The misfortune of the Miscellany, I suppose, was that its

publishers had no capital. They had to resort to the claptraps of

fashion-plates and other engravings, in the hope of forcing an

immediate sale upon persons who, caring for fashion-plates, did not

care for the literary character of the enterprise. It gave a very

happy escape-pipe, however, for the high spirits of some of us who

had just left college, and, through my brother's kindness, I was

sometimes permitted to contribute to the journal. In memory of

those early days of authorship, I select "The South American

Editor" to publish here. For the benefit of the New York Observer,

I will state that the story is not true. And lest any should

complain that it advocates elopements, I beg to observe, in the

seriousness of mature life, that the proposed elopement did not

succeed, and that the parties who proposed it are represented as

having no guardians or keepers but themselves. The article was

first published in 1842.]

It is now more than six years since I received the following letter from

an old classmate of mine, Harry Barry, who had been studying divinity,

and was then a settled minister. It was an answer to a communication I

had sent him the week before.

"TOPSHAM, R. I., January 22, 1836.

"To say the truth, my dear George, your letter startled me a

little. To think that I, scarcely six months settled in the

profession, should be admitted so far into the romance of it as to

unite forever two young runaways like yourself and Miss Julia

What's-her-name is at least curious. But, to give you your due, you

have made a strong case of it, and as Miss ---- (what is her name, I

have not yours at hand) is not under any real guardianship, I do

not see but I am perfectly justified in complying with your rather

odd request. You see I make a conscientious matter of it.

"Write me word when it shall be, and I will be sure to be ready.

Jane is of course in my counsels, and she will make your little

wife feel as much at home as in her father's parlor. Trust us for

secrecy.

"I met her last week--"

But the rest of the letter has nothing to do with the story.

The elopement alluded to in it (if the little transaction deserves so

high-sounding a name) was, in every sense of the words, strictly

necessary. Julia Wentworth had resided for years with her grandfather, a

pragmatic old gentleman, to whom from pure affection she had long

yielded an obedience which he would have had no right to extort, and

which he was sometimes disposed to abuse. He had declared in the most

ingenuous manner that she should never marry with his consent any man of

less fortune than her own would be; and on his consent rested the

prospect of her inheriting his property.

Julia and I, however, care little for money now, we cared still less

then; and her own little property and my own little salary made us

esteem ourselves entirely independent of the old gentleman and his will.

His intention respecting the poor girl's marriage was thundered in her

ears at least once a week, so that we both knew that I had no need to

make court to him; indeed, I had never seen him, always having met her

in walking, or in the evening at party, spectacle, concert, or lecture.

He had lately been more domineering than usual, and I had but little

difficulty in persuading the dear girl to let me write to Harry Barry,

to make the arrangement to which he assented in the letter which I have

copied above. The reasoning which I pressed upon her is obvious. We

loved each other,--the old gentleman could not help that; and as he

managed to make us very uncomfortable in Boston, in the existing state

of affairs, we naturally came to the conclusion that the sooner we

changed that state the better. Our excursion to Topsham would, we

supposed, prove a very disagreeable business to him; but we knew it

would result very agreeably for us, and so, though with a good deal of

maidenly compunction and granddaughterly compassion on Julia's part, we

outvoted him.

I have said that I had no fortune to enable me to come near the old

gentleman's _beau ideal_ of a grand-son-in-law. I was then living on my

salary as a South American editor. Does the reader know what that is?

The South American editor of a newspaper has the uncontrolled charge of

its South American news. Read any important commercial paper for a

month, and at the end of it tell me if you have any clear conception of

the condition of the various republics (!) of South America. If you

have, it is because that journal employs an individual for the sole

purpose of setting them in the clearest order before you, and that

individual is its South American editor. The general-news editor of the

paper will keep the run of all the details of all the histories of all

the rest of the world, but he hardly attempts this in addition. If he

does, he fails. It is therefore necessary, from the most cogent reasons,

that any American news office which has a strong regard for the

consistency or truth of its South American intelligence shall employ

some person competent to take the charge which I held in the

establishment of the Boston Daily Argus at the time of which I am

speaking. Before that enterprising paper was sold, I was its "South

American man"; this being my only employment, excepting that by a

special agreement, in consideration of an addition to my salary, I was

engaged to attend to the news from St. Domingo, Guatemala, and

Mexico.[6]

Monday afternoon, just a fortnight after I received Harry Barry's

letter, in taking my afternoon walk round the Common, I happened to meet

Julia. I always walked in the same direction when I was alone. Julia

always preferred to go the other way; it was the only thing in which we

differed. When we were together I always went her way of course, and

liked it best.

I had told her, long before, all about Harry's letter, and the dear

girl in this walk, after a little blushing and sighing, and half

faltering and half hesitating and feeling uncertain, yielded to my last

and warmest persuasions, and agreed to go to Mrs. Pollexfen's ball that

evening, ready to leave it with me in my buggy sleigh, for a three

hours' ride to Topsham, where we both knew Harry would be waiting for

us. I do not know how she managed to get through tea that evening with

her lion of a grandfather, for she could not then cover her tearful eyes

with a veil as she did through the last half of our walk together. I

know that I got through my tea and such like ordinary affairs by

skipping them. I made all my arrangements, bade Gage and Streeter be

ready with the sleigh at my lodgings (fortunately only two doors from

Mrs. Pollexfen's) at half-past nine o'clock, and was the highest

spirited of men when, on returning to those lodgings myself at eight

o'clock, I found the following missives from the Argus office, which had

been accumulating through the afternoon.

No. 1.

"4 o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:--The southern mail, just in, brings Buenos Ayres papers

six days later, by the Medora, at Baltimore.

"In haste, J. C."

(Mr. C. was the gentleman who opened the newspapers, and arranged the

deaths and marriages; he always kindly sent for me when I was out of the

way.)

No. 2.

"5 o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:-- The U. S. ship Preble is in at Portsmouth; latest

from Valparaiso. The mail is not sorted.

"Yours, J. D."

(Mr. D. arranged the ship news for the Argus.)

No. 3.

"6 o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:--I boarded, this morning, off Cape Cod, the Blunderhead,

from Carthagena, and have a week's later papers.

"Truly yours, J. E."

(Mr. E. was the enterprising commodore of our news-boats.)

No. 4.

"6¼ o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:--I have just opened accidentally the enclosed letter,

from our correspondent at Panama. You will see that it bears a New

Orleans post-mark. I hope it may prove exclusive.

"Yours, J. F."

(Mr. F. was general editor of the Argus.)

No. 5.

"6½ o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:--A seaman, who appears to be an intelligent man, has

arrived this morning at New Bedford, and says he has later news of

the rebellion in Ecuador than any published. The Rosina (his

vessel) brought no papers. I bade him call at your room at eight

o'clock, which he promised to do.

"Truly yours, J. G."

(Mr. G. was clerk in the Argus counting-room.)

No. 6.

"7½ o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:--The papers by the Ville de Lyon, from Havre, which I

have just received, mention the reported escape of M. Bonpland from

Paraguay, the presumed death of Dr. Francia, the probable overthrow

of the government, the possible establishment of a republic, and a

great deal more than I understand in the least.

"These papers had not come to hand when I wrote you this afternoon.

I have left them on your desk at the office.

"In haste, J. F."

I was taken all aback by this mass of odd-looking little notes. I had

spent the afternoon in drilling Singleton, the kindest of friends, as to

what he should do in any probable contingency of news of the next

forty-eight hours, for I did not intend to be absent on a wedding tour

even longer than that time; but I felt that Singleton was entirely

unequal to such a storm of intelligence as this; and, as I hurried down

to the office, my chief sensation was that of gratitude that the cloud

had broken before I was out of the way; for I knew I could do a great

deal in an hour, and I had faith that I might slur over my digest as

quickly as possible, and be at Mrs. Pollexfen's within the time

arranged.

I rushed into the office in that state of zeal in which a man may do

anything in almost no time. But first, I had to go into the

conversation-room, and get the oral news from my sailor; then Mr. H.,

from one of the little news-boats, came to me in high glee, with some

Venezuela Gazettes, which he had just extorted from a skipper, who, with

great plausibility, told him that he knew his vessel had brought no

news, for she never had before. (N.B. In this instance she was the only

vessel to sail, after a three months' blockade.) And then I had handed

to me by Mr. J., one of the commercial gentlemen, a private letter from

Rio Janeiro, which had been lent him. After these delays, with full

materials, I sprang to work--read, read, read; wonder, wonder, wonder;

guess, guess, guess; scratch, scratch, scratch; and scribble, scribble,

scribble, make the only transcript I can give of the operations which

followed. At first, several of the other gentlemen in the room sat

around me; but soon Mr. C., having settled the deaths and marriages, and

the police and municipal reporters immediately after him, screwed out

their lamps and went home; then the editor himself, then the legislative

reporters, then the commercial editors, then the ship-news conductor,

and left me alone.

I envied them that they got through so much earlier than usual, but

scratched on, only interrupted by the compositors coming in for the

pages of my copy as I finished them; and finally, having made my last

translation from the last _Boletin Extraordinario_, sprang up, shouting,

"Now for Mrs. P.'s," and looked at my watch. It was half past one![7] I

thought of course it had stopped,--no; and my last manuscript page was

numbered twenty-eight! Had I been writing there five hours? Yes!

Reader, when you are an editor, with a continent's explosions to

describe, you will understand how one may be unconscious of the passage

of time.

I walked home, sad at heart. There was no light in all Mr. Wentworth's

house; there was none in any of Mrs. Pollexfen's windows;[8] and the

last carriage of her last relation had left her door. I stumbled up

stairs in the dark, and threw myself on my bed. What should I say, what

could I say, to Julia? Thus pondering, I fell asleep.

If I were writing a novel, I should say that, at a late hour the next

day, I listlessly drew aside the azure curtains of my couch, and

languidly rang a silver bell which stood on my dressing-table, and

received from a page dressed in an Oriental costume the notes and

letters which had been left for me since morning, and the newspapers of

the day.

I am not writing a novel.

The next morning, about ten o'clock, I arose and went down to

breakfast. As I sat at the littered table which every one else had left,

dreading to attack my cold coffee and toast, I caught sight of the

morning papers, and received some little consolation from them. There

was the Argus with its three columns and a half of "Important from South

America," while none of the other papers had a square of any

intelligibility excepting what they had copied from the Argus the day

before. I felt a grim smile creeping over my face as I observed this

signal triumph of our paper, and ventured to take a sip of the black

broth as I glanced down my own article to see if there were any glaring

misprints in it. Before I took the second sip, however, a loud peal at

the door-bell announced a stranger, and, immediately after, a note was

brought in for me which I knew was in Julia's handwriting.

"DEAR GEORGE:--Don't be angry; it was not my fault, really it was

not. Grandfather came home just as I was leaving last night, and

was so angry, and said I should not go to the party, and I had to

sit with him all the evening. Do write to me or let me see you; do

something--"

What a load that note took off my mind! And yet, what must the poor girl

have suffered! Could the old man suspect? Singleton was true to me as

steel, I knew. He could not have whispered,--nor Barry; but that Jane,

Barry's wife. O woman! woman! what newsmongers they are! Here were Julia

and I, made miserable for life, perhaps, merely that Jane Barry might

have a good story to tell. What right had Barry to a wife? Not four

years out of college, and hardly settled in his parish. To think that I

had been fool enough to trust even him with the particulars of my

all-important secret! But here I was again interrupted, coffee-cup still

full, toast still untasted, by another missive.

"Tuesday morning.

"SIR:--I wish to see you this morning. Will you call upon me, or

appoint a time and place where I may meet you?

"Yours, JEDEDIAH WENTWORTH."

"Send word by the bearer."

"Tell Mr. Wentworth I will call at his house at eleven o'clock."

The cat was certainly out; Mrs. Barry had told, or some one else had,

who I did not know and hardly cared. The scene was to come now, and I

was almost glad of it. Poor Julia! what a time she must have had with

the old bear!

At eleven o'clock I was ushered into Mr. Wentworth's sitting-room. Julia

was there, but before I had even spoken to her the old gentleman came

bustling across the room, with his "Mr. Hackmatack, I suppose"; and

then followed a formal introduction between me and her, which both of us

bore with the most praiseworthy fortitude and composure, neither

evincing, even by a glance, that we had ever seen or heard of each other

before. Here was another weight off my mind and Julia's. I had wronged

poor Mrs. Barry. The secret was not out--what could he want? It very

soon appeared.

After a minute's discussion of the weather, the snow, and the

thermometer, the old gentleman drew up his chair to mine, with "I think,

sir, you are connected with the Argus office?"

"Yes, sir; I am its South American editor."

"Yes!" roared the old man, in a sudden rage. "Sir, I wish South America

was sunk in the depths of the sea!"

"I am sure I do, sir," replied I, glancing at Julia, who did not,

however, understand me. I had not fully passed out of my last night's

distress.

My sympathizing zeal soothed the old gentleman a little, and he said

more coolly, in an undertone: "Well, sir, you are well informed, no

doubt; tell me, in strict secrecy, sir, between you and me, do you--do

you place full credit--entire confidence in the intelligence in this

morning's paper?"

"Excuse me, sir; what paper do you allude to? Ah! the Argus, I see.

Certainly, sir; I have not the least doubt that it is perfectly

correct."

"No doubt, sir! Do you mean to insult me?--Julia, I told you so; he

says there is no doubt it is true. Tell me again there is some mistake,

will you?" The poor girl had been trying to soothe him with the constant

remark of uninformed people, that the newspapers are always in the

wrong. He turned from her, and rose from his chair in a positive rage.

She was half crying. I never saw her more distressed. What did all this

mean? Were one, two, or all of us crazy?

It soon appeared. After pacing the length of the room once or twice,

Wentworth came up to me again, and, attempting to appear cool, said

between his closed lips: "Do you say you have no doubt that Rio Janeiro

is strictly blockaded?"

"Not the slightest in the world," said I, trying to seem unconcerned.

"Not the slightest, sir? What are you so impudent and cool about it for?

Do you think you are talking of the opening of a rose-bud or the death

of a mosquito? Have you no sympathy with the sufferings of a

fellow-creature? Why, sir!" and the old man's teeth chattered as he

spoke, "I have five cargoes of flour on their way to Rio, and their

captains will--Damn it, sir, I shall lose the whole venture."

The secret was out. The old fool had been sending flour to Rio, knowing

as little of the state of affairs there as a child.

"And do you really mean, sir," continued the old man, "that there is an

embargo in force in Monte Video?"

"Certainly, sir; but I'm very sorry for it."

"Sorry for it! of course you are;--and that all foreigners are sent out

of Buenos Ayres?"

"Undoubtedly, sir. I wish--"

"Who does not wish so? Why, sir, my corresponding friends there are half

across the sea by this time. I wish Rosas was in ---- and that the

Indians have risen near Maranham?"

"Undoubtedly, sir."

"Undoubtedly! I tell you, sir, I have two vessels waiting for cargoes of

India-rubbers there, under a blunder-headed captain, who will do nothing

he has not been bidden to,--obey his orders if he breaks his owners. You

smile, sir? Why, I should have made thirty thousand dollars this winter,

sir, by my India-rubbers, if we had not had this devilish mild, open

weather, you and Miss Julia there have been praising so. But next winter

must be a severe one, and with those India-rubbers I should have

made--But now those Indians,--pshaw! And a revolution in Chili?"

"Yes, sir."

"No trade there! And in Venezuela?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir! Sir, I am ruined. Say 'Yes,

sir,' to that. I have thirteen vessels at this moment in the South

American trade, sir; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. Half of them will be

taken by the piratical scoundrels; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. Their

insurance will not cover them; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. The other half

will forfeit their cargoes, or sell them for next to nothing; say 'Yes,

sir,' to that. I tell you I am a ruined man, and I wish the South

America, and your daily Argus, and you--"

Here the old gentleman's old-school breeding got the better of his rage,

and he sank down in his arm-chair, and, bursting into tears, said:

"Excuse me, sir,--excuse me, sir,--I am too warm."

We all sat for a few moments in silence, but then I took my share of the

conversation. I wish you could have seen the old man's face light up

little by little, as I showed him that to a person who understood the

politics and condition of the mercurial country with which he had

ignorantly attempted to trade, his condition was not near so bad as he

thought it; that though one port was blockaded, another was opened; that

though one revolution thwarted him, a few weeks would show another which

would favor him; that the goods which, as he saw, would be worthless at

the port to which he had sent them, would be valuable elsewhere; that

the vessels which would fail in securing the cargoes he had ordered

could secure others; that the very revolutions and wars which troubled

him would require in some instances large government purchases, perhaps

large contracts for freight, possibly even for passage,--his vessels

might be used for transports; that the very excitement of some

districts might be made to turn to our advantage; that, in short, there

were a thousand chances open to him which skilful agents could readily

improve. I reminded him that a quick run in a clipper schooner could

carry directions to half these skippers of his, to whom, with an

infatuation which I could not and cannot conceive, he had left no

discretion, and who indeed were to be pardoned if they could use none,

seeing the tumult as they did with only half an eye. I talked to him for

half an hour, and went into details to show that my plans were not

impracticable. The old gentleman grew brighter and brighter, and Julia,

as I saw, whenever I stole a glance across the room, felt happier and

happier. The poor girl had had a hard time since he had first heard this

news whispered the evening before.

His difficulties were not over, however; for when I talked to him of the

necessity of sending out one or two skilful agents immediately to take

the personal superintendence of his complicated affairs, the old man

sighed, and said he had no skilful agents to send.

With his customary suspicion, he had no partners, and had never

intrusted his clerks with any general insight into his business.

Besides, he considered them all, like his captains, blunder-headed to

the last degree. I believe it was an idea of Julia's, communicated to me

in an eager, entreating glance, which induced me to propose myself as

one of these confidential agents, and to be responsible for the other.

I thought, as I spoke, of Singleton, to whom I knew I could explain my

plans in full, and whose mercantile experience would make him a valuable

coadjutor. The old gentleman accepted my offer eagerly. I told him that

twenty-four hours were all I wanted to prepare myself. He immediately

took measures for the charter of two little clipper schooners which lay

in port then; and before two days were past, Singleton and I were on our

voyage to South America. Imagine, if you can, how these two days were

spent. Then, as now, I could prepare for any journey in twenty minutes,

and of course I had no little time at my disposal for last words with

Mr. and--Miss Wentworth. How I won on the old gentleman's heart in those

two days! How he praised me to Julia, and then, in as natural affection,

how he praised her to me! And how Julia and I smiled through our tears,

when, in the last good-bys, he said he was too old to write or read any

but business letters, and charged me and her to keep up a close

correspondence, which on one side should tell all that I saw and did,

and on the other hand remind me of all at home.

I have neither time nor room to give the details of that South American

expedition. I have no right to. There were revolutions accomplished in

those days without any object in the world's eyes; and, even in mine,

only serving to sell certain cargoes of long cloths and flour. The

details of those outbreaks now told would make some patriotic presidents

tremble in their seats; and I have no right to betray confidence at

whatever rate I purchased it. Usually, indeed, my feats and Singleton's

were only obtaining the best information and communicating the most

speedy instructions to Mr. Wentworth's vessels, which were made to move

from port to port with a rapidity and intricacy of movement which none

besides us two understood in the least. It was in that expedition that I

travelled almost alone across the continent. I was, I think, the first

white man who ever passed through the mountain path of Xamaulipas, now

so famous in all the Chilian picturesque annuals. I was carrying

directions for some vessels which had gone round the Cape; and what a

time Burrows and Wheatland and I had a week after, when we rode into the

public square of Valparaiso shouting, "Muera la Constitucion,--Viva

Libertad!" by our own unassisted lungs actually raising a rebellion,

and, which was of more importance, a prohibition on foreign flour, while

Bahamarra and his army were within a hundred miles of us. How those

vessels came up the harbor, and how we unloaded them, knowing that at

best our revolution could only last five days! But as I said, I must be

careful, or I shall be telling other people's secrets.

The result of that expedition was that those thirteen vessels all made

good outward voyages, and all but one or two eventually made profitable

home voyages. When I returned home, the old gentleman received me with

open arms. I had rescued, as he said, a large share of that fortune

which he valued so highly. To say the truth, I felt and feel that he had

planned his voyages so blindly, that, without some wiser head than his,

they would never have resulted in anything. They were his last, as they

were almost his first, South American ventures. He returned to his old

course of more methodical trading for the few remaining years of his

life. They were, thank Heaven, the only taste of mercantile business

which I ever had. Living as I did, in the very sunshine of Mr.

Wentworth's favor, I went through the amusing farce of paying my

addresses to Julia in approved form, and in due time received the old

gentleman's cordial assent to our union, and his blessing upon it. In

six months after my return, we were married; the old man as happy as a

king. He would have preferred a little that the ceremony should have

been performed by Mr. B----, his friend and pastor, but readily assented

to my wishes to call upon a dear and early friend of my own.

Harry Barry came from Topsham and performed the ceremony, "assisted by

Rev. Mr. B."

G. H.

ARGUS COTTAGE, April 1, 1842.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] I do not know that this explanation is at all clear. Let

me, as the mathematicians say, give an instance which will illustrate

the importance of this profession. It is now a few months since I

received the following note from a distinguished member of the

Cabinet:--

"WASHINGTON, January --, 1842.

"DEAR SIR:--We are in a little trouble about a little thing. There

are now in this city no less than three gentlemen bearing

credentials to government as Chargés from the Republic of Oronoco.

They are, of course, accredited from three several home

governments. The President signified, when the first arrived, that

he would receive the Chargé from that government, on the 2d

proximo, but none of us know who the right Chargé is. The

newspapers tell nothing satisfactory about it. I suppose you know:

can you write me word before the 2d?

"The gentlemen are: Dr. Estremadura, accredited from the

'Constitutional Government,'--his credentials are dated the 2d of

November; Don Paulo Vibeira, of the 'Friends of the People,' 5th of

November; M. Antonio de Vesga, 'Constitution of 1823,' October

27th. They attach great importance to our decision, each having

scrip to sell. In haste, truly yours."

To this letter I returned the following reply:--

"SIR:--Our latest dates from Oronoco are to the 13th ultimo. The

'Constitution of '23' was then in full power. If, however, the

policy of our government be to recognize the gentlemen whose

principals shall be in office on the 2d proximo, it is a very

different affair.

"You may not be acquainted with the formulas for ascertaining the

duration of any given modern revolution. I now use the following,

which I find almost exactly correct.

"Multiply the age of the President by the number of statute miles

from the equator, divide by the number of pages in the given

Constitution; the result will be the length of the outbreak, in

days. This formula includes, as you will see, an allowance for the

heat of the climate, the zeal of the leader, and the verbosity of

the theorists. The Constitution of 1823 was reproclaimed on the

25th of October last. If you will give the above formula into the

hands of any of your clerks, the calculation from it will show that

that government will go out of power on the 1st of February, at 25

minutes after 1, P. M. Your choice, on the 2d, must be therefore

between Vibeira and Estremadura; here you will have no difficulty.

Bobádil (Vibeira's principal) was on the 13th ultimo confined under

sentence of death, at such a distance from the capital that he

cannot possibly escape and get into power before the 2d of

February. The 'Friends of the People,' in Oronoco, have always

moved slowly; they never got up an insurrection in less than

nineteen days' canvassing; that was in 1839. Generally they are

even longer. Of course, Estremadura will be your man.

"Believe me, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

"GEORGE HACKMATACK."

The Cabinet had the good sense to act on my advice. My information

proved nearly correct, the only error being one of seven minutes in the

downfall of the 1823 Constitution. This arose from my making no

allowance for difference of longitude between Piaut, where their

government was established, and Opee, where it was crushed. The

difference of time between those places is six minutes and fifty-three

seconds, as the reader may see on a globe.

Estremadura was, of course, presented to the President, and sold his

scrip.

[7] Newspaper men of 1868 will be amused to think that half

past one was late in 1836. At that time the "Great Western Mail" was due

in Boston at 6 P. M., and there was no later news except "local," or an

occasional horse express.

[8] The reader will observe the Arcadian habits of 1836, when

the German was yet unknown.

THE OLD AND THE NEW, FACE TO FACE.

A THUMB-NAIL SKETCH.

[This essay was published in Sartain's Magazine, in 1852, as "A

Thumb-nail Sketch," having received one of ten premiums which Mr.

Sartain offered to encourage young writers. It had been written a few

years earlier, some time before the studies of St. Paul's life by

Conybeare and Howson, now so well known, were made public. The

chronology of my essay does not precisely agree with that of these

distinguished scholars. But I make no attempt now either to recast the

essay or to discuss the delicate and complicated questions which belong

to the chronology of Paul's life or to that of Nero; for there is no

question with regard to the leading facts. At the end of twenty years I

may again express the wish that some master competent to the greatest

themes might take the trial of Paul as the subject of a picture.]

In a Roman audience-chamber, the old civilization and the new

civilization brought out, at the very birth of the new, their chosen

champions.

In that little scene, as in one of Rembrandt's thumbnail studies for a

great picture, the lights and shades are as distinct as they will ever

be in the largest scene of history. The champions were perfect

representatives of the parties. And any man, with the soul of a man,

looking on, could have prophesied the issue of the great battle from the

issue of that contest.

The old civilization of the Roman Empire, just at that time, had reached

a point which, in all those outward forms which strike the eye, would

regard our times as mean indeed. It had palaces of marble, where even

modern kings would build of brick with a marble front to catch the eye;

it counted its armies by thousands, where we count ours by hundreds; it

surmounted long colonnades with its exquisite statues, for which modern

labor digs deep in ruined cities, because it cannot equal them from its

own genius; it had roads, which are almost eternal, and which, for their

purposes, show a luxury of wealth and labor that our boasted locomotion

cannot rival. These are its works of a larger scale. And if you enter

the palaces, you find pictures of matchless worth, rich dresses which

modern looms cannot rival, and sumptuous furniture at which modern times

can only wonder. The outside of the ancient civilization is unequalled

by the outside of ours, and for centuries will be unequalled by it. We

have not surpassed it there. And we see how it attained this

distinction, such as it was. It came by the constant concentration of

power. Power in few hands is the secret of its display and glory. And

thus that form of civilization attained its very climax in the moment of

the greatest unity of the Roman Empire. When the Empire nestled into

rest; after the convulsions in which it was born; when a generation had

passed away of those who had been Roman citizens; when a generation

arose, which, excepting one man, the emperor, was a nation of Roman

subjects,--then the Empire was at its height of power, its

centralization was complete, the system of its civilization was at the

zenith of its success.

At that moment it was that there dawned at Rome the first gray

morning-light of the new civilization.

At that moment it was that that short scene, in that one chamber,

contrasted the two as clearly as they can be contrasted even in long

centuries.

There is one man, the emperor, who is a precise type, an exact

representative, of the old. That man is brought face to face with

another who is a precise type, an exact representative, of the new.

Only look at them as they stand there! The man who best illustrates the

old civilization owes to it the most careful nurture. From his childhood

he has been its petted darling. Its principal is concentration under one

head. He is that head. When he is a child, men know he will be emperor

of the world. The wise men of the world teach him; the poets of the

world flatter him; the princes of the world bow to him. He is trained in

all elegant accomplishments; he is led forward through a graceful,

luxurious society. His bearing is that of an emperor; his face is the

face of fine physical beauty. Imagine for yourself the sensual

countenance of a young Bacchus, beautiful as Milton's devils; imagine

him clad in splendor before which even English luxury is mean; arrayed

in jewels, to which even Eastern pomp is tinsel; imagine an expression

of tired hate, of low, brutal lust, hanging on those exquisite

licentious features, and you have before you the type of Roman

civilization. It is the boy just budding into manhood, whom later times

will name as the lowest embodiment of meanness and cruelty! You are

looking upon Nero!

Not only is this man an exact type of the ancient civilization, its

central power, its outside beauty, but the precise time of this sketch

of ours is the exact climax of the _moral_ results of the ancient

civilization. We are to look at Nero just when he has returned to Rome

from a Southern journey.[9] That journey had one object, which

succeeded. To his after-life it gives one memory, which never dies. He

has travelled to his beautiful country palace, that he might kill his

mother!

We can picture to ourselves Agrippina, by knowing that she was Nero's

mother, and our picture will not fail in one feature. She has all the

beauty of sense, all the attraction of passion. Indeed, she is the

Empress of Rome, because she is queen of beauty--and of lust. She is

most beautiful among the beautiful of Rome; but what is that beauty of

feature in a state of whose matrons not one is virtuous, of whose

daughters not one is chaste? It is the beauty of sense alone, fit

adornment of that external grandeur, of that old society.

In the infancy of her son, this beautiful Agrippina consulted a troop of

fortune-tellers as to his fate; and they told her that he would live to

be Emperor of Rome, and to kill his mother. With all the ecstasy of a

mother's pride fused so strangely with all the excess of an ambitious

woman's love of power, she cried in answer, "He may kill me, if only he

rules Rome!"[10]

She spoke her own fate in these words.

Here is the account of it by Tacitus. Nero had made all the

preparations; had arranged a barge, that of a sudden its deck might fall

heavily upon those in the cabin, and crush them in an instant. He meant

thus to give to the murder which he planned the aspect of an accident.

To this fatal vessel he led Agrippina. He talked with her affectionately

and gravely on the way; "and when they parted at the lakeside, with his

old boyish familiarity he pressed her closely to his heart, either to

conceal his purpose, or because the last sight of a mother, on the eve

of death, touched even his cruel nature, and then bade her farewell."

Just at the point upon the lake where he had directed, as the Empress

sat in her cabin talking with her attendants, the treacherous deck was

let fall upon them all. But the plot failed. She saw dead at her feet

one of her favorites, crushed by the sudden blow. But she had escaped

it. She saw that death awaited them all upon the vessel. The men around

sprang forward, ready to do their master's bidding in a less clumsy and

more certain way. But the Empress, with one of her attendants, sprang

from the treacherous vessel into the less treacherous waves. And there,

this faithful friend of hers, with a woman's wit and a woman's devotion,

drew on her own head the blows and stabs of the murderers above, by

crying, as if in drowning, "Save me, I am Nero's mother!" Uttering those

words of self-devotion, she was killed by the murderers above, while the

Empress, in safer silence, buoyed up by fragments of the wreck, floated

to the shore.

Nero had failed thus in secret crime, and yet he knew that he could not

stop here. And the next day after his mother's deliverance, he sent a

soldier to her palace, with a guard; and there, where she was deserted

even by her last attendant, without pretence of secrecy, they put to

death the daughter and the mother of a Cæsar. And Nero only waits to

look with a laugh upon the beauty of the corpse, before he returns to

resume his government at Rome.

That moment was the culminating moment of the ancient civilization. It

is complete in its centralizing power; it is complete in its external

beauty; it is complete in its crime. Beautiful as Eden to the eye, with

luxury, with comfort, with easy indolence to all; but dust and ashes

beneath the surface! It is corrupted at the head! It is corrupted at

the heart! There is nothing firm!

This is the moment which I take for our little picture. At this very

moment there is announced the first germ of the new civilization. In the

very midst of this falsehood, there sounds one voice of truth; in the

very arms of this giant, there plays the baby boy who is to cleave him

to the ground. This Nero slowly returns to the city. He meets the

congratulations of a senate, which thank him and the gods that he has

murdered his own mother. With the agony of an undying conscience

torturing him, he strives to avert care by amusement. He hopes to turn

the mob from despising him by the grandeur of their public

entertainments. He enlarges for them the circus. He calls unheard-of

beasts to be baited and killed for their enjoyment. The finest actors

rant, the sweetest musicians sing, that Nero may forget his mother, and

that his people may forget him.

At that period, the statesmen who direct the machinery of affairs inform

him that his personal attention is required one morning for a state

trial, to be argued before the Emperor in person. Must the Emperor be

there? May he not waste the hours in the blandishments of lying

courtiers, or the honeyed falsehoods of a mistress? If he chooses thus

to postpone the audience, be it so; Seneca, Burrhus, and his other

counsellors will obey. But the time will come when the worn-out boy will

be pleased some morning with the almost forgotten majesty of state. The

time comes one day. Worn out by the dissipation of the week, fretted by

some blunder of his flatterers, he sends for his wiser counsellers, and

bids them lead him to the audience-chamber, where he will attend to

these cases which need an Emperor's decision. It is at that moment that

we are to look upon him.

He sits there, upon that unequalled throne, his face sickly pale with

boyish debauchery; his young forehead worn with the premature sensual

wrinkles of lust; and his eyes bloodshot with last night's intemperance.

He sits there, the Emperor-boy, vainly trying to excite himself, and

forget her, in the blazonry of that pomp, and bids them call in the

prisoner.

A soldier enters, at whose side the prisoner has been chained for years.

This soldier is a tried veteran of the Prætorian cohorts. He was

selected, that from him this criminal could not escape; and for that

purpose they have been inseparably bound. But, as he leads that other

through the hall, he looks at him with a regard and earnestness which

say he is no criminal to him. Long since, the criminal has been the

guardian of his keeper. Long since, the keeper has cared for the

prisoner with all the ardor of a new-found son's affection.

They lead that gray-haired captive forward, and with his eagle eye he

glances keenly round the hall. That flashing eye has ere now bade

monarchs quail; and those thin lips have uttered words which shall make

the world ring till the last moment of the world shall come. The stately

Eastern captive moves unawed through the assembly, till he makes a

subject's salutation to the Emperor-judge who is to hear him. And when,

then, the gray-haired sage kneels before the sensual boy, you see the

prophet of the new civilization kneel before the monarch of the old! You

see Paul make a subject's formal reverence to Nero![11]

Let me do justice to the court which is to try him. In that

judgment-hall there are not only the pomp of Rome, and its crime; we

have also the best of its wisdom. By the dissolute boy, Nero, there

stands the prime minister Seneca, the chief of the philosophers of his

time; "Seneca the saint," cry the Christians of the next century. We

will own him to be Seneca the wise, Seneca almost the good. To this sage

had been given the education of the monster who was to rule the world.

This sage had introduced him into power, had restrained his madness when

he could, and with his colleague had conducted the general

administration of the Empire with the greatest honor, while the boy was

wearing out his life in debauchery in the palace. Seneca dared say more

to Nero, to venture more with him, than did any other man. For the young

tiger was afraid of his old master long after he had tasted blood. Yet

Seneca's system was a cowardly system. It was the best of Roman morality

and Greek philosophy, and still it was mean. His daring was the bravest

of the men of the old civilization. He is the type of their excellences,

as is Nero the model of their power and their adornments. And yet all

that Seneca's daring could venture was to seduce the baby-tyrant into

the least injurious of tyrannies. From the plunder of a province he

would divert him by the carnage of the circus. From the murder of a

senator he could lure him by some new lust at home. From the ruin of the

Empire, he could seduce him by diverting him with the ruin of a noble

family. And Seneca did this with the best of motives. He said he used

all the power in his hands, and he thought he did. He was one of those

men of whom all times have their share. The bravest of his time, he

satisfied himself with alluring the beardless Emperor by petty crime

from public wrong; he could flatter him to the expedient. He dared not

order him to the right.

But Seneca knew what was right. Seneca also had a well-trained

conscience, which told him of right and of wrong. Seneca's brother,

Gallio, had saved Paul's life when a Jewish mob would have dragged him

to pieces in Corinth; and the legend is that Seneca and Paul had

corresponded with each other before they stood together in Nero's

presence, the one as counsellor, the other as the criminal.[12] When

Paul arose from that formal salutation, when the apostle of the new

civilization spoke to the tottering monarch of the old, if there had

been one man in that assemblage, could he have failed to see that that

was a turning-point in the world's history? Before him in that little

hall, in that little hour, was passing the scene which for centuries

would be acted out upon the larger stage.

Faith on the one side, before expediency and cruelty on the other! Paul

before Seneca and Nero! He was ready to address Nero, with the eloquence

and vehemence which for years had been demanding utterance.

He stood at length before the baby Cæsar, to whose tribunal he had

appealed from the provincial court of a doubting Festus and a trembling

Agrippa.

And who shall ask what words the vigorous Christian spoke to the dastard

boy! Who that knows the eloquence which rung out on the ears of

astonished Stoics at Athens, which commanded the incense and the

hecatombs of wandering peasants in Asia, which stilled the gabbling

clamor of a wild mob at Jerusalem,--who will doubt the tone in which

Paul spoke to Nero! The boy quailed for the moment before the man! The

gilded dotard shrunk back from the home truths of the new, young,

vigorous faith: the ruler of a hundred legions was nothing before the

God-commissioned prisoner.

No; though at this audience all men forsook Paul, as he tells us; though

not one of the timid converts were there, but the soldier chained at

his side,--still he triumphed over Nero and Nero's minister.

From that audience-hall those three men retire. The boy, grown old in

lust, goes thence to be an hour alone, to ponder for an hour on this

God, this resurrection, and this truth, of which the Jew, in such

uncourtly phrase, has harangued him. To be alone, until the spectre of a

dying mother rises again to haunt him, to persecute him and drive him

forth to his followers and feasters, where he will try to forget Paul

and the Saviour and God, where he would be glad to banish them forever.

He does not banish them forever! Henceforward, whenever that spectre of

a mother comes before him, it must re-echo the words of God and eternity

which Paul has spoken. Whenever the chained and bleeding captive of the

arena bends suppliant before him, there must return the memory of the

only captive who was never suppliant before him, and his words of sturdy

power!

And Seneca? Seneca goes home with the mortified feelings of a great man

who has detected his own meanness.

We all know the feeling; for all God's children might be great, and it

is with miserable mortification that we detect ourselves in one or

another pettiness. Seneca goes home to say: "This wild _Easterner_ has

rebuked the Emperor as I have so often wanted to rebuke him. He stood

there, as I have wanted to stand, a man before a brute.

"He said what I have thought, and have been afraid to say. Downright,

straightforward, he told the Emperor truths as to Rome, as to man, and

as to his vices, which I have longed to tell him. He has done what I am

afraid to do. He has dared this, which I have dallied with, and left

undone. _What is the mystery of his power?_"

Seneca did not know. Nero did not know. The "Eastern mystery" was in

presence before them, and they knew it not!

What was the mystery of Paul's power?

Paul leaves them with the triumph of a man who has accomplished the hope

of long years. Those solemn words of his, "After that, I _must_ also see

Rome," expressed the longing of years, whose object now, in part, at

least, is gratified. He must see Rome!

It is God's mission to him that he see Rome and its Emperor. Paul has

seen with the spirit's eye what we have seen since in history,--that he

is to be the living link by which the electric fire of life should pass

first from religious Asia to quicken this dead, brutish Europe. He knows

that he is God's messenger to bear this mystery of life eternal from the

one land to the other, and to unfold it there. And to-day has made real,

in fact, this his inward confidence. To-day has put the seal of fact on

that vision of his, years since, when he first left his Asiatic home. A

prisoner in chains, still he has to-day seen the accomplishment of the

vows, hopes, and resolutions of that field of Troy, most truly famous

from the night he spent there. There was another of these hours when God

brings into one spot the acts which shall be the _argument_ of centuries

of history. Paul had come down there in his long Asiatic

journeys,--Eastern in his lineage, Eastern in his temperament, Eastern

in his outward life, and Eastern in his faith,--to that narrow

Hellespont, which for long ages has separated East from West, tore madly

up the chains which would unite them, overwhelmed even love when it

sought to intermarry them, and left their cliffs frowning eternal hate

from shore to shore. Paul stood upon the Asian shore and looked across

upon the Western. There were Macedonia and the hills of Greece, here

Troas and the ruins of Ilium. The names speak war. The blue Hellespont

has no voice but separation, except to Paul. But to Paul, sleeping, it

might be, on the tomb of Achilles, that night the "man of Macedonia"

appears, and bids him come over to avenge Asia, to pay back the debt of

Troy.

"Come over _and help us_." Give us life, for we gave you death. Give us

help for we gave you ruin. Paul was not disobedient to the heavenly

vision. The Christian Alexander, he crosses to Macedon with the words of

peace instead of war,--the Christian shepherd of the people, he carries

to Greece, from Troy, the tidings of salvation instead of carnage, of

charity instead of license. And he knows that to Europe it is the

beginning of her new civilization, it is the dawn of her new warfare, of

her new poetry, of her reign of heroes who are immortal.

That _faith_ of his, now years old, has this day received its crowning

victory. This day, when he has faced Nero and Seneca together, may well

stand in his mind as undoing centuries of bloodshed and of license.

And in this effort, and in that spiritual strength which had nerved him

in planning it and carrying it through, was the "Asian mystery." Ask

what was the secret of Paul's power as he bearded the baby Emperor, and

abashed the baby Philosopher? What did he give the praise to, as he left

that scene? What was the principle in action there, but faith in the new

life, faith in the God who gave it!

We do not wonder, as Seneca wondered, that such a man as Paul dared say

anything to such a boy as Nero! The absolute courage of the new faith

was the motive-power which forced it upon the world. Here were the

sternest of morals driven forward with the most ultra bravery.

Perfect faith gave perfect courage to the first witnesses. And there was

the "mystery" of their victories.

And so, in this case, when after a while Seneca again reminded Nero of

his captive, poor Nero did not dare but meet him again. Yet, when he met

him again in that same judgment-hall, he did not dare hear him long;

and we may be sure that there were but few words before, with such

affectation of dignity as he could summon, he bade them set the prisoner

free.

Paul free! The old had faced the new. Each had named its champion. And

the new conquers!

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Anno Christi, 60.

[10] Tacit. Annal., xiv. 9.

[11] Anno Christi, 60. See Neander, P. & T., B. iii. ch. x.

[12] This correspondence, as preserved in the collections of fragments,

has too much the aspect of a school-boy exercise to claim much credit,

though high authorities support it as genuine. But the probability that

there was such a correspondence, though now lost, is very strong.

THE DOT AND LINE ALPHABET.

[This sketch was originally published in the Atlantic Monthly for

October, 1858, just at the time that the first Atlantic Cable,

whose first prattle had been welcomed by the acclamations of a

continent, gasped its last under the manipulations of De Sauty. It

has since been copied by Mr. Prescott in his valuable hand-book of

the electric telegraph.

The war, which has taught us all so much, has given a brilliant

illustration of the dot and line alphabet, wholly apart from the

electric use of it, which will undoubtedly be often repeated. In

the movements of our troops under General Foster in North Carolina,

Dr. J. B. Upham of Boston, the distinguished medical director in

that department, equally distinguished for the success with which

he has led forward the musical education of New England, trained a

corps of buglers to converse with each other by long and short

bugle-notes, and thus to carry information with literal accuracy

from point to point at any distance within which the tones of a

bugle could be heard. It will readily be seen that there are many

occasions in military affairs when such means of conversation might

prove of inestimable value. Mr. Tuttle, the astronomer, on duty in

the same campaign, made a similar arrangement with long and short

flashes of light.]

Just in the triumph week of that Great Telegraph which takes its name

from the Atlantic Monthly, I read in the September number of that

journal the revelations of an observer who was surprised to find that he

had the power of reading, as they run, the revelations of the wire. I

had the hope that he was about to explain to the public the more general

use of this instrument,--which, with a stupid fatuity, the public has as

yet failed to grasp. Because its signals have been first applied by

means of electro-magnetism, and afterwards by means of the chemical

power of electricity, the many-headed people refuses to avail itself, as

it might do very easily, of the same signals for the simpler

transmission of intelligence, whatever the power employed.

The great invention of Mr. Morse is his register and alphabet. He

himself eagerly disclaims any pretension to the original conception of

the use of electricity as an errand-boy. Hundreds of people had thought

of that and suggested it; but Morse was the first to give the errand-boy

such a written message, that he could not lose it on the way, nor

mistake it when he arrived. The public, eager to thank Morse, as he

deserves, thanks him for something he did not invent. For this he

probably cares very little; nor do I care more. But the public does not

thank him for what he did originate,--this invaluable and simple

alphabet. Now, as I use it myself in every detail of life, and see every

hour how the public might use it, if it chose, I am really sorry for

this negligence,--both on the score of his fame, and of general

convenience.

Please to understand, then, ignorant Reader, that this curious alphabet

reduces all the complex machinery of Cadmus and the rest of the

writing-masters to characters as simple as can be made by a dot, a

space, and a line, variously combined. Thus, the marks .- designate the

letter A. The marks -... designate the letter B. All the other letters

are designated in as simple a manner.

Now I am stripping myself of one of the private comforts of my life,

(but what will one not do for mankind?) when I explain that this simple

alphabet need not be confined to electrical signals. _Long_ and _short_

make it all,--and wherever long and short can be combined, be it in

marks, sounds, sneezes, fainting-fits, canes, or children, ideas can be

conveyed by this arrangement of the long and short together. Only last

night I was talking scandal with Mrs. Wilberforce at a summer party at

the Hammersmiths. To my amazement, my wife, who scarcely can play "The

Fisher's Hornpipe," interrupted us by asking Mrs. Wilberforce if she

could give her the idea of an air in "The Butcher of Turin." Mrs.

Wilberforce had never heard that opera,--indeed, had never heard of it.

My angel-wife was surprised,--stood thrumming at the piano,--wondered

she could not catch this very odd bit of discordant accord at all,--but

checked herself in her effort, as soon as I observed that her long notes

and short notes, in their tum-tee, tee,--tee-tee, tee-tum tum, meant,

"He's her brother." The conversation on her side turned from "The

Butcher of Turin," and I had just time on the hint thus given me by Mrs.

I. to pass a grateful eulogium on the distinguished statesman whom Mrs.

Wilberforce, with all a sister's care, had rocked in his

baby-cradle,--whom, but for my wife's long and short notes, I should

have clumsily abused among the other statesmen of the day.

You will see, in an instant, awakening Reader, that it is not the

business simply of "operators" in telegraphic dens to know this Morse

alphabet, but your business, and that of every man and woman. If our

school committees understood the times, it would be taught, even before

phonography or physiology, at school. I believe both these sciences now

precede the old English alphabet.

As I write these words, the bell of the South Congregational strikes

dong, dong, dong,--dong, dong, dong, dong,--dong,--dong. Nobody has

unlocked the church-door. I know that, for I am locked up in the vestry.

The old tin sign, "In case of fire, the key will be found at the

opposite house," has long since been taken down, and made into the nose

of a water-pot. Yet there is no Goody Two-Shoes locked in. No one except

me, and certainly I am not ringing the bell. No! But, thanks to Dr.

Channing's Fire Alarm,[13] the bell is informing the South End that

there is a fire in District Dong-dong-dong,--that is to say, District

No. 3. Before I have explained to you so far, the "Eagle" engine, with a

good deal of noise, has passed the house on its way to that fated

district. An immense improvement this on the old system, when the

engines radiated from their houses in every possible direction, and the

fire was extinguished by the few machines whose lines of quest happened

to cross each other at the particular place where the child had been

building cob-houses out of lucifer-matches in a paper warehouse. Yes, it

is a very great improvement. All those persons, like you and me, who

have no property in District Dong-dong-dong, can now sit at home at

ease;--and little need we think upon the mud above the knees of those

who have property in that district and are running to look after it. But

for them the improvement only brings misery. You arrive wet, hot or

cold, or both, at the large District No. 3, to find that the

lucifer-matches were half a mile away from your store,--and that your

own private watchman, even, had not been waked by the working of the

distant engines. Wet property-holder, as you walk home, consider this.

When you are next in the Common Council, vote an appropriation for

applying Morse's alphabet of long and short to the bells. Then they can

be made to sound intelligibly. D[=au]ng d[)i]ng

d[)i]ng,--d[)i]ng,--d[)i]ng d[=au]ng,--d[=au]ng d[=au]ng d[=au]ng, and

so on, will tell you as you wake in the night that it is Mr. B.'s store

which is on fire, and not yours, or that it is yours and not his. This

is not only a convenience to you and a relief to your wife and family,

who will thus be spared your excursions to unavailable and

unsatisfactory fires, and your somewhat irritated return,--it will be a

great relief to the Fire Department. How placid the operations of a fire

where none attend except on business! The various engines arrive, but no

throng of distant citizens, men and boys, fearful of the destruction of

their all. They have all roused on their pillows to learn that it is No.

530 Pearl Street which is in flames. All but the owner of No. 530 Pearl

Street have dropped back to sleep. He alone has rapidly repaired to the

scene. That is he, who stands in the uncrowded street with the Chief

Engineer, on the deck of No. 18, as she plays away. His property

destroyed, the engines retire,--he mentions the amount of his insurance

to those persons who represent the daily press, they all retire to their

homes,--and the whole is finished as simply, almost, as was his private

entry in his day-book the afternoon before.[14]

This is what might be, if the magnetic alarm only struck _long_ and

_short_, and we had all learned Morse's alphabet. Indeed, there is

nothing the bells could not tell, if you would only give them time

enough. We have only one chime, for musical purposes, in the town. But,

without attempting tunes, only give the bells the Morse alphabet, and

every bell in Boston might chant in monotone the words of "Hail

Columbia" at length, every Fourth of July. Indeed, if Mr. Barnard should

report any day that a discouraged 'prentice-boy had left town for his

country home, all the bells could instantly be set to work to speak

articulately, in language regarding which the dullest imagination need

not be at loss,

"Turn again, Higginbottom,

Lord Mayor of Boston!"

I have suggested the propriety of introducing this alphabet into the

primary schools. I need not say I have taught it to my own

children,--and I have been gratified to see how rapidly it made head,

against the more complex alphabet, in the grammar schools. Of course it

does;--an alphabet of two characters matched against one of

twenty-six,--or of forty-odd, as the very odd one of the phonotypists

employ! On the Franklin-medal day I went to the Johnson-School

examination. One of the committee asked a nice girl what was the capital

of Brazil. The child looked tired and pale, and, for an instant,

hesitated. But, before she had time to commit herself, all answering was

rendered impossible by an awful turn of whooping-cough which one of my

own sons was seized with,--who had gone to the examination with me.

Hawm, hem hem;--hem hem hem;--hem, hem;--hawm, hem hem;--hem hem

hem;--hem, hem,--barked the poor child, who was at the opposite extreme

of the school-room. The spectators and the committee looked to see him

fall dead with a broken blood-vessel. I confess that I felt no alarm,

after I observed that some of his gasps were long and some very

_staccato_;--nor did pretty little Mabel Warren. She recovered her

color,--and, as soon as silence was in the least restored, answered,

"_Rio_ is the capital of Brazil,"--as modestly and properly as if she

had been taught it in her cradle. They are nothing but children, any of

them,--but that afternoon, after they had done all the singing the city

needed for its annual entertainment of the singers, I saw Bob and Mabel

start for a long expedition into West Roxbury,--and when he came back, I

know it was a long featherfew, from her prize school-bouquet, that he

pressed in his Greene's "Analysis," with a short frond of maiden's hair.

I hope nobody will write a letter to "The Atlantic," to say that these

are very trifling uses. The communication of useful information is never

trifling. It is as important to save a nice child from mortification on

examination-day, as it is to tell Mr. Fremont that he is not elected

President. If, however, the reader is distressed, because these

illustrations do not seem to his more benighted observation to belong to

the big bow-wow strain of human life, let him consider the arrangement

which ought to have been made years since, for lee shores, railroad

collisions, and that curious class of maritime accidents where one

steamer runs into another under the impression that she is a light

house. Imagine the Morse alphabet applied to a steam-whistle, which is

often heard five miles. It needs only _long_ and _short_ again. "_Stop

Comet_," for instance, when you send it down the railroad line, by the

wire, is expressed thus:

... - .. .....

... .. -- . -

Very good message, if Comet happens to be at the telegraph station when

it comes! But what if Comet has gone by? Much good will your trumpery

message do then! If, however, you have the wit to sound your long and

short on an engine-whistle, thus;--Scre scre, scre; screeee; scre scre;

scre scre scre scre scre; scre scre scre,--scre scre; screeeee screeeee;

scre; screeeee;--why, then the whole neighborhood, for five miles

around, will know that Comet must stop, if only they understand spoken

language,--and among others, the engineman of Comet will understand it;

and Comet will not run into that wreck of worlds which gives the

order,--with the nucleus of hot iron and his tail of five hundred tons

of coal.--So, of the signals which fog-bells can give, attached to

light-houses. How excellent to have them proclaim through the darkness,

"I am Wall"! Or of signals for steamship-engineers. When our friends

were on board the "Arabia" the other day, and she and the "Europa"

pitched into each other,--as if, on that happy week, all the continents

were to kiss and join hands all round,--how great the relief to the

passengers on each, if, through every night of their passage, collision

had been prevented by this simple expedient! One boat would have

screamed, "Europa, Europa, Europa," from night to morning,--and the

other, "Arabia, Arabia, Arabia,"--and neither would have been mistaken,

as one unfortunately was, for a light-house.

The long and short of it is, that whoever can mark distinctions of time

can use this alphabet of long-and-short, however he may mark them. It is

therefore within the compass of all intelligent beings, except those who

are no longer conscious of the passage of time, having exchanged its

limitations for the wider sweep of eternity. The illimitable range of

this alphabet, however, is not half disclosed when this has been said.

Most articulate language addresses itself to one sense, or at most to

two, sight and sound. I see, as I write, that the particular

illustrations I have given are all of them confined to signals seen or

signals heard. But the dot-and-line alphabet, in the few years of its

history, has already shown that it is not restricted to these two

senses, but makes itself intelligible to all. Its message, of course, is

heard as well as read. Any good operator understands the sounds of its

ticks upon the flowing strip of paper, as well as when he sees it. As he

lies in his cot at midnight, he will expound the passing message without

striking a light to see it. But this is only what may be said of any

written language. You can read this article to your wife, or she can

read it, as she prefers; that is, she chooses whether it shall address

her eye or her ear. But the long-and-short alphabet of Morse and his

imitators despises such narrow range. It addresses whichever of the five

senses the listener chooses. This fact is illustrated by a curious set

of anecdotes,--never yet put in print, I think,--of that critical

despatch which in one night announced General Taylor's death to this

whole land. Most of the readers of these lines probably read that

despatch in the morning's paper. The compositors and editors had read

it. To them it was a despatch to the eye. But half the operators at the

stations _heard_ it ticked out, by the register stroke, and knew it

before they wrote it down for the press. To them it was a despatch to

the ear. My good friend Langenzunge had not that resource. He had just

been promised, by the General himself (under whom he served at Palo

Alto), the office of Superintendent of the Rocky Mountain Lines. He was

returning from Washington over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, on a

freight-train, when he heard of the President's danger. Langenzunge

loved Old Rough and Ready,--and he felt badly about his own office, too.

But his extempore train chose to stop at a forsaken shanty-village on

the Potomac, for four mortal hours, at midnight. What does he do, but

walk down the line into the darkness, climb a telegraph-post, cut a

wire, and applied the two ends to his tongue, to _taste_, at the fatal

moment, the words, "Died at half past ten." Poor Langenzunge! he hardly

had nerve to solder the wire again. Cogs told me that they had just

fitted up the Naguadavick stations with Bain's chemical revolving disk.

This disk is charged with a salt of potash, which, when the electric

spark passes through it, is changed to Prussian blue. Your despatch is

noiselessly written in dark blue dots and lines. Just as the disk

started on that fatal despatch, and Cogs bent over it to read, his

spirit-lamp blew up,--as the dear things will. They were beside

themselves in the lonely, dark office; but, while the men were fumbling

for matches, which would not go, Cogs's sister, Nydia, a sweet blind

girl, who had learned Bain's alphabet from Dr. Howe at South Boston,

bent over the chemical paper, and _smelt_ out the prussiate of potash,

as it formed itself in lines and dots to tell the sad story. Almost

anybody used to reading the blind books can read the embossed Morse

messages with the finger,--and so this message was read at all the

midnight way-stations where no night-work is expected, and where the

companies do not supply fluid or oil. Within my narrow circle of

acquaintance, therefore, there were these simultaneous instances, where

the same message was seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt. So

universal is the dot-and-line alphabet,--for Bain's is on the same

principle as Morse's.

The reader sees, therefore, first, that the dot-and-line alphabet can be

employed by any being who has command of any long and short symbols,--be

they long and short notches, such as Robinson Crusoe kept his accounts

with, or long and short waves of electricity, such as these which

Valentia is sending across to the Newfoundland bay, so prophetically and

appropriately named "The Bay of Bulls." Also, I hope the reader sees

that the alphabet can be understood by any intelligent being who has any

one of the five senses left him,--by all rational men, that is,

excepting the few eyeless deaf persons who have lost both taste and

smell in some complete paralysis. The use of Morse's telegraph is by no

means confined to the small clique who possess or who understand

electrical batteries. It is not only the torpedo or the _Gymnotus

electricus_ that can send us messages from the ocean. Whales in the sea

can telegraph as well as senators on land, if they will only note the

difference between long spoutings and short ones. And they can listen,

too. If they will only note the difference between long and short, the

eel of Ocean's bottom may feel on his slippery skin the smooth messages

of our Presidents, and the catfish, in his darkness, look fearless on

the secrets of a Queen. Any beast, bird, fish, or insect, which can

discriminate between long and short, may use the telegraph alphabet, if

he have sense enough. Any creature, which can hear, smell, taste, feel,

or see, may take note of its signals, if he can understand them. A tired

listener at church, by properly varying his long yawns and his short

ones, may express his opinion of the sermon to the opposite gallery

before the sermon is done. A dumb tobacconist may trade with his

customers in an alphabet of short-sixes and long-nines. A beleaguered

Sebastopol may explain its wants to the relieving army beyond the line

of the Chernaya, by the lispings of its short Paixhans and its long

twenty-fours.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] The Fire Alarm is the invention of Dr. William F.

Channing:

"A wizard of such dreaded fame,

That when in Salamanca's cave,

Him listed his magic wand to wave,

The bells would ring in Notre Dame."

[14] I am proud to say that such suggestions have had so much

weight, that in 1868 the alarm strikes the number of the box which first

telegraphs danger, six-four, six-four, &c., six being the district

number, and four the box number in that district.

THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE RESOLUTE.

[I had some opportunities, which no other writer for the press had,

I believe, of examining the Resolute on her return from that weird

voyage which is the most remarkable in the history of the navies of

the world. And, as I know of no other printed record of the whole

of that voyage than this, which was published in the Boston Daily

Advertiser of June 11, 1856, I reprint it here. Readers should

remember that the English government abandoned all claim on the

vessel; that the American government then bought her off the

salvors, refitted her completely, and sent her to England as a

present to the Queen. The Queen visited the ship, and accepted the

present in person. The Resolute has never since been to sea. I do

not load the page with authorities; but I studied the original

reports of the Arctic expeditions carefully in preparing the paper,

and I believe it to be accurate throughout.

The voyage from New London to England, when she was thus returned,

is strictly her last voyage. But when this article was printed its

name was correct.]

It was in early spring in 1852, early on the morning of the 21st of

April, that the stout English discovery ship Resolute, manned by a large

crew, commanded by a most manly man, Henry Kellett, left her moorings

in the great river Thames, a little below the old town of London, was

taken in tow by a fussy steam-tug, and proudly started as one of a fine

English squadron in the great search of the nations for the lost Sir

John Franklin. It was late in the year 1855, on the 24th of December,

that the same ship, weatherworn, scantily rigged, without her lighter

masts, all in the trim of a vessel which has had a hard fight with wind,

water, ice, and time, made the light-house of _New_ London,--waited for

day and came round to anchor in the other river Thames, of _New_

England. Not one man of the English crew was on board. The gallant

Captain Kellett was not there; but in his place an American master, who

had shown, in his way, equal gallantry. The sixty or seventy men with

whom she sailed were all in their homes more than a year ago. The eleven

men with whom she returned had had to double parts, and to work hard to

make good the places of the sixty. And between the day when the

Englishmen left her, and the day the Americans found her, she had spent

fifteen months and more alone. She was girt in by the ice of the Arctic

seas. No man knows where she went, what narrow scapes she passed

through, how low her thermometers marked cold;--it is a bit of her

history which was never written. Nor what befell her little tender, the

"Intrepid," which was left in her neighborhood, "ready for occupation,"

just as she was left. No man will ever tell of the nip that proved too

much for her,--of the opening of her seams, and her disappearance

beneath the ice. But here is the hardy Resolute, which, on the 15th of

May, 1854, her brave commander left, as he was ordered, "ready for

occupation,"--which the brave Captain Buddington found September 10,

1855, more than a thousand miles from there, and pronounced still "ready

for occupation";--and of what can be known of her history from Old

London to New London, from Old England's Thames to New England's Thames,

we will try to tell the story; as it is written in the letters of her

old officers and told by the lips of her new rescuers.

For Arctic work, if ships are to go into every nook and lane of ice that

will yield at all to wind and steam, they must be as nearly

indestructible as man can make them. For Arctic work, therefore, and for

discovery work, ships built of the _teak_ wood of Malabar and Java are

considered most precisely fitted. Ships built of teak are said to be

wholly indestructible by time. To this we owe the fact, which now

becomes part of a strange coincidence, that one of the old Captain

Cook's ships which went round the world with him has been, till within a

few years, a whaling among the American whalers, revisiting, as a

familiar thing, the shores which she was first to discover. The English

admiralty, eager to fit out for Arctic service a ship of the best build

they could find, bought the two teak-built ships Baboo and Ptarmigan in

1850,--sent them to their own dock-yards to be refitted, and the Baboo

became the Assistance,--the Ptarmigan became the Resolute, of their

squadrons of Arctic discovery.

Does the reader know that in the desolation of the Arctic shores the

Ptarmigan is the bird most often found? It is the Arctic grouse or

partridge,[15] and often have the ptarmigans of Melville Island

furnished sport and even dinners to the hungry officers of the

"Resolute," wholly unconscious that she had ever been their god-child,

and had thrown off their name only to take that which she now wears.

Early in May, 1850, just at the time we now know that brave Sir John

Franklin and the remnant of his crew were dying of starvation at the

mouth of Back's River, the "Resolute" sailed first for the Arctic seas,

the flag-ship of Commodore Austin, with whose little squadron our own De

Haven and his men had such pleasant intercourse near Beechey Island. In

the course of that expedition she wintered off Cornwallis Island,--and

in autumn of the next year returned to England.

Whenever a squadron or a man or an army returns to England, unless in

the extreme and exceptional case of complete victory over obstacle

invincible, there is always dissatisfaction. This is the English way.

And so there was dissatisfaction when Captain Austin returned with his

ships and men. There was also still a lingering hope that some trace of

Franklin might yet be found, perhaps some of his party. Yet more, there

were two of the searching ships which had entered the Polar seas from

Behring's Straits on the west, the "Enterprise" and "Investigator,"

which might need relief before they came through or returned. Arctic

search became a passion by this time, and at once a new squadron was

fitted out to take the seas in the spring of 1852. This squadron

consisted of the "Assistance" and "Resolute" again, which had been

refitted since their return, of the "Intrepid" and "Pioneer," two

steamships used as tenders to the "Assistance" and "Resolute"

respectively, and of the "North Star," which had also been in those

regions, and now went as a storeship to the rest of the squadron. To the

command of the whole Sir Edward Belcher was appointed, an officer who

had served in some of the earlier Arctic expeditions. Officers and men

volunteered in full numbers for the service, and these five vessels

therefore carried out a body of men who brought more experience of the

Northern seas together than any expedition which had ever visited them.

Of these, Captain Henry Kellett had command of the "Resolute," and was

second in seniority to Sir Edward Belcher, who made the "Assistance" the

flag-ship. It shows what sort of man he was, to say that for more than

ten years he spent only part of one in England, and was the rest of the

time in an antipodean hemisphere or a hyperborean zone. Before brave Sir

John Franklin sailed, Captain Kellett was in the Pacific. Just as he was

to return home, he was ordered into the Arctic seas to search for Sir

John. Three years successively, in his ship the "Herald," he passed

inside Behring's Straits, and far into the Arctic Ocean. He discovered

"Herald Island," the farthest land known there. He was one of the last

men to see McClure in the "Investigator" before she entered the Polar

seas from the northwest. He sent three of his men on board that ship to

meet them all again, as will be seen, in strange surroundings. After

more than seven years of this Pacific and Arctic life, he returned to

England, in May or June, 1851, and in the next winter volunteered to try

the eastern approach to the same Arctic seas in our ship, the

"Resolute." Some of his old officers sailed with him.

We know nothing of Captain Kellett but what his own letters, despatches,

and instructions show, as they are now printed in enormous parliamentary

blue-books, and what the despatches and letters of his officers and of

his commander show. But these papers present the picture of a vigorous,

hearty man, kind to his crew and a great favorite with them, brave in

whatever trial, always considerate, generous to his officers, reposing

confidence in their integrity; a man, in short, of whom the world will

be apt to hear more. His commander, Sir Edward Belcher, tried by the

same standard, appears a brave and ready man, apt to talk of himself,

not very considerate of his inferiors, confident in his own opinion; in

short, a man with whom one would not care to spend three Arctic winters.

With him, as we trace the "Resolute's" fortunes, we shall have much to

do. Of Captain Kellett we shall see something all along till the day

when he sadly left her, as bidden by Sir Edward Belcher, "ready for

occupation."

With such a captain, and with sixty-odd men, the "Resolute" cast off her

moorings in the gray of the morning on the 21st of April, 1852, to go in

search of Sir John Franklin. The brave Sir John had died two years

before, but no one knew that, nor whispered it. The river steam-tug

"Monkey" took her in tow, other steamers took the "Assistance" and the

"North Star"; the "Intrepid" and "Pioneer" got up their own steam, and

to the cheers of the little company gathered at Greenhithe to see them

off, they went down the Thames. At the Nore, the steamship "Desperate"

took the "Resolute" in charge, Sir Edward Belcher made the signal

"Orkneys" as the place of rendezvous, and in four days she was there, in

Stromness outer harbor. Here there was a little shifting of provisions

and coal-bags, those of the men who could get on shore squandered their

spending-money, and then, on the 28th of April, she and hers bade good

by to British soil. And, though they have welcomed it again long since,

she has not seen it from then till now.

The "Desperate" steamer took her in tow, she sent her own tow-lines to

the "North Star," and for three days in this procession of so wild and

weird a name, they three forged on westward toward Greenland,--a train

which would have startled any old Viking had he fallen in with it, with

a fresh gale blowing all the time and "a nasty sea." On the fourth day

all the tow-lines broke or were cast off however, Neptune and the winds

claimed their own, and the "Resolute" tried her own resources. The

towing steamers were sent home in a few days more, and the squadron left

to itself.

We have too much to tell in this short article to be able to dwell on

the details of her visits to the hospitable Danes of Greenland, or of

her passage through the ice of Baffin's Bay. But here is one incident,

which, as the event has proved, is part of a singular coincidence. On

the 6th of July all the squadron, tangled in the ice, joined a fleet of

whalers beset in it, by a temporary opening between the gigantic masses.

Caught at the head of a bight in the ice, with the "Assistance" and the

"Pioneer," the "Resolute" was, for the emergency, docked there, and, by

the ice closing behind her, was, for a while, detained. Meanwhile the

rest of the fleet, whalers and discovery ships, passed on by a little

lane of water, the American whaler "McLellan" leading. This "McLellan"

was one of the ships of the spirited New London merchants, Messrs.

Perkins & Smith, another of whose vessels has now found the "Resolute"

and befriended her in her need in those seas. The "McLellan" was their

pioneer vessel there.

The "North Star" of the English squadron followed the "McLellan." A

long train stretched out behind. Whalers and government ships, as they

happened to fall into line,--a long three quarters of a mile. It was

lovely weather, and, though the long lane closed up so that they could

neither go back nor forward,--nobody apprehended injury till it was

announced on the morning of the 7th that the poor "McLellan" was nipped

in the ice and her crew were deserting her. Sir Edward Belcher was then

in condition to befriend her, sent his carpenters to examine her,--put a

few charges of powder into the ice to relieve the pressure upon

her,--and by the end of the day it was agreed that her injuries could be

repaired, and her crew went on board again. But there is no saying what

ice will do next. The next morning there was a fresh wind, the

"McLellan" was caught again, and the water poured into her, a steady

stream. She drifted about unmanageable, now into one ship, now into

another, and the English whalemen began to pour on board, to help

themselves to such plunder as they chose. At the Captain's request, Sir

Edward Belcher put an end to this, sent sentries on board, and working

parties, to clear her as far as might be, and keep account of what her

stores were and where they went to. In a day or two more she sank to the

water's edge and a friendly charge or two of powder put her out of the

way of harm to the rest of the fleet. After such a week spent together

it will easily be understood that the New London whalemen did not feel

strangers on board one of Sir Edward's vessels when they found her

"ready for occupation" three years and more afterwards.

In this tussle with the ice, the "Resolute" was nipped once or twice,

but she has known harder nips than that since. As July wore away, she

made her way across Baffin's Bay, and on the 10th of August made Beechey

Island,--known now as the head-quarters for years of the searching

squadrons, because, as it happened, the place where the last traces of

Franklin's ships were found,--the wintering place of his first winter.

But Captain Kellett was on what is called the "western search," and he

only stayed at Beechey Island to complete his provisions from the

storeships, and in the few days which this took, to see for himself the

sad memorials of Franklin's party,--and then the "Resolute" and

"Intrepid" were away, through Barrow's Straits,--on the track which

Parry ran along with such success thirty-three years before,--and which

no one had followed with as good fortune as he, until now.

On the 15th of August Captain Kellett was off; bade good by to the party

at Beechey Island, and was to try his fortune in independent command. He

had not the best of luck at starting. The reader must remember that one

great object of these Arctic expeditions was to leave provisions for

starving men. For such a purpose, and for travelling parties of his own

over the ice, Captain Kellett was to leave a depot at Assistance Bay,

some thirty miles only from Beechey Island. In nearing for that purpose

the "Resolute" grounded, was left with but seven feet of water, the ice

threw her over on her starboard bilge, and she was almost lost. Not

quite lost, however, or we should not be telling her story. At midnight

she was got off, leaving sixty feet of her false keel behind. Captain

Kellett forged on in her,--left a depot here and another there,--and at

the end of the short Arctic summer had come as far westward as Sir

Edward Parry came. Here is the most westerly point the reader will find

on most maps far north in America,--the Melville Island of Captain

Parry. Captain Kellett's associate, Captain McClintock of the

"Intrepid," had commanded the only party which had been here since

Parry. In 1851 he came over from Austin's squadron with a sledge party.

So confident is every one there that nobody has visited those parts

unless he was sent, that McClintock encouraged his men one day by

telling them that if they got on well, they should have an old cart

Parry had left thirty-odd years before, to make a fire of. Sure enough;

they came to the place, and there was the wreck of the cart just as

Parry left it. They even found the ruts the old cart left in the ground

as if they had not been left a week.

Captain Kellett came into harbor, and with great spirit he and his

officers began to prepare for the extended searching parties of the next

spring. The "Resolute" and her tender came to anchor off Dealy Island,

and there she spent the next eleven months of her life, with great news

around her in that time.

There is not much time for travelling in autumn. The days grow very

short and very cold. But what days there were were spent in sending out

carts and sledges with depots of provisions, which the parties of the

next spring could use. Different officers were already assigned to

different lines of search in spring. On their journeys they would be

gone three months and more, with a party of some eight men,--dragging a

sled very like a Yankee wood-sled with their instruments and provisions,

over ice and snow. To extend those searches as much as possible, and to

prepare the men for that work when it should come, advanced depots were

now sent forward in the autumn, under the charge of the gentlemen who

would have to use them in the spring.

One of these parties, the "South line of Melville Island" party, was

under a spirited young officer Mr. Mecham, who had tried such service in

the last expedition. He had two of "her Majesty's sledges," "The

Discovery" and "The Fearless," a depot of twenty days' provision to be

used in the spring, and enough for twenty-five days' present use. All

the sledges had little flags, made by some young lady friends of Sir

Edward Belcher's. Mr. Mecham's bore an armed hand and sword on a white

ground, with the motto, "_Per mare, per terram, per glaciem_." Over mud,

land, snow, and ice they carried their dépot, and were nearly back,

when, on the 12th of October, 1852, Mr. Mecham made the great discovery

of the expedition.

On the shore of Melville Island, above Winter Harbor, is a great

sandstone boulder, ten feet high, seven or eight broad, and twenty and

more long, which is known to all those who have anything to do with

those regions as "Parry's sandstone," for it stood near Parry's

observatory the winter he spent here, and Mr. Fisher, his surgeon, cut

on a flat face of it this inscription:--

HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S

SHIPS HECLA AND GRIPER,

COMMANDED BY

W. E. PARRY AND MR. LIDDON,

WINTERED IN THE ADJACENT

HARBOR 1819-20.

A. FISHER, SCULPT.

It was a sort of God Terminus put up to mark the end of that expedition,

as the Danish gentlemen tell us our Dighton rock is the last point of

Thorfinn's expedition to these parts. Nobody came to read Mr. Fisher's

inscription for thirty years and more,--a little Arctic hare took up her

home under the great rock, and saw the face of man for the first time

when, on the 5th of June, 1851, Mr. McClintock, on his first expedition

this way, had stopped to see whether possibly any of Franklin's men had

ever visited it. He found no signs of them, had not so much time as Mr.

Fisher for stone-cutting, but carved the figures 1851 on the stone, and

left it and the hare. To this stone, on his way back to the "Resolute,"

Mr. Mecham came again (as we said) on the 12th of October, one memorable

Tuesday morning, having been bidden to leave a record there. He went on

in advance of his party, meaning to cut 1852 on the stone. On top of it

was a small cairn of stones built by Mr. McClintock the year before.

Mecham examined this, and to his surprise a copper cylinder rolled out

from under a spirit tin. "On opening it, I drew out a roll folded in a

bladder, which, being frozen, broke and crumbled. From its dilapidated

appearance, I thought at the moment it must be some record of Sir Edward

Parry, and, fearing I might damage it, laid it down with the intention

of lighting the fire to thaw it. My curiosity, however, overcame my

prudence, and on opening it carefully with my knife, I came to a roll of

cartridge paper with the impression fresh upon the seals. My

astonishment may be conceived on finding it contained an account of the

proceedings of H. M. ship 'Investigator' since parting company with the

'Herald' [Captain Kellett's old ship] in August, 1850, in Behring's

Straits. Also a chart which disclosed to view not only the long-sought

Northwest Passage, but the completion of the survey of Banks and

Wollaston lands. Opened and indorsed Commander McClintock's despatch;

found it contained the following additions:--

"'Opened and copied by his old friend and messmate upon this date,

April 28, 1852. ROBERT MCCLURE

"'Party all well and return to Investigator to-day.'"

A great discovery indeed to flash across one in a minute. The

"Investigator" had not been heard from for more than two years. Here was

news of her not yet six months old. The Northwest Passage had been

dreamed of for three centuries and more. Here was news of its

discovery,--news that had been known to Captain McClure for two years.

McClure and McClintock were lieutenants together in the "Enterprise"

when she was sent after Sir John Franklin in 1848, and wintered together

at Port Leopold the next winter. Now, from different hemispheres, they

had come so near meeting at this old block of sandstone. Mr. Mecham bade

his mate build a new cairn, to put the record of the story in, and

hurried on to the "Resolute" with his great news,--news of almost

everybody but Sir John Franklin. Strangely enough, the other expedition,

Captain Collinson's, had had a party in that neighborhood, between the

other two, under Mr. Parks; but it was his extreme point possible, and

he could not reach the Sandstone, though he saw the ruts of McClure's

sleigh. This was not known till long afterwards.

The "Investigator," as it appeared from this despatch of Captain

McClure's, had been frozen up in the Bay of Mercy of Banks Land: Banks

Land having been for thirty years at once an Ultima Thule and Terra

Incognita, put down on the maps where Captain Parry saw it across thirty

miles of ice and water in 1819. Perhaps she was still in that same bay:

these old friends wintering there, while the "Resolute" and "Intrepid"

were lying under Dealy Island, and only one hundred and seventy miles

between. It must have been tantalizing to all parties to wait the winter

through, and not even get a message across. But until winter made it too

cold and dark to travel, the ice in the strait was so broken up that it

was impossible to attempt to traverse it, even with a light boat, for

the lanes of water. So the different autumn parties came in, the last on

the last of October, and the officers and men entered on their winter's

work and play, to push off the winter days as quickly as they could.

The winter was very severe; and it proved that, as the "Resolute" lay,

they were a good deal exposed to the wind. But they kept themselves

busy,--exercised freely,--found game quite abundant within reasonable

distances on shore, whenever the light served,--kept schools

for the men,--delivered scientific lectures to whoever would

listen,--established the theatre for which the ship had been provided at

home,--and gave juggler's exhibitions by way of variety. The recent

system of travelling in the fall and spring cuts in materially to the

length of the Arctic winters as Ross, Parry, and Back used to experience

it, and it was only from the 1st of November to the 10th of March that

they were left to their own resources. Late in October one of the

"Resolute's" men died, and in December one of the "Intrepid's," but,

excepting these cases, they had little sickness, for weeks no one on

the sick-list; indeed, Captain Kellett says cheerfully that a

sufficiency of good provisions, with plenty of work in the open air,

will insure good health in that climate.

As early in the spring as he dared risk a travelling party, namely, on

the 10th of March, 1853, he sent what they all called a forlorn hope

across to the Bay of Mercy, to find any traces of the "Investigator";

for they scarcely ventured to hope that she was still there. This start

was earlier by thirty-five days than the early parties had started on

the preceding expedition. But it was every way essential that, if

Captain McClure had wintered in the Bay of Mercy, the messenger should

reach him before he sent off any or all his men, in travelling parties,

in the spring. The little forlorn hope consisted of ten men under the

command of Lieutenant Pim, an officer who had been with Captain Kellett

in the "Herald" on the Pacific side, had spent a winter in the "Plover"

up Behring's Straits, and had been one of the last men whom the

"Investigator" had seen before they put into the Arctic Ocean, to

discover, as it proved, the Northwest Passage.

Here we must stop a moment, to tell what one of these sledge parties is

by whose efforts so much has been added to our knowledge of Arctic

geography, in journeys which could never have been achieved in ships or

boats. In the work of the "Resolute's" parties, in this spring of 1852,

Commander McClintock travelled 1,325 miles with his sledge, and

Lieutenant Mecham 1,163 miles with his, through regions before wholly

unexplored. The sledge, as we have said, is in general contour not

unlike a Yankee wood-sled, about eleven feet long. The runners are

curved at each end. The sled is fitted with a light canvas trough, so

adjusted that, in case of necessity, all the stores, &c., can be ferried

over any narrow lane of water in the ice. There are packed on this sled

a tent for eight or ten men, five or six pikes, one or more of which is

fitted as an ice-chisel; two large buffalo-skins, a water-tight

floor-cloth, which contrives

"a double debt to pay,

A floor by night, the sledge's sail by day"

(and it must be remembered that "day" and "night" in those regions are

very equivocal terms). There are, besides, a cooking-apparatus, of which

the fire is made in spirit or tallow lamps, one or two guns, a pick and

shovel, instruments for observation, pannikins, spoons, and a little

magazine of such necessaries, with the extra clothing of the party. Then

the provision, the supply of which measures the length of the

expedition, consists of about a pound of bread and a pound of pemmican

per man per day, six ounces of pork, and a little preserved potato, rum,

lime-juice, tea, chocolate, sugar, tobacco, or other such creature

comforts. The sled is fitted with two drag-ropes, at which the men haul.

The officer goes ahead to find the best way among hummocks of ice or

masses of snow. Sometimes on a smooth floe, before the wind, the

floor-cloth is set for a sail, and she runs off merrily, perhaps with

several of the crew on board, and the rest running to keep up. But

sometimes over broken ice it is a constant task to get her on at all.

You hear, "One, two, three, _haul_," all day long, as she is worked out

of one ice "cradle-hole" over a hummock into another. Different parties

select different hours for travelling. Captain Kellett finally

considered that the best division of time, when, as usual, they had

constant daylight, was to start at four in the afternoon, travel till

ten P. M., _breakfast_ then, tent and rest four hours; travel four more,

tent, dine, and sleep nine hours. This secured sleep, when the sun was

the highest and most trying to the eyes. The distances accomplished with

this equipment are truly surprising.

Each man, of course, is dressed as warmly as flannel, woollen cloth,

leather, and seal-skin will dress him. For such long journeying, the

study of boots becomes a science, and our authorities are full of

discussions as to canvas or woollen, or carpet or leather boots, of

strings and of buckles. When the time "to tent" comes, the pikes are

fitted for tent-poles, and the tent set up, its door to leeward, on the

ice or snow. The floor-cloth is laid for the carpet. At an hour fixed,

all talking must stop. There is just room enough for the party to lie

side by side on the floor-cloth. Each man gets into a long felt bag,

made of heavy felting literally nearly half an inch thick. He brings

this up wholly over his head, and buttons himself in. He has a little

hole in it to breathe through. Over the felt is sometimes a brown

holland bag, meant to keep out moisture. The officer lies farthest in

the tent,--as being next the wind, the point of hardship and so of

honor. The cook for the day lies next the doorway, as being first to be

called. Side by side the others lie between. Over them all Mackintosh

blankets with the buffalo-robes are drawn, by what power this deponent

sayeth not, not knowing. No watch is kept, for there is little danger of

intrusion. Once a whole party was startled by a white bear smelling at

them, who waked one of their dogs, and a droll time they had of it,

springing to their arms while enveloped in their sacks. But we remember

no other instance where a sentinel was needed. And occasionally in the

journals the officer notes that he overslept in the morning, and did not

"call the cook" early enough. What a passion is sleep, to be sure, that

one should oversleep with such comforts round him!

Some thirty or forty parties, thus equipped, set out from the "Resolute"

while she was under Captain Kellett's charge, on various expeditions. As

the journey of Lieutenant Pim to the "Investigator" at Banks Land was

that on which turned the great victory of her voyage, we will let that

stand as a specimen of all. None of the others, however, were undertaken

at so early a period of the year, and, on the other hand, several others

were much longer,--some of them, as has been said, occupying three

months and more.