, and the inhabitants in listening to the literary exercises of the occasion. When Captain DRAWCANSIR, of the Heavy Artillery, (1 gun and 1 ammunition-wagon,) received his mug, young LANCEM (M.D. Harv.) recited the following original lines:

'WHEN Phœbus car shall shine from far
To make or mar the glorious Fates
Which guide and guard the United States,
Then from the jug fill up this tin
With many a 'ϕιδ' of —— Caet. des.

SLAWKENBERGIUS, who has a nice nose at a hi. val. deflen. suggests 'WOL. Ar. Sc. Scups,' but this would be fatal alike to rhyme and rhythm—'ϕιδ' is Oxbridgean for 'go.' It is very common for tbe Bosvillian bards to introduce several languages, dead, half-dead, and living, in the same poem. Thus Dr. PECK (P.D. Harv.) in his 'Ode to WASHINGTON,' has the following:

MÆCENAS stavis edite regibus!
Though I should wish λεγειν Ατρεὶδας,
Even they, with GEORGIUS shining,
Both would have the ears of MIDAS.
You are facile dux, my honey!
Pater pat., as your statue shows—
POWERS will make one and take the money,
But where we shall put it, Θεος knows!

Solvitur hiems! then comes July!
Then, mavourneen! we think of thee!
Orator fit—he has fits that truly
Stir the πολνϕλοισβοιο sea.
O presidium! O GEORGE WASHINGTON!
Name that GEORGIUS βασιλενς mocked at!
How you remind us of ARISTOGITON,
Knocking HIPPARCHUS into a cocked hat!

When you crossed the Delaware flumen,
Standing to LEUTZE for your blessed picter,
ALECTO'S self would have been a gone numen,
If with that long, long leg you 'd kicked her.
Παις of liberty! GEORGE beatus!
Watch from the otium of the blest,
And should IGNIS and MORS await us,
Look out for Bosville and d—— the rest!

[Vol. LVII, No. 1 (January, 1861)]

THE TAXIDERMIST.

————

BY FITZ-HUGH LUDLOW.

————

I.—THE OLD MAID'S CHAPTER.

——'DIE, if dying I may give
Life to one who asks to live,
And more nearly,
Dying thus, resemble thee!'

'CIEL! Zat is ze true heroique! Zat is ze very far finest ting in all ze literature anglaise! Zere have not been made vun more sublime poesie by your immortel Villiams Shakyspeare! Glorieux! Vat a grandeur moral of ze woman who vill vonce die for her love!'

'Once? I knew a woman who died thrice for hers.'

The enthusiastic admirer of Longfellow was a French Professor in one of our American Colleges, by name Gautier Bonenfant. The person who met his panegyric with such a strange response, was Orloff Ruricson, by birth a Swede, by adoption a New-Yorker, and by trade the proprietor of a Natural History Museum. These two, with myself, were sitting on the west piazza of the little inn at Kaaterskill Falls. All of us hard-working men in the hard-working season; but on this tenth day of July; eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, soaking the dust out of our brains in a bath of sunlight and mountain air, forgetting in company that life was not all one sweet vacation.

Bonenfant and I looked at Ruricson with puzzled faces. Though a good fellow and a wisely humorous one, he seldom said any thing whose cleverness lay in a double-entendre.

'Pray, who is that remarkable woman?' said I.

'It is my wife,' replied Orloff Ruricson soberly.

'And she die, von, two, tree time?' asked Bonenfant, with uplifted eyebrows.

'And she died three times for her love,' repeated Orloff Ruricson.

'Perhaps you would have no objection to tell us exactly what you mean?' said I.

'None at all, to you two. With this proviso. I know that you, John Tryon, write for the magazines. For aught I know, Bonenfant here, may be a correspondent of the Constitutionnel.'

'Mais non! I am ze mose red of Red Republican!'

'Perhaps you are Ledru Rollin, then, travelling in disguise to hunt materials for a book. At any rate, I must exact of both of you a promise, that if a single lineament of the story I am going to relate, ever gets into print through your agency, it shall be represented as fictitious, and under assumed names.'

'C'est fait!'

'It 's a bargain!'

'You see, I live by my Museum. And if the public once suspected that I was a visionary man, the press and the pulpit and general opinion would run me down immediately. I should be accused of denying the originality of the human race inferentially, through my orang-outang; of teaching lessons of maternal infidelity through my stuffed ostrich; of seducing youth into a sea-faring life by my preserved whale. No more schools, at half-price on Saturday afternoon, accompanied by their principal; no more favorable notices by editors, 'who have been with their families,' for you, Orloff Ruricson!

'And what I am going to tell you will seem visionary. Even to you. Nevertheless, it is as real as any of the hardest facts in my daily life. Take my solemn word for it.

'When I was ten years old, my parents emigrated from Sweden to this country. At the age of twelve, I lost my father. At thirteen, I was apprenticed to a man who stuffed birds in Dutch-street. At fourteen, I was motherless. At twenty, my term was out, and I began to think of setting up as a taxidermist on my own hook. There! The Biographical Dictionary can't beat that summary of ten years, for compactness!

'I made a very liberal offer to my master; in fact, proposed to take him into partnership. He nobly refused to avail himself of my generosity. Bird-stuffing, even in New-York, was not a very lucrative business, and would hardly support two, he suggested. What did I think of one of the river towns? Albany, or Hudson, or Poughkeepsie, for instance? I did not tell him what; but in reality, I thought so little of them, that within ten days after my indenture was cancelled, I had taken a little nook in the Bowery; with window enough to show off three blue-jays, a chameleon, and a very young wild-cat, (whose domesticity I may, at this day, acknowledge to have been slandered by that name,) and sufficient door to display the inscription: 'ORLOFF RURICSON, Taxidermist and Aviarian Professor.' Even at that day, you see, Bonenfant, we impostors had begun to steal your literary title.'

'Sacrebleu! I do very moshe vish zat ze only ting ze plenty humbug professors now-a-days stuff vas ze birds!'

'Well, I may have stuffed the public a little, too. At any rate, they patronized me far better than I had any reason to expect. By the time I was of age, I had moved my business one door farther up, to a shop treble the size of the first; and instead of sleeping under and eating on top of my show-case, as I began, I occupied lodgings with a respectable cutler's widow, second-story front of a brick house on Third Avenue, and came down to my store every morning at nine o'clock, like any wholesale grocer.

'I had been installed in my comfortable quarters only six weeks, when a new lodger came to the boarding-house. The first thing that I knew of it, was my beholding, directly, opposite me at a Sunday dinner, the most preternaturally homely face I had ever seen. As I took my seat, and opened my napkin, the cutler's widow inclined her head in the direction of the apparition, and uttered the words: 'Miss Brentnall.' I cast a glance and a bow in the same quarter, pronouncing the name after her. 'Mr. Ruricson,' said the landlady laconically, and nodded toward me. 'Mr. Ruricson,' repeated the miracle of plainness, in a voice so sweet that I could not rid myself of the impression that it must be the ventriloquism of some one else. At the same moment she smiled. The smile was as incongruous with the face as the voice; and for that glancing half-minute, Miss Brentnall was a dozen shades more endurable.

'Cruikshank, acting as collaborator with Salvator Rosa, would fall short of any thing more ambitious than a slight sketch of the woman's unearthly homeliness. I dare hardly attempt describing her in words, but for your sake, let me try.

'Her hair was like Bonenfant's Republicanism, 'the most red of red,' but without the usual characteristic of that color, silky fineness. In fact, unless you have been through a New-England corn-field in the dog-days, and noticed the very crispest of all the crisp tassels which a brazen sun has been at work baking for the month previous; unless you have seen some peculiarly unsheltered specimen, to the eye like dried blood, and to the fingers like dust and ashes, you cannot imagine the impression produced by Miss Brentnall's hair. I really trembled lest our awkward waiter's sleeve should touch it, in serving the vegetables, and send it crumbling from her head in the form of a crimson powder. Her forehead was in every respect immense—high, broad, and protuberant enough for the tallest man who ever prided himself on his intellect; still, it might have been pardoned, if it had been fair withal, instead of sallow, wrinkled and freckled. A nose, whose only excuse for its mammoth maturity of size and its Spitzenberg depth of color, lay in the fact that it was exposed to the torrid glare of the tresses, depended, like the nest of the hanging-bird, between a pair of ferrety eyes, which seemed mere penknife gashes in a piece of red morocco. At that day; I could not swear to the pupils; but a profane man of sensitive mind, might have sworn at them, for they seemed to be a damp—not a swimming but a soaked damp—pale blue. Flanking the nose, imagine an inch and a half on either side, of dingy parchment, stretched almost to tearing, and you will get the general idea of the sides of Miss Brentnall's face; I will not travesty the word 'cheeks,' by calling them that. Below the nose, a mouth which would have been deformedly small for a child two weeks old; below that, a chin which hardly showed at all in front, and, taking a side view, seemed only an eccentric protraction of the scraggy neck to which it was attached. Now for the figure. High, stooping shoulders; a long, flat, narrow, mannish waist; the lower extremities immoderately short; immense feet: group these in one person, and you have a form to which I know only two parallels out of the world of night-mare, a German wooden doll, and Miss Brentnall.'

'Diable de laideur! You see zat viz your own eyes?'

'Yes, Bonenfant,'

'And yet you be yourself not vare ugly, after all!'

'So I have heard, Bonenfant. You will be still more surprised to feel that this is the case when you know that I lodged in the same house with Miss Brentnall a whole year. Indeed, she occupied the very next room to me. I was second-story front, she second-story back, during all that time; and do you know that I became very well acquainted with her?'

'Ah! It is pos-sible for a gentleman to be vare polite to vare ugly woman!'

'Yes, but from preference, I mean. I could shut my eyes, and hear her voice, or open them at the transient moment when she was smiling, and forget that she was homely at all. I discovered that she was the only remnant of a large family: that awakened my pity. In addition, that she was very well-informed, thought and conversed well: that aroused my respect. And when, in spite of a face and figure which by poetic justice should have belonged to Sin itself, I perceived that she had the kindest of hearts, and the most delicate of sensibilities, I am not ashamed to confess that I soon became attached to her.'

'Attach! You have fall in love viz sat e-scary-crow? You have marri-ed her?'

'Hear me through, Bonenfant, and you will find out. In the present instance, I mean, by the word 'attached,' nothing but a pure Platonic friendship. I do not make acquaintances easily. I visited nobody in New-York at that time. There was no one whose cheerful fireside I could make my own for an evening; and my natural tastes, to say nothing of any other feeling, kept me away from drinking-saloons. Moreover, I had an insatiate longing to make something of myself. I wanted the means for buying books, for travelling, for putting myself into what I considered good society. Accordingly, I often brought home, at evening, the specimens I had been working upon all day, and continued my labors long into the night. While I was busily engaged with the knife or the needle, the gentlest little tap would come at the door, so gentle, so unlike any other sound, that, however absorbed I might be, I always heard it, knew it was Miss Brentnall, and said: 'Walk in!' So, in hopped that little eighth world-wonder of ugliness, now with an orange for my supper, now with some pretty ornithological engraving, of which, by the merest chance, she always had a duplicate copy; and whose effect she would like to see on my wall. When she went out, she always forgot to take it with her; and in a few months, my room, through such like little kindnesses, became quite a portrait-gallery of celebrated birds. Sometimes, Miss Brentnall spent the whole evening with me. On such occasions, it was her greatest delight to stand by my table, and see some poor, mussed, shrivelled lark or Canary grow plump and saucy again, through the transformations of my art. She called it 'bird-resurrection.' For an hour at a time, she would stay close at my elbow, perfectly quiet, holding a pair of glass eyes in her hand. When I asked for one of them, she gave it to me with all the happiness of a helpful child; and, when at last both eyes were fixed in the specimen, I have seen her clap her hands, and jump up and down. In process of time, she became of real assistance to me. So apt a mind had she, that from merely witnessing my methods, she learned to stuff birds herself; and one evening, when I called 'come in,' to the well-known tap, I was surprised by seeing a parrot in her hands, prepared and mounted almost as well as I could have done it myself. It was a little present to the Professor, she said: she had been at work upon it for the last two days. From that time, her voluntary services were in my constant employ, whenever I worked of evenings.

'I was not so ungallant, however, as to let Miss Brentnall do all the visiting. Whenever a lazy fit took me, and I could not have worked, or studied, or walked, if I had been offered ten dollars an hour for these exertions, I always forestalled her coming to my room by going to hers. She had a large rocking-chair, which always seemed to run up to the fire-place of its own accord, and hold out its arms for me, the moment I came in. I would drop into that, shut my eyes, and say, 'Please talk to me,' or, 'Please read to me' with as much abandonment as if I were speaking to my own mother. It never felt like exacting impertinent demands of a stranger, I was so marvellously at my ease in Miss Brentnall's room.'

'Ze man of mose mauvaise honte be not embarrass, I have observe, viz ze vare ugly lady.'

'I do n't think it was that, Bonenfant. I used to ask myself if it might not be. But I always came to the conclusion that I should feel the same, were Miss Brentnall the most beautiful person in the world. There was something in her mind, especially as expressed in voice and style of talking, that lulled me when I was most irritable, that lifted the weight of self and pride quite off me for the time being. I knew that we both liked to be together; that was enough: I did not care, indeed I never once thought, how we either of us seemed to any one else.

'I could not help being aware that the other boarders talked about us. Having a pair of tolerably good ears, likewise of eyes, it was difficult not to know that old Mrs. Flitch, my landlady's half-sister, smelt a match in my intimacy with Miss Brentnall; that she considered it ill-advised, on the ground that I was twenty-one, and the lady at least forty; that she could imagine no possible motive in my mind, except a view to Miss Brentnall's snug little property; that, as a consequence of these premises, she regarded one of us a very mean knave, and the other a doting fool. It was difficult not to understand the meaning of Miss Simmons, an acid cotemporary of Miss Brentnall's, possessing all her chances of celibacy, half her homeliness, and one-thousandth of her mind, when, as I took my seat next her at the breakfast-table, she asked me with a pretty simper, if I had spent the last evening as pleasantly as usual. It was difficult to avoid seeing the gentlemen wink at each other when they passed us talking together in the entry: it was also difficult, as I perceive from Bonenfant's face he would like to suggest, not to pull their noses for it; but reflection suggested the absurdity of such a course. This is one of the few objections I have to your native, and my adopted country, Tryon, that notwithstanding the great benefit which results from that intimacy between a man and a woman, in which each is mere friend, and neither present nor expectant lover, our society will not hear of such a thing, without making indelicate reference to marriage. Still, I suppose, they would have talked about us, any where.

'Miss Brentnall knew this as well as I, and like me, never gave it a thought after the momentary demonstration which recalled it. We passed one whole delightful year together in the Third Avenue boarding-house. I felt my own mind growing, becoming richer in all sorts of knowledge, freer and clearer in every field of thinking, with each succeeding day. And as for Miss Brentnall, she was so kind as to say; and I knew she sincerely meant it, that to her, all lonely in the world, our friendship was in all respects inestimable. At the end of the year, Miss Brentnall was taken ill. For the first few days, neither she nor I felt any serious alarm with reference to her case. The doctor pronounced it a mild type of typhoid fever. It proceeded, so he said to me in private, more from mental causes than any tangible physical one. Had she been unfortunate in any way? he asked me. I could only reply that, as her intimate friend, I was unaware of the fact. Probably she read late, then, he suggested. I said that might be. At all events, her mind had been very much overtaxed: what she needed was perfect quiet, good nursing, and as little medicine as possible. Upon his giving me this view of the case, I sought out the most faithful, judicious woman within reach, and hired her on Miss Brentnall's behalf, to stay by her bedside night and day. My own income, from the little shop in the Bowery, was now so fair, that I felt able to repay, in some measure, the debt of gratitude I owed my kind friend for her many contributions to the walls of my lonely room. Accordingly, whenever I lighted on any new engraving or book of art, or any embellishment to a sick-chamber, which seemed likely to attract without fatiguing a strained mind, I brought it up to her in the evening. If I had not been in her debt already; I should have been a thousand times repaid for these little evidences of friendship, by the appreciative delight with which the childlike woman talked of them, for their own sake, and the grateful enthusiasm she bestowed upon them for mine.

'The opportunity to be kind and thoughtful was very short. At the end of the third week, the doctor gravely told me that typhus pneumonia was becoming alarmingly prevalent in New-York, and that Miss Brentnall's disease had taken that form. Furthermore, that unless some change for the better occurred in the course of the next twenty-four hours, she would die.

'I heard this piece of news without the least outward sign of sorrow. It did not seem possible to me that I could lose this best, kindest friend I had in the world. You will think the reason whimsical perhaps; but, merely because she was not beautiful, I felt as if she would not be taken away from me. 'Only the beautiful die, only the beautiful,' I kept saying to myself all day; in the shop or at the work-table. In the evening, when I came back to the house, I found that two things had occurred. Miss Brentnall's pulse had become feebler, and she did not seem to me so plain as before. Then, for the first time, I began to be afraid.

'In the morning, the doctor took me into the entry; and told me that his patient might live till mid-night, but not longer. Would I take the painful office of breaking the intelligence to her? 'Yes,' I replied, hardly knowing what I said.

'I entered the sick-room. As I came toward the bed; Miss Brentnall opened her eyes and smiled.

' 'Martha,' said she, in a feeble voice, 'you may go down-stairs, and get me some arrow-root.'

'As soon as the nurse had shut the door behind her, Miss Brentnall continued:

' 'I shall be dead in a few hours, Orloff. I have something to say to you alone. I am sorry to go away from you. Very sorry. You have been kind to me, Orloff. More than any body else in the world.'

'I took Miss Brentnall's poor, parched hand, but could not answer. 'Orloff—kind as you are to me—in the bottom of your heart, you know that I have the most repulsive face you ever saw. Say yes, Orloff. You do know it. I have been sure of it, since I was a little girl, six years old, thirty-four years ago, yesterday. I was never sorry for it, more than a moment at a time, until a year ago. And now you may tell me you see it, without hurting me at all. Pride is past. Say that my face is the most unlovely in the world. Say it to please me.'

'I saw she was in deep earnest, and I brought myself to answer for her sake:

' 'Well. But your soul is the most lovely.'

' 'I thank you for saying it, Orloff. And now, now that pride is past, I may tell you something which life would hide forever, but death wrings out of my very soul. You have been a friend to me, a dear, kind friend, Orloff; but nothing more. I have been something else to you. A dying woman may say it. I have loved you.'

'For a minute we were both silent, and then Miss Brentnall resumed: 'Passionately, passionately. Without once deluding myself; without once dreaming that there was a shadow of hope. Had you been blind; had you been deaf; so that you could never have seen what I am, or heard a word of it from other lips; even had you, under these circumstances, loved me, I would have felt it base to give you, in exchange for yourself, such a thing as I. But you did see, you did hear, and I knew that I loved impossibly. You came in, now, to tell me that I would not live till to-morrow, did you not, Orloff?'

' 'I meant to, if I could,' was my reply.

' 'I had a dream just before you came in. I thought I saw you, and you told me so. Do you know what a strange thing happened, just as you seemed speaking? But you are not angry with me, for what I have said already?'

' 'Angry? My dear friend, no!' said I instantly.

' 'The strange thing was this. As you spoke, my deformed face fell off like a veil, and my body; like a cloak, was lifted from me. At the same moment, I had the power of being outside of myself, of looking down on myself, and I was—very beautiful. I was not proud, but I was glad. I drank in a whole fountain of peace at every breath. At that instant, I began to float farther and farther from you; but as I went, I heard, oh! such a sweet voice! saying:

'Again! Again! You shall meet again!' As you came into the room, I awoke. And I have dared to uncover my whole soul to you, Orloff Ruricson, because those words are still in my ears. We shall meet again! And when we meet, I shall be beautiful!'

'With all my respect for Miss Brentnall, it was impossible for me not to feel that she was raving. Indeed, from this very belief I took hope. I had seldom heard of cases like hers, in which patients, almost in the very last hour, continued to be delirious. I therefore doubted the doctor's diagnosis, and persuaded myself that, since she had not arrived at the lucid interval preceding death, she was not so near it as he suspected.

'Comforting myself with the assurance that I should see her well again, or at least, that there was no immediate danger, I went down to my shop in the Bowery, leaving orders to send for me immediately, if any change took place in Miss Brentnall.

'After transacting the business of my trade, all day, I came back earlier than usual at evening, greatly depressed in spirits, but without any idea that I had seen my friend for the last time. As I put my latch-key into the door of the boarding-house, it opened. I saw the pale, frightened face of Martha, the nurse. She was just coming out after me. Miss Brentnall was dead.

'And again I was alone in the world.'

II.—THE FLICKER'S CHAPTER.

'THERE was a quiet funeral where I was the only mourner. There were days of loneliness succeeding, in which it seemed to me that the small isthmus by which I had been for a year attached to my fellow-men, had been suddenly covered by the rising of a dark, cold tide; that I was an islander again, and the only one.

'There was a will to be proved in the Surrogate's Court. Miss Brentnall's nurse and the landlady had witnessed it. I thought this strange at first, remembering what a friend the dead had been to me; but my surprise at not being a witness was soon supplanted by the greater one of being sole legatee.

'There was a monument to be placed over the dead. To every detail of it I attended personally. I remember how heavy even that simple little shaft seemed to me, how much too heavy for a head that had borne so much of heaviness through life. Then I thought of her expression 'bird-resurrection,' of her perfect faith in the coming of better things; and if the monument had been a pyramid, I would have known that it could not press her down.

'It is one of my eccentricities that I fear good-fortune; not bad-fortune, at all. For I have seen so much of it, that it only looks to me like a grimmer kind of father, coming to wake his over-slept son and tell him that unless he leaps from his feather-bed, and that right suddenly, the time for every thing good in life will have gone by. I fear good-fortune, because I am not sure that I shall use it well. It may carry me till it has dwarfed me; I may lie on its breast till I have lost my legs; then whisk! it may slip away from under me and leave me a lame beggar for the rest of my life.

'I resolved, therefore, that I would not touch a farthing of my new property until I had become quite familiar with the idea of owning it. It was all in stocks when I found it. I converted it into real-estate securities, and as fast as my interest came in, deposited it in the bank. Meanwhile, I supported myself well upon the little shop; bought books, and laid something by.

'I was busy one morning at my stuffing-table in the back-room, when the bell over the street-door rang: and running into the front-shop, I found a new customer. He was a private bird-fancier, he told me, and had brought a specimen, which he wished mounted for his cabinet. As he spoke, he slid back the cover from a box which he carried under his arm; and as I looked in, expecting to see a dead bird, a live one hopped out and sat upon my finger.

' 'I declare that is very curious!' said the gentleman; 'the creature never did such a thing before! I have had it eight months without being able to domesticate it in the slightest. It will not even eat or drink when any body is in the room; yet there it is sitting on your hand.'

'I had never seen such a bird before. It resembled the northern meadowlark in size and shape; in hue, its wings were like the quail's, its breast ash-color, its tail mottled above, like the wings, and of a delicate canary yellow beneath. But the greatest beauty it possessed was a bright crimson crescent, covering the whole back of the head. 'What is this bird?' said I.

' ' It is a Flicker,' answered the gentleman. 'It was sent me by a friend living in Florida.'

' ' Why do n't you keep it alive?'

' 'For the reason I 've told you. It 's perfectly impossible to tame it. My children and I have tried every means we can think of without success. If we confine it in a cage, it mopes all day and eats nothing; if we let it fly about the room, it sculks under the furniture as soon as we enter; if we take it in our hands, it screams and fights. There is a specimen of the execution it can do in an emergency with that sharp, long bill!'

'And my customer showed me his finger, out of which a strip of flesh an inch long had been gouged as neatly as it could have been done with a razor.

' 'It is nothing but botheration, that confounded bird!' he continued. 'It does nothing but make muss and litter about the house from morning till night; and for all our troubles, it never repays us with a single chirp. Indeed, I do n't believe it has any voice.'

'Just then the Flicker, still sitting on my finger, turned up its big, brown eye to my face and uttered a soft, sweet gurgle, like a musical-glass.

' 'Good heavens!' exclaimed the gentleman; 'it never did that before!'

' 'Suppose you let me take it for a month or so,' said I; 'it seems to be fond of me, and perhaps I can tame it. I never felt so little like killing any bird in my life. We may make something of its social qualities yet.'

' 'Very well,' answered the new customer. 'Keep it for a month. I 'll drop in now and then to see how its education is getting on.'

' 'You may hold me responsible for it, Sir,' I replied; and the gentleman left my shop.

'All day the Flicker staid by me as I worked. Now it perched upon my shoulder, now on my head. At noon, when I opened my basket, it took lunch with me. When I whistled or sang, it listened until it caught the strain, and then put in some odd kind of an accompaniment. The compass and power of its voice was nothing remarkable, but the tone was as sweet as a wood-robin's. I could not be enough astonished with the curious little creature.

'Still, every kind of animal takes to me naturally. I accounted for the previous wildness of the Flicker on the ground of mistaken management in the gentleman who owned it, and as a matter of professional pride, determined to make something of the bird, were it only to show, like your Sam Patch, Tryon, that some things can be done as well as others. When I went home in the evening I took the Flicker with me, and made it a nest in an old cigar-box on my mantel-piece.

'The next morning, when I awoke, the bird was perched above me on the scroll of the head-board! Again I carried it down-town with me; again I brought it up in the evening. After that it was my companion every where. You will hardly imagine how it could become better friends with me than it did immediately upon our introduction. Yet our acquaintance grew day by day, and with our acquaintance the little being's intelligence. It had not been with me a fortnight before it knew its name. You may think it curious, perhaps unfeeling, but you know it was my only friend in the world, and in memory of the one who had lately held that place, I called it 'Brenta.'

' 'Brenta!' I would say as I sat before my grate in the evening, and wherever the little creature might be, it would come flying to me with a joyful chirp, light on my finger, dance on the hearth-rug, eat out of my hand, or go through the pantomime of various emotions I had taught it. If I said, 'Be angry, Brenta,' it would scream, flap its wings, and fight the legs of the chair. 'Be sorry, Brenta,' and it would droop its little head, cower against my breast, and utter notes as plaintive as a tired child's.

'By the time the month was up, it could do almost any thing but talk. Its owner, who, to his great delight, had paid it several visits during the progress of its education, now came to take it home.

' 'I have become very much attached to the little thing,' said I; 'won't you let me buy it of you?'

' 'You should have asked me that when I first brought it,' was his answer. 'You have made it too valuable for me to part with now. To show you how much I think it is worth, here is a ten-dollar piece for your services.'

'I took the money, feeling very much as if I were receiving the price of treason. 'If you ever change your mind,' said I, 'remember that I am always ready with a generous bid.'

'When we came to look for the Flicker, it was nowhere to be found. I could not believe it possible that it had heard and understood our conversation, but another hypothesis to account for its disappearance was not at hand. After hunting every nook and corner of the shop, I forced myself into the traitorous expedient of luring it by my own voice. 'Brenta!' I called, and the poor creature instantly hopped out of my coat-pocket, climbed up to my shoulder, and nestled against my cheek.

' 'The little rascal!' exclaimed the gentleman.

'I could willingly have knocked him down! It was not until I had undertaken the business with my own hands that we could get the Flicker into the cage which the gentleman had brought with him. Even then, the poor thing continued clinging to my finger with claws which had to be loosened by force, and went out of my shop-door screaming piteously and beating itself against the bars of the cage.

'I had no heart for any thing the rest of the day. At night my room seemed lonelier than a dungeon. The very next morning, the owner of the bird came back with it in a terrible passion.

' 'You have been teaching the thing tricks!' was his first exclamation.

' 'To be sure,' said I mildly. 'Was n't that what you wished me to do?'

' 'Wished you to do?' To mope, and wail, and lie on the carpet like a dead chicken? Never to sing a note or eat a morsel? To peck at the hands that brought food, and—and——'

' 'I am sure I cannot help it, Sir, if the bird has become attached to me, and mourns when away.'

' 'You 've taught the creature to do it! Look at this finger, will you! another piece taken clean out of it! Piece, I say!—steak, I mean! The bird's a regular butcher! Here, kill the creature directly, and have it stuffed for my cabinet by this day week.'

'And as he set down the cage on the counter, the Flicker, with a joyful cry, jumped to the wicker-door, and tried to pick a way out to me by its beak.

' 'There! you see what you 've done! Why do n't the wretch act so to me?'

' 'I really can't say, Sir. Perhaps because I 've had a great deal to do with birds, and naturally know how to manage them.'

' 'Well, I do n't care. Stuff the thing, and I shall be able to manage it then myself.'

' 'May I make you a repetition of my offer? If you have n't a toucan in your collection, there is a very fine one I 'll give you for the Flicker, stuffed only last Saturday. Here 's a young pelican—a still rarer bird. Or how would you like a flamingo?'

' 'Got 'em all,' replied the gentleman curtly. 'And if I had n't, I count the Flicker. Kill the thing, I say, and stuff it.'

'Just then the bird cast on me a glance as imploring as ever looked out of human eye. For a thousand dollars I could not have done the wrong.

' 'Really, Sir,' said I, 'I prefer not to take the job. I am very much attached to your bird. I cannot bear to kill it.'

' ''Pon my soul!' he exclaimed, 'if that is n't pretty for a taxidermist! I should suppose, to hear you talk, that you would faint at the sight of a dead sparrow! Well, you can get your courage up to stuff the bird, I suppose? As for the killing, I 'll do that myself.'

'As the man said this, he thrust his hand into the cage, and caught the Flicker by the wing. With a sharp cry, his victim struck him again on the finger, enraging him more than ever. He opened his pen-knife, pulled the bird out, drew the blade across its throat, and out of the cruel slash there poured, mingling with the blood, a bitter cry, like a woman's. I heard it, and every drop of my own blood returned to my heart. He let the bird drop upon the counter: it gave one hop, tumbled over in my hand, and its eye-lids slid shut.

' 'This day week, remember,' said the man, and went out of the shop, wiping his knife.

'I took up the bird, laid it in my neck, and, I am not ashamed to say, cried over it.

'There are a good many things which may happen between now and this day week. I am not one of those people who regard every misfortune that occurs to an enemy the judgment of HEAVEN in their behalf. But I must say, that the event which occurred before that man's week was out, always seemed to me a direct blow from Nemesis. He was a very passionate fellow; subject to temporary fits of insanity. One of them came on in the morning while he was shaving, and he cut his own throat as he had the Flicker's.

'When his estate was settled, nobody thought of the bird. I inclosed the ten dollars he had given me for its education in an anonymous note to his executors, simply stating that my conscience demanded it; and having thus quieted that organ, kept the Flicker for myself. With a daguerreotype of Miss Brentnall's, found among a parcel of papers labelled, 'To be burned up,' and upon which alone, of all the parcel, I could not persuade myself to execute her will, I put the stuffed bird by. When I was too lonely to dare to be utterly alone, I went to the trunk, where they were preserved and looked at them.

III.—THE MARMOSET'S CHAPTER.

'AFTER the loss of my second only friend, a painful change came over me. I had risen from the shock of Miss Brentnall's death with an elasticity which surprised even myself. Partly for the reason that my constitution was better by several less months of anxiety, grief, and application to business. Partly because I felt assured that, as she said, we should some time or other meet again.

'When the Flicker died, I felt that this only thing hitherto left to love me, could never reäppear. The kind heart of the woman would beat again; the kind heart of the bird no more forever. And strangely enough, the whole sorrow that I had passed through for Miss Brentnall's loss revived, and I went about my day's work bearing the weight of a two-fold melancholy.

'The first thing that the bird-fancying public knew—indeed almost the first thing I knew myself, so abstracted, so moody was I—a paragraph appeared in the morning papers, to the effect that the celebrated Taxidermist and Aviarian Professor, Orloff Ruricson, was about to close his business, and make a voyage to Europe, Asia and Africa, from which parts he hoped to return in two or three years, with a large and interesting collection of rare animals, to establish a Natural History Museum.

'I had caused the appearance of this notice myself; but when I read it, felt quite as surprised by it as any body. In nerve and mind I was so worn out, that although thoroughly resolved to make the move, the consolidation of the purpose into such a fixed form shocked me.

'When the novelty of the idea passed off, I disposed of all my stock to various amateurs who knew me and had every disposition to help me by paying large prices. I put the thirty thousand dollars I was now worth into such a shape that I could get its increase in regular remittances; packed the bird, the daguerreotype, and a small wardrobe, and took passage by barque for Genoa.

'At sun-rise one Monday morning, the barque's yawl took me out to her anchorage. As I went up the ladder at the side, I heard an opera-air playing on board, and when I reached the deck, the first thing that met my eyes was an Italian grinder, with his organ and monkey.

' 'Is that man going the voyage with us?' I asked the captain.

' 'Yes, Sir,' he replied; 'but he shan't play without permission after we get to sea. He 's a Genoese, who has made enough in this country to keep a fruit-stall in his own, and so he 's going home.'

'Home! He had a home, and was going to it! I would have handed him my bank-book—taken his monkey and organ—to be able to say that.

'As the tug hitched fast to us and we began walking down toward the Narrows, I crossed to the other side of the ship, that I might take a look at the fortunate man.

'Certainly, I said to myself, Fortune is blind. He had a home; but he was one of the most ill-favored rascals I ever laid my eyes on. No body would have taken him for a Genoese—the New-Englander of Italy—rather for a Romanesque cut-throat, or a brigand of the mountain, who had found his stiletto or his carbine good for only the slowest kind of shilling and taken to the nimble six-pence of the hand-organ, on the principle that honesty was the best policy. You have seen a thousand pen-and-pencil pictures of the fellow, and need no description of him from me.

'As I stood beside him at the bulwarks, his monkey leapt upon me.

' 'Pardon, good gentleman,' said the Italian with an abject smirk, and gave a jerk to the chain that brought back the little animal flying.

' 'Never mind that,' said I; 'let him come to me. I am fond of monkeys: I would like to look at him.'

' 'As it pleases, then,' replied the Italian, with another smirk, and loosed the chain again. 'Go, Beppo!'

'Beppo needed no command, but jumped instantly upon my arm and laid his cheek upon my bosom. As I patted his head, I examined him curiously, and found him the most beautiful little monkey in the world. A Marmoset, with a great brown, tender eye like a gazelle's; a face which varied its expression constantly without ever degenerating into the brutal leer of the common ape; a winning, confiding mien of head and hand that was human, child-like; and a soft coronal of golden fur around his little skull, that added still more to his baby-like look, giving him the appearance of some mother's favorite, dressed for a walk in a bonnet of down. I do n't know how I could have been guilty of the folly of becoming attached to the little fellow, after all the lessons of warning my life had taught me. But I did take a great fancy to him. Never a day passed during the whole voyage, in which he did not get many a tit-bit from my hands. He spent far more of the time with me than with his own master, and before long obeyed me with a hearty good nature, which he never thought of showing toward that musical brigand.

'One sunny afternoon, when we were three weeks out, the captain, the grinder and myself stood upon the forecastle-deck, trying to make out a sail just visible on the horizon ahead of us. As usual, Beppo was cutting his pranks about me. For a moment he would sit demurely on my shoulder and hold his tail to his eye in mimicry of the captain's eye-glass. A second more, and he would be sitting in the fore-top. The next, and he came sliding down a halliard to his old perch. These antics interfered with our look-out, and I put my hand into my pocket to feel for something which might keep him still. Finding neither prune, nor nut, nor string, but only the purse which I always carried there, I drew it out and opened it, to look for a copper. As I committed this incautious act, I saw the eyes of the Italian cast a sidelong, sly glance at the gold that shone there, and I shut the clasp with an uncomfortable sense of having been very silly. At the same moment, he stole away, like a cat, to the fore-stays, and pretended to be more earnestly interested than any of us in the sail.

'The nights grew still warmer and warmer as we sailed on. The cabin became so close, that I ordered the steward to bring my mattress upon deck, and usually slept there under a shawl, unless we had rain.

'I had lain down at about half-past eleven, upon one night in particular, utterly fatigued, sick at heart, despairing. As the tall masts nodded past the stars—the stars rather than the masts seemed moving—and in my heart I believed that even heaven itself was not permanent; that all things flickered and danced, and passed away as earthly hope had passed from my heart; nothing was fixed, certain, and to be striven for. Finally, I only wished to sleep. 'Let me die this temporary death of slumber,' said I; 'there is happiness therein, and therein only.' I was more of a Lord Byron at that instant; more of a moral desperado; less of a Thomas Carlyle, a Goethe, sanguine Yankee, who believes that the best way to get rid of misery is to suffer and work out, if you fall, always to fall on your feet and scramble out, than I had ever been in my life, Messrs. Tryon and Bonenfant! So, said I, let me go to sleep.

'Would you believe it, that confounded little Beppo would not hear of such a thing! Over my face this minute, over my legs the next; now tumbling down on my breast from a line; now, as the sailors say, working Tom Cox's traverse, up one hatchway and down the other, past my side.

'I could not get a wink of sleep. I tossed and I tumbled; I swore and I grumbled. I called Beppo to me, and for the first time without success.

'I was just about going after Luigi, his master, when I saw that person creeping to me in the shadow of the mizzen-mast. By the high cove of the after-hatch, I was quite hid from the stern, and the only person who happened to be there, the second mate, could see Luigi no more than me.

'At that instant the monkey gave me a tweak of the hair that nearly made me scream out, and then ran away noiselessly forward. Luigi crept on and on. As he drew nearer, I could perceive a stiletto in his hand. Its blade gleamed faintly now and then in the star-light, so indistinctly that at first it seemed like a trailing white ribbon.

'I did not believe his first intention was to kill me. That would have been absurd as well as cruel. So I lay still and let him come close. I feigned myself fast asleep and snored heavily.

'He knelt at my side, and holding the knife over my heart with one hand, felt with the other in my pocket. Still I slept away for dear life. He found the purse: drew it out with a slow, gentle motion, and crept forward again on his hands and knees, thanking his saints in a whisper. I was on his back before he could turn around. He was lithe, but he was feeble, and I had him pinioned, prone upon his face, with the purse in his hand and the thanksgiving in his mouth, while it was yet only half-changed to a curse. Thus I forced from him both the stiletto and the purse, and threw the one over-board at the same time that I returned the other to my pocket. Then I arose, and we stood up face to face.

' 'Shall I have you hanged at the yard-arm in half-an-hour?' was my first question.

'The Italian looked me full in the face, his olive cheeks were like chalk, his lips quivered, but he did not speak. And then, as if suddenly understanding the cause of his failure, he ran forward to the fore-stay, where the marmoset was clinging and chattering.

'I hurried after him. Catching him by the shoulder, I whispered in his ear: 'If one hair of Beppo's head is hurt, you are a dead man before you can say your prayers. You came after my money. You are a villain, but you shall have it—two gold pieces, ten dollars, at least—if you sell him to me on the spot. Is Beppo mine, on these conditions? If he isn' t, I will arouse the crew, and you shall dangle aloft before the next watch is set. Yes or no?'

' 'You shall have the monkey,' replied the Italian, with another of his infernal smirks. ' You shall have him, but the gentleman will not find him good fortune.'

' 'The devil take you and your fortune! If he brings me no better fortune than you deserve—and for the same reason—I shall wish, and not wait, to die.' So I brought the monkey aft, and made Luigi acknowledge him mine, while I counted out the ten dollars, in the presence of the second mate.

'After that night, warm as it might be, you will readily believe that I slept in the cabin. Beppo nestled by me, occupying as much of the berth as his little form required; and I declare to you, that had he needed it all I would have given it to him, and stretched myself on the floor, so warm an affection had I for the creature who had saved my money: possibly my life.

'At that time, perhaps you will say because I was young and visionary, I often believed that Beppo knew what he had been the means of doing for me. At this day I shall be still insaner in your eyes, for I hold that he was not only the means, but the intentional agent. I must stop. I am forerunning my story.

'It was amazing how I improved as soon as I had something to love! I became so strong, so hearty, that I was quite ashamed to think of having abandoned America for my health; and meditated going back with the barque's return voyage. Nothing but the presence on board of that cursed Luigi prevented my spirits from being better than since I could remember.

'We reached Genoa, and anchored in Quarantine. My trunk was on deck, and in all respects I was ready to go ashore. Already the infernal Italian had taken his seat in the health-officer's boat; and, with his elbow resting on his organ, looked up at me over the gunwale. Beppo, for very joy of seeing land again, had climbed clear to the main truck, and was chattering audibly as he whisked his tail.

' 'All ready, Beppo!' I cried: 'come down, boy!'

'In his haste at hearing my voice, as he tumbled head over heels down the main shrouds, for the first time in my life that I ever saw a monkey do such a thing, he missed his hold on a ratline, and tumbled into the water of the harbor. I sprang to the side, and called to the oarsmen of the boat:

' 'Save that monkey; and you shall have—whatever you ask!' Fool! I was talking English, and every man of them was an Italian! A language I had some understanding of, but could not speak.

' 'What says the gentleman?' asked one of the boat-crew, in his own tongue.

'And then I heard that olive-skinned brigand wretch, the organ-grinder, reply to the speaker: 'He says the beast who fell overboard is sick of the small-pox, and you must not touch him.'

'As he made this answer he turned around to me with one of his diabolical smirks, kissed his hand to me, spit at the drowning Beppo, then asked me blandly: 'Did I not tell the good gentleman his buying would be bad fortune? Are we settled of accounts, good gentleman?'

'I to hear this! I to look over the side; hear my last friend screaming his poor wordless agony; see him look up at me with that supplicating child's eye of his; see him fighting the water despairingly with his little unlearned hands, then go down in a bubbling circle out of sight; I who could not swim a stroke!

'The captain, seeing my distress, humanely put his own boat after the poor creature. With the boat-hook a sailor brought him up after he had gone down for the last time. And thus they laid him on the deck at my feet. I lifted him up; his child eyes were closed, and the golden crown of his fur lay matted and dripping over them. I tried to warm him in my bosom. I laid my hand on his heart: it had stopped.

'Beppo was dead. The Marmoset whom nature had given, only of all, to love the man!

'And I went into Quarantine at Genoa, once more alone in the world.'

'Ciel! and vat you do vith zat cursed Italian?'

'I? Nothing. Ten years afterward I saw him rowing in the galleys at Marseilles. He knew me; I knew him. He smirked as of old, but with such very visible teeth that I was glad he was chained; and passed on without even asking the overseer his crime.

IV.—THE YOUNG MAIDEN'S CHAPTER.

'MY wanderings, dating from the day I landed at Genoa, would fill with their narrative a book far larger than 'Livingstone's Travels.' I journeyed over all the traversable regions of Africa; in India I have been wherever the foot of the white man has trodden; I spent a year and a half in China; almost as long in Syria; and I went every where over the continent of Europe. Then I passed six months in Sweden; most of that time living at my native town, Jönpöping, until at last the sound of my mother's tongue spoken by stranger mouths became absolutely unbearable to me, and I left the country never to return. I will see Great Britain, I said. No better place for that purpose, at least to begin with, than London. So I went there; and, with all the curiosities I had collected in my vagabond life, opened a shop as Exhibitor and Taxidermist, in Piccadilly.

'By this time, you will perceive, I had quite abandoned my original idea of returning to America to open a museum. It takes no longer for the world in general, or the world of New-York, to forget its largest man, than for a heaping measure of grain to close up the gap after a hand is withdrawn. And I was a long way from the conceit of fancying myself even a large man. Probably, I said to myself, there are a dozen in my place by this time. I will not go back to revive a name wiped out; it is at least more entertaining to stay here and try chalking out a new one. If I fail, why, the remittances still come regularly.

'So up went the old sign on a fresh board: 'Orloff Ruricson, Taxidermist and Aviarian Professor.' In about three months from the opening of the establishment, the collection was a little more than self-supporting, and the Taxidermy throve at the rate of ten guineas a week. I got some favorable critiques in the Times; some body called me the Minor Zoological Gardens; and gradually my aviarianism came into play. Lord Crinkum consulted me about his Chinese pheasants, and Lord Crankum got my general views on fighting-cocks. The Honorable Miss Dingleton, like Mr. Pecksniff, only with more money to bestow on the object, thought she would like to see my ideas of a grotto. I gave it to her, and of course every alderman's wife must have me fussing about her cobble-stones out in what she called a suburban willer. That 's the great beauty of art in England, looked at in the paying light; the moment you' re so fortunate as to get a lord by the nose, you lead all Cockneydom whithersoever you will. It 's a country where every body shuts his eyes, and grabs the next bigger man by the coat tail. So, on the whole, I got along.'

'That was all very well, looked at in the paying light, as you say,' interrupted John Tryon, 'but you must have been terribly lonely during the long winter evenings. Did n't you have any body to speak to: any body to love?'

'Nobody. I had learned the misery of that by lessons enough, I should think. Even in the desert I never made a pet of my camel, and most people do that, to the extent, at least, of complimenting the lovely beast upon his patience. I had nothing to care for and cared for nothing. I was now thirty years old, you see, and had travelled.

'I had kept the shop in Piccadilly for a year. I stood one morning, at the expiration of that period, in a room of the back-shop, where I prepared specimens, and was consulted. My clerks had just taken down the shutters, and were chattering to each other behind the counter. I was pensive that morning, a mighty unusual thing for me, and their gabble disturbed me. I meditated calling out to them to be still, when the shop-door opened, the front-door looking on the street, and some one said:

' 'Please, Sir, can you give me any work?'

'Good heavens! I started to my feet, and yet seemed in such a dream that I could scarcely move them after I was erect. Who spoke? It was a low, sweet, woman's voice, the like whereof I had not heard for nine years! Not that it was low, or sweet, or a woman's; not that it was all these together, but that it was the voice.

' 'Get out with you, beggar!' answered the chattering clerks, with unanimous fierceness; and I heard the front shop-door shut slowly, as by a tired, feeble hand.

'In a second more and she would be gone; I should never see her again! That thought awakened me, and gave wings to my feet. I dashed through the shop; my clerks looking at me as if they thought I had suddenly gone mad. I jerked the door open, and saw a lithe girl's figure moving wearily away among the hurrying crowd: her back toward me.

' 'Who asked for work?' I called out aloud.

'Among the few that turned to look was this lithe figure. She turned hastily anxiously, deprecatingly, and again I heard that wonderful voice.

' 'It was I, Sir.'

' 'Come into the shop, if you please. Let us talk about it.'

' 'You are not vexed with me, Sir?'

'As the girl said this she cast her great brown eyes upon me so piteously, so helplessly, seeming so intensely to fear displeasure, yet so wistfully to beg help, that all at once there flashed before me the harbor of Genoa! I saw it for an instant as distinctly as we now see the Kaaterskill Clove; saw the villainous Italian smirking across his organ; saw the glassy, shining waters of the Mediterranean; and the drowning face of Beppo going down therein; with those same eyes in it!

' 'Vexed with you? With you? GOD knows I am not!' was my first wild exclamation, as soon as this strange phantasmagoria passed by; and I saw Piccadilly, and its crowd, and the slender girl, again, standing there uncared for, like myself, in the great ocean of London being.

' 'Come in, I say! Come in! For the love of GOD, come in!' I continued passionately, reckless who heard me.

' 'Work, food, money, help, any thing, every thing! I will give you all.'

'This I said beseechingly, yet neither this nor the passionate command did the girl, timid as she was, seem to regard as at all strange or out of place. She only came confidingly toward me, put her hand in mine, and I led her into the back-shop, while the chatterers stared.

'I bade her take off her faded bonnet, and sit down. As she obeyed, her golden brown hair caught on a pin in the bonnet behind; its soft, well-grown mass lifted from her neck, and there I beheld, close where the brown joined the white, a small red crescent mark reaching almost from ear to ear!

'I seemed to be wandering through a chain of dreams. I tried to speak, but in vain. To think, but as vainly. She disengaged the bonnet, and let it droop upon her shoulders. Her face, thus disclosed, was the most beautiful array of human features, flushed through by the light of the most beautiful human soul, I ever saw, or mused of, or believed in, in my life!

'She sat in the chair opposite me. As for me, I gazed and gazed. Modestly inviting questions, she looked me frankly in the eyes; and then, as in wonder that I did not speak, throw her head backward, and perused my face curiously. This posture elevated her chin. I was about to say something, but just then I saw under that chin another crimson mark, the slenderest of slender lines, as if the finest knife-point dipped in blood had been drawn clear across the throat by a nervous hand. I durst not say to myself what I was reminded of by that. Not even to think of it at all. I half-feared that I had become insane, rubbed my forehead, and kept repeating: 'Oh! it is only her bonnet-strings tied too tightly, that is all!'

'I would not trust myself with questioning her then. Not a word of any kind did I speak to her, except to say gently, that she might consider herself my apprentice in the art of bird-stuffing; and that all her necessities should be provided for.

'I had a little bed made for her in the room of the old Yorkshire woman, who minded my solitary establishment for me. She was an orphan, so she said afterward; and had walked all the way from the Stafford Potteries, where her only relative, an aunt, was just dead: hoping to find work in London, that might keep her from the street. She was eighteen years of age, and had never known father or mother.

'Once more I had a living creature to feel an interest in, to become attached to. Whatever was mysterious in her arrival, her appearance, or her voice, I dismissed from my mind as mere curious coincidences, at once too frivolous, too perplexing to be followed up. There was the real substantial fact: a girl without home or friends. Now what was to be done with her?

'I settled that question gradually day by day. I taught her, in the day-time, to help me at my specimen-table; in the evening, to read and write. The rapidity with which she caught by the right end, and made her own every new process, either of brain or fingers, was astonishing. She was my constant wonder and delight. So imitative yet so original; so talented but so modest withal; so bright and sportive, so docile and grateful; she soon became my right hand and right eye in all I had to do.

'As soon as I had dressed her presentably; the clerks saw her superiority as they could not through old clothes, and did it unquestioning reverence. But for this reverence I verily believe they would have come in a body, and thrown themselves at her feet, entreating her to take her pick within the first month after she was domesticated with me. For they were all desperately in love with her: devouring her with their eyes as she went in and out among them so modestly and yet so loftily, like a queen in disguise.

'Well, I did not wonder; I could forgive them. For, six months after she had entered my shop-door, the homeless wayfarer, I awoke to the fact that I was in love with her myself. For the first time in all the days of my manhood, did I know what it was to feel a woman wrought into the texture of my life, so that pulling her away seemed an endless pain to look forward to; and before I knew that it had happened. And that combination of circumstances only, as I view it, is adequate to constitute love, on which marriage may be honorably founded.

'As soon as I knew that I loved Bessie Cartwright—that was her name—I began to torture myself with the question whether I ought to tell her of it yet. Whether, if I did so, her simple heart, out of mere gratefulness, would not instantly give itself up as a matter of debt and honor to the man whom she regarded only in the light of a benefactor. And I had rather have any thing happen than this, my own loneliness till I died even, than this, so galling to me if I discovered it when it was too late, so ruinous to every thing that was best in her young growing womanhood.

'As in the old days, it was my custom still to look at the memorials of my lost friends, when times went hard with me, and my spirits fell. So, one evening, after I had been musing painfully in my room for a couple of hours, I took from my battered old trunk Miss Brentnall's portrait, the Flicker, and the Marmoset, which I had embalmed after his death in the harbor of Genoa.

'I ranged them on my table, and with a feeling of mournful pleasure gazed from one to the other, dwelling upon all the past which they recalled.

'As I sat thus employed, I heard Bessie's tap at the door; I called, 'Come in!' and she entered, with her reading-book for the evening's lesson. Seeing the unusual array upon my table, she asked me: 'What! working still?'

' 'No; not working, Bessie,' I replied; 'thinking.'

' 'May I see who that is?' said she artlessly, pointing to the daguerreotype.

' 'Oh! certainly. Though you must not laugh at it. It is a very homely lady, but a very good one; and, while she lived, my dearest friend.' So I handed it to her.

'She bent her brown head down to the shaded drop-light on my table, and held the portrait close to it. I watched her to see the effect of that strange world-wronged face on the beautiful, Heaven-favored one.

'I saw Bessie Cartwright grow pale as death! Her eyes became fixed like a cataleptic person's. But her head moved, from the portrait to the Flicker, from the Flicker to the Marmoset. The portrait fell from her hand, she grasped hurriedly at the table, and then fell to the floor.

' 'Dead: dead like the rest!' said I, with a fierce coldness; 'and because I have loved her.'

'I pulled the shade from the drop-light, and drew it to the edge of the table, so that the light fell full on the prostrate girl. I called her by name, and got no answer. I loosened her dress, and in doing so pushed the heavy knot of her brown hair away from her neck. That scarlet crescent glowed there in the midst of the marble whiteness, like a flame!

'I turned her upon her back, and beneath her chin saw the slender crimson line, burning also brighter than ever, while all the throat was deadly pale. 'Bessie! Bessie! speak to me once, only once more.' I spoke passionately at her ear.

'Still no answer. I looked in agony at the dead things which had once been mine; saw plainest of all the Flicker; and again that strange suspicion which I had felt the first day I ever saw the girl, awoke in my brain.

'I bent my mouth to her ear, and softly said: 'Brenta!' At that instant her great dark eyes opened, she read my face wistfully, and then her lips murmured:

' 'Orloff, dear Orloff! I told you I would meet you again; I have kept my word.'

'It was the voice that became silent ten years before in the sick-room next my own!

' 'Miss Brentnall!' I exclaimed, not knowing what I said.

' 'Orloff, dear Orloff!' replied the voice, once more from the lips of Bessie Cartwright.

'And then the blood came rushing back to the young girl's face. Timidly she sat up, passed her hand across her eyes, and said faintly:

' 'Oh! I have had such a dream!'

' 'What was it, dear child?' I asked.

' 'I thought that picture you showed me was I. Then I felt myself dying. You were by me till all the room grew dark. I hardly remember what came then; but I have had, oh! so many strange thoughts, and been in so many strange places! I thought I was killed with a little knife: I was on the sea; I was close by a great town that rose from the water's side; I was drowning: then I was myself again in the old dress I wore when I came to you; then I seemed to be all things at once, and you called me a name I had heard before, when I lay in the bed dying; and oh! forgive me, Sir, I called you by your Christian name, Orloff, dear Orloff! I said, do forgive me: I will never do it again.'

' 'You must do something else than that,' said I, no longer awe-stricken and trembling, for in a moment the mystery of my life had parted like a fog, and I saw its meaning beyond in the clearest of heaven's twilight. 'Something else than that, Bessie. You must never call me by any other name than dear Orloff! Can you call me that? For I love you: GOD only knows how I love you. Can you?'

'The girl looked at me with parted lips; caught her breath quickly; hid her face in my bosom; and once more after all those years the beloved voice, knowing what it said, replied:

"Orloff, dear Orloff.'

'Bessie Cartwright is my wife. Not until years afterward did I tell her the meaning of her dream; nor how through lives and deaths she had followed me to save and claim her own. She knows it now; we both keep it for the grateful wonder of our prayers; a mystery like all mysteries had we but the key, with its grand, beneficent meaning, unmeaning, contemptible only to those who read it wrong or not at all.'

'And you do mean to tell to me zat ze beautiful lady you have now espouse, be vonce in se body of se vare ugly woman, ze red-head bird vat you call him, and ze marmosette; you mean to say to me zat?'

'I 'd like to ask that question too,' said John Tryon.

'I mean to tell you both,' answered Orloff Ruricson, 'that you can put your own interpretation on my facts. Also, that if you ever break our confidence in telling my history with its proper names, then good-by to your friendship with Orloff Ruricson.'

I have been permitted to state the facts without the names. Let me also be permitted to state them without my interpretation.

[Vol. LVII, No. 2 (February, 1861)]

THE WIVES OF THE POETS.

————

BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

————

'By the grace of GOD we are here assembled.'

ON examining the biographies of literary men, the reader cannot but be struck by the obscure part which the wife plays in the drama of such lives. Her history, as a general thing, is unwritten. The encyclopedias record the date of her marriage, and sometimes condescend to say when she died. Much more than this we are seldom permitted to know. Her liege-lord neglected to write her epitaph, however glad or sorry he may have been to have the opportunity of doing so.

That the wives of poets should have so often escaped the celebrity which keeps their husbands forever young, cannot always be pleasantly explained. In many cases they have been inferior women, unable, through a lack of intellectual sympathy, to reach that enchanted sphere wherein moves most that is holiest and enduring of the literary man: if they have loved, it has been with the heart wholly, and with the brain not at all. Poets, it is said, require a two-fold love—one for themselves and one for their art. When the fool in the play asks the lover how tall his mistress is, the lover neatly replies: 'Her height, prithee? As high as my heart!' When an author's wife is also as high as his brain, 'it is then truly that the intercourse of the sexes becomes the most refined pleasure;' and, ten to one, she laughs and weeps and is delicious forever in a novel, or dwells, with all her graces, in the rhythm of a lyric that perpetually sweetens the lips of the world. She so far fails in answering the requirements of her station who is shut by incapacity from her husband's demesne of thought. Such unions are fire-side tragedies—the more tragic, inasmuch as the actors are Souls rather than bodies, the more hopeless because the agony of the play is purely intellectual.

For one reason or another, the wives of the poets, as a class, are a sadly neglected group of ladies: in proof of which I am cruelly bent on adding a live poet bear testimony. My witness is Mr. R. H. Stoddard,* who has recently appeared as the editor of a volume of that peculiar kind of poetry in which he himself excels as an author.

[*THE LOVES AND HEROINES OF THE POETS. Edited by RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. With Illustrations by CHAS. A. BARRY. New-York: DERBY AND JACKSON. Quarto: pp. 480.]

The fact is (and it is rather a pathetic fact, if you wish to think so) literary men have been very chary in their praises of married life—especially the poets, who are popularly supposed to be the legal guardians of the blind little boy with the bow and arrows.

In looking over Mr. Stoddard's 'Loves and Heroines of the Poets'—the most faultless collection of love-poetry in the language—an ill-natured person might smile at the meagre number of poems which the poets have addressed to their own wives. Even these few poems, with eight or ten exceptions, lack the flavor and felicity which characterize their authors on other less laudable occasions. They are not the real sparkling champagne, but very 'still Catawba.' If the editor had restricted his selections to readable 'Stanzas Addressed to my Wife,' he might have put all his material in a pocket-book. He would have found few such noble verses as Bishop King's 'Exequy.' For those poets who have made themselves famous by singing of Chloe and Amaryllis, whom they did not marry, are generally as mute as moulting robins concerning Maria and Clementina, whom they did marry. From this point of view the lady-love appears to have been every thing, and the wife—nothing.

'THINK you, if LAURA had been PETRARCH'S wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?'

Now, for my part, I am cynical enough to believe that he would have written much better sonnets, and may be an epic or two, by way of variety. It requires something more terrible than a noble woman to spoil the verses of a decent poet. One of the chief pleasures in contemplating the lives of the old English singers, is to know that some of those master-spirits were blessed, in their rough pilgrimage, by gracious wives, whom they loved, though they neither dedicated folios nor always wrote flowery poems to them. Perhaps they held domestic love too sacred to sing about it. At all events, they sang but seldom, and then not always excellently well.

In Mr. Stoddard's volume we have one hundred and twenty-six poets. Of these one hundred and twenty-six, sixty are married men. Of these sixty about thirty have sung the praises of their wives. And of these thirty only about fifteen have sung any thing worth the singing. There may be some slight error in these figures, for I am distinguished for my horror of mathematics; but the statement is sufficiently correct for the occasion.

The limits assigned to a magazine article will not allow me to discuss in detail the ladies of these sixty poets. But what a curious history they would make! How their stories would involve kings, courtiers, beggars, fools, and knaves! What royal women some of them were, what spendthrifts, what sweet-tongued creatures, what scolds! How some of them ruined their lords with no other charm than the crimson thread of their lips. It is odd that Disraeli, in his 'Calamities of Authors,' neglects, as I believe he does, to mention woman. The shrews of literature, with a minute account of 'the life, sufferings and death' of hen-pecked authors, would make a long and comical chapter. But a longer, though not so comical a chapter might be furnished by the pale ghosts of neglected wives. As I lean over my friend's book, what phantoms from the dark night without, from old, mossy English kirk-yards, hover about me in the dim gas-light of my chamber, each whispering some strange tale of cruelty and neglect, telling of unvalued loveliness and patience and devotion!

'OF love that never found his earthly close,
What sequel?'

Ah! you poor little women, some of you have been shamefully not taken care of!

Dante wove such a wreath of laurels for Beatrice, that the beauty of the Florentine woman, with her blood-red dress, has stood the test of five hundred years. The wife of the gloomy Tuscan is the merest shadow beside her immortal rival. Howard, Earl of Surrey, wraps the Lady Elizabeth Gerald in a pretty name and pens sentimental sonnets to her eye-brows—just as if his own wife had no eye-brows, and very charming ones! But he seems to have no music left for his cousin Lady Frances Vere, to whom he was betrothed in his boyhood. The elaborate Sir Philip Sidney wasted his anapests and dactyles on a pair of restless court fire-flies, to the neglect of a lovely woman, the pink of whose little-finger nail was worth a whole race of such female fops. And Shakspeare, too. Shakspeare has a sweet mysterious lady embalmed in his sonnets, like a fly in amber. There is not a beautiful flower, according to the bard, which does not steal its shape, its color, or its perfume from her perfection. The stars are lighted by her eyes. She causes day and night by her coming and going. In her praises he makes mellifluous words fall into line and sweep on with triumphant music. But what of Mrs. Shakspeare?—the gentle Anne Hathaway! He leaves no immortal verse to her, only an old bedstead in his last will and testament! Milton has three wives, and writes one sonnet on Mrs. Milton No. 2—after he buries her!

'METHOUGHT I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me, like ALCESTIS from the grave.'

We are all acquainted with Mr. Waller's Amoret, and Saccharissa who gave him a cold shoulder, as he deserved, for he was an insincere piece; we all know his reply to Saccharissa when in after-life she, in her rouge and powder, asked him:

'Mr. Waller, when will you write such fine verses to me again?'

'O Madam!' replied that gallant old boy, 'when your ladyship is as young again.'

We know these things, and a great many more not so much to the credit of this sparkling, velvet butterfly; but we have not had the pleasure of meeting either of his two wives in the society of the muses. I fancy he did not trouble himself much about them; but he made the brides of other people famous. This hasty and by no means complete list of celebrated 'loves' and unknown wives, is growing too long; but I must add to it one wife and one love more pitiful than all—Stella and Vanessa, the two ill-starred ladies rendered historical personages by Swift's verse and Swift's cruelty. Mr. Stoddard has told their story very pathetically in his note on Swift. These two women lavished on the savage Dean such pure idolatry as the world has seldom witnessed. By what wizard spell he possessed himself of these unfortunate hearts, it is difficult to surmise. For years he held their souls in his hand, tossing them to-and-fro as a conjurer tosses the gilded balls. To Stella he was married, though the marriage was not publicly acknowledged, and the parties never met except in the presence of a third person. Vanessa, after cherishing for eight years the hope that Swift would make her his wife, could no longer bear the suspense which was undermining her health: she wrote to her rival, praying she would tell her whether or not she was Swift's wife. Stella immediately answered in the affirmative. After suffering such mortification and misery as would have driven any man but Swift to suicide, Vanessa died in resentment and despair. Four years after this, Stella lay on her death-bed. For fourteen she had waited in vain for love to dawn in the bosom of this poor wretch. It is said that a brief conversation then took place between them relative to their unproclaimed marriage. Only Swift's reply was overheard.

'Well, my dear,' he said, 'it shall be acknowledged, if you wish it.'

'It is now too late,' said Stella, with a sigh.

It was too late. She died of lingering decline in January, 1728. 'After Stella's death,' says Mr. Stoddard, 'and probably after Swift's, one of her raven tresses came into the possession of an antiquary. It was wrapped in paper and labelled, in Swift's hand-writing, 'Only a woman's hair.' '

As I read this bitter page of secret history, spectral hands seem to turn over the leaves for me, and spectral fingers to rest sarcastically on the glittering tropes and flowery nothings with which Swift garlanded his victims. I shall have to turn up my gas-light and read 'The Legend of Good Women,' and think of happy ones, to exorcise those complaining ghosts that come and go in the shadow of my book-case.

The reader will remember the charming Lucy Herbert, who might have been a Duchess if she had not chosen to walk out of the purple and wed the poet Habbington, who sang her praises as maid and matron, and loved her, notwithstanding she was his wife! I will let a woman* say that 'his poems to Castara form one of the most elegant monuments genius ever raised to the memory of a wife.' The amiable and lovely woman whose early death drove Parnell to destruction, should not be forgotten; nor Anne More, the wife of Dr. Donne, whose fidelity through poverty to death is loftier than any poetry, certainly much loftier than any of the Doctor's. And later still is Lady Lyttelton, whose flight from this world, in the flush of her youth and beauty, taught Lord Lyttelton the only noble number he ever uttered. In times nearer our own, we recollect several poets whose lives have been broken by the severing of these domestic ties which so many have worn but lightly.

[*Mrs. JAMESON.]

In view of these and similar cases, a witty French author once prepared an ingenious treatise in which he attempted to show why a literary man should not marry at all. He says that twenty poets are unhappy because their wives died, and twenty are wretched because their wives lived. In one case the husband trembles for fear his consort will leave him, and in the other—for fear that she won't! The humorist had proceeded thus far when the ingenuity of his own logic made him an idiot, and he really completed the essay with a solemn protest against marriage! While we smile at the entertaining French gentleman, it is worth observing that many of the finest tributes paid to the gentler sex have emanated from old bachelors—the light-hearted Benedicks who never lived to be married! Tasso made Leonora immortal, and Herrick his Prudence Baldwin—and these were the most incurable of old bachelors. There is one of Herrick's lyrics to his sweet-heart, so diminutive and chaste and perfect—'like an agate-stone on the fore-finger of an alderman'—that I can never think of it without quoting it:

ON HIS MAID PREW.

'IN this little urn is laid
PREWDENCE BALDWIN, once my maid,
From whose happy spark here let
Spring the purple violet!'

No reader of recent biography is unfamiliar with Lady Byron's unfortunate marriage, nor with the love of Jean Burns, nor the touching account of Shelley's two wives, nor with the tender care with which the wife of Tom Moore watched over the splendid ruin of his intellect. The memorials of Thomas Hood by his son and daughter, lately republished in this country by Ticknor and Fields, present us with a delightful picture of domestic literary life. The book itself is not a remarkable specimen of biographical writing, but the characters of Hood and his wife are so full of human goodness, so touched with all delicate graces, that one forgets every thing else. Mrs. Hood's letters are delicious unrevealings of herself. She was

'A SPIRIT, yet a woman, too.
*  *  *  *  *
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.'

Our own day and our own literature are not barren in instances of such unions, nor lacking in painful household histories. The time has not come when it would be proper to speak of the wives of those authors who are still living, or who have but newly passed away from among us. Many women who to-day are moving quietly and gracefully through the light and shadow of fire-side life, are to be known hereafter. Their names will be gracious words to other generations. They shall have justice done them, for the nineteenth century, among other inventions and discoveries, has discovered Woman! It was not enough that she was placed in the garden of Eden for us. We were blind for many thousand years. When the world was young, we made her fetch our wood and cook our food and play the menial. In our days of chivalry we taught her to be a pretty Amazon, to dress our wounds, to bind her scarf about our helmet, to receive a fantastic and insincere adoration. Then, as if there were never to be an end to our nonsense, we fancied that she was an Arcadian shepherdess, or a lovely wood-nymph with confused ideas of virtue. Then was the sickly, sentimental, pastoral age in full blast. Then did she tap us on the cheek with her fan, and smirk and smile, and paint and powder, and wear her hair four stories high. That was the courtly age. But by-and-by she wearied of these follies. We began to treat her with more sense: then little by little she began to assert herself; the better we treated her the more she asserted, until at last we cried out like Frankenstein, 'What monster is this we have created?' But it was not a monster—it was only A Woman! Great in her weakness, noble in her charity, beautiful in her patience. We have found her out! She was never so recognized as now; we have discovered that she has brain as well as heart; that she can write verse like Mrs. Browning, paint pictures like Rosa Bonheur, and still be all that is gentle and lovable like Florence Nightingale.

[Vol. LVII, No. 3 (March, 1861)]

BOB O' LINK.

————

BY FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN

————

It was noon in summer. The earth lay breathless in the heat, with its thousand tongues in wood and field too faint for their accustomed low, mysterious speech. The Long Island shore, white and crescented, bared its bosom like Danae to the golden embraces of the sun. In the meadows the heavy-crested grasses with nodding heads beat time to the sweet wash of waves upon the beach. Yellow spires of the golden-rod pierced the air like steeples. The tulip-tree, robed like a priest in fereal green, held up to heaven with branching arms a thousand golden chalices. Far away across the Sound lay the Connecticut shore trembling through mist, while behind me, from the green recesses of a deserted garden the oriole poured forth his monotone of sorrow.

As I sauntered down the little path that led from the old house where I was boarding for the summer, to my favorite haunt by the sea-shore, with clouds of insects springing from the grass like a living spray at every step I took, I suddenly heard the saucy notes of that low-comedian of birds, the Bob o' Link. As I have always had a friendly feeling toward this ornithological farceur; I set to work to obtain an interview with him. I was not long in discovering his whereabouts. He was sitting on the stump of a rail chattering vehemently, and as well as I understood his language, impudently; preening his feathers, cocking his head on one side, as if he had a passion for seeing Nature upside down, and shaking his wings as though he contemplated an immediate migration to the coast of Africa. About every half-minute or so he would suddenly leave his perch, and flying a little distance, flop into the long meadow-grass, whence instantly would proceed a most astounding vocal effort, after which he would reäppear and resume his rail in triumph. His frequent journeys to the same spot led me to suspect that he had some private interest in that quarter—a nest, or a young bride perhaps, and that he was in fact passing his honey-moon, so I walked toward the place in which I saw him disappear last, determined to be a witness of his domestic bliss.

It seemed to me that a human head was lying alone and bodiless in the deep green sea of grass that surrounded me. A beautiful youth's head, blonde and spiritual, looking up at me with a calm, unfrightened look, while nestling close to its pale, rounded cheek, hushed and rather astonished by my appearance, sat Master Bob o' Link.

The head, however, was not without a body. The long bending grass met over the form, leaving exposed only the pale, beautiful face, which looked like an exquisite Venetian picture framed in gold and green.

'Good morning, Sir,' said the youth in a sweet voice as I bent over him, looking I suppose a little bewildered at this sudden apparition, and fondling at the same time Master Bob o' Link with long slender fingers. 'Good morning, Sir.'

'Good morning,' I answered. 'You seem to be taking things quietly here.'

He gave a sudden glance downward toward his feet, and a sad smile flickered over his lips.

'I am obliged to take things quietly,' he said.

'Ah! an invalid I suppose. I am sorry.'

'I am paralyzed, Sir.'

No words can paint the tone of utter despair in which he made this terrible statement. If you have ever spoken with a man who had spent twenty years in solitary confinement, you will have noticed the unearthly calm of his voice, the low monotone of sound, the loneliness of accent. Well, this lad's voice sounded so. He talked like one shut out of life. I made a place for myself in the grass and sat down beside him.

'I was attracted by your bird,' I said; 'I thought he had a nest here, and so followed him. I trust I am not intruding.'

'Not at all, Sir; I am glad to have some one to speak to. As for Bob, he has a nest here, but it 's in my heart. He is the only thing on earth that loves me.'

'You take too sad a view of life, my friend. Your calamity is great, no doubt, but still——'

'Ah! Sir, it 's all well enough to talk so when you have limbs and health and freedom. When you can work and go out into life and tread the earth with the full consciousness of being. But when ever since you can remember you have been but the moiety of a man, utterly helpless, utterly dependent, an infant without an infant's happy unconsciousness. But what 's the use of my talking to you in this way; here, Bob, show the gentleman your tricks.'

Bob, on this summons, left his post by the lad's cheek, where he had remained perfectly still, taking an inventory of my person with his round bright eye, and apparently measuring me for a suit of clothes, and suddenly flew into the air, where he summersaulted and pirouetted and affected to lose the use of his wings and tumble from an appalling height, invariably recovering himself before he reached the ground, after which he gravely alit upon his master's breast and thrust his little bill affectionately between his lips.

'You have tamed your bird wonderfully,' I said to the boy.

'It has been my amusement during many solitary hours,' he answered with a feeble smile.

'How is it that you have been left so solitary?' I asked; 'you live in the neighborhood?'

'In that house up yonder just peeping from behind that clump of maples,' and he pointed as he spoke toward a respectable farm-house.

'And you have friends—a family?'

'Ah! Sir, they are kind enough to me; but they must be very tired of me by this time.'

'Come,' said I encouragingly; laying my hand on his shoulder, 'come, tell me all about yourself. I 'm a good listener: beside, I am interested in you. Bob here looks as if he was anxious for a story. This is a charming nook that we are in, so I 'll just light a cigar, and do you talk.'

The free and easy manner I assumed seemed to surprise him. He glanced shyly at me out of his large blue eyes as if suspicious of my sincerity; then he heaved a little sigh, stroked Bob's feathers, as if to assure himself of the presence of at least one friend, and saying, 'As you please,' commenced:

'I am eighteen,' he said; 'you would not think it, for I know I look younger than I am. Confinement and suffering have made my complexion pale and transparent, and the sun and the winds that harden other men's skins and age their features, have had but little to do with me. Ever since I can remember I have been paralyzed in the lower limbs. For years I lay upon an inclined plane of board, looking up at the ceiling with a mind very nearly as blank as the white plaster I gazed at. My father died when I was a mere infant, and there was no one left in the house but mother and Cousin Alice and me.'

'Cousin Alice,' I said; 'who is she?'

His eyes wandered timidly toward the house behind the maples, as if he expected some apparition to start from thence on the very instant.

'Cousin Alice,' he repeated vaguely, 'well, she 's—Cousin Alice.'

'Excessively explanatory,' I said, laughing. 'Is Cousin Alice young?'

'My age.'

'Is she pretty?'

One deep, reproachful look of those large blue eyes told me all. Poor fellow, there he lay maimed, useless, passing his days and evenings in the presence of some beautiful creature whom he could never hope to possess, but loving her with all that concentrated intensity which belongs to the passions of the deformed.

He seemed to know what was passing in my mind; for without a word from me, he continued: 'She is engaged to Ralph Farnwell, who lives down yonder. She is very fond of him, and he of her. It is they who bring me down between them to this place every fine day, and I sit here with Bob while they go off and pick nuts, and—and——' and here the picture was too much for him, and the poor fellow burst into tears.

No wonder. To have his misfortune paraded through necessity before the woman he loved. To be carried about like a piece of furniture by her and his rival. How often that poor heart must have been smitten bitterly! How often those crippled limbs thrilled with agony!

I took his hand in mine, but did not say a word. There are times when consolation is cruel. It was better than all words to let him feel by the pressure of my hand that he had found a friend. We sat this way for some time, until I was aroused from a painful reverie into which I had fallen by a long, black shadow being projected across the spot in which we were sitting. I looked up and saw a tall, handsome young man with bronzed cheeks and curly chestnut hair, on whose arm was hanging an exceedingly lovely young girl, whose face was a perfect treasury of archness and innocence. They looked rather surprised at seeing me, but I explained how it was that I came to be there, and they seemed satisfied.

'Harry; isn't it time to come home?' said the young girl. 'Ralph and I are come for you.'

'Thank you, Alice; but I 'd like to stay an hour longer. The day is so bright and sunny that it is a shame to be in-doors. You do n't want to go home yet,' and he looked at Ralph as he said this with a bitter expression of countenance that perhaps I alone observed, but which seemed to say: It will give you an hour more to wander together. Of course you do n't want to go home.

'Well, as you please, Harry. Ralph and I will go off to the pond in the cedar grove and come back in about an hour. But I say, Harry, look here; is n't this pretty?' and as she spoke she held out a little box for his inspection. He opened it, and disclosed a pretty little ring set with garnets. While he looked at it, Alice stooped over and with a blush whispered something into his ear, which made him to my keener sight quiver in all that part of him that was alive. It was but momentary, however, for he restored the box, saying coldly: 'Well, I wish you both every happiness. You will find me here when you return.'

As they walked slowly away, he followed them with his eyes, then turned to me. 'They are to be married next Sunday,' he said.

I felt all the meaning of his words. I pitied him. Solitude is a need to him at this moment; I will leave him. As I pulled out my watch and prepared for my departure, he said to me: 'I am exceedingly obliged to you, Sir, for your company, but I want you to do me one more favor before you leave. You are strong and I am light. Please take me to the giant's chair. I love to sit on it and dip my hand in the salt wash of the sea.'

'But are you not afraid of slipping and falling in?' I asked, for the giant's chair was a fantastically-shaped rock a few hundred yards down the beach, around whose rugged base the sea at high tide washed clamorously.

'Oh! no,' he answered; 'there is a cleft in it where I sit quite safely. And when Ralph and Alice come to look for me, I can easily shout to them from where I am. Do take me, Sir, if you please.'

Of course I obeyed his wishes. I lifted him in my arms, and with Bob flying alongside of us, carried him down to the huge old rock which was regally draped in the rich brown tapestry of the sea. I found a comfortable, dry cleft in which I stowed him away, and with a promise to come and see him the following day, I left him, with Bob chattering away on his shoulder, gazing dreamily across at the Connecticut shore.

About an hour and three-quarters after this, I was strolling down the road smoking my after-dinner segar, when I heard hurried steps behind me, and the young man named Ralph ran up pale and breathless.

'For GOD'S sake, Sir, where did you leave Harry?' he cried. 'We can't find him any where!'

'Oh! you have n't looked on the giant's chair, then; I took him there. I left him snug and comfortable.'

'But we have, Sir. We knew how fond he was of sitting there, and when we missed him from the meadow, concluded that he had got you to carry him there. But there 's no sign of him, only the Bob o' Link flying wildly over the spot where the rock dips in to the water, and crying as if its heart would break.'

'Not in the giant's chair!' I cried, with a sick feeling about my heart. 'Good GOD! he has drowned himself.'

'Drowned himself! Why, what for?' asked Ralph with the most unfeigned astonishment.

'He was in love with his Cousin Alice; and you are to marry her on next Sunday,' was my only reply.

The man was stunned. He saw it in an instant. All that secret and mysterious love which had racked the heart of the poor cripple, unknown to him or his betrothed, was now laid bare. He groaned and buried his head in his hands. 'This will kill Alice, Sir,' he said to me. 'Come and help me to break it to her.'

My conjecture was correct. About a week after this, the body of the poor paralytic was washed ashore some miles down the beach, holding with desperate clutch in one hand a little daguerreotype of his Cousin Alice.

And Bob: he missed the accustomed hand. For days after his master's death he used to fly down to the old place in the meadow and hover around there, waiting for him who never more would come. This lasted for about a fortnight, when one day Ralph in passing by found the poor bird dead in the grass, which still bore the impress of his master's form.

[Vol. LVII, No. 3 (March, 1861)]

A NEW THEORY OF BOHEMIANS.

————

BY CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED, (CARL BENSON.)

————

LAST spring: the spring of 1860, I mean—if this communication waits as long as some of mine have done, it may be spring before last, or spring before that, when it is published—in the spring of 1860, I say, it was rumored in New-York that a club of Bohemians had been established on the European principle; an idea which provoked much ridicule from some of the Europeans settled among us. This set Carl Benson a-thinking (for he does perform that operation sometimes, and it was not the first time he had performed it on the very same subject) about the differentia of the Bohemian—what he is and what he is not, what properly constitutes him, and whether he is a specific product of a particular city, as the European critics alluded to seem to think, or one of all civilized countries.

The name, if not invented, was at least fixed in circulation by Henry Murger. His 'Bohemian Life' was published some fifteen years since, and about half as long ago Carl Benson translated it in tutta la sua parte sana, according to the Italian editors' phrase—that is to say, rather less than half of it—for the KNICKERBOCKER, as some of the KNICKERBOCKER'S readers may or may not remember. The term was of course borrowed from the Gypsies, and his Bohemians led a precarious, Gypsy-like existence. Artists and authors (in intention at least) with no capital but their wits, they struggled on till they had fairly made their way into decent, tax-paying society, and were Gypsies of Art no longer, or else succumbed in the struggle and perished miserably. Never having read 'Friends of Bohemia,' or other English works, in which the same class is specially treated of, I am unable to say how closely this type has been followed by Anglo-Saxon writers, but I suspect they took substantially the same view of Bohemian life as the idealization of vagabondism. A light heart and a thin pair of breeches will go through all the world, my brave boys, as the old song had it a long while before Henry Murger. Or in the words of the German ballad, which you will find at the end of this treatise, The bore of life is fiddled, smoked and slept away. All very well for a time, but some day—generally before you have gone through all the world—the other side of the account-book is turned over. Suppose Justice Oldmixon puts you in the stocks for a vagrant. Suppose there is no money to smoke with; for even the cheapest tobacco costs something. You may sleep, to be sure; and he who sleeps dines, on the authority of the French proverb; but does he who sleeps also smoke? Even the fiddle-strings will wear out in time, and you can't 'rosin the bow' without the chino. So does insulted respectability find its revenges brought about by time's whirligig.

Bohemianism, then, we see considered by its first historians as a necessarily transient state, which men must get out of or be swallowed up by; a state of poverty; and incidentally of vice. I say incidentally of vice, because its inventors as a status, a metier, were Frenchmen, and every thing in France must have a spice of vice about it.

Now this I maintain to be a limited and inadequate conception of Bohemianism. It is not necessarily a state of poverty, (if by poverty you mean want of substantial comforts,) still less of vice, that is, of dissipation. It is not necessarily a transition state; on the contrary, people are born to it, and live and die in it. Sala, it appears to me, first hinted at the truth of the case when he talked of a Bohemian going home at ten o'clock to read Plato and take water-gruel. Paradoxical it must have seemed to many of his readers, but nevertheless literally true. There are Bohemians who go home at ten o'clock to read Plato and drink water-gruel. There are Bohemians with houses and lands and rent-rolls and government stocks. Nay, there are Bohemians who keep their accounts and their appointments with rarely deviating regularity. And Bohemianism, I repeat, is not a phase, a transitory period of a man's life, but the whole of it. The Bohemian may be born poor, and die rich, or vice versa: he is always a Bohemian.

But who and what, then, is the Bohemian, you may ask. Define him at once, or we find it more difficult to tell who is not a Bohemian than who is. Well then, I proceed to my definition.

A Bohemian is a man with literary or artistic tastes, and an incurable proclivity to debt.

To many members of our mercantile community the second head of this definition would appear to be merely a natural sequence from the first. It has long been a doctrine on 'Change that authors and artists and such people are bound to be in debt and difficulty and more or less risk of starvation all their lives. But this is a fallacy of juxtaposition and imperfect generalization which it is not worth while to confute seriously or at length. Look at a fashionable English portrait-painter, or indeed at an English artist generally. Can there be any thing less Bohemian? How many Wilkies do we find for one Haydon? Look at our own literary men. How many Bancrofts and Prescotts and Everetts are there for one Poe!

On the other hand, it is evident that the unfortunate propensity to run in debt, is not confined to literary men and artists, but is common to some of them with many men of all and of no profession, utterly innocent of any artistic or literary pretension or performance. This again is so obvious, that to enlarge upon it would be merely platitudinous.

But why does the Bohemian get into debt, since it is not in virtue of his profession? The answer to this question will develop the constituent points of the Bohemian character.

In the first place, the Bohemian is always a man with a hobby. He may have more than one, but one he must have, and that not a mere theoretic and speculative, but a substantial, material, money-costing hobby. It may be larger or smaller according to his means and position, but is very apt to be too large for those means, whatever they are. If he is a rich man, he may be fond of horse-flesh, which is not an illiterate taste as some over-wise people would have you believe; or he may have a mania for collecting pictures, of which even good artists are not necessarily the best judges; or a weakness for fine furniture and jewelry; many great authors have run into such seemingly feminine extravagances. If poor, he will have some smaller weakness, but one equally fatal in proportion to his income. Men have ruined themselves buying pipes. La Brunie, who wrote under the name of Gerard de Nerval, was in this respect perhaps the most finished type of the Bohemian. He had garrets full of curiosities and bric-a-brac, and no certain daily means of procuring a dinner. At last he was found hanging in one of his garrets. He would sooner part with life than part with his curiosities, or give up the habit of collecting them. Of course such manias are not the peculiar property of authors and artists; most readers of sporting literature are familiar with the story of the clerk who lived on offal in a granary-loft, that he might keep his hounds and horses, and a more common example is that of the inveterate gambler. But the Bohemian is a literary or artistic man with a hobby; though it must be observed that his hobby is not necessarily connected with literature or art.

Moreover, it is necessary that his hobby, or weakness, or whatever you choose to call it—his 'wanity,' as Sam Weller would say—should not be a profitable one. The man who collects pictures, or books, or horses—curiosities or animals of any sort—with a view to selling them again, is the very reverse of a Bohemian. There are many such speculative collectors to be found; Paris is particularly flush of them just now. They are only a variety of Barnum. It is true that the real Bohemian's reckless expenditure may sometimes, by pure accident, turn out to his pecuniary advantage. Thus there is a story of Balzac how he had once very absurdly furnished his parlor all in white satin with magnificent chandeliers, and some jolly friends dining with him had lighted up the chandeliers 'to see the effect.' Suddenly a publisher 'happened in,' and was so struck by (what appeared to be) the author's daily luxury that he made him a huge offer for his next romance. But these are only accidental hits; the Bohemian's hobby is necessarily an expensive and very likely a ruinous one.

Now do n't fancy that I disapprove of hobbies. On the contrary, I believe in them immensely. Every man ought to have a hobby, provided he can keep it within bounds, and does n't ride it over other peoples' toes. The misfortune is, that the Bohemian's hobby can't be kept within bounds, but is always tending to eat its own head off and outrun the constable. Here, then, we have the first reason why the Bohemian must and will get into debt.

Secondly, the Bohemian is generous; free of his money when he has any, and sometimes when he has not. There are plenty of men who live 'about' on society generally, and contrive to support themselves at the expense of others; some of these are literary men, or soi-disant ones; there may be some quasi-artists among them too; but they are not Bohemians, (though sometimes erroneously confounded with the real article,) they are only sponges.

Thirdly, beside these particular debt-incurring traits, the Bohemian has a general inaptitude for business. Not merely a distaste for business details—this he may have and often has—but even if he has brought himself to conquer this dislike, nay, even if he has it not, (for there are Bohemians, rather methodical than otherwise, as we have already remarked,) he always makes a mess of his business.

This incapacity for business is by 'men of the world' and men of the ledger frequently attributed to all votaries of art and literature indiscriminately; and some literary men have accepted the imputation, and rather gloried in it. Thus, Alphonse Karr allows it as the most natural thing in the world that a novelist should know nothing of any other figures than those of metaphor, and he illustrates the position by some old comparisons. The danseuse, he says, develops her legs at the expense of her chest; so the literary man develops his brains at the expense of his—chest, he probably would have said only the pun can't be made in French. But this rule (as we also have had occasion to remark previously) is subject to so many limitations and exceptions that it cannot be considered a general rule at all. No doubt a lad who has been stuck into a counting-house at seventeen will know more of book-keeping and trade at twenty-one, than if he had passed that time at a university, or in an atelier. So too an author plunged suddenly into any business matter—made a consul, for instance—may find himself at first awkward in the routine. But it is a long jump from this to the conclusion that the scholar or the painter is ipso facto incompetent to manage his private business, or a reasonable amount of public business. Some scholars and writers and painters are, and these some are the Bohemians. How many such young men have I seen put into, or putting themselves into, mercantile harness, working for years invita Minerva enough, GOD knows! but diligently and conscientiously, only at last to ruin themselves and others. And when they were ruined, and thoroughly given up to Bohemianism, they were happier than before; and the business world was happier too, to be rid of them. Their un-Bohemian period of life had been a dead loss to themselves and to society. If the phrenologists could only invent an organ of Bohemianism, and prevent such persons from being placed by mistaken parents upon counting-house stools, destined to be real stools of repentance; or placing themselves in 'firms,' which are any thing but firm, what a blessing it would be to all concerned! But of course the phrenologists can't, any more than they can do any thing else of real practical utility.

Having thus defined the subject of our investigation, we have next to consider whether the popular prejudice against him on the ground of vice is justly founded.

Theoretically; and in the abstract nature of things, there is no reason why it should be. So far as a man is artistic or literary, he is pro tanto provided with resources and mental occupation, and is so far better protected against the temptations of gross animal vice than the mere man of business who has no intellectual resources outside of his ordinary occupation. A man's taste, though it can never be a substitute for religion and morality, may often be a valuable auxiliary to them. True, we can imagine a man taking up vice artistically, plunging into the haunts of dissipation that he may be able to portray them graphically, or even deliberately committing sin in order to study its effect upon himself and his fellow-sinner. So Firmilian murders his friends and blows up the cathedral in order to realize and analyze the feelings of an assassin and incendiary. But the Firmilians are rare and monstrous exceptions, and can scarcely occur save in a thoroughly diseased condition of society.

The source of the connection in the popular mind of one particular form of immorality with Bohemianism, we have already hinted at. The Bohemian was first taken from the Parisian point of view, and all society taken from that point of view, (except perhaps some purely poetic and utopian state,) is equally immoral. If Murger's artist tenants have their mistresses, the bourgeois landlord (a married man too) has his. This count of the indictment then we may summarily dismiss.

Drunkenness is another vice charged upon the Bohemian, especially by those who, ignorantly or malevolently, confound jollity with drunkenness. Here again the exceptions are constantly made to serve for the rule; a Jarvis or a Poe is obstinately represented as the type of a whole class. A lot of laughers and quaffers are set down as an orgie, though their potations may be nothing stronger than Lager. This much I admit, that your true Bohemian generally has in him a potentiality of drink, not an energy or entelechy constantly acting, but a dynamis (how is our friend T. L., by the way?) enabling him to enjoy his liquor on proper occasions, though most nights he may go home early to his water-gruel (like Sala's example) or tea or orgeat. In teetotalers' eyes the Bohemian is lost and condemned. But we are not writing for teetotalers.

Smoking is another vice popularly attributed to the Bohemian. It certainly is a common Bohemian habit. The grave and important question, how far this practice is necessarily a vice, would demand a separate treatise. Let us merely remark that some of the usual objections to it are much the reverse of fact; as when it is said that smoking directly encourages drinking, whereas the case is just the contrary. Nothing has done more to put down after-dinner tippling than the segar. As to the excess of the practice, let us notice with special reference to the Bohemian, that the man who works or talks with interest, putting his whole mind into his work or talk, is much less likely, nay, much less able to smoke excessively than he who works mechanically, and whose mind is idle during the intervals of repose.

A modern school of reformers do indeed maintain that drinking and smoking are always excesses; that there is no such thing as temperance in the use of wine and tobacco, all indulgence, however limited, in those articles, being intemperance, and tending to shorten life. Possibly, in a certain sense, they do so tend; and probably the creed of these philosophers was never so pithily summed up as in the advice of Punch's Scotchman to his son: 'Wear thick shoes, eat oat-meal porridge, and walk ten miles a day; thus you may live a hundred years, and enjoy the last year as much as the first.' The question is, what such a man's life is worth. He can hardly be said to have gelebt und geliebet.

One vice, indeed, the Bohemian must have; it is an essential part of his character and definition. He must be normally and habitually in debt. A terrible thing to be in debt, no doubt, and a great theme to moralize on. One's children, and society, and the bad example, and so forth. Unfortunately, it is with some people a natural infirmity, perhaps an heriditary one; men are born to get into debt, and so born Bohemians, as I said. Now here again, if the wise phrenologists could only invent an organ of get-into-debt-iveness—that and philippism, and a great many other propensities stronger than most of those in their charts, they have never been able to locate. Perhaps after all, though, it is as well that these unfortunates cannot be labelled for life beforehand, have hay put on their horns, (foenum in cornu,) at the risk of being prematurely cut off. Well, go read 'Panurge's Apology for Debt,' and while you are looking for it in your 'Rabelais,' remember that I do n't more than half believe that dogmatic adage about 'being just before,' etc. I am not by any means sure that it is always better to be just (in the sense implied by the adage) than to be generous. There is Lamartine, one of the real kings of Bohemia, a man certainly not profligate, certainly not idle, but always in pecuniary difficulties. That is a generous man. Now on the other side, take a Jew tailor; he is a just man in the mercantile sense, agrees with his laborers for a penny, or ten-pence a day, as the case may be, pays them that theirs is, and does what he likes with his own, as is lawful. Which would you rather be—I mean apart from all reference to the former's literary reputation; merely looking at the conscience and feelings of the two men—Lamartine or the Jew tailor?

One point remains, too important to be passed over in silence; the relation of woman to the Bohemian life. It is a delicate question. My own opinion (which I express with diffidence, and which to some readers will appear not the least novel position in my novel theory) is that women are not fit for Bohemians. They are flowers too delicate for the violent extremes of the Bohemian climate. They can't stand the ups-and-downs. When women have to pass from luxury to privation, (positive or comparative,) they are in danger either of losing their temper, or of going to the bad altogether. Moreover, it is difficult for a woman, without some loss of delicacy, to be very unconventional, and that is just what a Bohemian is apt to be. Indeed, it is so general a trait of the Bohemian character, that I had at first some thoughts of adding it to the definition, thus: 'A Bohemian is a man with literary or artistic tastes, an incurable proclivity to debt, and a strong disbelief in Mrs. Grundy.' I fancy women must believe a little in Mrs. Grundy. This unconventionalism is, after all, the crying sin of the Bohemian in many people's eyes, because they vaguely imagine it to include and connote almost every possible vice. All things considered, I am inclined to think that when a man has the misfortune (for misfortune on some accounts it certainly is) to be a Bohemian born, it is better for him and for society that he should light upon a wife of rather anti-Bohemian tendencies to keep his house in order.

I am well aware that not only the above opinion, but the whole theory of this essay; may be strongly contested. It may be considered an unfounded pretension on my part to admission among the Knights of the—what Table? No Table at all, most probably; like the soirée of Murger's hero, where they could only sit down metaphorically. Certainly I do claim to be a Bohemian, as a literary man by profession and (after a fashion) practice, and as never having been out of debt but twice since the age of sixteen. Once I recollect having had a balance at my banker's; they stopped payment immediately after, which I accepted as a judgment and a lesson. Nevertheless, if any of Old KNICK'S readers refuse to accept my claim or my theory, and cling obstinately to the old pre-conceived type of Bohemian, let us present them with this ballad as a peace-offering in accordance with their own conception of the subject. It has already appeared once in print, but where the un-Bohemian portion of KNICK'S subscribers would hardly think of going to look for it; besides, it has received a few touchings-up for its new destination. Strike up, fiddlers! Hats off in front, and small boys will please to sit down. Do n't be frightened at the rhythm; it goes to an air from Wagner's 'Music of the Future:'

The Three Gypsies.

————

FROM THE GERMAN OF LENAU.

————

Once I came upon Gypsies three,
In a green spot together,
As my carriage dragged wearily
Over the sandy heather.

One in his hands a fiddle had got,
All to himself—more pity!
The evening sun shone round him hot,
As he played a fiery ditty.

The second had a pipe in his mouth;
He looked at the smoke, as jolly
As if upon earth, from north to south,
All else to him was folly.

The third one's banjo hung on a tree,
The wind o'er its strings was sweeping;
A dream swept over his soul, while he
Beneath lay cosily sleeping.

For clothes the three had around them curled
Mere tatters and rags most various;
But they laughed no less at all the world,
Its honors and joys precarious.

Three-fold they showed me, as there they lay,
How those who take life in the true sense,
Fiddle it, smoke it, and sleep it away,
And trebly despise its nuisance.

As I went on I had to look back,
Watching those curious creatures,
Watching their locks of hair, jet black,
And their merry dark-brown features.

Paris, December, 1860.

[Vol. LVIII, No. 1 (July, 1861)]

THE BULLFINCH.

————

BY FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN.

————

I.

MR. KAMM.

THERE is a certain portion of Crosby-street that smells of theatre. I will not malign that narrow-fare by insinuating that it smells of nothing else, because I think it is conscious of stables, and toward the lower end is slightly tinctured with tenement-house. But the particular locality to which I allude is odorous of the buskin and the boards. Two of our largest theatres, if I may say so, 'back' on this quarter with great unsightly brick-walls pierced with little lightless windows; and stage-doors, round which shiftless supernumeraries loaf all day, holding converse with the Cerberus that serves as door-keeper, whose surliness, although proof against music, may be overcome without difficulty by coin.

At night these same stage-doors are interesting studies. Here you may see, in the sort of watchman's box that serves as ante-chamber to the theatre, the patient actor out of employment, who has just sent in his name to the manager with a view to engagement, and who, poor devil, is fobbed off with a message to the effect that applications can only be received by letter. You may always see three or four mysterious hobbedehoys lounging about the door and talking with the door-keeper, or writing on the walls with pencil aimless slanders on rival supers or other members of their acquaintance. Here at slight intervals take place the rushing exit and equally rapid entrance of the 'dresser' to the theatre, bearing on his return sundry liquids for the refreshment of the eminent artists performing within. Now the door opens and out comes the gas-boy with a pan of charcoal, which, to avoid danger of fire, has to be lighted on the side-walk, and which in ten minutes more will represent the flaming logs that blaze in the huge fire-place of the tapestry-chamber in the lordly mansion of the Baron Hugh de Brass. Here, at a later hour, a short time before the performance closes, you may behold one or two young swells lounging up and down the side-walk, smoking cigars and watching the stage-door uneasily as it opens and shuts. In a little while you will see Fannie Caracole and Mary Paragon, both friends and members of the corps de ballet, come out, glance up and down the street and presently be joined by the swells, with whom they will go off to supper. If you were in the common dressing-room of the ballet-women after the two girls have gone, you would be edified by the remarks of their companions on their superior style of dress, and the ironical surprise as to how they did it on twelve dollars a week.

Here, too, once and again, you may witness a sadder procession than that of hearty and reckless young men marching off to oysters and champagne with a couple of theatre-women. For one of the theatres is devoted to circus performances, and it may be that suddenly you will hear a vague murmur run through the street, an inarticulate warning of disaster; and be hurried along to the stage-door by a sudden stream of curious loungers, and after listening to whispered rumors of accident spoken in under-breaths among the idlers outside, you will see the stage-door open, the crowd give way, and, tenderly borne in the arms of his companions, the dying acrobat pass to the carriage in waiting with closed eyes, white face shining with the dews of death, and one leg and one arm hanging loose and broken!

Pretty nearly opposite to one of these theatres, some time since, there was a small shop, which belonged to Mr. Charles Kamm, theatrical boot and shoe-maker. Mr. Kamm's establishment was of limited dimensions, and was inserted between two larger houses, so that it looked as if it had been wandering about for a location and crept into the first chink it could find. The sparseness of interior accommodation may perhaps account for such an amount of Mr. Kamm's stock splurging out on the pavement. It seemed as if the little shop had been squeezed so tight by the two big houses that it had burst. There was a glass-case on the side-walk which seemed much larger than the house from which it was popularly supposed to emerge every morning, and to which it is not too much to presume it was consigned at night, which was filled with articles of cunning workmanship. Here it was that the genius of Kamm was visible. Boys spent hours gazing with open mouths at the treasures contained in that repository of art. There were long yellow boots with red heels, that were so muscular about the calves that they looked as if they could walk by themselves, and were so dainty in the finish, and high in the instep, that they seemed as if they were equal to avoiding every muddy crossing or slushy kennel in the city. Then there were nice little white satin slippers, embroidered with gold, that called up visions of constellations of tiny feet, all flashing into air at a certain chord given by the orchestra, and gradually alluring the eye to white petals of crinoline which blossomed about a perfect garden of rosy faces and budding bosoms. Stalking grimly among those dainty works of art were grim russets. Such are to be found under the green-wood tree carousing in the lawless security of the forest, or intercepting the incautious wanderer in the woodlands and remorselessly plundering him of his money and jewels. Neither were the emasculate pumps of the male dancer wanting. The fellow with large feminine hips, imperfectly disguised by a scanty tunic of velvet; pasty hair that is a revolt against manhood; horrid, sexless smile ever sitting on his lips, while he bounds and twirls, and whose would-be passionate pursuit of the danseuse is such a mockery of love that it makes every man's blood run cold to look at it. All these elegant varieties of the shoes and boots that tread the mimic world were to be seen in Charles Kamm's glass-case. Did you want a Roman sandal, or a Turkish slipper, or an Irish brogan, Kamm was equal to the feat, and would turn you out either as perfectly as if he owned the book of fashion-plates of the time of Roscius, and had spent most of his life on the shores of the Golden Horn, or digging turf on the bog of Allen.

Charles Kamm, personally, was a fine, handsome young fellow of the Teutonic type, although born in this country, with long fair hair, blue eyes, and a slender, well-knit figure which was not disimproved by the fact of his belonging to a society of Turners. Kamm did a nice profitable business for the theatres. He made boots, for instance, for Mr. Belvidere, the popular light comedian at the Mulberry Theatre—and Belvidere was not easily satisfied, let me tell you. Belvidere had a nice foot, and would no more have had a hair's breadth of his instep concealed than he would have submitted to decapitation. Kamm was an enthusiast in his art, and expended himself on Belvidere, who was not alone a very handsome man, but an immense favorite with the public. The boots that he made for Belvidere were pictures. The wrinkles came exactly in the right place. The heels tapered beautifully. The spring under the hollow of the instep rendered the foot equal to the fulfilment of the Arab test, and would permit water to run beneath without wetting it. But when he came to embroidery, Kamm displayed himself. He had all the invention of Graun, whose floral designs for natural intricacy have never been surpassed. The impossible golden and scarlet flowers that wandered over the feet and ran carelessly up the calves of his boots, were not to be surpassed. On leather he was great, but when he came to satin, he was without parallel. He created a new Flora. The glowing blossoms that crept over his court-shoes had no similitude in nature, and I think privately, that nature was the worse for it.

I have said that Kamm was an enthusiast in his profession. It was good to see him at the theatre on the nights of first performances, to which he had of course contributed the great Belvidere's boots. He was always there before the curtain drew up, and sat in the back-row of the parquette, where he was presently joined by Umber the scene-painter, an amiable little man, with a charming feeling for color, and a thick, shaggy kind of voice, as if his throat was lined with frieze and the sound had brought away some of the wool with it. Umber naturally enough came to watch the effect of his scenery, but Kamm was there to behold the triumph of his boots. When Belvidere appeared, it was not the actor that, in Kamm's mind, received the plauditory greetings, but the boots. Kamm's criticisms terminated at Belvidere's knees. All above that was a blank. A pair of boots impassioned, a pair of boots in a state of virtuous indignation, a pair of boots drunk, a pair of boots penitent, and at last a pair of boots married, was all that Kamm beheld during the performance. If the boots were called before the curtain, Kamm was proud, and after having his quiet glass of lager with Umber, over which each would talk of his own performances, the one on canvas, the other on leather, the pleased boot-maker would retire to his solitary little shop in Crosby-street and go to bed peacefully with Bully hanging in his cage by his bed-side.

Bully was the great solace of the boot-maker's lonely life. When he was at work during the day-time on splendid fabrics of Cordovan leather, knightly leggings and kingly buskins, Bully, hanging near by in a pretty little cage, constructed after the model of a Swiss chalet, where the water-bottle occupied the principal drawing-room, and the hemp-seed was kept in the best bed-room, cheered Kamm's solitude with pretty little melodies, slow German waltzes and volk's lied whistled in those low plaintive notes peculiar to the piping bullfinch. For Bully, as my reader has guessed before now, was nothing more than one of those rosy-breasted, slate-backed, jetty-crested, familiar little birds that are so friendly and affectionate to those that pet them, and who learn with facility to whistle certain kinds of mild melodies of a not very complicated character.

Kamm's bullfinch was more than ordinarily intelligent. He enjoyed the freedom of the shop, issuing from his cage at will and roaming through the wilderness of scraps of leather, bits of wax, balls of thread, books of gold-leaf, morsels of resplendent lace, and all the paraphernalia that crowd the work-shop of a theatrical boot-maker. He delighted principally in accumulating those bristles which are attached to the waxed threads with which leather-work is sewed, and when he had picked up a sufficient quantity in his bill, he immediately proceeded to make a nest with them in Kamm's hair. As this was invariably a fruitless operation, he was in the end obliged to give it up, and consoled himself for his failure by whistling 'Life let us cherish' in rather a solemn and dirge-like manner, to the great delight of Kamm, in whose opinion the performance was superior to the most brilliant efforts of Vieuxtemps on the violin or Gottschalk on the piano. Tender and affectionate to his master as Bully was, and docile as he proved himself in learning those tunes which the young boot-maker whistled to him over and over again while he worked at his trade, there was one streak of rebellion in the red-breasted pet. He could not be induced by any art to whistle the sweet old air of 'Roslyn Castle,' which was a particular favorite with Kaam. All day long the boot-maker would slowly and laboriously whistle the first bars of the plaintive old strain, weaving his head backward and forward so as to impress the time on the bird, and Bully, after paying profound attention, would, when his master had concluded, strike up with an air of cool satisfaction, Pleyel's German hymn, or 'God Save the Emperor.' This obstinacy on the part of his favorite, was a source of considerable annoyance to Kamm, and he occasionally used to break into a furious passion with his feathered pupil, and storm at him, so that the poor frightened bird would retreat to his cage and sullenly sit there for hours, until his master relented and proclaimed an armistice by a low, affectionate whistle.

II.

CINDERELLA.

IT was a fine day in Autumn, just at the commencement of the theatrical season, when Kamm, whose book overflowed with orders from the various actors, was busy at work on a pair of young Marlowe boots for Mr. Belvidere, with the bullfinch perched on his shoulder, croaking like a diminutive raven, or arranging his feathers with great care, or occasionally climbing down on Kamm's coat-collar, until he got within reach of his mouth, where he would peck a kiss to him and gravely reäscend to his former position.

'Come, Bully,' said Kamm, pausing between two stitches, and catching the bird in his hand, which operation was followed by an indignant 'quick,' 'come, it 's time for your lesson.'

Bully resigned himself somewhat sullenly to a position on the back of a chair fronting the shoe-maker, who began with the weaving motion of the head to whistle 'Roslyn Castle.' Very sweetly he whistled. The notes were full of a country wildness, and in the peculiar break by which they were characterized, resembled that wild music called the Jodel by the Swiss peasants.

Bully instantly assumed an attitude of profound attention. His head was cocked on one side, and one black, bright, intelligent eye was fixed on his master. He was as immovable as if he had been stuffed, while the sweet, melancholy air in a silver thread of sound issued vibrating from the boot-maker's lips. The air then ceased. Bully retained his attitude of attention for a moment or two, then finding that the strain was over, he drew himself up proudly, erected his jetty crest, puffed out his rosy corselet, and with swollen throat and a quaint swing of the body and flirt of the tail, he joyously burst into 'Ah! vous dirai je maman.'

'Confound you for an obstinate little pig!' cried Kamm, enraged; 'will you never learn that tune, you red-breasted idiot? I 'll flog it into you, by all that 's great I will?' and so saying he proceeded to catch his unhappy pet and belabor him with a bristle with such earnestness that one would have imagined that he intended to hurt him.

'O Mr. Kamm! please do n't beat the little bird,' cried a voice at this juncture. 'I 'm sure he sings very sweetly. I 've been listening to him outside the door these two minutes.'

'Ah! is that you, Miss Grace?' answered Kamm, with a lava-like rush of blood flooding his temples, as he greeted a pretty piquant girl of about sixteen years of age, who tripped into the little shop, and held one little hand raised threateningly against the shoe-maker, while Bully escaping from his relaxed grasp, flew to his Swiss cottage, where he secluded himself in the attic with an air that indicated an eternal abandonment of the pomps and vanities of the world.

'Yes, it 's me, Kamm,' said the little lady, 'and I do n't like to see you so cruel.'

'Bless you, Miss, I an't cruel, no how. You see I want to get the bird to whistle 'Roslyn Castle,' a fine old air, Miss; and though I 've been teaching him a year and more, he goes against me all he can, and won't do it. So I make believe to be angry with him, that's all.'

'Well, but you frighten him, and that's cruel. Poor little fellow! perhaps 'Roslyn Castle' is too high for his voice.'

This was a comic view of the question, and they both burst out laughing, which merriment on the part of his oppressors seemed to Bully to be an additional insult, for he got as near his imitation chimneys as possible, and turned his back on mankind.

'What can I do for you to-day, Miss Grace?' asked Kamm as soon as he had given her a chair, the seat of which he carefully wiped.

'I want a pair of yellow gaiter-boots for the new piece, Kamm. It is a burlesque, and I play the Princess Jaberatung of the Polyglot Islands. I am disguised as a boy, by the connivance of my father, because in the Polyglot Islands there is a law against woman's studying any branch of knowledge, and I have the greatest passion for learning languages. The King of Lingualia, a neighboring territory, who is also a great lover of languages, gives notice that he will give the hand of his daughter to the man who will speak in the greatest number of tongues. There is a great tournament held, and I, although a woman, enter the lists just for the fun of the thing. I overcome all opponents, until at last a stranger appears, who calls himself Prince Lexicon, and who, after three days' struggle, conquers me by addressing me in the Skyittchee language, the only known tongue with which I am not familiar. The Prince also secretly informs me that he is aware of my sex, and that he will not claim the King's daughter, but prefers to teach me the language of love. Then the King is enraged at his daughter's hand being slighted, and imprisons the Prince and pursues me. I escape with difficulty, and in the end rescue the Prince just as he is about to be beheaded, and all ends happily with our marriage in Consonant Castle, on the lake of Verbs. And Mr. Belvidere plays the Prince, and O Mr. Kamm! he sings a song in the piece so beautifully!'

'Why, that must be a very pretty piece, Miss Grace. I suppose it 's for that Mr. Belvidere ordered the scarlet boots with the gold tassels.'

'Well, if Mr. Belvidere's boots are to be as handsome as that, Kamm, I hope that you 'll make mine lovely, for you know he is to marry me.'

'I hope not, Miss Grace,' said Kamm gravely, with a touch of pathos in his voice.

'Oh! I mean on the stage, you know,' said Miss Grace quickly. 'Why, I 'd rather do I do n't know what than marry him really, with his airs, and his great, conceited blue eyes, which he thinks so much of. Had n't you better take my measure? And now, Kamm, I want you to make them the cunningest little things you can think of.'

And so saying, the little danseuse put a very pretty little foot up on a stool, and Kamm, measuring-tape in hand, knelt as if in adoration before it.

'So you would n't marry Mr. Belvidere, Miss Grace?' said the shoe-maker as he bound the arching instep with the graduated tape.

'No, I do n't like him a bit,' was the decided reply.

'Ah! but you 're hard to please,' said Kamm, with a heavy sigh and a timid glance at the pretty face that bent over him as he knelt.

'No, I 'm not, Mr. Kamm; not at all. But I do like a man to have a good heart, and some respect for women. I do n't think Mr. Belvidere has either. Now, I 'm sure I 'm simple enough in my tastes, for I often remember with pleasure that day when we went out on our excursion to Hackensack, you and I and mother, and had that nice cold dinner at the queer little English inn called the Three Pigeons, and which reminded us all of Goldsmith's comedy of 'She Stoops to Conquer;' and how jolly every thing was, and—and—the drive home——'

'And,' continued Kamm, rising and taking advantage of what seemed to be a momentary confusion on Grace's part, 'and that pleasure that I shall never forget, the first time I ever pressed your hand with my own great clumsy paw, the first time that I ever felt a little hope springing up in my heart about you.'

Grace suddenly drew down her foot and stood half-startled, half-expectant before the earnest shoe-maker, who, measure in hand, and all unconscious of apron, continued:

'You see, I never said any thing about it since. To tell you the truth, I was afraid of you, Miss Grace, you are so much above me, and you know so much finer people than I am; but I can't help loving you, Miss Grace—I can't, indeed; and I 'm sure it would be the joy of my life to have the privilege and pleasure of working for you and watching over you; and if I thought—if I thought——'

Here the poor fellow stopped, evidently overpowered or afraid to go on any further. Grace, with that aplomb which the stage gives to even the most modest of girls, put her hand plumply into the boot-maker's and said:

'Kamm, you are an honest, sensible man, and I 'll treat you as one. I like you. Come and see my mother this evening.'

Kamm kissed the neat little hand, and feeling that the thing had gone as far as it ought to just then, quietly knelt down and took her measure for the fairy boots.

III.

THAT evening Mr. Kamm presented himself at the residence of Mrs. Sculpin, Grace's mother. Mrs. Sculpin was an obese old lady, whose great solace in life consisted in reminiscences of a deceased husband, who, she said, was a Lieutenant in the English Navy, and had been eaten by savages on the coast of Madagascar. There were envious persons who maintained that the deceased Sculpin had been a licensed victualler in Liverpool, and had never seen more of the sea than the Mersey presented in the form of mud, but however that may be, Mrs. Sculpin cherished her naval reminiscences, and accorded to the gallant lieutenant virtues, talents, and a station in society of the most exalted character.

Grace was at the theatre when Kamm arrived at the old lady's house, in Sullivan-street, so that the lieutenant's widow and the boot-maker had the field to themselves. Mrs. Sculpin produced some ale and cigars, and the matrimonial trenches were opened.

Mrs. Sculpin was lofty in proportion as Kamm was humble. She, after a manner, trod the deck of a seventy-two gun frigate, and talked as if through a speaking-trumpet. She shook her fat old shoulders as if she felt epaulettes growing there, and treated Kamm more like a prisoner of war than a suitor: courteous, but not familiar.

'You see, Mr. Kamm,' she said on the subject of the marriage, 'we can't always forget the past. I 'm sure I 'm not in the least proud whatsomever, although we have had rank in our family, Mr. Kamm, and many's the day that I 've seen my poor dear husband in his white trowsers and goold epaulettes, walking arm in arm with admirals, as familiar with them as if he was a crowned king.'

Kamm bent his head as if overcome with this magnificence of this reminiscence, and the condescension that deigned to recall it in his presence.

'Owing to succumstances, Mr. Kamm, we have been obleeged to do things that was beneath us. We was obleeged to dance, Sir, to dance on the boords of a public theayter, the which stage I never sees but I 'm forcibly reminded of the deck of the beautiful ship which my husband commanded, with all the seams running side by side, and the sailors a-touching their hats to him as respectful as men ever was.'

'I 'm sure it must have been a fine sight,' said the poor boot-maker faintly, while Mrs. Sculpin squared her old head as if she felt a cocked hat adorning her rusty brown wig. It will be noticed that Mrs. Sculpin always spoke editorially; and that in the point of choreographic display it was her daughter and not herself she meant, for indeed the old lady's dancing-days were long over, and her steps shook the little house in Sullivan-street as she went up and down-stairs.

'Far be it from me to discourage honest industry, Mr. Kamm; I hope I knows my duty to my country's flag too well to do that; but still you must allow that in point of rank you are no match for us. Grace likes you very much, Mr. Kamm, and I think you a young man of excellent character, but you see——'

'Mrs. Sculpin, madam,' here broke in Kamm, with his fine, honest face all aglow with emotion, 'I love Grace, and you know she loves me. I 'm but a poor boot-maker, but it does n't follow that I myself am made of leather. I am tolerably comfortable. I have a good custom, and have a nice sum in the savings bank. I can make your daughter happy; and when we are married I 'll take a handsome store in Broadway, and become a fashionable boot-maker, and rise in the world. Now, ma'am, may I marry your daughter, yes or no?'

This dashing attack rather upset the pompous old woman, who was very glad to get Grace so well married, but wanted at the same time to air her importance. Kamm was getting impatient at the eternal lieutenant, nor did he like to be constantly kicked with his own boots. Mrs. Sculpin, therefore, leaned back in her chair, feeling that her cocked hat had been somewhat shoved over her eyes.

'Reelly you 're so suddint in your ways, Mr. Kamm. Consider the feeling of a parient, Sir, and the respect we owe to the memory of the lieutenant, who was as proud a man as ever stepped, and whom I 've seen many and many time going to coort in his uniform, and there was n't—though I say it—a handsomer man in——'

'Mrs. Sculpin, will you say yes or no? I 'm a plain man, and I want a plain answer. If I 'm too low for you, say so, and let me go; if not, say so, and let me stay. Now come to the point.'

Kamm was astonished at his own courage; but the fact was, the poor fellow, like all modest men, was a terrible fellow when his blood was up; and he now stood facing the old commodore, with cheeks high-colored and blue eyes sparkling with fire.

The poor commodore found herself beaten. Cocked-hat, epaulettes, were all gone. So she determined to surrender, but still resolved to make a scene of it. She accordingly, to Kamm's consternation, suddenly burst into tears, and flung herself into his arms, sobbing violently.

'Take her, Kamm. You do n't know my feelings. You do n't know what she has been to me. And it is my prayer that her father will look down upon her from heaven, and guide her for the best, for he was always looked on as one of the best officers in the service, and no one that saw him in uniform could doubt it.'

After this outburst she kissed Kamm, and brought in another jug of ale, over which it was arranged that the marriage should take place immediately, provided Grace consented; after which Kamm set off for the theatre for the double purpose of taking a pair of new boots to Mr. Belvidere, and seeing Grace home after the performance, a duty which up to that period had been always faithfully performed by the old commodore, who was the terror of all those reckless young actors that hover about pretty faces in a theatre.

It was not long before Mr. Kamm arrived at the stage-door of the Mulberry theatre, bearing in his hand a bag containing the great Belvidere's boots. An act was just over, and the musicians, interrupted in their game of cards with which they were wont to amuse themselves while the play was going on, in a sort of hole under the stage, were scrambling into the orchestra, and sulkily tuning their instruments; carpenters, engaged ostensibly in setting the next scene, were in reality occupied only in butting against every inoffensive person they could find, under the pretence that they were in the way: or pursuing some unhappy stranger with a great canvas-scene on rollers, which they slid after him with a venomous speed until they drove him into a corner, when they let the scene down on him, and left him immured in darkness. The actors were changing in their dressing-rooms. The call-boy was consulting the prompt book, and seeing that the pocket-book, and the purse of gold, and the false will, which were to be used in the next act, were all ready, and in their proper places. The gas-man was fixing the chandelier for the ball-room; the scene-painter aloft in his studio was putting the finishing-touches to the very last scene of the play; which, when the time came, would be lowered on the stage with the colors wet upon the canvas. All was bustle, hurry, confusion; some swearing, and considerable chaff.

Kamm proceeded to Belvidere's dressing-room with the boots; but not finding that great artist, sauntered on the stage, and looked about him. The stage of the Mulberry Theatre is very large, and full of all sorts of odd nooks and corners; shadowy recesses where one might expect to see the ghosts of deceased dramatists flitting with indignant gesturing at the slaughtering of their plays. Kamm was passing one of those dusty corners, when he thought he heard a voice that he recognized. He stopped involuntarily and listened. It was Grace who was speaking:

'Mr. Belvidere, I wish you would n't speak so, Sir. It 's wrong of you, Sir, indeed it is.'

'But I swear to you, Grace, that I am in earnest. I declare that since you have come to the theatre I have thought only of you. You will not be cruel enough to refuse me the small favor of seeing you home this evening after the play; my carriage will be at the door, and——'

'Indeed, Sir, I cannot. My mother always comes for me, and I would rather go home with her than any one else.'

'Confound your mother,' Kamm heard Belvidere mutter; then he continued: 'Then I swear, Grace, that you must give me a kiss; one little one; only one. Come, now, do n't be foolish.'

'Stop, stop, Sir! I 'll shriek. It 's ungentlemanly of you. Mr. Belvidere, let me go.'

Then came the sound of a struggle, and a scraping of feet on the boards; when a shadowy figure appeared in the dusky recess, and seized Belvidere by the throat.

'Come out here, you scoundrel,' cried Kamm, dragging the comedian out into the broad gas-light, and holding him at arm's length. 'I 'll teach you to set your rascally traps for a young girl that's innocent as the angels,' and he gave the comedian a good shaking.

Now, Mr. Belvidere was not at all deficient in what is called pluck, so the moment he got an opportunity, he dealt Kamm a tremendous blow on the peak of the jaw, which sent him flying back against a scene. 'You infernal cobbler,' he said, 'take that.'

Kamm took it, but unfortunately for Belvidere he was not satisfied with it, and finding that the comedian was a bruiser, the shoe-maker being an excellent gymnast, suddenly betook himself to that terrible mode of fighting called the savate. Accordingly, while Belvidere was in the most approved attitude for resisting an attack with the fists, he was suddenly kicked by Kamm in the face with both feet, and before he could recover he received a third similar application in the region of his wind, which laid him helpless on his back, with gasping mouth, and wondering how the deuce the thing was done. This accomplished,

Kamm turned to where poor Grace was cowering against a wing, white and trembling with terror, and saying to her, 'Grace, you shan't dance here to-night,' tucked her tremulous arm under his, and made his way through the crowd of gaping supers, who made way with great alacrity for a man who could box with his feet as well as with his hands. Grace had not yet donned her theatre-dress, and so he bore her straight home to her mother, where, the moment she was safely housed, she burst into a fit of hysterical tears.

Mrs. Sculpin's indignation was of course majestic, when the affair was related to her. That the daughter of the lieutenant, who was familiar with admirals, and on whom some of the bullion of his epaulettes may be supposed to have descended, should have been outraged by a mere actor like Belvidere, was incredible. I think that at first the old lady contemplated having the offending comedian lashed to a grating, and given nine dozen by a boatswain's mate; but toward the latter end of the evening, under the influence of ale, she mitigated the punishment to a court-martial, of which I have no doubt she intended being president. During many of Mrs. Sculpin's relations concerning her husband and general family connections, I trust it will not be indiscreet to mention, that a certain amount of inattention might have been observed on the part of Grace and Mr. Charles Kamm. In fact, they didn't listen to the old lady; but as soon as Grace's hysterics were over, our friend the boot-maker applied himself to the task of convincing the young danseuse that a speedy marriage was absolutely necessary to the well-being of the nation. After a long sitting, in which a rapid ceremony was finally agreed upon, Kamm took his departure, and reached his little shop, where he found Bully with his head immersed in a bath of feathers, with all his rosy breast-plumes ruffled about him in sleep, until he looked like a pink poppy on one leg.

It was a glorious autumn day when Kamm, arrayed in his best clothes, and shod with a pair of bridal boots, on which he had expended all his ingenuity, issued from his shop-door, on his way to Mrs. Sculpin's. He had bade good-by to the bullfinch, as if he was not coming back again; though in his solitary hours he often thought what a source of pleasure the bird would be to his little wife, when he was away at work. He went across by Houston-street joyously. He was happy and independent. He had been dismissed from the patronage of the Mulberry Theatre, owing to the influence of Belvidere, but he had also withdrawn Grace, in virtue of his position as affianced husband, from her engagement, and made it a stipulation that she should dance no more. Ring out, bells of St. Thomas! Enter Commodore Sculpin, with new cocked-hat and epaulettes! Appear quiet and business-like parson from the vestry, gazing as you pass to the rails, with a sort of vague sympathy on the flushed face of Charles Kamm, aged twenty-three; and the pale face of Grace Sculpin, aged seventeen!

The ceremony passed as all such ceremonies pass. There was no grand display. There were not six bride's-maids, and six grooms-men, which saved Grace the presentation of six lace veils, and Kamm the distribution of six suits of dress-clothes. But invisible grooms-men and bride's-maids hovered about the altar-rails as the vows were made. Truth, Honor, Loyalty and Love were there, and hallowed the simple ceremony.

According to special agreement, Kamm went home that day with his bride. The Sculpin frigate—excuse me, I meant mansion—had a pretty sunny little chamber set apart for the young couple; and our friend the boot-maker agreed to forsake his bunk in the shop for the splendors of a home. Sweetly passed the hours. Forgetful of work, forgetful of every thing except love, Kamm idled away through four days. He was irritated no longer at the commodore's assumption of dignity. He allowed her to wear her epaulettes with impunity; their false glitter was more than recompensed by the light that beamed upon him from Grace's eyes.

It was the fourth day after the wedding when, as Kamm was sitting in the window, toying, after his simple, lover-like fashion, with Grace's hair, when he started up suddenly, and cried: 'Good GOD!'

'What's the matter?' asked Grace, alarmed at the wild look of fright that suddenly overspread his countenance.

'O my GOD! what a wretch I am! The bird! Bully! I shut up my shop, and have not been there for four days, and he is starving; oh-h-h!' and the poor fellow groaned as if he had been stricken with some agonizing disease.

In an instant Grace had rushed for his hat, and the next moment the poor shoe-maker, with a throbbing heart, was running full speed down Houston-street to his neglected store. The picture of that poor, pining, affectionate bird, who loved him so, singing his little songs in darkness and solitude, was ever before him as he ran. He pictured him, as the days went by, descending to his trough and his water-bottle, and finding them empty. He saw him at length exhausted with hunger, huddle into the corner of his cage, and die.

And he ran. How he did run! So fast that when he reached his door he was so much out of breath that he could not for a moment put the key in the lock. In that brief pause he thought he heard a faint, shrill sound. He put his ear close to the door, and listened. I will not tell how his heart smote him as he heard from within, whistled in faint but clear notes the long-disputed air of 'Roslyn Castle.' Poor bird! Deserted by his master for another love, he called up from the depths of his memory, the strain he would not remember when he was present; and in the dreary work-shop, lonely and without food, he bethought himself of the strain that his master loved!

Need I say with what acclamations Bully was received at Mrs. Sculpin's when Kamm brought him thither? What pastures of groundsel were thrust into his cage of mornings? What dainties in the way of seeds and fruits were his portion evermore? He was in all respects, slangular and otherwise, Bully.