When we got there, it was such a scene as you seldom see, and never want

to. Nastiness beyond account, and chaos run loose in the midst of the

nastiness. There were not a great many of the negroes; but by way of

making what there were understand that they were free, Vaughan had had

their hand-cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for convenience'

sake, was putting them upon the rascals of the schooner's crew. The

negroes were, most of them, out of the hold, and swarming all round the

dirty deck, with a central throng surrounding Vaughan and addressing him

in every dialect, and _patois_ of a dialect, from the Zulu click up to

the Parisian of Beledeljereed.

As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down from a hogshead, on which he had

mounted in desperation, and said:--

"For God's love, is there anybody who can make these wretches

understand something? The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet

them. I knocked that big fellow down twice, and that did not soothe him.

And then I talked Choctaw to all of them together; and I'll be hanged if

they understood that as well as they understood the English."

Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two fine-looking

Kroomen were dragged out, who, as it had been found already, had worked

for the Portuguese on the coast at Fernando Po.

"Tell them they are free," said Vaughan; "and tell them that these

rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope enough."

Nolan "put that into Spanish,"--that is, he explained it in such

Portuguese as the Kroomen could understand, and they in turn to such of

the negroes as could understand them. Then there was such a yell of

delight, clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan's

feet, and a general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous

worship of Vaughan, as the _deus ex machina_ of the occasion.

"Tell them," said Vaughan, well pleased, "that I will take them all to

Cape Palmas."

This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas was practically as far from the

homes of most of them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was; that is, they

would be eternally separated from home there. And their interpreters, as

we could understand, instantly said, "_Ah, non Palmas_," and began to

propose infinite other expedients in most voluble language. Vaughan was

rather disappointed at this result of his liberality, and asked Nolan

eagerly what they said. The drops stood on poor Nolan's white forehead,

as he hushed the men down, and said:--

"He says, 'Not Palmas.' He says, 'Take us home, take us to our own

country, take us to our own house, take us to our own pickaninnies and

our own women.' He says he has an old father and mother who will die if

they do not see him. And this one says he left his people all sick, and

paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come and help them,

and that these devils caught him in the bay just in sight of home, and

that he has never seen anybody from home since then. And this one says,"

choked out Nolan, "that he has not heard a word from his home in six

months, while he has been locked up in an infernal barracoon."

Vaughan always said he grew gray himself while Nolan struggled through

this interpretation. I, who did not understand anything of the passion

involved in it, saw that the very elements were melting with fervent

heat, and that something was to pay somewhere. Even the negroes

themselves stopped howling, as they saw Nolan's agony, and Vaughan's

almost equal agony of sympathy. As quick as he could get words, he

said:--

"Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell them they shall go to the Mountains of

the Moon, if they will. If I sail the schooner through the Great White

Desert, they shall go home!"

And after some fashion Nolan said so. And then they all fell to kissing

him again, and wanted to rub his nose with theirs.

But he could not stand it long; and getting Vaughan to say he might go

back, he beckoned me down into our boat. As we lay back in the

stern-sheets and the men gave way, he said to me: "Youngster, let that

show you what it is to be without a family, without a home, and without

a country. And if you are ever tempted to say a word or to do a thing

that shall put a bar between you and your family, your home, and your

country, pray God in his mercy to take you that instant home to his own

heaven. Stick by your family, boy; forget you have a self, while you do

everything for them. Think of your home, boy; write and send, and talk

about it. Let it be nearer and nearer to your thought, the farther you

have to travel from it; and rush back to it, when you are free, as that

poor black slave is doing now. And for your country, boy," and the words

rattled in his throat, "and for that flag," and he pointed to the ship,

"never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, though the

service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to

you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another

flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag.

Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind

officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself,

your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong to your own

mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would stand by your mother, if those

devils there had got hold of her to-day!"

I was frightened to death by his calm, hard passion; but I blundered

out, that I would, by all that was holy, and that I had never thought of

doing anything else. He hardly seemed to hear me; but he did, almost in

a whisper, say: "O, if anybody had said so to me when I was of your

age!"

I think it was this half-confidence of his, which I never abused, for I

never told this story till now, which afterward made us great friends.

He was very kind to me. Often he sat up, or even got up, at night, to

walk the deck with me, when it was my watch. He explained to me a great

deal of my mathematics, and I owe to him my taste for mathematics. He

lent me books, and helped me about my reading. He never alluded so

directly to his story again; but from one and another officer I have

learned, in thirty years, what I am telling. When we parted from him in

St. Thomas harbor, at the end of our cruise, I was more sorry than I can

tell. I was very glad to meet him again in 1830; and later in life, when

I thought I had some influence in Washington, I moved heaven and earth

to have him discharged. But it was like getting a ghost out of prison.

They pretended there was no such man, and never was such a man. They

will say so at the Department now! Perhaps they do not know. It will not

be the first thing in the service of which the Department appears to

know nothing!

There is a story that Nolan met Burr once on one of our vessels, when a

party of Americans came on board in the Mediterranean. But this I

believe to be a lie; or, rather, it is a myth, _ben trovato_, involving

a tremendous blowing-up with which he sunk Burr,--asking him how he

liked to be "without a country." But it is clear from Burr's life, that

nothing of the sort could have happened; and I mention this only as an

illustration of the stories which get a-going where there is the least

mystery at bottom.

So poor Philip Nolan had his wish fulfilled. I know but one fate more

dreadful; it is the fate reserved for those men who shall have one day

to exile themselves from their country because they have attempted her

ruin, and shall have at the same time to see the prosperity and honor to

which she rises when she has rid herself of them and their iniquities.

The wish of poor Nolan, as we all learned to call him, not because his

punishment was too great, but because his repentance was so clear, was

precisely the wish of every Bragg and Beauregard who broke a soldier's

oath two years ago, and of every Maury and Barron who broke a sailor's.

I do not know how often they have repented. I do know that they have

done all that in them lay that they might have no country,--that all the

honors, associations, memories, and hopes which belong to "country"

might be broken up into little shreds and distributed to the winds. I

know, too, that their punishment, as they vegetate through what is left

of life to them in wretched Boulognes and Leicester Squares, where they

are destined to upbraid each other till they die, will have all the

agony of Nolan's, with the added pang that every one who sees them will

see them to despise and to execrate them. They will have their wish,

like him.

For him, poor fellow, he repented of his folly, and then, like a man,

submitted to the fate he had asked for. He never intentionally added to

the difficulty or delicacy of the charge of those who had him in hold.

Accidents would happen; but they never happened from his fault.

Lieutenant Truxton told me, that, when Texas was annexed, there was a

careful discussion among the officers, whether they should get hold of

Nolan's handsome set of maps, and cut Texas out of it,--from the map of

the world and the map of Mexico. The United States had been cut out when

the atlas was bought for him. But it was voted, rightly enough, that to

do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or, as

Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it was

from no fault of Nolan's that a great botch happened at my own table,

when, for a short time, I was in command of the George Washington

corvette, on the South American station. We were lying in the La Plata,

and some of the officers, who had been on shore, and had just joined

again, were entertaining us with accounts of their misadventures in

riding the half-wild horses of Buenos Ayres. Nolan was at table, and was

in an unusually bright and talkative mood. Some story of a tumble

reminded him of an adventure of his own, when he was catching wild

horses in Texas with his brother Stephen, at a time when he must have

been quite a boy. He told the story with a good deal of spirit,--so much

so, that the silence which often follows a good story hung over the

table for an instant, to be broken by Nolan himself. For he asked

perfectly unconsciously:--

"Pray, what has become of Texas? After the Mexicans got their

independence, I thought that province of Texas would come forward very

fast. It is really one of the finest regions on earth; it is the Italy

of this continent. But I have not seen or heard a word of Texas for near

twenty years."

There were two Texan officers at the table. The reason he had never

heard of Texas was that Texas and her affairs had been painfully cut out

of his newspapers since Austin began his settlements; so that, while he

read of Honduras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite lately, of

California,--this virgin province, in which his brother had travelled so

far, and, I believe, had died, had ceased to be to him. Waters and

Williams, the two Texas men, looked grimly at each other, and tried not

to laugh. Edward Morris had his attention attracted by the third link in

the chain of the captain's chandelier. Watrous was seized with a

convulsion of sneezing. Nolan himself saw that something was to pay, he

did not know what. And I, as master of the feast, had to say,--

"Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan. Have you seen Captain Back's

curious account of Sir Thomas Roe's Welcome?"

After that cruise I never saw Nolan again. I wrote to him at least twice

a year, for in that voyage we became even confidentially intimate; but

he never wrote to me. The other men tell me that in those fifteen years

he _aged_ very fast, as well he might indeed, but that he was still the

same gentle, uncomplaining, silent sufferer that he ever was, bearing as

best he could his self-appointed punishment,--rather less social,

perhaps, with new men whom he did not know, but more anxious,

apparently, than ever to serve and befriend and teach the boys, some of

whom fairly seemed to worship him. And now it seems the dear old fellow

is dead. He has found a home at last, and a country.

Since writing this, and while considering whether or no I would print

it, as a warning to the young Nolans and Vallandighams and Tatnalls of

to-day of what it is to throw away a country, I have received from

Danforth, who is on board the Levant, a letter which gives an account

of Nolan's last hours. It removes all my doubts about telling this

story.

To understand the first words of the letter, the non-professional reader

should remember that after 1817, the position of every officer who had

Nolan in charge was one of the greatest delicacy. The government had

failed to renew the order of 1807 regarding him. What was a man to do?

Should he let him go? What, then, if he were called to account by the

Department for violating the order of 1807? Should he keep him? What,

then, if Nolan should be liberated some day, and should bring an action

for false imprisonment or kidnapping against every man who had had him

in charge? I urged and pressed this upon Southard, and I have reason to

think that other officers did the same thing. But the Secretary always

said, as they so often do at Washington, that there were no special

orders to give, and that we must act on our own judgment. That means,

"If you succeed, you will be sustained; if you fail, you will be

disavowed." Well, as Danforth says, all that is over now, though I do

not know but I expose myself to a criminal prosecution on the evidence

of the very revelation I am making.

Here is the letter:--

"LEVANT, 2° 2' S. @ 131° W.

"DEAR FRED:--I try to find heart and life to tell you that it is

all over with dear old Nolan. I have been with him on this voyage

more than I ever was, and I can understand wholly now the way in

which you used to speak of the dear old fellow. I could see that he

was not strong, but I had no idea the end was so near. The doctor

has been watching him very carefully, and yesterday morning came to

me and told me that Nolan was not so well, and had not left his

state-room,--a thing I never remember before. He had let the doctor

come and see him as he lay there,--the first time the doctor had

been in the state-room,--and he said he should like to see me. O

dear! do you remember the mysteries we boys used to invent about

his room, in the old Intrepid days? Well, I went in, and there, to

be sure, the poor fellow lay in his berth, smiling pleasantly as he

gave me his hand, but looking very frail. I could not help a glance

round, which showed me what a little shrine he had made of the box

he was lying in. The stars and stripes were triced up above and

around a picture of Washington, and he had painted a majestic

eagle, with lightnings blazing from his beak and his foot just

clasping the whole globe, which his wings overshadowed. The dear

old boy saw my glance, and said, with a sad smile, 'Here, you see,

I have a country!' And then he pointed to the foot of his bed,

where I had not seen before a great map of the United States, as he

had drawn it from memory, and which he had there to look upon as he

lay. Quaint, queer old names were on it, in large letters: 'Indiana

Territory,' 'Mississippi Territory,' and 'Louisiana Territory,' as

I suppose our fathers learned such things: but the old fellow had

patched in Texas, too; he had carried his western boundary all the

way to the Pacific, but on that shore he had defined nothing.

"'O Danforth,' he said, 'I know I am dying. I cannot get home.

Surely you will tell me something now?--Stop! stop! Do not speak

till I say what I am sure you know, that there is not in this ship,

that there is not in America,--God bless her!--a more loyal man

than I. There cannot be a man who loves the old flag as I do, or

prays for it as I do, or hopes for it as I do. There are

thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I thank God for that, though

I do not know what their names are. There has never been one taken

away: I thank God for that. I know by that that there has never

been any successful Burr. O Danforth, Danforth,' he sighed out,

'how like a wretched night's dream a boy's idea of personal fame or

of separate sovereignty seems, when one looks back on it after such

a life as mine! But tell me,--tell me something,--tell me

everything, Danforth, before I die!'

"Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like a monster that I had not

told him everything before. Danger or no danger, delicacy or no

delicacy, who was I, that I should have been acting the tyrant all

this time over this dear, sainted old man, who had years ago

expiated, in his whole manhood's life, the madness of a boy's

treason? 'Mr. Nolan,' said I, 'I will tell you everything you ask

about. Only, where shall I begin?'

"O the blessed smile that crept over his white face! and he

pressed my hand and said, 'God bless you!' 'Tell me their names,'

he said, and he pointed to the stars on the flag. 'The last I know

is Ohio. My father lived in Kentucky. But I have guessed Michigan

and Indiana and Mississippi,--that was where Fort Adams is,--they

make twenty. But where are your other fourteen? You have not cut up

any of the old ones, I hope?'

"Well, that was not a bad text, and I told him the names in as good

order as I could, and he bade me take down his beautiful map and

draw them in as I best could with my pencil. He was wild with

delight about Texas, told me how his brother died there; he had

marked a gold cross where he supposed his brother's grave was; and

he had guessed at Texas. Then he was delighted as he saw California

and Oregon;--that, he said, he had suspected partly, because he had

never been permitted to land on that shore, though the ships were

there so much. 'And the men,' said he, laughing, 'brought off a

good deal besides furs.' Then he went back--heavens, how far!--to

ask about the Chesapeake, and what was done to Barron for

surrendering her to the Leopard, and whether Burr ever tried

again,--and he ground his teeth with the only passion he showed.

But in a moment that was over, and he said, 'God forgive me, for I

am sure I forgive him.' Then he asked about the old war,--told me

the true story of his serving the gun the day we took the

Java,--asked about dear old David Porter, as he called him. Then he

settled down more quietly, and very happily, to hear me tell in an

hour the history of fifty years.

"How I wished it had been somebody who knew something! But I did as

well as I could. I told him of the English war. I told him about

Fulton and the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott, and

Jackson; told him all I could think of about the Mississippi, and

New Orleans, and Texas, and his own old Kentucky. And do you think,

he asked who was in command of the 'Legion of the West.' I told him

it was a very gallant officer named Grant, and that, by our last

news, he was about to establish his head-quarters at Vicksburg.

Then, 'Where was Vicksburg?' I worked that out on the map; it was

about a hundred miles, more or less, above his old Fort Adams; and

I thought Fort Adams must be a ruin now. 'It must be at old Vick's

plantation,' said he: 'well, that is a change!'

"I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the history of

half a century into that talk with a sick man. And I do not now

know what I told him,--of emigration, and the means of it,--of

steamboats, and railroads, and telegraphs,--of inventions, and

books, and literature,--of the colleges, and West Point, and the

Naval School,--but with the queerest interruptions that ever you

heard. You see it was Robinson Crusoe asking all the accumulated

questions of fifty-six years!

"I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who was President now; and

when I told him, he asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin Lincoln's

son. He said he met old General Lincoln, when he was quite a boy

himself, at some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old Abe was a

Kentuckian like himself, but I could not tell him of what family;

he had worked up from the ranks. 'Good for him!' cried Nolan; 'I am

glad of that. As I have brooded and wondered, I have thought our

danger was in keeping up those regular successions in the first

families.' Then I got talking about my visit to Washington. I told

him of meeting the Oregon Congressman, Harding; I told him about

the Smithsonian, and the Exploring Expedition; I told him about the

Capitol, and the statues for the pediment, and Crawford's Liberty,

and Greenough's Washington: Ingham, I told him everything I could

think of that would show the grandeur of his country and its

prosperity; but I could not make up my mouth to tell him a word

about this infernal Rebellion!

"And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I cannot tell you. He grew

more and more silent, yet I never thought he was tired or faint. I

gave him a glass of water, but he just wet his lips, and told me

not to go away. Then he asked me to bring the Presbyterian 'Book of

Public Prayer,' which lay there, and said, with a smile, that it

would open at the right place,--and so it did. There was his double

red mark down the page; and I knelt down and read, and he repeated

with me, 'For ourselves and our country, O gracious God, we thank

Thee, that, notwithstanding our manifold transgressions of Thy holy

laws, Thou hast continued to us Thy marvellous kindness,'--and so

to the end of that thanksgiving. Then he turned to the end of the

same book, and I read the words more familiar to me: 'Most heartily

we beseech Thee with Thy favor to behold and bless Thy servant, the

President of the United States, and all others in authority,'--and

the rest of the Episcopal collect. 'Danforth,' said he, 'I have

repeated those prayers night and morning, it is now fifty-five

years.' And then he said he would go to sleep. He bent me down over

him and kissed me; and he said, 'Look in my Bible, Danforth, when I

am gone.' And I went away.

"But I had no thought it was the end. I thought he was tired and

would sleep. I knew he was happy and I wanted him to be alone.

"But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found Nolan had

breathed his life away with a smile. He had something pressed close

to his lips. It was his father's badge of the Order of the

Cincinnati.

"We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper at the place

where he had marked the text:--

"'They desire a country, even a heavenly: wherefore God is not

ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a

city.'

"On this slip of paper he had written:--

"'Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will

not some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at

Orleans, that my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say

on it:--

"'_In Memory of_

"'PHILIP NOLAN,

"'_Lieutenant in the Army of the United States._

"'He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no

man deserved less at her hands.'"

THE LAST OF THE FLORIDA.

FROM THE INGHAM PAPERS.

[The Florida, Anglo-Rebel pirate, after inflicting horrible

injuries on the commerce of America and the good name of England,

was cut out by Captain Collins, from the bay of Bahia, by one of

those fortunate mistakes in international law which endear brave

men to the nations in whose interest they are committed. When she

arrived here the government was obliged to disavow the act. The

question then was, as we had her by mistake, what we should do with

her. At that moment the National Sailors' Fair was in full blast at

Boston, and I offered my suggestion in answer in the following

article, which was published November 19, 1864, in the "Boatswain's

Whistle," a little paper issued at the fair.

The government did not take the suggestion. Very unfortunately,

before the Florida was got ready for sea, she was accidentally sunk

in a collision with a tug off Fort Monroe, and the heirs of the

Confederate government or the English bond-holders must look there

for her, if the Brazilian government will give them permission.

For the benefit of the New York Observer I will state that a

despatch sent round the world in a spiral direction westward 1,200

times, would not really arrive at its destination four years before

it started. It is only a joke which suggests it.]

SPECIAL DESPATCH.

LETTER FROM CAPTAIN INGHAM, IN COMMAND OF THE FLORIDA.

[Received four years in advance of the mail by a lightning express,

which has gained that time by running round the world 1,200 times

in a spiral direction westward on its way from Brazil to our

publication-office. Mrs. Ingham's address not being known, the

letter is printed for her information.]

No. 29.

BAHAI, BRAZIL, April 1, 1868.

MY DEAR WIFE:--We are here at last, thank fortune; and I shall surrender

the old pirate to-day to the officers of government. We have been

saluted, are to be fêted, and perhaps I shall be made a Knight Commander

of the Golden Goose. I never was so glad as when I saw the lights on the

San Esperitu head-land, which makes the south point of this Bahia or

bay.

You will not have received my No. 28 from Loando, and may have missed 26

and 24, which I gave to _outward_ bound whalemen. I always doubted

whether you got 1, 7, 9, and 11. And for me I have no word of you since

you waved your handkerchief from the window in Springfield Street on the

morning of the 1st of June, 1865, nearly four years. My dear child, you

will not know me.

Let me then repeat, very briefly, the outline of this strange cruise;

and when the letters come, you can fill in the blanks.

The government had determined that the Florida must be returned to the

neutral harbor whence she came. They had put her in complete repair, and

six months of diplomacy had made the proper apologies to the Brazilian

government. Meanwhile Collins, who had captured her by mistake, had, by

another mistake, been made an admiral, and was commanding a squadron;

and to insure her safe and respectful delivery, I, who had been waiting

service, was unshelved, and, as you know, bidden to take command.

She was in apple-pie order. The engines had been cleaned up; and I

thought we could make a quick thing of it. I was a little dashed when I

found the crew was small; but I have been glad enough since that we had

no more mouths. No one but myself knew our destination. The men thought

we were to take despatches to the Gulf squadron.

You remember I had had only verbal orders to take command, and after we

got outside the bay I opened my sealed despatches. The gist of them was

in these words:--

"You will understand that the honor of this government is pledged for

the _safe_ delivery of the Florida to the government of Brazil. You will

therefore hazard nothing to gain speed. The quantity of your coal has

been adjusted with the view to give your vessel her best trim, and the

supply is not large. You will husband it with care,--taking every

precaution to arrive in Bahia _safely_ with your charge, in such time as

_your best discretion_ may suggest to you."

"_Your best discretion_" was underscored.

I called Prendergast, and showed him the letter. Then we called the

engineer and asked about the coal. He had not been into the bunkers, but

went and returned with his face white, through the black grime, to

report "not four days' consumption." By some cursed accident, he said,

the bunkers had been filled with barrels of salt-pork and flour!

On this, I ordered a light and went below. There had been some fatal

misunderstanding somewhere. The vessel was fitted out as for an arctic

voyage. Everywhere hard-bread, flour, pork, beef, vinegar, sour-krout;

but, clearly enough, not, at the very best, five days of coal!

And I was to get to Brazil with this old pirate transformed into a

provision ship, "at my best discretion."

"Prendergast," said I, "we will take it easy. Were you ever in Bahia?"

"Took flour there in '55, and lay waiting for India-rubber from July to

October. Lost six men by yellow-jack."

Prendergast was from the merchant marine. I had known him since we were

children. "Ethan," said I, "in my best discretion it would be bad to

arrive there before the end of October. Where would you go?"

I cannot say he took the responsibility. He would not take it. You know,

my dear, of course, that it was I who suggested Upernavik. From the days

of the old marbled paper Northern Regions,--through the quarto Ross and

Parry and Back and the nephew Ross and Kane and McClure and McClintock,

you know, my dear, what my one passion has been,--to see those floes

and icebergs for myself. Surely you forgive me, or at least excuse me.

Do not you? Here was this fast steamer under me. I ought not to be in

Bahia before October 25. It was June 1. Of course we went to Upernavik.

I will not say I regret it now. Yet I will say that on that decision,

cautiously made, though it was "on my discretion," all our subsequent

misfortunes hang. The Danes were kind to us,--the Governor especially,

though I had to carry the poor fellow bad news about the Duchies and the

Danish war, which was all fresh then. He got up a dance for us, I

remember, and there I wrote No. 1 to you. I could not of course

help--when we left him--running her up a few degrees to the north, just

to see whether there is or is not that passage between Igloolik and

Prince Rupert's Headland (and by the way there _is_). After we passed

Igloolik, there was such splendid weather, that I just used up a little

coal to drive her along the coast of King William's Land; and there, as

we waited for a little duck-shooting on the edge of a floe one day, as

our luck ordered, a party of natives came on board, and we treated them

with hard-tack crumbs and whale-oil. They fell to dancing, and we to

laughing,--they danced more and we laughed more, till the oldest woman

tumbled in her bear-skin bloomers, and came with a smash right on the

little cast-iron frame by the wheel, which screened binnacle and

compass. My dear child, there was such a hullalu and such a mess

together as I remember now. We had to apologize; the doctor set her head

as well as he could. We gave them gingerbread from the cabin, to console

them, and got them off without a fight. But the next morning when I cast

off from the floe, it proved the beggars had stolen the compass card,

needle and all.

My dear Mary, there was not another bit of magnetized iron in the ship.

The government had been very shy of providing instruments of any kind

for Confederate cruisers. Poor Ethan had traded off two compasses only

the day before for whalebone spears and skin breeches, neither of which

knew the north star from the ace of spades. And this thing proved of

more importance than you will think; it really made me feel that the

stuff in the books and the sermons about the mariners' needle was not

quite poetry.

As you shall see, if I ever get through. (Since I began, I have seen the

Consul,--and heard the glorious news from home,--and am to be presented

to the port authorities to-morrow.) It was the most open summer, Mary,

ever known there. If I had not had to be here in October, I would have

driven right through Lancaster Sound, by Baring's Island, and come out

into the Pacific. But here was the honor of the country, and we merely

stole back through the Straits. It was well enough there,--all daylight,

you know. But after we passed Cape Farewell, we worked her into such

fogs, child, as you never saw out of Hyde Park. Did not I long for that

compass-card! We sailed, and we sailed, and we sailed. For thirty-seven

days I did not get an observation, nor speak a ship! October! It was

October before we were warm. At noon we used to sail where we thought it

was lightest. At night I used to keep two men up for a lookout, lash the

wheel, and let her drift like a Dutchman. One way as good as another.

Mary, when I saw the sun at last, enough to get any kind of observation,

we were wellnigh three hundred miles northeast of Iceland! Talk of fogs

to me!

Well, I set her south again, but how long can you know if you are

sailing south, in those places where the northeast winds and Scotch

mists come from! Thank Heaven, we got south, or we should have frozen to

death. We got into November, and we got into December. We were as far

south as 37° 29'; and were in 31° 17' west on New Year's Day, 1866, when

the second officer wished me a happy new year, congratulated me on the

fine weather, said we should get a good observation, and asked me for

the new nautical almanac! You know they are only calculated for five

years. We had two Greenwich ones on board, and they ran out December 31,

1865. But the government had been as stingy in almanacs as in coal and

compasses. They did not mean to keep the Confederacy in almanacs.

That was the beginning of our troubles. I had to take the old almanac,

with Prendergast, and we figured like Cocker, and always kept ahead with

a month's tables. But somehow,--I feel sure we were right,--but

something was wrong; and after a few weeks the lunars used to come out

in the most beastly way, and we always proved to be on the top of the

Andes or in the Marquesas Islands, or anywhere but in the Atlantic

Ocean. Well then, by good luck, we spoke the Winged Batavian; could not

speak a word of Dutch, nor he a word of English; but he let Ethan copy

his tables, and so we ran for St. Sacrament. I posted 8, 9, and 10

there; I gave the Dutchman 7, which I hope you got, but fear.

Well, this story is running long; but at St. Sacrament we started again,

but, as ill-luck would have it, without a clean bill of health. At that

time I could have run into Bahia with coal--of which I had bought

some--in a week. But there was fever on shore,--and bad,--and I knew we

must make pratique when we came into the outer harbor here; so, rather

than do that, we stretched down the coast, and met that cyclone I wrote

you about, and had to put into Loando. Understand, this was the first

time we went into Loando. I have learned that wretched hole well enough

since. And it was as we were running out of Loando, that, in reversing

the engine too suddenly, lest we should smash up an old Portuguese

woman's bum-boat, that the slides or supports of the piston-rod just

shot out of the grooves they run in on the top, came cleverly down on

the outside of the carriage, gave that odious _g-r-r-r_, which I can

hear now, and then, _dump_,--down came the whole weight of the

walking-beam, bent rod and carriages all into three figure 8's, and

there we were! I had as lief run the boat with a clothes-wringer as with

that engine, any day, from then to now.

Well, we tinkered, and the Portuguese dock-yard people tinkered. We took

out this, and they took out that. It was growing sickly, and I got

frightened, and finally I shipped the propeller and took it on board,

and started under such canvas as we had left,--not much after the

cyclone,--for the North and the South together had rather rotted the

original duck.

Then,--as I wrote you in No. 11,--it was too late to get to Bahia before

that summer's sickly season, and I stretched off to cooler regions

again, "in my best discretion." That was the time when we had the fever

so horribly on board; and but for Wilder the surgeon, and the Falkland

Islands, we should be dead, every man of us, now. But we touched in

Queen's Bay just in time. The Governor (who is his own only subject) was

very cordial and jolly and kind. We all went ashore, and pitched tents,

and ate ducks and penguins till the men grew strong. I scraped her,

nearly down to the bends, for the grass floated by our side like a

mermaid's hair as we sailed, and the once swift Florida would not make

four knots an hour on the wind;--and this was the ship I was to get into

Bahia in good order, at my best discretion!

Meanwhile none of these people had any news from America. The last

paper at the Falkland Islands was a London Times of 1864, abusing the

Yankees. As for the Portuguese, they were like the people Logan saw at

Vicksburg. "They don't know anything good!" said he; "they don't know

anything at all!" It was really more for news than for water I put into

Sta. Lucia,--and a pretty mess I made of it there. We looked so like

pirates (as at bottom the old tub is), that they took all of us who

landed to the guard-house. None of us could speak Sta. Lucia, whatever

that tongue may be, nor understand it. And it was not till Ethan fired a

shell from the 100-pound Parrott over the town that they let us go. I

hope the dogs sent you my letters. I suppose there was another

infringement of neutrality. But if the Brazilian government sends this

ship to Sta. Lucia, I shall not command her, that's all!

Well! what happened at Loando the second time, Valencia, and Puntos

Pimos, and Nueva Salamanca, and Loando this last time, you know and will

know, and why we loitered so. At last, thank fortune, here we are.

Actually, Mary, this ship logged on the average only thirty-two knots a

day for the last week before we got her into port.

Now think of the ingratitude of men! I have brought her in here,

"according to my best discretion," and do you believe, these hidalgos,

or dons, or señores, or whatever they are, had forgotten she existed.

And when I showed them to her, they said in good Portugal that I was a

liar. Fortunately the Consul is our old friend Kingsley. He was

delighted to see me; thought I was at the bottom of the sea. From him we

learned that the Confederacy was blown sky-high long ago. And from all I

can learn, I may have the Florida back again for my own private yacht or

peculium, unless she goes to Sta. Lucia.

Not I, my friends! Scrape her, and mend her, and give her to the

marines,--and tell them her story; but do not intrust her again to my

own Polly's own

FREDERIC INGHAM.

THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET.

BY J. THOMAS DARRAGH (LATE C. C. S.).

[This paper was first published in the "Galaxy," in 1866.]

I see that an old chum of mine is publishing bits of confidential

Confederate History in Harper's Magazine. It would seem to be time,

then, for the pivots to be disclosed on which some of the wheelwork of

the last six years has been moving. The science of history, as I

understand it, depends on the timely disclosure of such pivots, which

are apt to be kept out of view while things are moving.

I was in the Civil Service at Richmond. Why I was there, or what I did,

is nobody's affair. And I do not in this paper propose to tell how it

happened that I was in New York in October, 1864, on confidential

business. Enough that I was there, and that it was honest business. That

business done, as far as it could be with the resources intrusted to me,

I prepared to return home. And thereby hangs this tale, and, as it

proved, the fate of the Confederacy.

For, of course, I wanted to take presents home to my family. Very little

question was there what these presents should be,--for I had no boys nor

brothers. The women of the Confederacy had one want, which overtopped

all others. They could make coffee out of beans; pins they had from

Columbus; straw hats they braided quite well with their own fair hands;

snuff we could get better than you could in "the old concern." But we

had no hoop-skirts,--skeletons, we used to call them. No ingenuity had

made them. No bounties had forced them. The Bat, the Greyhound, the

Deer, the Flora, the J. C. Cobb, the Varuna, and the Fore-and-Aft all

took in cargoes of them for us in England. But the Bat and the Deer and

the Flora were seized by the blockaders, the J. C. Cobb sunk at sea, the

Fore-and-Aft and the Greyhound were set fire to by their own crews, and

the Varuna (our Varuna) was never heard of. Then the State of Arkansas

offered sixteen townships of swamp land to the first manufacturer who

would exhibit five gross of a home-manufactured article. But no one ever

competed. The first attempts, indeed, were put to an end, when Schofield

crossed the Blue Lick, and destroyed the dams on Yellow Branch. The

consequence was, that people's crinoline collapsed faster than the

Confederacy did, of which that brute of a Grierson said there was never

anything of it but the outside.

Of course, then, I put in the bottom of my new large trunk in New York,

not a "duplex elliptic," for none were then made, but a "Belmonte," of

thirty springs, for my wife. I bought, for her more common wear, a good

"Belle-Fontaine." For Sarah and Susy each, I got two "Dumb-Belles." For

Aunt Eunice and Aunt Clara, maiden sisters of my wife, who lived with us

after Winchester fell the fourth time, I got the "Scotch Harebell," two

of each. For my own mother I got one "Belle of the Prairies" and one

"Invisible Combination Gossamer." I did not forget good old Mamma Chloe

and Mamma Jane. For them I got substantial cages, without names. With

these, tied in the shapes of figure eights in the bottom of my trunk, as

I said, I put in an assorted cargo of dry-goods above, and, favored by a

pass, and Major Mulford's courtesy on the flag-of-truce boat, I arrived

safely at Richmond before the autumn closed.

I was received at home with rapture. But when, the next morning, I

opened my stores, this became rapture doubly enraptured. Words cannot

tell the silent delight with which old and young, black and white,

surveyed these fairy-like structures, yet unbroken and unmended.

Perennial summer reigned that autumn day in that reunited family. It

reigned the next day, and the next. It would have reigned till now if

the Belmontes and the other things would last as long as the

advertisements declare; and, what is more, the Confederacy would have

reigned till now, President Davis and General Lee! but for that great

misery, which all families understand, which culminated in our great

misfortune.

I was up in the cedar closet one day, looking for an old parade cap of

mine, which I thought, though it was my third best, might look better

than my second best, which I had worn ever since my best was lost at the

Seven Pines. I say I was standing on the lower shelf of the cedar

closet, when, as I stepped along in the darkness, my right foot caught

in a bit of wire, my left did not give way in time, and I fell, with a

small wooden hat-box in my hand, full on the floor. The corner of the

hat-box struck me just below the second frontal sinus, and I fainted

away.

When I came to myself I was in the blue chamber; I had vinegar on a

brown paper on my forehead; the room was dark, and I found mother

sitting by me, glad enough indeed to hear my voice, and to know that I

knew her. It was some time before I fully understood what had happened.

Then she brought me a cup of tea, and I, quite refreshed, said I must go

to the office.

"Office, my child!" said she. "Your leg is broken above the ankle; you

will not move these six weeks. Where do you suppose you are?"

Till then I had no notion that it was five minutes since I went into the

closet. When she told me the time, five in the afternoon, I groaned in

the lowest depths. For, in my breast pocket in that innocent coat, which

I could now see lying on the window-seat, were the duplicate despatches

to Mr. Mason, for which, late the night before, I had got the

Secretary's signature. They were to go at ten that morning to

Wilmington, by the Navy Department's special messenger. I had taken them

to insure care and certainty. I had worked on them till midnight, and

they had not been signed till near one o'clock. Heavens and earth, and

here it was five o'clock! The man must be half-way to Wilmington by this

time. I sent the doctor for Lafarge, my clerk. Lafarge did his prettiest

in rushing to the telegraph. But no! A freshet on the Chowan River, or a

raid by Foster, or something, or nothing, had smashed the telegraph wire

for that night. And before that despatch ever reached Wilmington the

navy agent was in the offing in the Sea Maid.

"But perhaps the duplicate got through?" No, breathless reader, the

duplicate did not get through. The duplicate was taken by Faucon, in the

Ino. I saw it last week in Dr. Lieber's hands, in Washington. Well, all

I know is, that if the duplicate had got through, the Confederate

government would have had in March a chance at eighty-three thousand two

hundred and eleven muskets, which, as it was, never left Belgium. So

much for my treading into that blessed piece of wire on the shelf of the

cedar closet, up stairs.

"What was the bit of wire?"

Well, it was not telegraph wire. If it had been, it would have broken

when it was not wanted to. Don't you know what it was? Go up in your own

cedar closet, and step about in the dark, and see what brings up round

your ankles. Julia, poor child, cried her eyes out about it. When I got

well enough to sit up, and as soon as I could talk and plan with her,

she brought down seven of these old things, antiquated Belmontes and

Simplex Elliptics, and horrors without a name, and she made a pile of

them in the bedroom, and asked me in the most penitent way what she

should do with them.

"You can't burn them," said she; "fire won't touch them. If you bury

them in the garden, they come up at the second raking. If you give them

to the servants, they say, 'Thank-e, missus,' and throw them in the back

passage. If you give them to the poor, they throw them into the street

in front, and do not say, 'Thank-e.' Sarah sent seventeen over to the

sword factory, and the foreman swore at the boy, and told him he would

flog him within an inch of his life if he brought any more of his sauce

there; and so--and so," sobbed the poor child, "I just rolled up these

wretched things, and laid them in the cedar closet, hoping, you know,

that some day the government would want something, and would advertise

for them. You know what a good thing I made out of the bottle corks."

In fact, she had sold our bottle corks for four thousand two hundred and

sixteen dollars of the first issue. We afterward bought two umbrellas

and a corkscrew with the money.

Well, I did not scold Julia. It was certainly no fault of hers that I

was walking on the lower shelf of her cedar closet. I told her to make

a parcel of the things, and the first time we went to drive I hove the

whole shapeless heap into the river, without saying mass for them.

But let no man think, or no woman, that this was the end of troubles. As

I look back on that winter, and on the spring of 1865 (I do not mean the

steel spring), it seems to me only the beginning. I got out on crutches

at last; I had the office transferred to my house, so that Lafarge and

Hepburn could work there nights, and communicate with me when I could

not go out; but mornings I hobbled up to the Department, and sat with

the Chief, and took his orders. Ah me! shall I soon forget that damp

winter morning, when we all had such hope at the office. One or two of

the army fellows looked in at the window as they ran by, and we knew

that they felt well; and though I would not ask Old Wick, as we had

nicknamed the Chief, what was in the wind, I knew the time had come, and

that the lion meant to break the net this time. I made an excuse to go

home earlier than usual; rode down to the house in the Major's

ambulance, I remember; and hopped in, to surprise Julia with the good

news, only to find that the whole house was in that quiet uproar which

shows that something bad has happened of a sudden.

"What is it, Chloe?" said I, as the old wench rushed by me with a bucket

of water.

"Poor Mr. George, I 'fraid he's dead, sah!"

And there he really was,--dear handsome, bright George Schaff,--the

delight of all the nicest girls of Richmond; he lay there on Aunt

Eunice's bed on the ground floor, where they had brought him in. He was

not dead,--and he did not die. He is making cotton in Texas now. But he

looked mighty near it then. "The deep cut in his head" was the worst I

then had ever seen, and the blow confused everything. When McGregor got

round, he said it was not hopeless; but we were all turned out of the

room, and with one thing and another he got the boy out of the swoon,

and somehow it proved his head was not broken.

No, but poor George swears to this day it were better it had been, if it

could only have been broken the right way and on the right field. For

that evening we heard that everything had gone wrong in the surprise.

There we had been waiting for one of those early fogs, and at last the

fog had come. And Jubal Early had, that morning, pushed out every man he

had, that could stand; and they lay hid for three mortal hours, within I

don't know how near the picket line at Fort Powhatan, only waiting for

the shot which John Streight's party were to fire at Wilson's Wharf, as

soon as somebody on our left centre advanced in force on the enemy's

line above Turkey Island stretching across to Nansemond. I am not in the

War Department, and I forget whether he was to advance _en barbette_ or

by _échelon_ of infantry. But he was to advance somehow, and he knew

how; and when he advanced, you see, that other man lower down was to

rush in, and as soon as Early heard him he was to surprise Powhatan, you

see; and then, if you have understood me, Grant and Butler and the whole

rig of them would have been cut off from their supplies, would have had

to fight a battle for which they were not prepared, with their right

made into a new left, and their old left unexpectedly advanced at an

oblique angle from their centre, and would not that have been the end of

them?

Well, that never happened. And the reason it never happened was, that

poor George Schaff, with the last fatal order for this man whose name I

forget (the same who was afterward killed the day before High Bridge),

undertook to save time by cutting across behind my house, from Franklin

to Green Streets. You know how much time he saved,--they waited all day

for that order. George told me afterwards that the last thing he

remembered was kissing his hand to Julia, who sat at her bedroom window.

He said he thought she might be the last woman he ever saw this side of

heaven. Just after that, it must have been,--his horse--that white

Messenger colt old Williams bred--went over like a log, and poor George

was pitched fifteen feet head-foremost against a stake there was in that

lot. Julia saw the whole. She rushed out with all the women, and had

just brought him in when I got home. And that was the reason that the

great promised combination of December, 1864, never came off at all.

I walked out in the lot, after McGregor turned me out of the chamber,

to see what they had done with the horse. There he lay, as dead as old

Messenger himself. His neck was broken. And do you think, I looked to

see what had tripped him. I supposed it was one of the boys' bandy

holes. It was no such thing. The poor wretch had tangled his hind legs

in one of those infernal hoop-wires that Chloe had thrown out in the

piece when I gave her her new ones. Though I did not know it then, those

fatal scraps of rusty steel had broken the neck that day of Robert Lee's

army.

That time I made a row about it. I felt too badly to go into a passion.

But before the women went to bed,--they were all in the sitting-room

together,--I talked to them like a father. I did not swear. I had got

over that for a while, in that six weeks on my back. But I did say the

old wires were infernal things, and that the house and premises must be

made rid of them. The aunts laughed,--though I was so serious,--and

tipped a wink to the girls. The girls wanted to laugh, but were afraid

to. And then it came out that the aunts had sold their old hoops, tied

as tight as they could tie them, in a great mass of rags. They had made

a fortune by the sale,--I am sorry to say it was in other rags, but the

rags they got were new instead of old,--it was a real Aladdin bargain.

The new rags had blue backs, and were numbered, some as high as fifty

dollars. The rag-man had been in a hurry, and had not known what made

the things so heavy. I frowned at the swindle, but they said all was

fair with a pedler,--and I own I was glad the things were well out of

Richmond. But when I said I thought it was a mean trick, Lizzie and

Sarah looked demure, and asked what in the world I would have them do

with the old things. Did I expect them to walk down to the bridge

themselves with great parcels to throw into the river, as I had done by

Julia's? Of course it ended, as such things always do, by my taking the

work on my own shoulders. I told them to tie up all they had in as small

a parcel as they could, and bring them to me.

Accordingly, the next day, I found a handsome brown paper parcel, not so

very large, considering, and strangely square, considering, which the

minxes had put together and left on my office table. They had a great

frolic over it. They had not spared red tape nor red wax. Very official

it looked, indeed, and on the left-hand corner, in Sarah's boldest and

most contorted hand, was written, "Secret service." We had a great laugh

over their success. And, indeed, I should have taken it with me the next

time I went down to the Tredegar, but that I happened to dine one

evening with young Norton of our gallant little navy, and a very curious

thing he told us.

We were talking about the disappointment of the combined land attack. I

did not tell what upset poor Schaff's horse; indeed, I do not think

those navy men knew the details of the disappointment. O'Brien had told

me, in confidence, what I have written down probably for the first time

now. But we were speaking, in a general way, of the disappointment.

Norton finished his cigar rather thoughtfully, and then said: "Well,

fellows, it is not worth while to put in the newspapers, but what do you

suppose upset our grand naval attack, the day the Yankee gunboats

skittled down the river so handsomely?"

"Why," said Allen, who is Norton's best-beloved friend, "they say that

you ran away from them as fast as they did from you."

"Do they?" said Norton, grimly. "If you say that, I'll break your head

for you. Seriously, men," continued he, "that was a most extraordinary

thing. You know I was on the ram. But why she stopped when she stopped I

knew as little as this wineglass does; and Callender himself knew no

more than I. We had not been hit. We were all right as a trivet for all

we knew, when, skree! she began blowing off steam, and we stopped dead,

and began to drift down under those batteries. Callender had to

telegraph to the little Mosquito, or whatever Walter called his boat,

and the spunky little thing ran down and got us out of the scrape.

Walter did it right well; if he had had a monitor under him he could not

have done better. Of course we all rushed to the engine-room. What in

thunder were they at there? All they knew was they could get no water

into her boiler.

"Now, fellows, this is the end of the story. As soon as the boilers

cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged

if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth,

and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that

French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the

Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have

such a chance again!"

Some of the men thought Norton lied. But I never was with him when he

did not tell the truth. I did not mention, however, what I had thrown

into the water the last time I had gone over to Manchester. And I

changed my mind about Sarah's "secret-service" parcel. It remained on my

table.

That was the last dinner our old club had at the Spotswood, I believe.

The spring came on, and the plot thickened. We did our work in the

office as well as we could; I can speak for mine, and if other

people--but no matter for that! The 3d of April came, and the fire, and

the right wing of Grant's army. I remember I was glad then that I had

moved the office down to the house, for we were out of the way there.

Everybody had run away from the Department; and so, when the powers that

be took possession, my little sub-bureau was unmolested for some days. I

improved those days as well as I could,--burning carefully what was to

be burned, and hiding carefully what was to be hidden. One thing that

happened then belongs to this story. As I was at work on the private

bureau,--it was really a bureau, as it happened, one I had made Aunt

Eunice give up when I broke my leg,--I came, to my horror, on a neat

parcel of coast-survey maps of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. They were

not the same Maury stole when he left the National Observatory, but they

were like them. Now I was perfectly sure that on that fatal Sunday of

the flight I had sent Lafarge for these, that the President might use

them, if necessary, in his escape. When I found them, I hopped out and

called for Julia, and asked her if she did not remember his coming for

them. "Certainly," she said, "it was the first I knew of the danger.

Lafarge came, asked for the key of the office, told me all was up,

walked in, and in a moment was gone."

And here, on the file of April 3d, was Lafarge's line to me:--

"I got the secret-service parcel myself, and have put it in the

President's own hands. I marked it, 'Gulf coast,' as you bade me."

What could Lafarge have given to the President? Not the soundings of

Hatteras Bar. Not the working-drawings of the first monitor. I had all

these under my hand. Could it be,--"Julia, what did we do with that

stuff of Sarah's that she marked _secret service_?"

As I live, we had sent the girls' old hoops to the President in his

flight.

And when the next day we read how he used them, and how Pritchard

arrested him, we thought if he had only had the right parcel he would

have found the way to Florida.

That is really the end of this memoir. But I should not have written it,

but for something that happened just now on the piazza. You must know,

some of us wrecks are up here at the Berkeley baths. My uncle has a

place near here. Here came to-day John Sisson, whom I have not seen

since Memminger ran and took the clerks with him. Here we had before,

both the Richards brothers, the great paper men, you know, who started

the Edgerly Works in Prince George's County, just after the war began.

After dinner, Sisson and they met on the piazza. Queerly enough, they

had never seen each other before, though they had used reams of

Richards's paper in correspondence with each other, and the treasury had

used tons of it in the printing of bonds and bank-bills. Of course we

all fell to talking of old times,--old they seem now, though it is not a

year ago. "Richards," said Sisson at last, "what became of that last

order of ours for water-lined, pure linen government-callendered paper

of _sureté_? We never got it, and I never knew why."

"Did you think Kilpatrick got it?" said Richards, rather gruffly.

"None of your chaff, Richards. Just tell where the paper went, for in

the loss of that lot of paper, as it proved, the bottom dropped out of

the Treasury tub. On that paper was to have been printed our new issue

of ten per cent, convertible, you know, and secured on that up-country

cotton, which Kirby Smith had above the Big Raft. I had the printers

ready for near a month waiting for that paper. The plates were really

very handsome. I'll show you a proof when we go up stairs. Wholly new

they were, made by some Frenchmen we got, who had worked for the Bank of

France. I was so anxious to have the thing well done, that I waited

three weeks for that paper, and, by Jove, I waited just too long. We

never got one of the bonds off, and that was why we had no money in

March."

Richards threw his cigar away. I will not say he swore between his

teeth, but he twirled his chair round, brought it down on all fours,

both his elbows on his knees and his chin in both hands.

"Mr. Sisson," said he, "if the Confederacy had lived, I would have died

before I ever told what became of that order of yours. But now I have no

secrets, I believe, and I care for nothing. I do not know now how it

happened. We knew it was an extra nice job. And we had it on an elegant

little new French Fourdrinier, which cost us more than we shall ever

pay. The pretty thing ran like oil the day before. That day, I thought

all the devils were in it. The more power we put on the more the rollers

screamed; and the less we put on, the more sulkily the jade stopped. I

tried it myself every way; back current, I tried; forward current; high

feed; low freed, I tried it on old stock, I tried it on new; and, Mr.

Sisson, I would have made better paper in a coffee-mill! We drained off

every drop of water. We washed the tubs free from size. Then my brother,

there, worked all night with the machinists, taking down the frame and

the rollers. You would not believe it, sir, but that little bit of

wire,"--and he took out of his pocket a piece of this hateful steel,

which poor I knew so well by this time,--"that little bit of wire had

passed in from some hoop-skirt, passed the pickers, passed the screens,

through all the troughs, up and down through what we call the

lacerators, and had got itself wrought in, where, if you know a

Fourdrinier machine, you may have noticed a brass ring riveted to the

cross-bar, and there this cursed little knife--for you see it was a

knife, by that time--had been cutting to pieces the endless wire web

every time the machine was started. You lost your bonds, Mr. Sisson,

because some Yankee woman cheated one of my rag-men."

On that story I came up stairs. Poor Aunt Eunice! She was the reason I

got no salary on the 1st of April. I thought I would warn other women by

writing down the story.

That fatal present of mine, in those harmless hourglass parcels, was the

ruin of the Confederate navy, army, ordnance, and treasury; and it led

to the capture of the poor President too.

But, Heaven be praised, no one shall say that my office did not do its

duty!

CHRISTMAS WAITS IN BOSTON.

FROM THE INGHAM PAPERS.

[When my friends of the Boston Daily Advertiser asked me last year

to contribute to their Christmas number, I was very glad to recall

this scrap of Mr. Ingham's memoirs.

For in most modern Christmas stories I have observed that the rich

wake up of a sudden to befriend the poor, and that the moral is

educed from such compassion. The incidents in this story show, what

all life shows, that the poor befriend the rich as truly as the

rich the poor: that, in the Christian life, each needs all.

I have been asked a dozen times how far the story is true. Of

course no such series of incidents has ever taken place in this

order in four or five hours. But there is nothing told here which

has not parallels perfectly fair in my experience or in that of any

working minister.]

I always give myself a Christmas present.

And on this particular year the present was a carol party, which is

about as good fun, all things consenting kindly, as a man can have.

Many things must consent, as will appear. First of all, there must be

good sleighing; and second, a fine night for Christmas eve. Ours are not

the carollings of your poor shivering little East Angles or South

Mercians, where they have to plod round afoot in countries which do not

know what a sleigh-ride is.

I had asked Harry to have sixteen of the best voices in the chapel

school to be trained to five or six good carols, without knowing why. We

did not care to disappoint them if a February thaw setting in on the

24th of December should break up the spree before it began. Then I had

told Howland that he must reserve for me a span of good horses, and a

sleigh that I could pack sixteen small children into, tight-stowed.

Howland is always good about such things, knew what the sleigh was for,

having done the same in other years, and made the span four horses of

his own accord, because the children would like it better, and "it would

be no difference to him." Sunday night, as the weather nymphs ordered,

the wind hauled round to the northwest and everything froze hard. Monday

night, things moderated and the snow began to fall steadily,--so

steadily; and so Tuesday night the Metropolitan people gave up their

unequal contest, all good men and angels rejoicing at their

discomfiture, and only a few of the people in the very lowest _Bolgie_

being ill-natured enough to grieve. And thus it was, that by Thursday

evening was one hard compact roadway from Copp's Hill to the

Bone-burner's Gehenna, fit for good men and angels to ride over, without

jar, without noise, and without fatigue to horse or man. So it was that

when I came down with Lycidas to the chapel at seven o'clock, I found

Harry had gathered there his eight pretty girls and his eight jolly

boys, and had them practising for the last time,

"Carol, carol, Christians,

Carol joyfully;

Carol for the coming

Of Christ's nativity."

I think the children had got inkling of what was coming, or perhaps

Harry had hinted it to their mothers. Certainly they were warmly

dressed, and when, fifteen minutes afterwards, Howland came round

himself with the sleigh, he had put in as many rugs and bear-skins as if

he thought the children were to be taken new-born from their respective

cradles. Great was the rejoicing as the bells of the horses rang beneath

the chapel windows, and Harry did not get his last _da capo_ for his

last carol. Not much matter indeed, for they were perfect enough in it

before midnight.

Lycidas and I tumbled in on the back seat, each with a child in his lap

to keep us warm; I flanked by Sam Perry, and he by John Rich, both of

the mercurial age, and therefore good to do errands. Harry was in front

somewhere flanked in like wise, and the other children lay in

miscellaneously between, like sardines when you have first opened the

box. I had invited Lycidas, because, besides being my best friend, he is

the best fellow in the world, and so deserves the best Christmas eve can

give him. Under the full moon, on the still white snow, with sixteen

children at the happiest, and with the blessed memories of the best the

world has ever had, there can be nothing better than two or three such

hours.

"First, driver, out on Commonwealth Avenue. That will tone down the

horses. Stop on the left after you have passed Fairfield Street." So we

dashed up to the front of Haliburton's palace, where he was keeping his

first Christmas tide. And the children, whom Harry had hushed down for a

square or two, broke forth with good full voice under his strong lead in

"Shepherd of tender sheep,"

singing with all that unconscious pathos with which children do sing,

and starting the tears in your eyes in the midst of your gladness. The

instant the horses' bells stopped their voices began. In an instant more

we saw Haliburton and Anna run to the window and pull up the shades, and

in a minute more faces at all the windows. And so the children sung

through Clement's old hymn. Little did Clement think of bells and snow,

as he taught it in his Sunday school there in Alexandria. But perhaps

to-day, as they pin up the laurels and the palm in the chapel at

Alexandria, they are humming the words, not thinking of Clement more

than he thought of us. As the children closed with

"Swell the triumphant song

To Christ, our King,"

Haliburton came running out, and begged me to bring them in. But I told

him, "No," as soon as I could hush their shouts of "Merry Christmas";

that we had a long journey before us, and must not alight by the way.

And the children broke out with

"Hail to the night,

Hail to the day,"

rather a favorite,--quicker and more to the childish taste perhaps than

the other,--and with another "Merry Christmas" we were off again.

Off, the length of Commonwealth Avenue, to where it crosses the

Brookline branch of the Mill-Dam, dashing along with the gayest of the

sleighing-parties as we came back into town, up Chestnut Street, through

Louisburg Square; ran the sleigh into a bank on the slope of Pinckney

Street in front of Walter's house; and, before they suspected there that

any one had come, the children were singing

"Carol, carol, Christians,

Carol joyfully."

Kisses flung from the window; kisses flung back from the street. "Merry

Christmas" again with a good-will, and then one of the girls began,

"When Anna took the baby,

And pressed his lips to hers,"

and all of them fell in so cheerily. O dear me! it is a scrap of old

Ephrem the Syrian, if they did but know it! And when, after this, Harry

would fain have driven on, because two carols at one house was the

rule, how the little witches begged that they might sing just one song

more there, because Mrs. Alexander had been so kind to them, when she

showed them about the German stitches. And then up the hill and over to

the North End, and as far as we could get the horses up into Moon Court,

that they might sing to the Italian image-man who gave Lucy the boy and

dog in plaster, when she was sick in the spring. For the children had,

you know, the choice of where they would go, and they select their best

friends, and will be more apt to remember the Italian image-man than

Chrysostom himself, though Chrysostom should have "made a few remarks"

to them seventeen times in the chapel. Then the Italian image-man heard

for the first time in his life

"Now is the time of Christmas come,"

and

"Jesus in his babes abiding."

And then we came up Hanover Street and stopped under Mr. Gerry's chapel,

where they were dressing the walls with their evergreens, and gave them

"Hail to the night,

Hail to the day";

and so down State Street and stopped at the Advertiser office, because,

when the boys gave their "Literary Entertainment," Mr. Hale put in their

advertisement for nothing, and up in the old attic there the compositors

were relieved to hear

"Nor war nor battle sound,"

and

"The waiting world was still";

so that even the leading editor relaxed from his gravity, and the

"In-General" man from his more serious views, and the Daily the next

morning wished everybody a merry Christmas with even more unction, and

resolved that in coming years it would have a supplement, large enough

to contain all the good wishes. So away again to the houses of

confectioners who had given the children candy,--to Miss Simonds's

house, because she had been so good to them in school,--to the palaces

of millionnaires who had prayed for these children with tears if the

children only knew it,--to Dr. Frothingham's in Summer Street, I

remember, where we stopped because the Boston Association of Ministers

met here,--and out on Dover Street Bridge, that the poor chair-mender

might hear our carols sung once more before he heard them better sung in

another world where nothing needs mending.

"King of glory, king of peace!"

"Here the song, and see the Star!"

"Welcome be thou, heavenly King!"

"Was not Christ our Saviour?"

and all the others, rung out with order or without order, breaking the

hush directly as the horses' bells were stilled, thrown into the air

with all the gladness of childhood, selected sometimes as Harry happened

to think best for the hearers, but more often as the jubilant and

uncontrolled enthusiasm of the children bade them break out in the most

joyous, least studied, and purely lyrical of all. O, we went to twenty

places that night, I suppose! We went to the grandest places in Boston,

and we went to the meanest. Everywhere they wished us a merry Christmas,

and we them. Everywhere a little crowd gathered round us, and then we

dashed away far enough to gather quite another crowd; and then back,

perhaps, not sorry to double on our steps if need were, and leaving

every crowd with a happy thought of

"The star, the manger, and the Child!"

At nine we brought up at my house, D Street, three doors from the

corner, and the children picked their very best for Polly and my six

little girls to hear, and then for the first time we let them jump out

and run in. Polly had some hot oysters for them, so that the frolic was

crowned with a treat. There was a Christmas cake cut into sixteen

pieces, which they took home to dream upon; and then hoods and muffs on

again, and by ten o'clock, or a little after, we had all the girls and

all the little ones at their homes. Four of the big boys, our two

flankers and Harry's right and left hand men, begged that they might

stay till the last moment. They could walk back from the stable, and

"rather walk than not, indeed." To which we assented, having gained

parental permission, as we left younger sisters in their respective

homes.

II.

Lycidas and I both thought, as we went into these modest houses, to

leave the children, to say they had been good and to wish a "Merry

Christmas" ourselves to fathers, mothers, and to guardian aunts, that

the welcome of those homes was perhaps the best part of it all. Here was

the great stout sailor-boy whom we had not seen since he came back from

sea. He was a mere child when he left our school years on years ago, for

the East, on board Perry's vessel, and had been round the world. Here

was brave Mrs. Masury. I had not seen her since her mother died.

"Indeed, Mr. Ingham, I got so used to watching then, that I cannot sleep

well yet o' nights; I wish you knew some poor creature that wanted me

to-night, if it were only in memory of Bethlehem." "You take a deal of

trouble for the children," said Campbell, as he crushed my hand in his;

"but you know they love you, and you know I would do as much for you and

yours,"--which I knew was true. "What can I send to your children?" said

Dalton, who was finishing sword-blades. (Ill wind was Fort Sumter, but

it blew good to poor Dalton, whom it set up in the world with his

sword-factory.) "Here's an old-fashioned tape-measure for the girl, and

a Sheffield wimble for the boy. What, there is no boy? Let one of the

girls have it then; it will count one more present for her." And so he

pressed his brown-paper parcel into my hand. From every house, though

it were the humblest, a word of love, as sweet, in truth, as if we could

have heard the voice of angels singing in the sky.

I bade Harry good night; took Lycidas to his lodgings, and gave his wife

my Christmas wishes and good night; and, coming down to the sleigh

again, gave way to the feeling which I think you will all understand,

that this was not the time to stop, but just the time to begin. For the

streets were stiller now, and the moon brighter than ever, if possible,

and the blessings of these simple people and of the grand people, and of

the very angels in heaven, who are not bound to the misery of using

words when they have anything worth saying,--all these wishes and

blessings were round me, all the purity of the still winter night, and I

didn't want to lose it all by going to bed to sleep. So I put the boys

all together, where they could chatter, took one more brisk turn on the

two avenues, and then, passing through Charles Street, I believe I was

even thinking of Cambridge, I noticed the lights in Woodhull's house,

and, seeing they were up, thought I would make Fanny a midnight call.

She came to the door herself. I asked if she were waiting for Santa

Claus, but saw in a moment that I must not joke with her. She said she

had hoped I was her husband. In a minute was one of those contrasts

which make life, life. God puts us into the world that we may try them

and be tried by them. Poor Fanny's mother had been blocked up on the

Springfield train as she was coming on to Christmas. The old lady had

been chilled through, and was here in bed now with pneumonia. Both

Fanny's children had been ailing when she came, and this morning the

doctor had pronounced it scarlet fever. Fanny had not undressed herself

since Monday, nor slept, I thought, in the same time. So while we had

been singing carols and wishing merry Christmas, the poor child had been

waiting, and hoping that her husband or Edward, both of whom were on the

tramp, would find for her and bring to her the model nurse, who had not

yet appeared. But at midnight this unknown sister had not arrived, nor

had either of the men returned. When I rang, Fanny had hoped I was one

of them. Professional paragons, dear reader, are shy of scarlet fever. I

told the poor child that it was better as it was. I wrote a line for Sam

Perry to take to his aunt, Mrs. Masury, in which I simply said: "Dear

mamma, I have found the poor creature who wants you to-night. Come back

in this carriage." I bade him take a hack at Gates's, where they were

all up waiting for the assembly to be done at Papanti's. I sent him over

to Albany Street; and really as I sat there trying to soothe Fanny, it

seemed to me less time than it has taken to dictate this little story

about her, before Mrs. Masury rang gently, and I left them, having made

Fanny promise that she would consecrate the day, which at that moment

was born, by trusting God, by going to bed and going to sleep, knowing

that her children were in much better hands than hers. As I passed out

of the hall, the gas-light fell on a print of Correggio's Adoration,

where Woodhull had himself written years before,

"Ut appareat iis qui in tenebris et umbra mortis positi sunt."

"Darkness and the shadow of death" indeed, and what light like the light

and comfort such a woman as my Mary Masury brings!

And so, but for one of the accidents, as we call them, I should have

dropped the boys at the corner of Dover Street, and gone home with my

Christmas lesson.

But it happened, as we irreverently say,--it happened as we crossed Park

Square, so called from its being an irregular pentagon of which one of

the sides has been taken away, that I recognized a tall man, plodding

across in the snow, head down, round-shouldered, stooping forward in

walking, with his right shoulder higher than his left; and by these

tokens I knew Tom Coram, prince among Boston princes. Not Thomas Coram

that built the Foundling Hospital, though he was of Boston too; but he

was longer ago. You must look for him in Addison's contribution to a

supplement to the Spectator,--the old Spectator, I mean, not the

Thursday Spectator, which is more recent. Not Thomas Coram, I say, but

Tom Coram, who would build a hospital to-morrow, if you showed him the

need, without waiting to die first, and always helps forward, as a

prince should, whatever is princely, be it a statue at home, a school in

Richmond, a newspaper in Florida, a church in Exeter, a steam-line to

Liverpool, or a widow who wants a hundred dollars. I wished him a merry

Christmas, and Mr. Howland, by a fine instinct, drew up the horses as I

spoke. Coram shook hands; and, as it seldom happens that I have an empty

carriage while he is on foot, I asked him if I might not see him home.

He was glad to get in. We wrapped him up with spoils of the bear, the

fox, and the bison, turned the horses' heads again,--five hours now

since they started on this entangled errand of theirs,--and gave him his

ride. "I was thinking of you at the moment," said Coram,--"thinking of

old college times, of the mystery of language as unfolded by the Abbé

Faria to Edmond Dantes in the depths of the Chateau d'If. I was

wondering if you could teach me Japanese, if I asked you to a Christmas

dinner." I laughed. Japan was really a novelty then, and I asked him

since when he had been in correspondence with the sealed country. It

seemed that their house at Shanghae had just sent across there their

agents for establishing the first house in Edomo, in Japan, under the

new treaty. Everything looked promising, and the beginnings were made

for the branch which has since become Dot and Trevilyan there. Of this

he had the first tidings in his letters by the mail of that afternoon.

John Coram, his brother, had written to him, and had said that he

enclosed for his amusement the Japanese bill of particulars, as it had

been drawn out, on which they had founded their orders for the first

assorted cargo ever to be sent from America to Edomo. Bill of

particulars there was, stretching down the long tissue-paper in

exquisite chirography. But by some freak of the "total depravity of

things," the translated order for the assorted cargo was not there. John

Coram, in his care to fold up the Japanese writing nicely, had left on

his own desk at Shanghae the more intelligible English. "And so I must

wait," said Tom philosophically, "till the next East India mail for my

orders, certain that seven English houses have had less enthusiastic and

philological correspondents than my brother."

I said I did not see that. That I could not teach him to speak the

Taghalian dialects so well, that he could read them with facility before

Saturday. But I could do a good deal better. Did he remember writing a

note to old Jack Percival for me five years ago? No, he remembered no

such thing; he knew Jack Percival, but never wrote a note to him in his

life. Did he remember giving me fifty dollars, because I had taken a

delicate boy, whom I was going to send to sea, and I was not quite

satisfied with the government outfit? No, he did not remember that,

which was not strange, for that was a thing he was doing every day.

"Well, I don't care how much you remember, but the boy about whom you

wrote to Jack Percival, for whose mother's ease of mind you provided

the half-hundred, is back again,--strong, straight, and well; what is

more to the point, he had the whole charge of Perry's commissariat on

shore at Yokohama, was honorably discharged out there, reads Japanese

better than you read English; and if it will help you at all, he shall

be here at your house at breakfast." For as I spoke we stopped at

Coram's door. "Ingham," said Coram, "if you were not a parson, I should

say you were romancing." "My child," said I, "I sometimes write a

parable for the Atlantic; but the words of my lips are verity, as all

those of the Sandemanians. Go to bed; do not even dream of the Taghalian

dialects; be sure that the Japanese interpreter will breakfast with you,

and the next time you are in a scrape send for the nearest minister.

George, tell your brother Ezra that Mr. Coram wishes him to breakfast

here to-morrow morning at eight o'clock; don't forget the number,

Pemberton Square, you know." "Yes, sir," said George; and Thomas Coram

laughed, said "Merry Christmas," and we parted.

It was time we were all in bed, especially these boys. But glad enough

am I as I write these words that the meeting of Coram set us back that

dropped-stitch in our night's journey. There was one more delay. We were

sweeping by the Old State House, the boys singing again, "Carol, carol,

Christians," as we dashed along the still streets, when I caught sight

of Adams Todd, and he recognized me. He had heard us singing when we

were at the Advertiser office. Todd is an old fellow-apprentice of

mine,--and he is now, or rather was that night, chief pressman in the

Argus office. I like the Argus people,--it was there that I was South

American Editor, now many years ago,--and they befriend me to this hour.

Todd hailed me, and once more I stopped. "What sent you out from your

warm steam-boiler?" "Steam-boiler, indeed," said Todd. "Two rivets

loose,--steam-room full of steam,--police frightened,--neighborhood in a

row,--and we had to put out the fire. She would have run a week without

hurting a fly,--only a little puff in the street sometimes. But there we

are, Ingham. We shall lose the early mail as it stands. Seventy-eight

tokens to be worked now." They always talked largely of their edition at

the Argus. Saw it with many eyes, perhaps; but this time, I am sure,

Todd spoke true. I caught his idea at once. In younger and more muscular

times, Todd and I had worked the Adams press by that fly-wheel for full

five minutes at a time, as a test of strength; and in my mind's eye, I

saw that he was printing his paper at this moment with relays of

grinding stevedores. He said it was so. "But think of it to-night," said

he. "It is Christmas eve, and not an Irishman to be hired, though one

paid him ingots. Not a man can stand the grind ten minutes." I knew that

very well from old experience, and I thanked him inwardly for not

saying "the demnition grind," with Mantilini. "We cannot run the press

half the time," said he; "and the men we have are giving out now. We

shall lose all our carrier delivery." "Todd," said I, "is this a night

to be talking of ingots, or hiring, or losing, or gaining? When will you

learn that Love rules the court, the camp, and the Argus office." And I

wrote on the back of a letter to Campbell: "Come to the Argus office,

No. 2 Dassett's Alley, with seven men not afraid to work"; and I gave it

to John and Sam, bade Howland take the boys to Campbell's house,--walked

down with Todd to his office,--challenged him to take five minutes at

the wheel, in memory of old times,--made the tired relays laugh as they

saw us take hold; and then,--when I had cooled off, and put on my

Cardigan,--met Campbell, with his seven sons of Anak, tumbling down the

stairs, wondering what round of mercy the parson had found for them this

time. I started home, knowing I should now have my Argus with my coffee.

III.

And so I walked home. Better so, perhaps, after all, than in the lively

sleigh, with the tinkling bells.

"It was a calm and silent night!--

Seven hundred years and fifty-three

Had Rome been growing up to might,

And now was queen of land and sea!

No sound was heard of clashing wars,--

Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain;

Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars

Held undisturbed their ancient reign

In the solemn midnight,

Centuries ago!"

What an eternity it seemed since I started with those children singing

carols. Bethlehem, Nazareth, Calvary, Rome, Roman senators, Tiberius,

Paul, Nero, Clement, Ephrem, Ambrose, and all the singers,--Vincent de

Paul, and all the loving wonder-workers, Milton and Herbert and all the

carol-writers, Luther and Knox and all the prophets,--what a world of

people had been keeping Christmas with Sam Perry and Lycidas and Harry

and me; and here were Yokohama and the Japanese, the Daily Argus and its

ten million tokens and their readers,--poor Fanny Woodhull and her sick

mother there, keeping Christmas too! For a finite world, these are a

good many "waits" to be singing in one poor fellow's ears on one

Christmas-tide.

"'T was in the calm and silent night!--

The senator of haughty Rome,

Impatient urged his chariot's flight,

From lordly revel, rolling home.

Triumphal arches gleaming swell

His breast, with thoughts of boundless sway.

What recked the _Roman_ what befell

A paltry province far away,

In the solemn midnight,

Centuries ago!

"Within that province far away

Went plodding home a weary boor;

A streak of light before him lay,

Fallen through a half-shut stable door

Across his path. He passed,--for naught

Told _what was going on within_;

How keen the stars, his only thought,

The air how calm and cold and thin,

In the solemn midnight,

Centuries ago!"

"Streak of light"--Is there a light in Lycidas's room? They not in bed!

That is making a night of it! Well, there are few hours of the day or

night when I have not been in Lycidas's room, so I let myself in by the

night-key he gave me, ran up the stairs,--it is a horrid seven-storied,

first-class lodging-house. For my part, I had as lief live in a steeple.

Two flights I ran up, two steps at a time,--I was younger then than I am

now,--pushed open the door which was ajar, and saw such a scene of

confusion as I never saw in Mary's over-nice parlor before. Queer! I

remember the first thing that I saw was wrong was a great ball of white

German worsted on the floor. Her basket was upset. A great

Christmas-tree lay across the rug, quite too high for the room; a large

sharp-pointed Spanish clasp-knife was by it, with which they had been

lopping it; there were two immense baskets of white papered presents,

both upset; but what frightened me most was the centre-table. Three or

four handkerchiefs on it,--towels, napkins, I know not what,--all brown

and red and almost black with blood! I turned, heart-sick, to look into

the bedroom,--and I really had a sense of relief when I saw somebody.

Bad enough it was, however. Lycidas, but just now so strong and well,

lay pale and exhausted on the bloody bed, with the clothing removed from

his right thigh and leg, while over him bent Mary and Morton. I learned

afterwards that poor Lycidas, while trimming the Christmas-tree, and

talking merrily with Mary and Morton,--who, by good luck, had brought

round his presents late, and was staying to tie on glass balls and

apples,--had given himself a deep and dangerous wound with the point of

the unlucky knife, and had lost a great deal of blood before the

hemorrhage could be controlled. Just before I entered, the stick

tourniquet which Morton had improvised had slipped in poor Mary's

unpractised hand, at the moment he was about to secure the bleeding

artery, and the blood followed in such a gush as compelled him to give

his whole attention to stopping its flow. He only knew my entrance by

the "Ah, Mr. Ingham," of the frightened Irish girl, who stood useless

behind the head of the bed.

"O Fred," said Morton, without looking up, "I am glad you are here."

"And what can I do for you?"

"Some whiskey,--first of all."

"There are two bottles," said Mary, who was holding the candle,--"in the

cupboard behind his dressing-glass."

I took Bridget with me, struck a light in the dressing-room (how she

blundered about the match), and found the cupboard door locked! Key

doubtless in Mary's pocket,--probably in pocket of "another dress." I

did not ask. Took my own bunch, willed tremendously that my account-book

drawer key should govern the lock, and it did. If it had not, I should

have put my fist through the panels. Bottle of bedbug poison; bottle

marked "bay rum"; another bottle with no mark; two bottles of Saratoga

water. "Set them all on the floor, Bridget." A tall bottle of Cologne.

Bottle marked in MS. What in the world is it? "Bring that candle,

Bridget." "Eau destillée. Marron, Montreal." What in the world did

Lycidas bring distilled water from Montreal for? And then Morton's clear

voice in the other room, "As quick as you can, Fred." "Yes! in one

moment. Put all these on the floor, Bridget." Here they are at last.

"Bourbon whiskey." "Corkscrew, Bridget."

"Indade, sir, and where is it?" "Where? I don't know. Run down as quick

as you can, and bring it. His wife cannot leave him." So Bridget ran,

and the first I heard was the rattle as she pitched down the last six

stairs of the first flight headlong. Let us hope she has not broken her

leg. I meanwhile am driving a silver pronged fork into the Bourbon

corks, and the blade of my own penknife on the other side.

"Now, Fred," from George within. (We all call Morton "George.") "Yes,

in one moment," I replied. Penknife blade breaks off, fork pulls right

out, two crumbs of cork come with it. Will that girl never come?

I turned round; I found a goblet on the washstand; I took Lycidas's

heavy clothes-brush, and knocked off the neck of the bottle. Did you

ever do it, reader, with one of those pressed glass bottles they make

now? It smashed like a Prince Rupert's drop in my hand, crumbled into

seventy pieces,--a nasty smell of whiskey on the floor,--and I, holding

just the hard bottom of the thing with two large spikes running

worthless up into the air. But I seized the goblet, poured into it what

was left in the bottom, and carried it in to Morton as quietly as I

could. He bade me give Lycidas as much as he could swallow; then showed

me how to substitute my thumb for his, and compress the great artery.

When he was satisfied that he could trust me, he began his work again,

silently; just speaking what must be said to that brave Mary, who seemed

to have three hands because he needed them. When all was secure, he

glanced at the ghastly white face, with beads of perspiration on the

forehead and upper lip, laid his finger on the pulse, and said: "We will

have a little more whiskey. No, Mary, you are overdone already; let Fred

bring it." The truth was that poor Mary was almost as white as Lycidas.

She would not faint,--that was the only reason she did not,--and at the

moment I wondered that she did not fall. I believe George and I were

both expecting it, now the excitement was over. He called her Mary and

me Fred, because we were all together every day of our lives. Bridget,

you see, was still nowhere.

So I retired for my whiskey again,--to attack that other bottle. George

whispered quickly as I went, "Bring enough,--bring the bottle." Did he

want the bottle corked? Would that Kelt ever come up stairs? I passed

the bell-rope as I went into the dressing-room, and rang as hard as I

could ring. I took the other bottle, and bit steadily with my teeth at

the cork, only, of course, to wrench the end of it off. George called

me, and I stepped back. "No," said he, "bring your whiskey."

Mary had just rolled gently back on the floor. I went again in despair.

But I heard Bridget's step this time. First flight, first passage;

second flight, second passage. She ran in in triumph at length, with a

_screw-driver_!

"No!" I whispered,--"no. The crooked thing you draw corks with," and I

showed her the bottle again. "Find one somewhere and don't come back

without it." So she vanished for the second time.

"Frederic!" said Morton. I think he never called me so before. Should I

risk the clothes-brush again? I opened Lycidas's own drawers,--papers,

boxes, everything in order,--not a sign of a tool.

"Frederic!" "Yes," I said. But why did I say "Yes"? "Father of Mercy,

tell me what to do."

And my mazed eyes, dim with tears,--did you ever shed tears from

excitement?--fell on an old razor-strop of those days of shaving, made

by C. WHITTAKER, SHEFFIELD. The "Sheffield" stood in black letters out

from the rest like a vision. They make corkscrews in Sheffield too. If

this Whittaker had only made a corkscrew! And what is a "Sheffield

wimble?"

Hand in my pocket,--brown paper parcel.

"Where are you, Frederic?" "Yes," said I, for the last time. Twine off!

brown paper off. And I learned that the "Sheffield wimble" was one of

those things whose name you never heard before, which people sell you in

Thames Tunnel, where a hoof-cleaner, a gimlet, a screw-driver, and a

_corkscrew_ fold into one handle.

"Yes," said I, again. "Pop," said the cork. "Bubble, bubble, bubble,"

said the whiskey. Bottle in one hand, full tumbler in the other, I

walked in. George poured half a tumblerful down Lycidas's throat that

time. Nor do I dare say how much he poured down afterwards. I found that

there was need of it, from what he said of the pulse, when it was all

over. I guess Mary had some, too.

This was the turning-point. He was exceedingly weak, and we sat by him

in turn through the night, giving, at short intervals, stimulants and

such food as he could swallow easily; for I remember Morton was very

particular not to raise his head more than we could help. But there was

no real danger after this.

As we turned away from the house on Christmas morning,--I to preach and

he to visit his patients,--he said to me, "Did you make that whiskey?"

"No," said I, "but poor Dod Dalton had to furnish the corkscrew."

And I went down to the chapel to preach. The sermon had been lying ready

at home on my desk,--and Polly had brought it round to me,--for there

had been no time for me to go from Lycidas's home to D Street and to

return. There was the text, all as it was the day before:--

"They helped every one his neighbor, and every one said to his

brother, Be of good courage. So the carpenter encouraged the

goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the

anvil."

And there were the pat illustrations, as I had finished them yesterday;

of the comfort Mary Magdalen gave Joanna, the court lady; and the

comfort the court lady gave Mary Magdalen, after the mediator of a new

covenant had mediated between them; how Simon the Cyrenian, and Joseph

of Arimathea, and the beggar Bartimeus comforted each other, gave each

other strength, common force, _com-fort_, when the One Life flowed in

all their veins; how on board the ship the Tent-Maker proved to be

Captain, and the Centurion learned his duty from his Prisoner, and how

they "_All_ came safe to shore," because the New Life was there. But as

I preached, I caught Frye's eye. Frye is always critical; and I said to

myself, "Frye would not take his illustrations from eighteen hundred

years ago." And I saw dear old Dod Dalton trying to keep awake, and

Campbell hard asleep after trying, and Jane Masury looking round to see

if her mother did not come in; and Ezra Sheppard, looking, not so much

at me, as at the window beside me, as if his thoughts were the other

side of the world. And I said to them all, "O, if I could tell you, my

friends, what every twelve hours of my life tells me,--of the way in

which woman helps woman, and man helps man, when only the ice is

broken,--how we are all rich so soon as we find out that we are all

brothers, and how we are all in want, unless we can call at any moment

for a brother's hand,--then I could make you understand something, in

the lives you lead every day, of what the New Covenant, the New

Commonwealth, the New Kingdom is to be."

But I did not dare tell Dod Dalton what Campbell had been doing for

Todd, nor did I dare tell Campbell by what unconscious arts old Dod had

been helping Lycidas. Perhaps the sermon would have been better had I

done so.

But, when we had our tree in the evening at home, I did tell

all this story to Polly and the bairns, and I gave Alice her

measuring-tape,--precious with a spot of Lycidas's blood,--and Bertha

her Sheffield wimble. "Papa," said old Clara, who is the next child,

"all the people gave presents, did not they, as they did in the picture

in your study?"

"Yes," said I, "though they did not all know they were giving them."

"Why do they not give such presents every day?" said Clara.

"O child," I said, "it is only for thirty-six hours of the three hundred

and sixty-five days, that all people remember that they are all brothers

and sisters, and those are the hours that we call, therefore, Christmas

eve and Christmas day."

"And when they always remember it," said Bertha, "it will be Christmas

all the time! What fun!"

"What fun, to be sure; but Clara, what is in the picture?"

"Why, an old woman has brought eggs to the baby in the manger, and an

old man has brought a sheep. I suppose they all brought what they had."

"I suppose those who came from Sharon brought roses," said Bertha. And

Alice, who is eleven, and goes to the Lincoln School, and therefore

knows everything, said, "Yes, and the Damascus people brought Damascus

wimbles."

"This is certain," said Polly, "that nobody tried to give a straw, but

the straw, if he really gave it, carried a blessing."

Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.