CHAPTER XXXII.

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

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

VOL. XVIII.--AUGUST, 1866.--NO. CVI.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR AND

FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of

Massachusetts.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved

to the end of the article.

HOW MY NEW ACQUAINTANCES SPIN.

The strictly professional man may have overcome his natural aversion to

some of the most interesting objects of his study, such as snakes, and

toads, and spiders, and vermin of all kinds; but people in general have

always required that any attempt to force such abominations upon their

notice should be preceded by a more or less elaborate and humble

acknowledgment of their hideous aspect, their ferocious disposition,

their dark and bloody deeds, and the utter impossibility of their

conducing in any way to human comfort and convenience.

But, while admitting the truth of much that has been thus urged against

spiders as a class, I must decline, or at least defer, conforming to

custom in speaking of the particular variety which we are about to

consider, and I believe that it will need only a glance at the insect

and its silk, and a brief notice of its habits, to justify my

indisposition to follow the usual routine.

Without apology, then, I shall endeavor to show that in the structure,

the habits, the mode of growth, and, above all, in the productions of

this spider are to be found subjects worthy the attention of every class

of minds; for to the naturalist is exhibited a species which, though not

absolutely new to science, was never seen nor heard of by Professor

Agassiz till the spring of 1865, and which is so narrowly circumscribed

in its geographical distribution that, so far as I can ascertain, it was

never observed by Hentz,--a Southern entomologist, who devoted himself

particularly to spiders,--and is met with only upon a few low, marshy

islands on the coast of South Carolina, and perhaps of other Southern

States. Its habits, too, are so interesting, and so different in many

respects from those recorded of other species, that the observer of

living creatures has here an abundant opportunity, not only for

increasing his own knowledge, but for enlarging the domain of science.

And this more especially in America; for while, in England, Blackwall

and others have been laboring for more than thirty years, spiders seem

to have received little attention on this side of the Atlantic.

We have now, moreover, in our observation of these insects, an

incentive of sovereign effect, namely, the hope of increasing our

national wealth; for to the practical man, to the manufacturer and the

mechanic, is offered a new silken material which far surpasses in beauty

and elegance that of the silk-worm, and which, however small in quantity

at present, demands some attention in view of the alarming decrease in

the silk crops of Europe. This material is obtained in a manner entirely

new,--not, as with the worm, by unwinding the cocoons, nor yet, as might

be suggested for the spider, by unravelling the web, but by _drawing_ or

_winding_ or _reeling directly from the body of the living insect_, even

as you would milk a cow, or, more aptly, as wire is pulled through a

wire-drawing machine.

To the admirer of the beautiful and perfect in nature is presented a

fibre of absolute smoothness, roundness, and finish, the colors of which

resemble, and in the sunlight even excel in brilliancy those of the two

precious metals, silver and gold; while the moralist who loves to

illustrate the workings of God's providence in bringing forth good out

of evil, by comparing the disgusting silk-worm with its beautiful and

useful product, may now enforce the lesson by the still more striking

contrast between this silk and the loathed and hated spider.

The statesman who, after a four years' war, sees few indications of a

better spirit on the part of the South, and is almost ready to exclaim,

"Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" may now perhaps discern a

spot, small indeed, but brilliant, on the very edge of the dark Carolina

cloud; and it may not be too much to hope that, in course of time, the

cords of our spider's golden and silver silk may prove potent bonds of

union with the first of the rebellious States.

As to the mathematician who believes in the inborn tendency of mankind

to variation and imperfection, and holds up to us, as shining examples

of mathematical accuracy, the work of certain insects, and who--since

Professor Wyman has shown that the hexagonal form of the bee's cell is

not of original design, but rather the necessary result of difficulties

met and overcome in the most economical manner, though by no means

always with perfect exactness and uniformity--has fallen back upon the

ancient and still prevalent belief in the precise construction of the

spider's web, (which, as will be seen, really displays it no more than

does the bee's cell,)--to this disappointed man of geometry and figures

is now offered the alternative of either finding a new and truer

illustration, or of abandoning his position entirely.

Let us, then, wait till we have seen this spider and heard his story.

_His_ story! That reminds me of another class which may possibly be

represented among my readers, and whose members, in the contemplation of

the domestic economy of these insects, will, I fear, discover many and

weighty arguments in favor of the various opinions entertained by the

advocates of Woman's Rights; for here is a community in which the

females not only far exceed the males in number, but present so great a

contrast to them in size and importance, that, but for absolute proof,

they never would be regarded as belonging to the same species.

Here, then, is a life-size picture of our spider and of--I was about to

say, _his_ partner; but in truth it is _she_ who is _the_ spider, and

_he_ is only _her_ partner. Such is the real physical, and, so to speak,

mental superiority of the female, that, even if we insist upon the legal

equality at least of the masculine element, we can do so only in name,

and will find it hard to avoid speaking of him as the male of the

_Nephila plumipes_, thus tacitly admitting her as the truer

representative of the species. Their relative size and appearance are

shown by the figures; but it may be added that she is very handsome; the

fore part of her body, which, being composed of the head and chest

soldered together, is termed _cephalothorax_, is glossy-black and

covered, except in spots, with white hairs; she has also upon six of

her legs one or two brushes of black hairs;--while he is an

insignificant-looking insect of a dull-brown color and half-starved

look, with only a few scattered bristles upon his slender limbs. He does

nothing for himself, leaving her to make the web and provide the food,

and even to carry him on her back when removal is necessary; but she

makes up for the imposition by keeping him on short allowance and at a

respectful distance, excepting when the impregnation of her eggs is

necessary; and even then she is mistress of the situation, and, _etiam

in amoribus saeva_, may afterward eat him up. But of this contrast

between the two sexes, of their functions and their relations to each

other, more hereafter. It is sufficient to observe that, when this

spider is mentioned, and the sex is not specified, the _female_ is

always referred to.

[Illustration: Fig. 1. Male and Female _Nephila plumipes_.]

When, where, and how was this spider discovered? and why is it that we

have never heard of it before? To answer these questions, we must go

back three years, to the 19th of August, 1863, and to the camp of the

Fifty-fifth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, on a desolate island a

little south from the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and in sight

of the fortress which Gillmore had just begun to strengthen by the

addition of tons of Union shot and shell, till, from tolerably strong

masonry, its walls became solid earthworks which nothing could pierce or

greatly injure. There, at the north end of Folly Island,--scarce wider

than our camp at that point, and narrower than the magnificent beach

which, at low tide, afforded ample space for the battalion drill,--I

found in a tree a very large and handsome spider, whose web was at least

three feet in diameter.

Glad enough to meet with anything new, and bearing in mind the interest

with which, when a boy, I had watched and recorded the operations of our

common house and hunting spiders, I entangled him--I didn't then know it

was _her_, so let it pass--in the web, and carried it to my tent. The

insect was very quiet, and did not attempt to escape; but presently,

after crawling slowly along my sleeve, she let herself down to the

floor, taking first the precaution, after the prudent fashion of most

spiders, to attach to the point she left a silken line, which, as she

descended, came from her body. Rather than seize the insect itself, I

caught the thread and pulled. The spider was not moved, but the line

readily drew out, and, being wound upon my hands, seemed so strong that

I attached the end to a little quill, and, having placed the spider upon

the side of the tent, lay down on my couch and turned the quill between

my fingers at such a rate that in one minute six feet of silk were wound

upon it. At the end of an hour and a half I estimated, with due

allowance for stop-pages, that I had four hundred and fifty feet, or

_one hundred and fifty yards_, of the most brilliant and beautiful

golden silk I had ever seen.

During all this operation the spider had remained perfectly quiet, but

finally put an end to my proceedings by grasping the line with the tip

of one of her hind legs so that it snapped. I was tired, however, and

contented myself with the quantity already obtained, which now formed a

raised band of gold upon the quill. This specimen is now in my

possession, but has been removed from the quill to ascertain its weight,

which is one third of a grain.

It is worthy of notice, perhaps, that in all this was involved no new

_fact_, but only a happy deduction from one known ages ago; namely, that

a spider, when dropping, leaves her line attached, and so allows it to

be drawn from her body. Nothing was more natural than to simply reverse

the position of the fixed point, and, instead of letting the spider go

away from the end of her line, to take the end of her line away from

her. So natural, indeed, did it seem, that my gratification at having

been (as was then supposed) the first to do it was, on reflection, mixed

with surprise that no one had ever thought of it before, and I am very

glad to find that at least _four_ individuals have, within the last

century, pulled silk out of a spider, though of these only one, whose

researches I hope to make known, regarded the matter as anything more

than a curious experiment.

I had never before seen such a spider, nor even paid attention to any

geometrical species; though one large black and yellow variety is, or

used to be, common enough in our fields at the North. Neither had I ever

heard of such a method of obtaining silk. But though my first specimen

was not preserved, and a second was never seen on Folly Island, yet I

was so impressed with its size and brilliant colors, and especially with

the curious brushes of black hairs on its legs, that when, during the

following summer, another officer described to me a great spider which

was very common on Long Island, where he was stationed, I knew it was

the same, and told him what I had done the year before, adding that I

was sure something would come of it in time.

With leisure and many spiders at his command, this officer improved upon

my suggestion, by substituting for my quill turned in the fingers a

wooden cylinder worked by a crank, and by securing, at a proper

distance, (between pins, I think,) one or more spiders, whose threads

were guided between pins upon the cylinder. He thus produced more of the

silk, winding it upon rings of hard rubber so as to make very pretty

ornaments. With this simple machine I wound the silk in two grooves cut

on a ring of hard rubber and parallel except at one point, where they

crossed so as to form a kind of signet. Another officer now suggested

and put in operation still another improvement, in the shape of the

"gear-drill-stock" of our armorer's chest. This, being a machine for

drilling iron, was rough in its construction and uneven in its action,

but, having cog-wheels, a rapid and nearly steady motion could be given

to its shaft. To this shaft he attached a little cross of rubber, and

covered it with silk, which was of a silver-white color instead of

golden-yellow, as in other cases. The difference in color was then

supposed to depend upon individual peculiarities, but the true

explanation will be given farther on. With this gear-drill-stock, upon a

larger ring, one inch in diameter and three eighths of an inch in width,

in a groove upon its periphery one fourth of an inch in width, and

across the sides of the ring in two directions, I wound _three thousand

four hundred and eighty-four yards_, or _nearly two miles, of silk_. The

length was estimated by accurately determining the different dimensions

of the ring where wound upon, and multiplying by this the number of

revolutions of the cylinder per minute (170), and this product again by

the number of minutes of actual winding (285), deducting from the gross

time of winding (about nine hours) each moment of stoppage for any

cause.

This was late in the fall of 1864, and, our specimens being sent home,

further experiments, and even thoughts upon the subject, were prevented

by the expedition against the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, and the

many changes of station that followed the disastrous battle of Honey

Hill. But, when I was at the North in February, 1865, a friend expressed

to me his confident belief that this new silken product could be made of

practical utility, and advised me to make inquiries on the subject. So,

before presenting it to the scientific societies, I tested the strength

of the silk by attaching to a fixed point one end of a thread _one

four-thousandth_ of an inch in diameter, and tying the other end upon

the arm of an accurate balance: weights were then dropped in to the

amount of _fifty-four grains_ before the line was broken. By a

calculation from this, a solid bar of spider's silk, one inch in

diameter, would sustain a weight of more than _seventy tons_; while a

similar bar of steel will sustain only fifty-six, and one of iron

twenty-eight tons. The specimens were then exhibited to Professors

Wyman, Agassiz, and Cooke, of Harvard University, to all of whom the

species of spider was unknown, though Professor Wyman has since found a

single specimen among some insects collected at the South; while to them

as well as to the silk-manufacturers the idea of reeling silk directly

from a living insect was entirely new. The latter, of course, wished to

see a quantity of it before pronouncing upon its usefulness. So most of

my furlough was spent in making arrangements for securing a number of

the spiders, and reeling their silk during the coming summer. These

comprised six light wooden boxes with sliding fronts, each eighteen

inches wide and high and one foot deep, and containing six tin trays one

above another, each of which, again, held twenty-four square paper boxes

two and a half inches in diameter, and with lids closed by an elastic.

Into these the spiders were to be put for transportation. Then I had

made a costly machine for reeling the silk, which, however, proved of no

practical value.

In March, with these and other real or fancied adjuvants, (some of which

proved even less useful and trustworthy than the machine,) but, above

all, with a determination to put this matter to the test of actual

experiment, I rejoined the regiment at Charleston, which had just fallen

into our hands. It was not until April, however, that we were so

situated that I could make any attempt to get spiders. Of course it was

not expected that the full-grown ones should be found at that season,

but the eggs or young should be abundant where the spiders had been in

the summer.

Before recounting my adventures in pursuit of my spinster friends, it

may be well to say a few words of the locality which they inhabited.

[Illustration: Fig. 2. Map of Charleston and Vicinity.]

Charleston stands upon the extremity of a narrow peninsula, between the

Cooper and the Ashley Rivers. Charleston Harbor, supplied by these and

some smaller streams, lies between Mt. Pleasant and Sullivan's Island on

the northeast, and James and Morris Islands on the southwest. One cannot

but be struck with the resemblance, so great as to be almost

symmetrical, between the two sides of the harbor. Mt. Pleasant and James

Island are quite high land,--high at least for the coast of South

Carolina,--and are separated from the mainland, the one by the Wando

River, the other by Wappoo Creek; while Sullivan's Island, where stand

Fort Moultrie and other Rebel batteries, corresponds almost precisely to

Morris Island, both being low and sandy, and being, as it were, bent

inland from the sea, with sharp points looking toward the city, their

convex shores forming a rounded entrance to the harbor. Extending

southward from Morris Island, and separated from it by Lighthouse Inlet,

is Folly Island; and in exact correspondence to the latter, north of

Sullivan's Island, and separated from it by Breach Inlet, is a similar

sand-ridge called Long Island. But now occurs a difference; for while

between Long and Sullivan's Islands and Christ's Church Parish is an

immense salt marsh intersected by creeks, but presenting an unbroken

surface, in the midst of the corresponding marsh between Morris and

Folly Islands and James Island is a group of low wooded islands, the

largest of which lies opposite the upper or north end of Folly Island.

To this no name is given on the maps, nor is it even distinguished from

the marsh. It is, however, completely surrounded by water; and, though

this is in the form of creeks neither wide nor deep, yet the peculiar

softness of the mud, and the absence of any landing-place except upon

the side toward Folly Island, render it almost inaccessible.

To this narrow strip of land, not three miles in length, was given the

name of Long Island,--perhaps by our own troops, who knew nothing of an

island of the same name _north_ of the harbor; and in case it is found

that no other name belongs to it, we may properly avoid a confusion, and

christen it _Spider_ Island, in honor of the remarkable insects for

whose especial benefit it seems to have been made, and which, with the

exception of the mosquitoes, are its sole inhabitants.

As was said, the first spider was found on Folly Island on the 19th of

August, 1863: it was also the last there seen. During the summer of

1864, many were found on Long Island (so called); and when, in the

spring of 1865, our regiment was encamped on James Island near Wappoo

Creek, it was toward Long Island that all my attention, so far as

concerned spiders, was directed.

But first, as a bit of collateral history, and to show how easily and

how far one may go astray when one of the links in the chain of argument

is only an _inference_, let me relate that, while riding over James

Island, I observed upon trees and bushes numbers of small brown bags,

from half an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, pear-shaped, and

suspended by strong silken cords. The bags themselves were made of a

finer silk so closely woven as to resemble brown paper, and, when

opened, were found to contain a mass of loose silk filled with young

spiders to the number of five hundred or more. In certain localities,

especially in a swampy field just outside the first line of Rebel works,

they were quite abundant. I had soon collected about four hundred of

them, which, by a moderate estimate, contained _two hundred thousand

little spiders_,--quite enough, I thought, with which to commence

operations. But one hot day in June I placed them all on a tray in the

sun. I was called away, and on my return found my one fifth of a million

young spiders dead,--baked to death.

Prior to this catastrophe, however, I had become convinced that these

were not the spiders I sought. Indeed, my only reasons for thinking they

might be were, first, the abundance of these cocoons in a locality so

near Long Island; and, second, my own great desire that they should

prove the spiders I wanted. The young spiders, it is true, did not at

all resemble their supposed progenitors, as to either shape, or color,

or markings; yet all of these evidently changed during growth, and would

not of themselves disprove the relationship.

One day in April, however, a cocoon was found in a tree on James Island,

of a very different appearance from the others. It was of loose

texture, and, instead of being pear-shaped, was hemispherical in form,

and attached by its flat surface to the lower side of a leaf. This also

contained young spiders, a little larger and a little brighter in color

than the others, but really bearing no resemblance to the full-grown

spiders of Long Island. This single cocoon formed the entering wedge of

doubt, and soon it was clear that the only means of proof lay on Long

Island itself.

But how was this to be reached? Easily enough while we were upon Folly

Island and could row through the creeks to a wharf on the east side of

Long Island. But now the case was altered; for between James and Long

Islands was the immense marsh already mentioned, intersected by creeks,

and composed of mud practically without bottom, and ranging from

eighteen to twenty-three feet in depth by actual measurement. Around or

over or through this marsh it was necessary to go, in order to reach

Long Island, the home of the spiders.

I could easily occupy the rest of my allotted space in recounting my

various attempts to reach this El Dorado, which my fancy, excited by

every delay, stocked with innumerable cocoons of the kind already found

so abundantly on James Island. These I expected would furnish thousands

of spiders, the care of which, with the reeling of their silk, would

give employment to all the freed people in South Carolina,--for even

then the poor creatures were finding their way to the coast. And

perhaps, I thought, some day, the Sea-Island silk may be as famous as

the choice Sea-Island cotton. This hope I still cherish, together with

the belief that, under certain conditions, the spiders may also be

reared at the North.

After riding miles and miles in all directions in search of the readiest

point of attack; after having once engaged a row-boat to go around

through Stono River and meet me at the nearest point of land,--on which

occasion I dismounted to give my horse a better chance of getting over a

bad place in the road, and the ungrateful beast left me in the lurch and

went home much faster than he came, while I, being now half-way, walked

on through the marsh, and had the pleasure of sitting on a log in a

pouring rain for an hour, with Long Island just on the other side of a

creek over which no boat came to carry me,--after this and other

disappointments, I at last made sure by going in the boat myself, and so

finally reached the island. But now, to my discomfiture, after a most

careful search, I saw only two or three cocoons of the kind I looked

for, while the others, of loose texture, were quite abundant, and

doubtless would have been found in still greater numbers but for their

always being under leaves, and often at a considerable height. It was

probable now that these latter cocoons contained _the_ spiders, and that

the former were a different species.

The regiment now removed to the interior of the State, and while there

occurred the _coup de soleil_ above mentioned. We remained at Orangeburg

until the middle of August, and then, being stationed at Mt. Pleasant, I

again made raids for spiders. Upon James Island, in the localities where

during the spring the cocoons were abundant, I found many large

geometrical spiders, all of one kind, but not of the kind I sought. They

were bad-tempered, and their legs were so short and strong that it was

not easy to handle them, while their silk was of a light, and not

brilliant, yellow.

My first attempt upon Long Island was made by leaving Charleston in a

boat, which, after touching at Sumter, landed me at Fort Johnson. Here I

was joined by a sergeant and corporal of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts,

and we walked across to a little settlement of freed people not far from

Secessionville, where a boat and crew were engaged. It would be tedious

to relate how, after sticking on invisible oyster-beds and mud-flats,

and losing our way among the creeks, at two o'clock we found ourselves

about one hundred yards from the north end of the island; and how,

since it was too late to try to reach the wharf on the east side, even

had we been sure of the way, the two Fifty-fourth boys and myself got

out of the boat and essayed to cross upon the marsh. Such a marsh! We

have marshes at the North, but they are as dry land in comparison. I had

seen them at the South, had stepped upon and into them, but never one

like this. It was clear mud, as soft as mud could be and not run like

the water that covered it at high tide. Even the tall rushes wore an

unsteady look; and the few oysters upon its surface evidently required

all their balancing powers to lie upon their flat sides and avoid

sinking edgewise into the oozy depths. In we sank, over ankles, at the

first step, and deeper and deeper till we took a second; for our only

safety lay in pushing down the rushes with the inside of one foot and

treading upon them, till the other could be withdrawn from its yielding

bed, and a spot selected for the next step forward. I say _selected_,

for even this mud was more firm than a hole in it filled with water and

treacherously concealed by a few rushes. A misstep into one of these

pitfalls brought me to my knees, and well-nigh compelled me to call for

help; but a sudden and determined spring, and a friendly bunch of rushes

beyond, spared me that mortification. When two thirds of the way across,

and while thinking we should soon reach dry land, we came upon the edge

of a creek, not wide, it is true, but with soft, slimy, sloping sides,

(for _banks_ they could not properly be called,) and no one knew how

many feet of mud beneath its sluggish stream. Under ordinary

circumstances I might have sounded a retreat; but, remembering that

there was twice as much mud behind as before us, and feeling ourselves

sinking slowly but surely in our tracks, we slid down the sides into the

water. This received our bodies to the waist, the mud our legs to the

knees; but we struggled through, and, after another terrible thirty

yards of mud, reached Long Island. Leaving my faithful companions to

rest, I struck off down the east side of the island, and soon found

spiders in plenty. Stopping at the wharf, and returning upon the west

side, I counted one hundred spiders in less than an hour. This was only

a voyage of discovery, but I could not resist the temptation to capture

one big fellow and put it in my hat, which, with the edges brought

together, I was forced to carry in my teeth, for one hand was required

to break down the webs stretched across my path, and the other to do

battle in vain with the thousands of mosquitoes, of huge size and bloody

intent, besetting me on every side. What with the extreme heat and my

previous fatigue, and the dread lest my captive should escape and

revenge herself upon my face while I was avoiding the nets of her

friends, and the relentless attacks of their smaller but more venomous

associates, it was the most uncomfortable walk imaginable. To complete

my misery, the path led me out upon the marsh where I could see nothing

of the boat or my companions, and whence, to reach them, I had to walk

across the head of the island. Excepting the dreaded recrossing of the

mud, I hardly remember how we made our way back; but by one means and

another I finally reached Charleston at nine o'clock, about as

disreputable-looking a medical man as ever was seen.

However, all this was soon forgotten, and, being now assured of the

presence of the spiders in their former haunts, on the 30th of August,

1865, I organized a new expedition, which was to proceed entirely by

water, and which consisted of a sail-boat and crew of picked volunteers.

Leaving Mt. Pleasant in the morning, we crossed the harbor, and were

soon lost in the meanderings of the creeks behind Morris Island. _Lost_

is appropriate, for, once in these creeks, you know nothing, you see and

hear nothing, and, if you change your course, must do so by mere guess.

But the most annoying thing is, after an apparent advance of a quarter

of a mile, to find yourself not twenty yards from your starting-point,

so tortuous are the windings of the creeks.

By dint of hard rowing (in the wrong direction, as we soon found), then

by walking across Morris Island to Light-House Inlet, and still harder

rowing from there to the wharf of Long Island, we succeeded in securing

sixty spiders; but now arose a furious storm of wind and rain, which not

only compelled our retreat, but drenched us to the skin, blew us back

faster than we could row, and threatened to overturn our boat if we

hoisted the sail; so slow was our progress, that it was eleven o'clock

at night before we reached Mt. Pleasant. Thus ended my last and only

successful raid upon Long Island.

It may seem that I have dwelt longer than was necessary upon the

circumstances attending the discovery of this spider and its silk. If

so, it is not merely because at that time both were new to myself and

all to whom I showed them, and everything concerning them was likely to

be impressed upon my mind, but also because I then hoped that the idea

of obtaining silk directly from a living insect might be found of

practical importance, as I still hope it may. The incidents illustrate,

too, the nature of the obstacles daily encountered and overcome by our

troops; for no one who has never seen or stepped into a Sea-Island marsh

can realize how difficult it was for our forces to obtain a foothold in

the vicinity of Charleston. This was appreciated by the old freedman

whom we left in the boat while crossing the mud. "No wonder," he said,

"the Yankees whipped the Rebels, if they will do such things for to

catch _spiders_."

The sixty spiders so obtained were kept for several weeks in the little

boxes in which they had been deposited when caught. Every day each box

was opened, the occupant examined, and its condition, if altered, noted

on the cover. They generally spun a few irregular lines on which to

hang, and so remained quiet except when the boxes were opened: then, of

course, they tried to escape. Half a dozen of the larger ones were

placed on the window-seats and in corners of the room, where they

speedily constructed webs. By preference these were stretched across the

windows, illustrating one of the three principal instincts of this

spider, which are, first, to _seek the light_; second, to _ascend_; and

third, to take a position with the _head downward_.

It was now a question how they were to be fed; not so much while there,

where flies were abundant, but after their arrival at the North. So,

remembering that the young ones had seemed to relish blood, I took the

tender liver of a chicken, cut it into little pieces, and dipped them in

water, not, I am sorry to say, with any view to supply them with that

fluid for the want of which they afterward perished, but in order that

the bits of liver should be more easily pulled from the pins by the

spiders. To my delight they greedily accepted the new food, and now I

felt assured of keeping them during the winter.

Deferring, however, a more particular account of what was observed at

Mt. Pleasant, until their habits and mode of life are taken up in order,

it should be understood that, during our short stay, my attention was

chiefly directed to getting from the spiders as much silk as possible;

for it was evident that practical men would not credit the usefulness of

spiders' silk until an appreciable quantity could be shown to them. The

first trial of the machine with a live spider proved it an utter

failure; for though quite ingenious and complicated, it had been devised

with reference only to _dead_ spiders. In regard to the arrangement

(wherein lay its chief, if not sole, peculiarity) by which a thin slip

of brass was sprung against a rubber band by the latter's elasticity,

with a view to secure the spider's legs between them, it was found that,

as the spider was alive, and, literally, kicking, and two of its legs

were smaller than the rest, these were at once extricated, and the

others soon followed; while, if the spring was made forcible enough to

hold the smaller legs, the larger were in danger of being crushed, and

the spider, fearing this, often disjointed them, according to the

convenient, though loose habit of most Arachnida, crabs, and other

articulates. It was also proposed to secure several spiders in the above

manner upon the periphery of a wheel, the revolution of which would give

a twist to their conjoined threads, carried through a common eyelet upon

the spindle; but this can be accomplished without the inconvenience of

whirling the spiders out of sight, by modifications of the apparatus

which has always been used for twisting ordinary silk. It will probably

be inferred from the above, that, in securing the spider, two points are

to be considered; first, to prevent its escape, and second, so to

confine the legs that it cannot reach with their tips either the _silk_

or the _spinners_. Now the machine accomplished this by putting all the

legs together in a vice, as it were, entailing upon the captive much

discomfort and perhaps the loss of some of its legs, which, though eight

in number, are each appropriated to a special use by their possessor.

So, abandoning the machine, I fell back upon a simple reel, and a

modification of my little contrivance of the previous year; which was,

to grasp the spider by all the legs, holding them behind her back, and

to let her body down into a deep notch or slot cut in a thin card, the

edges of which reached the constriction between the two regions of the

body, the _cephalothorax_ and _abdomen_; so that, when a second piece of

card was let down upon it, the _cephalothorax_, with the _legs_ of the

spider, was upon one side of a partition, while on the other was the

_abdomen_, bearing upon its posterior extremity the spinning organs. The

head and horns of a cow to be milked are secured in a similar manner. By

placing in a row, or one behind another, several spiders thus secured, a

compound thread was simultaneously obtained from them, and wound upon a

spindle of hard rubber.

By this means were produced several very handsome bands of bright yellow

silk; but the time was so short, and the means of constructing and

improving my apparatus so deficient, that I could procure no more than

these few specimens, which were very beautiful, and shone in the sun

like polished and almost translucent gold; but which, being wound upon a

cylinder only an inch in diameter, and from several spiders at different

times, could not be unwound, and so made of any further use.

I tried now to ascertain how much silk could be obtained from a single

spider at once. It will be remembered that the first specimen, wound on

Folly Island, was one hundred and fifty yards in length, and weighed one

third of a grain. I now exhausted the supply of a spider for three days,

using the same spindle, one inch in diameter, and turning this at the

rate of one hundred and sixty times per minute. On the first day I

reeled for twenty minutes, which gave two hundred and sixty-six and two

thirds yards; on the third day, the second being Sunday, for twenty-five

minutes, giving three hundred and thirty-three and one third yards; and

on the fourth day, for eighteen minutes, giving two hundred and

thirty-three and one third yards,--amounting in all to eight hundred and

thirty-three and one third yards in three or four days. This was all

that could be got, and the spider herself seemed unable to evolve any

more; but on killing her and opening her abdomen, plenty of the gum was

found in the little silk bags into which it is secreted. As this has

always been the case, I have concluded that the evolution of the silk is

almost entirely a mechanical process, which is but little controlled by

the spinners themselves, and that the gum requires some degree of

preparation after it is secreted before it is fit for use as silk; for

it must be remembered that with the spider, as with the silk-worm, the

silk is formed and contained in little bags or glands in the abdomen,

not as _threads_, but as a very viscid gum. This passes in little tubes

or ducts to the spinners, through minute openings, in which it is drawn

out into filaments, uniting and drying instantly in the air, and so

forming the single fibre from each spinner.

The silk obtained the first day was of a deep yellow; to my great

astonishment, the second reeling from the same spider gave silk of a

brilliant silver-white color; while on the third occasion, as if by

magic, the color had changed again, and I got only _yellow_ silk. The

hypothesis of individual peculiarity, adopted the previous year to

explain why some spiders gave yellow, and others white silk, was now

untenable; and, remembering that, beside these two positive colors there

was also (and indeed more commonly) a _light yellow_, as if a

combination of the other two, I saw that the real solution of the

mystery must lie in the spinners themselves. Examining carefully the

thread as it came from the body, it was seen to be composed of two

distinct portions, differing materially in their size, their color,

their elasticity, and their relative position; for one of them was

_white_ and _inelastic_, crinkling and flying up when relaxed, and

seemed to proceed from the _posterior_ of the two principal pairs of

spinners, while the other was _larger_, _yellow_, so _elastic_ that when

relaxed it kept its direction, and seemed to come from the _anterior_

pair of spinners, and so, in the inverted position of the spider, was

_above_ the other. By putting a spider under the influence of

chloroform, and then carrying the first thread under a pin stuck in a

cork to one part of a spindle, and the second or yellow line over

another pin to a different part of the spindle, I reeled off from the

same spider, at the same time, two distinct bands of silk, of which one

was a deep golden-yellow, the other a bright silver-white; while, if

both threads ran together, there was formed a band of _light yellow_

from the union of the two. Thinking such a difference must subserve some

use in the economy of the insect, I made a more careful examination of

its webs. At first sight these resembled those of most geometrical

spiders, in being broad, rounded, nearly vertical nets; but they were

unusually large, and in their native woods often stretched between trees

and across the paths, so as to be two, three, and even more, feet in

diameter, and in my room at Mt. Pleasant hung like curtains before the

windows. They were of a bright yellow color and very viscid; but now I

noticed that neither the color nor the viscidity pertained to the entire

net, for although the concentric circles constituting the principal part

of the web were _yellow_, and very _elastic_, and studded with little

beads of _gum_, (Fig 3,) yet the diverging lines or _radii_ of the

wheel-shaped structure, with all the guys and stays by which it was

suspended and braced, were _dry_ and _inelastic_, and of a _white_ or

lighter yellow color.

[Illustration: Fig. 3. Silk threads, viscid and dry.]

Now, however, a new mystery presented itself. We will admit that the

spider had the power, not only to vary the _size_ of her lines according

to the number of spinners, or of the minute holes in each spinner, which

were applied to the surface whence the line was to proceed, but also to

make use of either golden or silver silk at will. But how was it that

this yellow silk--which was quite dry and firm, though elastic, as

reeled from the spider, or as spun by her in the formation of her

cocoons--was nevertheless, when used for the concentric circles of the

web, so viscid as to follow the point of a pin, stretching in so doing

many times its length? A satisfactory explanation of this has never yet

been offered, nor can be until the minute anatomy of the spinning organs

is better understood, and the evolution of the silk more carefully

observed at every stage, and under all conditions. I will merely state

very briefly the few facts already established, with some of the

possible explanations.

The spinning _mammulae_ are placed in pairs at the lower part of the

abdomen, near its hinder end, and number four, six, or eight in

different species. They are little conical or cylindrical papillae,

closely resembling the pro-legs of caterpillars, and are composed of two

or three joints, the terminal one of which is pierced with a greater or

less number of minute holes, the sides of these, in some, if not all,

cases, being prolonged into tubes. Through these holes or tubes issue

the fine filaments, which, uniting as they dry in the air, constitute

the line from each spinner.

[Illustration: Fig. 4. Spinners.]

Now the _Nephila plumipes_ possesses at least three pairs of spinners.

Of these, two are much larger than the third, which indeed does not

appear till they are separated. From the _posterior_ of the two largest

pairs _seems_ to proceed the _white_, and from the _anterior_ the

_yellow_ silk, while from the small intermediate pair seem to proceed

very fine filaments of a pale-blue color, the use of which is to envelop

the prey after it has been seized and killed, being drawn out by the

bristles near the tips of the spider's hinder legs. Beside these six

papillae there is, just in front of the anterior pair, a single small

papilla on the middle line, the nature and use of which I have not

ascertained, though I feel quite sure that no silk comes from it. The

large median papilla, just _behind_ the posterior pair, surrounds the

termination of the intestines, and through it the excrement is voided,

the insect for this purpose turning back the abdomen as she hangs head

downward, so that neither the web nor the spinners shall be

contaminated. Now it has recently been ascertained that the minute

globules with which the circles are studded, and the number of which on

a web of average size is estimated at _one hundred thousand_, do not

exist in that form when the viscid lines are first spun by the spider,

but as a uniform coating of gum upon a thread; this gum, of itself and

according to physical laws, soon exhibits little undulations, and then

separates into the globules which have long been observed and supposed

to be formed by the spider. The fact of spiders selecting the night for

the construction of their webs, the difficulty of making any close

observations upon them while so engaged without disturbing them, and the

near approximation of the two larger pairs of spinners while the viscid

line is slowly drawn out by the hind leg, have hitherto prevented my

determining its exact source and manner of formation. If it comes from

the anterior pair only, then one and the same organ has the power of

evolving a central axis and covering it with viscid gum; and it seems

less improbable that the axis is white and formed by the posterior pair,

the yellow gum being spread upon it by the anterior pair, which also

would then have the power to evolve this same gum at other times as an

equally dry, though more elastic thread. But in either case we have only

_three_ pairs of spinners and _four_ kinds of silk, the _pale-blue

fasciculi_ the _dry white_, the _dry yellow_, and the _viscid_ and very

_elastic_ silk which is employed only in the circles of the web, and

which often does not become yellow till after exposure to the light.

Apparently the surest method of investigation will be carefully to

destroy one pair of spinners at a time without injuring the others, and

then note the effect upon the spinning.

Let us go back now to the sixty spiders left at Mt. Pleasant. A few of

these died on the way North, but the majority reached Boston in safety

about the 20th of September, 1865; for some time I had observed that

they all were becoming more or less emaciated, and relished their food

less than at first. Occasionally one died from no apparent cause. The

mortality increasing toward the end of the month, and all of them losing

both flesh and vigor, I was persuaded to try them with water,--a thing I

had thus far declined to do, never having heard of a spider's drinking

water, and knowing that our common house species can hardly get it at

all. The result was most gratifying: a drop of water upon the tip of a

camel's-hair pencil, not only was not avoided, but greedily seized and

slowly swallowed, being held between the jaws and the palpi. All of the

spiders took it, and some even five or six drops in succession. You will

exclaim, "Poor things! what tortures they must have suffered!" I admit

that it could not have been pleasant for them to go so long without that

which they crave every day, but I cannot believe that creatures whose

legs drop off on very slight provocation, and which never show any sign

whatever of real pain, suffered very acute pangs even when subjected to

what occasions such distress to ourselves.

The few survivors straightway improved in health and spirits; but being

now convinced that a moist atmosphere was almost as needful as water to

drink, I turned them loose in the north wing of the hot-house in Dr.

Gray's Botanical Garden at Cambridge. They all mysteriously disappeared,

excepting one, which made a nice web at one end just under the

ridge-pole, and for several weeks lived and grew fat upon the flies; but

a thorough fumigation of the house with tobacco so shocked her not yet

civilized organization that she died.

Her untimely death, however, afforded opportunity for a closer

examination of the web itself. The first one she had made was not

_vertical_; and, following the prevalent ideas as to the precise

construction of the spider's web, I had felt somewhat ashamed of my pet,

but supposed the next she made would be an improvement. But no, the

rebellious insect constantly made them all (for, it should have been

said before, this spider seldom uses the same web more than forty-eight

hours) after the same manner, and finally I laid it to a depraved

idiocrasy, incident to captivity and poor health. But now another and

most unexpected feature developed itself; for, on attempting to remove

the last web by placing against it a large wire ring, and cutting the

guy-lines, I found that this most degenerate spider had not only failed

to make her house _perpendicular_, but had so far departed from the

traditions of our ancestors as to have the centre thereof decidedly

eccentric, and four times as near the upper as the lower border of the

web, so that its upper portion was only a confused array of irregular

lines, which it was impossible to secure to the frame. For any accurate

observation my web was of no value. But perhaps this was best; for had I

then learned what I have since, that our spider utterly ignores every

precedent, not only in the _position_ and _shape_ of her web, but also

in its _minute arrangement_, I might have been so affected by her

evident bad character and radical proclivities, as to have feared paying

her any further attentions,--much more, presenting her to the world.

But in order to understand how these further discoveries were made, we

must again go back to the original sixty spiders in my room at Mt.

Pleasant, South Carolina.

At the time of their capture, I had observed upon a few of the webs

little brown spiders, which I then imagined might be the half-grown

young. Six of these were found among the sixty larger spiders, and a

moment's examination of their palpi or feelers (Fig. 5) showed that they

were males, though even then I could not believe they had reached their

maturity; for their bodies were only about one fourth of an inch in

length, and weighed only one thirty-second part of a grain, while the

females were from an inch to an inch and a quarter in length, and

weighed from three to four grains. It was as absurd as if a man

weighing one hundred and fifty pounds were joined to a bigger half of

_eighteen thousand pounds' weight_, and I was not fully convinced that

these small spiders were really the males of the _Nephila plumipes_ till

I had witnessed the impregnation of the eggs of the females by them.

[Illustration: Fig. 5. Palpi, or Feelers.]

One morning, in the cell of a large female, I found a cocoon of

beautiful yellow silk containing a rounded mass of eggs. Soon the same

occurred with other females, and there were fifteen cocoons, which would

give about _seven thousand spiders_. Early in October, just one month

after they were laid, the eggs of the first cocoon were broken and

disclosed little spiders with rounded yellow bodies and short legs,

looking about as little like their parents as could be imagined. The

eggs in the other cocoons followed in their order, and now each

contained four or five hundred little spiders closely packed.

For some time they seemed to eat nothing at all; but within a few days

all had shed their skins, and now the abdomen was smaller, while the

_cephalothorax_ and legs were larger and darker; but they showed no

desire to leave their cocoons. Still they grew perceptibly; and

coincident with this was a less pleasing fact: their numbers were

decreasing in the same proportion, and occasionally one was seen eating

another. It was some time before I could reconcile the good temper and

quiet behavior of the parents with this instinctive and habitual

fratricide on the part of their children. But look at it in this way:

here were several hundred active little creatures in a space just large

enough to contain them; presently they were hungry, and as no two could

be of exactly the same size, the smaller and weaker naturally fell a

prey to their larger brethren, or rather sisters, for either very few

males are hatched, or else they are particularly good eating, and a very

small proportion survive the perils of infancy. It is evidently an

established and well-understood thing among them: all seem to be aware

of their destiny, to _eat_ or _be eaten_. What else can they do? Human

beings would do the same under the same circumstances; and I have never

seen the least sign of personal spite or malignity in the spider. There

is no pursuit, for there is no escape; and we can only conclude that, as

the new-born fish's first nourishment is the contents of the yolk-sac,

partly outside, though still a portion of its body, so the first food of

the young spiders is, if not themselves, the next best thing,--each

other. Thus it is provided that the smaller and less vigorous shall

furnish food for the larger until the latter are strong enough to

venture forth in search of other means of support.

In consequence of this mutual destruction, aided materially by the

depredations of birds and of other insects, and by exposure to the

weather, only about one per cent of those hatched reach maturity. If

properly protected, however, a far larger proportion may be saved; and

as their multiplication is so rapid, no fear need be entertained of a

limit to the supply.

By keeping these little spiders in glass jars, inverted, and with a wet

sponge at the bottom, they were easily watched and cared for. At first

only about one twentieth of an inch long and nearly as wide, they

increased in length as they grew, but for many weeks lived in common on

an irregular web, feeding together on the crushed flies or bugs thrown

to them. But when one fourth of an inch in length, they showed a

disposition to separate, and to spin each for herself a regular web,

out of which all intruders were kept. And now it was found that all

these webs were _inclined_ at nearly the same angle, and were _never

exactly vertical_; that, like the spider in the first web she made in

the Botanical Garden, the insect took a position much nearer the upper

than the lower border; and also that, instead of a web of _perfect

circles_ laid upon _regular radii_, as used to be described and is still

figured in our books, or even one of a _spiral line_, as is now more

correctly described of ordinary geometrical spiders (Fig. 6), these

never made a circle, nor even a spiral, but a _series of concentric

loops_ or arcs of circles, the lines turning back upon themselves before

reaching a point over the spider, and leaving the larger portion of the

web below her; and more than this, that the lines, though quite regular,

were by no means perfectly so, as may be seen in Fig. 7, copied from a

photograph.

[Illustration: Fig. 6. Web of common Garden Spider.]

[Illustration: Fig. 7. Web of _Nephila plumipes_.]

As usual, the _radii_, or _spokes_, of the wheel-shaped structure are

first made; then the spider begins a little way from the centre, and,

passing from one radius to another, spins a series of loops at

considerable distances from each other till she reaches the

circumference. These first loops, like the radii, are of _white, dry_,

and _inelastic_ silk, and may be recognized by the little notches at

their junction with the radii. The notches are made by the spider's

drawing her body a little inward toward the centre of the web at the

time of attaching them to the radii, and so they always point in the

direction in which the spider is moving at that time, and in opposite

directions on any two successive lines (Fig. 8). Having reached what is

to be the border of her web, and thus constructed a firm framework or

scaffolding, she begins to retrace her steps, moving more slowly and

spinning now in the _intervals_ of the dry loops two or three similar

loops, but much nearer together and made of the _elastic_ and _viscid_

silk, till she has again reached her starting-point near the middle of

the web, where, on its under side, she takes a position, head downward,

hanging by her claws, and thus keeping her body from direct contact with

the web.

[Illustration: Fig. 8. Section of Web.]

Here she will remain quiet for hours as if asleep; but no sooner does a

fly or other insect strike the web, than she darts in the direction

whence the vibrations proceed, and usually seizes her prey; but,

strangely enough, if the insect have ceased its struggles before she

reaches it, she stops, and if she cannot renew them by shaking the web

with her claws, will slowly and disconsolately return to the centre of

the web, there to await fresh vibrations. These and many other facts,

even more conclusive, have satisfied me that, although this spider has

eight eyes (Fig. 9), it is as blind as a man with his eyelids shut, and

can only distinguish light from darkness, nothing more. This seems to be

the case with other geometrical species, but not at all with the field

and hunting spiders, some of which will boldly turn upon you and look

right in your eyes; they alone, of all insects, seeming to recognize the

_face_ of man as different from his body.

[Illustration: Fig. 9. Face and Jaws, magnified (eyes dimly seen).]

The hearing and touch of this spider are very acute. The latter is

exercised by the palpi and the tips of the legs, especially the first

pair, but no ear has yet been discovered; neither is anything known of

the organs of taste and smell, or even whether the insect possesses

these senses at all.

I ought before this to have anticipated and answered a question which

nine out of ten, perhaps, of my readers have already asked themselves,

"Do not spiders bite? and is not their bite poisonous, nay, at times,

deadly even to man?" The answer is, in brief, Yes, spiders do bite,

probably all of them, if provoked and so confined that they cannot

escape; though only a few tropical species can be said to seek of their

own accord an opportunity for attacking man, or any creature larger than

the insects that form their natural prey. Even the _Nephila plumipes_,

which, it has been intimated, is "Christian in its disposition, and

well-behaved beyond most of its kind," will readily bite, if it is held

in the fingers and anything is put to its jaws. But that is nothing. So

would you, most gentle reader, if a great giant pinched you between his

thumb and finger, and held your hands and feet and head; and if, too,

like our spider, you could not see enough to distinguish friends from

foes. Spiders, then, will bite. But to the second part of the inquiry

our answer must be less positive. They have a very bad name; but much of

this is due to their grim and forbidding aspect, and their bloody trade

of trapping and eating poor little insects. It is to be remembered that

there are very few, if any, medical reports of injuries from the bites

of spiders, and that the accounts of such cases occurring in the

newspapers consist in great measure of inference, and either make no

mention of the offender at all, or merely speak of a little black or

gray spider being found in the vicinity. A number of experiments have

been made in England to ascertain the effect of the bite of the larger

geometrical spiders upon the experimenter himself, upon other spiders,

and upon common insects; and the conclusion was, that it produces no

greater effect than the prick of a pin, or any other injury of equal

extent and severity; while the speedy death of its victim is ascribed to

the spider's sucking its juices, rather than to any poison instilled

into the wound. But these experiments, though somewhat reassuring, are

not conclusive; for they were tried only on one person, and people vary

much in their susceptibility to poison of all kinds; moreover, the

spiders employed were of the _geometrical_ kinds, which have never been

so much feared as the larger _field_ and _hunting_ spiders. Indeed, it

may be found that among spiders there is as great a difference in

respect to venom as among serpents, and that those which depend upon

their jaws for taking and holding their prey, such as the field and

hunting spiders, are poisonous, while the web-builders which ensnare

their victims are not so. In regard to our spiders, I have caused a

large one to bite, so as to draw blood, a kitten three days old, and the

kitten has not appeared to suffer in the least on that account.

They are very quiet insects, and never appear disturbed at what goes on

about them; neither do they run away and hide in holes and corners, like

our common spiders; but if their webs are injured, or they are startled

by a noise, they will shake themselves from side to side in their webs,

so as to be wholly invisible. Their natural food is insects of all

kinds; but they soon learn to eat soft flesh, such as the liver of

chickens, for which, as well as for water, they will sometimes stretch

themselves and turn in their webs so as to take it from the point of a

pin or camel's-hair pencil. Besides water to drink, they require an

atmosphere saturated with moisture, like that of their native island,

the relative humidity being about _seventy_ on the Hygrodeik scale. If

stroked upon the back, they often raise their bodies as a cat does, and

sometimes put back a leg to push away your finger. They may be allowed

to run over one's person with perfect safety, but, if suddenly seized,

will hold on with tooth as well as nail.

They are quite economical, and every few days, when the web has become

too dry and dusty for use, will gather it up in a mass, which they stuff

into their jaws and masticate for hours, swallowing the gum, but

throwing out the rest, with the little particles of dust, in the form of

a hard black pellet,--an instance rare, if not indeed unique, of an

animal eating a substance already excreted from its body.

Here I must close, though much against my will. It would please me to

describe, as it has almost fascinated me to observe, the doings of my

spiders, as they grew older and made their webs in the Wardian cases to

which they were removed when too many and too large for the jars; how

the young are gregarious, and move from place to place in a close

column, protected on all sides by skirmishers, which continually report

to the main body; how some of these young, whose parents were caught on

Long Island, South Carolina, a year ago, and which were hatched from the

egg in October last, have grown up during a Northern winter, have

themselves become parents and laid eggs; how they periodically cast off

their skins, even to that of the eyes, the jaws, and the breathing

tubes, and how, from too great impatience, sad accidents sometimes

befall them on these occasions; how, also, I have reeled silk from

several of these spiders, and made a thread which has been woven in a

power-loom as a woof or filling upon a warp of common black silk, so as

to make a bit of ribbon two inches wide, thereby proving that it is real

silk and can be treated as such.

Much, too, could be said of the only other attempts to utilize spiders'

silk, a knowledge of which would have materially aided me. In France,

one hundred and fifty years ago, M. Bon made gloves and stockings of

silk got by carding spiders' cocoons, and seventy years later, as I have

but recently ascertained, Termeyer, a Spaniard, not only used the

cocoons, but also, by an observation similar to my own, was led to reel

the silk from the living insect. He, however, had poorer spiders or too

little perseverance, or friends and a government influenced by a most

short-sighted economy and prudence, else the highly interesting and

instructive account of his experiments would have been familiar to some

one in this country, and would not have waited these many years to be

found by accident last spring in an obscure corner of the Astor Library.

I will add, finally, that I believe some other geometrical spiders,

especially of the genus _Nephila_, may be found as docile, and as

productive of beautiful silk, as the species I have described. At any

rate, you cannot find a more interesting inmate of your Wardian case

than some large geometrical spider.

WHAT DID SHE SEE WITH?

I could not have been more than seven or eight years old, when it

happened; but it might have been yesterday. Among all other childish

memories, it stands alone. To this very day it brings with it the old,

utter sinking of the heart, and the old, dull sense of mystery.

To read the story, you should have known my mother. To understand it,

you should understand her. But that is quite impossible now, for there

is a quiet spot over the hill, and past the church, and beside the

little brook where the crimsoned mosses grow thick and wet and cool,

from which I cannot call her. It is all I have left of her now. But

after all, it is not of her that you will chiefly care to hear. The

object of my story is simply to acquaint you with a few facts, which,

though interwoven with the events of her life, are quite independent of

it as objects of interest. It is, I know, only my own heart that makes

these pages a memorial,--but, you see, I cannot help it.

Yet, I confess, no glamour of any earthly love has ever utterly dazzled

me,--not even hers. Of imperfections, of mistakes, of sins, I knew she

was guilty. I know it now,--even with the sanctity of those crimsoned

mosses, and the hush of the rest beneath, so close to my heart, I cannot

forget them. Yet somehow--I do not know how--the imperfections, the

mistakes, the very sins, bring her nearer to me as the years slip by,

and make her dearer.

The key to her life is the key to my story. That given, as I can give

it, I will try to compress. It lies in the fact that my mother was what

we call an aristocrat, I do not like the term, as the term is used. I am

sure she does not now; but I have no other word. She was a royal-looking

woman, and she had the blood of princes in her veins. Generations

back--how we children used to reckon the thing over!--she was cradled in

a throne. A miserable race, to be sure, they were,--the Stuarts; and the

most devout genealogist might deem it dubious honor to own them for

great-grandfathers by innumerable degrees removed. So she used to tell

us, over and over, as a damper on our childish vanity, looking such a

very queen as she spoke, in every play of feature, and every motion of

her hand, that it was the old story of preachers who did not practise.

The very baby was proud of her. The beauty of a face, and the elegant

repose of a manner, are by no means influences more unfelt at three

years than at thirty.

As insanity will hide itself away, and lie sleeping, and die out,--while

old men are gathered to their fathers scathless, and young men follow in

their footsteps safe and free,--and start into life, and claim its own

when children's children have forgotten it; as a single trait of a

single scholar in a race of clods will bury itself in day-laborers and

criminals, unto the third and fourth generation, and spring then, like a

creation from a chaos, into statesmen and poets and sculptors;--so, I

have sometimes fancied, the better and truer nature of voluptuaries and

tyrants was sifted down through the years, and purified in our little

New England home, and the essential autocracy of monarchical blood

refined and ennobled in my mother into royalty.

A broad and liberal culture had moulded her; she knew its worth, in

every fibre of her heart; scholarly parents had blessed her with their

legacies of scholarly mind and name. With the soul of an artist, she

quivered under every grace and every defect; and the blessing of a

beauty as rare as rich had been given to her. With every instinct of her

nature recoiling from the very shadow of crimes the world winks at, as

from a loathsome reptile, the family record had been stainless for a

generation. God had indeed blessed her; but the very blessing was a

temptation.

I knew, before she left me, what she might have been, but for the

merciful and tender watch of Him who was despised and rejected of men. I

know, for she told me, one still night when we were alone together, how

she sometimes shuddered at herself, and what those daily and hourly

struggles between her nature and her Christianity _meant_.

I think we were as near to one another as mother and daughter can be;

but yet as utterly different. Since I have been talking in such lordly

style of those miserable Jameses and Charleses, I will take the

opportunity to confess that I have inherited my father's thorough-going

democracy,--double measure, pressed down and running over. She not only

pardoned it, but I think she loved it in me, for his sake.

It was about a year and a half, I think, after he died, that she sent

for Aunt Alice to come to Creston. "Your aunt loves me," she said, when

she told us in her quiet way, "and I am so lonely now."

They had been the only children, and they loved each other,--how much, I

afterwards knew. And how much they love each other _now_, I like to

think,--quite freely and fully, and without shadow or doubt between

them, I dare to hope.

A picture of Aunt Alice always hung in mother's room. It was taken down

years ago. I never asked her where she put it. I remember it, though,

quite well; for mother's sake I am glad I do. For it was a pleasant face

to look upon, and a young, pure, happy face,--beautiful too, though with

none of the regal beauty crowned by my mother's massive hair, and

pencilled brows. It was a timid, girlish face, with reverent eyes, and

ripe, tremulous lips,--weak lips, as I remember them. From babyhood, I

felt a want in the face. I had, of course, no capacity to define it; it

was represented to me only by the fact that it differed from my

mother's.

She was teaching school out West when mother sent for her. I saw the

letter. It was just like my mother:--"Alice, I need you. You and I ought

to have but one home now. Will you come?"

I saw, too, a bit of a postscript to the answer,--"I'm not fit that you

should love me so, Marie."

And how mother laughed at it!

When it was all settled, and the waiting weeks became at last a single

day, I hardly knew my mother. She was in her early married years; she

was a girl; she was a child; she was every young thing, and merry thing,

that she could have ever been. So full of fitful moods, and little

fantastic jokes! such a flush on her cheeks too, as she ran to the

window every five minutes, like a child! I remember how we went all over

the house together, she and I, to see that everything looked neat, and

bright, and welcome. And how we lingered in the guest-room, to put the

little finishing touches to its stillness, and coolness, and coseyness.

The best spread on the bed, and the white folds smoothed as only

mother's fingers could smooth them; the curtain freshly washed, and

looped with its crimson cord; the blinds drawn, cool and green; the late

afternoon sunlight slanting through, in flecks upon the floor. Flowers,

too, upon the table. I remember they were all white,--lilies of the

valley, I think; and the vase of Parian marble, itself a solitary lily,

unfolding stainless leaves. Over the mantle she had hung the finest

picture in the house,--an "Ecce Homo," and an exquisite engraving. It

used to hang in grandmother's room in the old house. We children

wondered a little that she took it up stairs.

"I want your aunt to feel at home, and see home things," she said. "I

wish I could think of something more to make it pleasant in here."

Just as we left the room she turned and looked into it. "Pleasant, isn't

it? I am so glad, Sarah," her eyes dimming a little. "She's a very dear

sister to me."

She stepped in again to raise a stem of the lilies that had fallen from

the vase, and lay like wax upon the table, then she shut the door and

came away.

That door was shut just so for years; the lonely bars of sunlight

flecked the solitude of the room, and the lilies faded on the table. We

children passed it with hushed footfall, and shrank from it at twilight,

as from a room that held the dead. But into it we never went.

Mother was tired out that afternoon; for she had been on her feet all

day, busied in her loving cares to make our simple home as pleasant and

as welcome as home could be. But yet she stopped to dress us in our

Sunday clothes,--and no sinecure was it to dress three persistently

undressable children; Winthrop was a host in himself. "Auntie must see

us look our prettiest," she said.

She was a picture herself when she came down. She had taken off her

widow's cap and coiled her heavy hair low in her neck, and she always

looked like a queen in that lustreless black silk. I do not know why

these little things should have made such an impression on me then. They

are priceless to me now. I remember how she looked, framed there in the

doorway, while we were watching for the coach,--the late light ebbing in

golden tides over the grass at her feet, and touching her face now and

then through the branches of trees, her head bent a little, with eager,

parted lips, and the girlish color on her cheeks, her hand shading her

eyes as they strained for a sight of the lumbering coach. She must have

been a magnificent woman when she was young,--not unlike, I have heard

it said, to that far-off ancestress whose name she bore, and whose

sorrowful story has made her sorrowful beauty immortal. Somewhere abroad

there is a reclining statue of Queen Mary, to which, when my mother

stood beside it, her resemblance was so strong that the by-standers

clustered about her, whispering curiously. "Ah, mon Dieu!" said a little

Frenchman, aloud, "c'est une resurrection."

We must have tried her that afternoon, Clara and Winthrop and I; for the

spirit of her own excitement had made us completely wild. Winthrop's

scream of delight when, stationed on the gate-post, he caught the first

sight of the old yellow coach, might have been heard a quarter of a

mile.

"Coming?" said mother, nervously, and stepped out to the gate, full in

the sunlight that crowned her like royal gold.

The coach lumbered on, and rattled up, and passed.

"Why, she hasn't come!" All the eager color died out of her face. "I am

so disappointed!" speaking like a troubled child, and turning slowly

into the house.

Then, after a while, she drew me aside from the others,--I was the

oldest, and she was used to make a sort of confidence between us,

instinctively, as it seemed, and often quite forgetting how very few my

years were. "Sarah, I don't understand. You think she might have lost

the train? But Alice is so punctual, Alice never lost a train. And she

said she would come." And then, a while after, "I _don't_ understand."

It was not like my mother to worry. The next day the coach lumbered up

and rattled past, and did not stop,--and the next, and the next.

"We shall have a letter," mother said, her eyes saddening every

afternoon. But we had no letter. And another day went by, and another.

"She is sick," we said; and mother wrote to her, and watched for the

lumbering coach, and grew silent day by day. But to the letter there was

no answer.

Ten days passed. Mother came to me one afternoon to ask for her pen,

which I had borrowed. Something in her face troubled me vaguely.

"What are you going to do, mother?"

"Write to your aunt's boarding-place. I can't bear this any longer,"

sharply. She had already grown unlike herself.

She wrote, and asked for an answer by return of mail.

It was on a Wednesday, I remember, that we looked for it. I remember

everything that happened that day. I came home early from school. Mother

was sewing at the parlor window, her eyes wandering from her work, up

the road. It was an ugly day. It had rained drearily from eight o'clock

till two, and closed in suffocating mist, creeping and dense and chill.

It gave me a childish fancy of long-closed tombs and lowland graveyards,

as I walked home in it.

I tried to keep the younger children quiet when we went in, mother was

so nervous. As the early, uncanny twilight fell, we grouped around her

timidly. A dull sense of awe and mystery clung to the night, and clung

to her watching face, and clung even then to that closed room up stairs

where the lilies were fading.

Mother sat leaning her head upon her hand, the outline of her face dim

in the dusk against the falling curtain. She was sitting so when we

heard the first rumble of the distant coach-wheels. At the sound, she

folded her hands in her lap and stirred a little, rose slowly from her

chair, and sat down again.

"Sarah."

I crept up to her. At the near sight of her face, I was so frightened I

could have cried.

"Sarah, you may go out and get the letter. I--I can't."

I went slowly out at the door and down the walk. At the gate I looked

back. The outline of her face was there against the window-pane, white

in the gathering gloom.

It seems to me that my older and less sensitive years have never known

such a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists,

unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, and

head hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp,

like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded and

drooped in the grass at my feet seemed to be gasping for breath. The

neighbor's house, not forty paces across the street, was invisible. I

remember the sensation it gave me, as I struggled to find its outlines,

of a world washed out, like the figures I washed out on my slate. As I

trudged, half frightened, into the road, and the fog closed about me, it

seemed to my childish superstition like a horde of long-imprisoned

ghosts let loose and angry. The distant sound of the coach, which I

could not see, added to the fancy.

The coach turned the corner presently. On a clear day I could see the

brass buttons on the driver's coat at that distance. There was nothing

visible now of the whole dark structure but the two lamps in front, like

the eyes of some evil thing, glaring and defiant, borne with swift

motion down upon me by a power utterly unseen,--it had a curious effect.

Even at this time, I confess I do not like to see a lighted carriage

driven through a fog.

I summoned all my little courage, and piped out the driver's name,

standing there in the road.

He reined up his horses with a shout,--he had nearly driven over me.

After some searching, he discovered the small object cowering down in

the mist, handed me a letter, with a muttered oath at being intercepted

on such a night, and lumbered on and out of sight in three rods.

I went slowly into the house. Mother had lighted a lamp, and stood at

the parlor door. She did not come into the hall to meet me.

She took the letter and went to the light, holding it with the seal

unbroken. She might have stood so two minutes.

"Why don't you read, mamma?" spoke up Winthrop. I hushed him.

She opened it then, read it, laid it down upon the table, and went out

of the room without a word. I had not seen her face. We heard her go up

stairs and shut the door.

She had left the letter open there before us. After a little awed

silence, Clara broke out into sobs. I went up and read the few and

simple lines.

_Aunt Alice had left for Creston on the appointed day._

Mother spent that night in the closed room where the lilies had drooped

and died. Clara and I heard her pacing the floor till we cried ourselves

to sleep. When we woke in the morning, she was pacing it still.

* * * * *

Well, weeks wore into months, and the months became many years. More

than that we never knew. Some inquiry revealed the fact, after a while,

that a slight accident had occurred upon the Erie Railroad to the train

which she should have taken. There was some disabling, but no deaths,

the conductor had supposed. The car had fallen into the water. She might

not have been missed when the half-drowned passengers were all drawn

out.

So mother added a little crape to her widow's weeds, the key of the

closed room lay henceforth in her drawer, and all things went on as

before. To her children my mother was never gloomy,--it was not her way.

No shadow of household affliction was placed like a skeleton confronting

our uncomprehending joy. Of what those weeks and months and years were

to her,--a widow, and quite uncomforted in their dark places by any

human love,--she gave no sign. We thought her a shade paler, perhaps. We

found her often alone with her little Bible. Sometimes, on the Sabbath,

we missed her, and knew that she had gone into that closed room. But she

was just as tender with us in our little faults and sorrows, as merry

with us in our plays, as eager in our gayest plans, as she had always

been. As she had always been,--our mother.

And so the years slipped by, to her and to us. Winthrop went into

business in Boston; he never took to his books, and mother was too wise

to _push_ him through college; but I think she was disappointed. He was

her only boy, and she would have chosen for him the profession of his

father and grandfather. Clara and I graduated in our white dresses and

blue ribbons, like other girls, and came home to mother, crochet-work,

and Tennyson. And then something happened, as the veriest little

things--which, unnoticed and uncomprehended, hold the destinies of lives

in their control--will happen.

I mean that our old and long-tried cook, Bathsheba, who had been an

heirloom in the family, suddenly fell in love with the older sexton, who

had rung the passing-bell for every soul who died in the village for

forty years, and took it into her head to marry him, and desert our

kitchen for his little brown house under the hill.

So it came about that we hunted the township for a handmaiden; and it

also came about that our inquiring steps led us to the poor-house. A

stout, not over-brilliant-looking girl, about twelve years of age, was

to be had for her board and clothes, and such schooling as we could give

her,--in country fashion, to be "bound out" till she should be eighteen.

The economy of the arrangement decided in her favor; for, in spite of

our grand descent and grander notions, we were poor enough, after father

died, and the education of three children had made no small gap in our

little principal, and she came.

Her name was a singular one,--Selphar. It always savored too nearly of

brimstone to please me. I used to call her Sel, "for short." She was a

good, sensible, uninteresting-looking girl, with broad face, large

features, and limp, tow-colored curls. I doubt if I ever see curls like

them now without a little shudder. They used to hang straight down about

her eyes, and were never otherwise than perfectly smooth. She proved to

be of good temper, which is worth quite as much as brains in a servant,

as honest as the daylight, dull enough at her books, but a good,

plodding worker, if you marked out every step of the way for her

beforehand. I do not think she would ever have discovered the laws of

gravitation; but she might have jumped off a precipice to prove them,

if she had been bidden.

Until she was seventeen, she was precisely like any other rather stupid

girl; never given to novel-reading or fancies; never frightened by the

dark or ghost-stories; proving herself warmly attached to us, after a

while, and rousing in us, in return, the kindly interest naturally

felt for a faithful servant; but she was not in any respect

_un_common,--quite far from it,--except in the circumstance that she

never told a falsehood.

At seventeen she had a violent attack of diphtheria, and her life hung

by a thread. Mother's aristocracy had nothing of that false pride which

is afraid of contamination from kindly association with its inferiors.

She was too thoroughly a lady. She was as tender and unwearying in her

care of Selphar as the girl's own mother might have been. She was

somehow touched by the child's orphaned life,--suffering always, in all

places, appealed to her so strongly,--every sorrow found so warm a place

in her heart.

From that time, I believe Sel was immovable in her faith in my mother's

divinity. Under such nursing as she had, she slowly recovered, but her

old, stolid strength never came back to her. Severe headaches became of

frequent occurrence. Her stout, muscular arms grew weak. As weeks went

on, it became evident in many ways that, though the diphtheria itself

was quite out of her system, it had left her thoroughly diseased.

Strange fits of silence came over her: her volubility had been the

greatest objection we had to her hitherto. Her face began to wear a

troubled look. She was often found in places where she had stolen away

to be alone.

One morning she slept late in her little garret-chamber, and we did not

call her. The girl had gone up stairs the night before crying with the

pain in her temples, and mother, who was always thoughtful of her

servants, said it was a pity to wake her, and, as there were only three

of us, we might get our own breakfast for once. While we were at work

together in the kitchen, Clara heard her kitten mewing out in the snow,

and went to the door to let her in. The creature, possessed by some

sudden frolic, darted away behind the well-curb. Clara was always a bit

of a romp, and, with never a thought of her daintily-slippered feet, she

flung her trailing dress over one arm and was off over the three-inch

snow. The cat led her a brisk chase, and she came in flushed, and

panting, and pretty, her little feet drenched, and the tip of a Maltese

tail just visible above a great bundle she had made of her apron.

"Why!" said mother, "you have lost your ear-ring."

Clara dropped the kitten with unceremonious haste on the floor, felt of

her little pink ear, shook her apron, and the corners of her mouth went

down into her dimpled chin.

"They're the ones Winthrop sent, of all things in the world!"

"You'd better put on your rubbers, and have a hunt out-doors," said

mother.

We hunted out-doors,--on the steps, on the well-boards, in the

wood-shed, in the snow; Clara looked down the well till her nose and

fingers were blue, but the ear-ring was not to be found. We hunted

in-doors, under the stove, and the chairs, and the table, in every

possible and impossible nook, cranny, and crevice, but gave up the

search in despair. It was a pretty trinket,--a leaf of delicately

wrought gold, with a pearl dew-drop on it,--very becoming to Clara, and

the first present Winthrop had sent her from his earnings. If she had

been a little younger she would have cried. She came very near it as it

was, I suspect, for when she went after the plates she stayed in the

cupboard long enough to set two tables.

When we were half through breakfast, Selphar came down, blushing, and

frightened half out of her wits, her apologies tumbling over each other

with such skill as to render each one unintelligible,--and evidently

undecided in, her own mind whether she was to be hung or burnt at the

stake.

"It's no matter at all," said mother, kindly; "I knew you felt sick last

night. I should have called you if I had needed you."

Having set the girl at her ease, as only she could do, she went on with

her breakfast, and we forgot all about her. She stayed, however, in the

room to wait on the table. It was afterwards remembered that she had not

been out of our sight since she came down the garret-stairs. Also, that

her room looked out upon the opposite side of the house from that on

which the well-curb stood.

"Why, look at Sel!" said Clara, suddenly, "she has her eyes shut."

The girl was just passing the toast. Mother spoke to her. "Selphar, what

is the matter?"

"I don't know."

"Why don't you open your eyes?"

"I can't."

"Hand the salt to Miss Sarah."

She took it up and brought it around the table to me, with perfect

precision.

"Sel, how you act!" said Clara, petulantly. "Of course you saw."

"Yes'm, I saw," said the girl in a puzzled way, "but my eyes are shut,

Miss Clara."

"Tight?"

"Tight."

Whatever this freak meant, we thought best to take no notice of it. My

mother told her, somewhat gravely, that she might sit down until she was

wanted, and we returned to our conversation about the ear-ring.

"Why!" said Sel, with a little jump, "I see your ear-ring, Miss

Clara,--the one with a white drop on the leaf. It's out by the well."

The girl was sitting with her back to the window, her eyes, to all

appearance, tightly closed.

"It's on the right-hand side, under the snow, between the well and the

wood-pile. Why, don't you see?"

Clara began to look frightened, mother displeased.

"Selphar," she said, "this is nonsense. It is impossible for you to see

through the walls of two rooms and a wood-shed."

"May I go and get it?" said the girl, quietly.

"Sel," said Clara, "on your word and honor, are your eyes shut

_perfectly_ tight?"

"If they ain't, Miss Clara, then they never was."

Sel never told a lie. We looked at each other, and let her go. I

followed her out, and kept my eyes on her closed lids. She did not once

raise them; nor did they tremble, as lids will tremble, if only

partially closed.

She walked without the slightest hesitation directly to the well-curb,

to the spot which she had mentioned, stooped down, and brushed away the

three-inch fall of snow. The ear-ring lay there, where it had sunk in

falling. She picked it up, carried it in, and gave it to Clara.

That Clara had the thing on when she started after her kitten, there

could be no doubt. She and I both remembered it. That Sel, asleep on the

opposite side of the house, could not have seen it drop, was also

settled. That she, with her eyes closed and her back to the window, had

seen through three walls, and through three inches of snow, at a

distance of fifty feet, was an inference.

"I don't believe it!" said my mother, "it's some nonsensical mistake."

Clara looked a little pale, and I laughed.

We watched her carefully through the day. Her eyes remained tightly

closed. She understood all that was said to her, answered correctly, but

did not seem inclined to talk. She went about her work as usual, and

performed it without a mistake. It could not be seen that she groped at

all with her hands to feel her way, as is the case with the blind. On

the contrary, she touched everything with her usual decision. It was

impossible to believe, without seeing them, that her eyes were closed.

We tied a handkerchief tightly over them; see through it or below it she

could not, if she had tried. We then sent her into the parlor, with

orders to bring from the book-case two Bibles which had been given as

prizes to Clara and me at school, when we were children. The books were

of precisely the same size, color, and texture. Our names in gilt

letters were printed upon the binding. We followed her in, and watched

her narrowly. She went directly to the book-case, laid her hands upon

the books at once, and brought them to my mother. Mother changed them

from, hand to hand several times, and turned them with the gilt

lettering downwards upon her lap.

"Now, Selphar, which is Miss Sarah's?"

The girl quietly took mine up. The experiment was repeated and varied

again and again. In every case the result was the same. She made no

mistake. It was no guess-work. All this was done with the bandage

tightly drawn about her eyes. _She did not see those letters with them._

That evening we were sitting quietly in the dining-room. Selphar sat a

little apart with her sewing, her eyes still closed. We kept her with

us, and kept her in sight. The parlor, which was a long room, was

between us and the front of the house. The distance was so great that we

had often thought, if prowlers were to come around at night, how

impossible it would be to hear them. The curtains and shutters were

closely drawn. Sel was sitting by the fire. Suddenly she turned pale,

dropped her sewing, and sprang from her chair.

"Robbers, robbers!" she cried. "Don't you see? they're getting in the

east parlor window! There's three of 'em, and a lantern. They've just

opened the window,--hurry, hurry!"

"I believe the girl is insane," said mother, decidedly. Nevertheless,

she put out the light, opened the parlor door noiselessly, and went in.

The east window was open. There was a quick vision of three men and a

dark lantern. Then Clara screamed, and it disappeared. We went to the

window, and saw the men running down the street. The snow the next

morning was found trodden down under the window, and their footprints

were traced out to the road.

When we went back to the other room, Selphar was standing in the middle

of it, a puzzled, frightened look on her face, her eyes wide open.

"Selphar," said my mother, a little suspiciously, "how did you know the

robbers were there?"

"Robbers!" said the girl, aghast.

She knew nothing of the robbers. She knew nothing of the ear-ring. She

remembered nothing that had happened since she went up the garret-stairs

to bed, the night before. And, as I said, the girl was as honest as the

sunlight. When we told her what had happened, she burst into terrified

tears.

For some time after this there was no return of the "tantrums," as

Selphar had called the condition, whatever it was. I began to get up

vague theories of a trance state. But mother said, "Nonsense!" and Clara

was too much frightened to reason at all about the matter.

One Sunday morning Sel complained of a headache. There was an evening

service that night, and we all went to church. Mother let Sel take the

empty seat in the carryall beside her.

It was very dark when we started to come home. But Creston was a safe

old Orthodox town, the roads were filled with returning church-goers

like ourselves, and mother drove like a man. A darker night I think I

have never seen. Literally, we could not see a hand before our eyes. We

met a carriage on a narrow road, and the horses' heads touched, before

either driver had seen the other.

Selphar had been quite silent during the drive. I leaned forward, looked

closely into her face, and could dimly see through the darkness that her

eyes were closed.

"Why!" she said at last, "see those gloves!"

"Where?"

"Down in the ditch; we passed them before I spoke. I see them on a

blackberry-bush; they've got little brass buttons on the wrist."

Three rods past now, and we could not see our horse's head.

"Selphar," said my mother, quickly, "what _is_ the matter with you?"

"If you please, ma'am, I don't know," replied the girl, hanging her

head. "May I get out and bring 'em to you?"

Prince was reined up, and Sel got out. She went so far back, that,

though we strained our eyes to do it, we could not see her. In about two

minutes she came up, a pair of gentleman's gloves in her hand. They were

rolled together, were of cloth so black that on a bright night it would

never have been seen, and had small brass buttons at the wrist.

Mother took them without a word.

The story leaked out somehow, and spread all over town. It raised a

great hue and cry. Four or five antediluvian ladies declared at once

that we were nothing more nor less than a family of "them spirituous

mediums," and seriously proposed to expel mother from the

prayer-meeting. Masculine Creston did worse. It smiled a pitying smile,

and pronounced the whole thing the fancy of "scared women-folks." I

could endure with calmness any slander upon earth but that. I sent by

the next mail for Winthrop, and stated the case to him in a condition of

suppressed fury. He very politely bit back an incredulous smile, and

said he should be _very_ happy to see her perform. The answer was

somewhat dubious. I accepted it in silent suspicion.

He came on Saturday noon. That afternoon we attended _en masse_ one of

those refined inquisitions commonly known as picnics, and Winthrop lost

his pocket-knife. Selphar, of course, kept house at home.

When we returned, Winthrop made some careless reference to his loss in

her presence, and thought no more of it. About half an hour after, we

observed that she was washing the dishes with her eyes shut. The

condition had not been upon her five minutes before she dropped the

spoon suddenly into the water, and asked permission to go out to walk.

She "saw Mr. Winthrop's knife somewhere under a stone, and wanted to get

it." It was fully two miles to the picnic grounds, and nearly dark.

Winthrop followed the girl, unknown to her, and kept her in sight. She

went rapidly, and without the slightest hesitation or search, to an

out-of-the-way gully down by the pond, where Winthrop afterwards

remembered having gone to cut some willow-twigs for the girls, parted a

thick cluster of bushes, lifted a large, loose stone under which the

knife had rolled, and picked it up. She returned it to Winthrop,

quietly, and hurried away about her work to avoid being thanked.

I observed that, after this incident, masculine Creston became more

respectful.

Of several peculiarities in this development of the girl I made at the

time careful memoranda, and the exactness of these can be relied upon.

1. She herself, so far from attempting to bring on these trance states,

or taking any pride therein, was intensely troubled and mortified by

them,--would run out of the room, if she felt them coming on in the

presence of visitors.

2. They were apt to be preceded by severe headaches, but came often

without any warning.

3. She never, in any instance, recalled anything that happened during

the trance, after it was passed.

4. She was powerfully and unpleasantly affected by electricity from a

battery, or acting in milder forms. She was also unable at any time to

put her hands and arms into hot water; the effect was to paralyze them

at once.

5. Space proved to be no impediment to her vision. She has been known to

follow the acts, words, and expressions of countenance of members of the

family hundreds of miles away, with accuracy; as was afterwards proved

by comparing notes as to time.

6. The girl's eyes, after her trances became habitual, assumed, and

always retained, the most singular expression I ever saw on any face.

They were oblong and narrow, and set back in her head like the eyes of a

snake. They were not--smile if you will, O practical and incredulous

reader!--but they were not _human_ eyes. The eyes of Elsie Venner are

the only eyes I can think of as at all like them. The most horrible

circumstance about them--a circumstance that always made me shudder,

familiar as I was with it--was, that, though turned fully on you, _they

never looked at you_. Something behind them or out of them did the

seeing, not they.

7. She not only saw substance, but soul. She has repeatedly told me my

thoughts when they were upon subjects to which she could not by any

possibility have had the slightest clew.

8. We were never able to detect a shadow of deceit about her.

9. The clairvoyance never failed in any instance to be correct, so far

as we were able to trace it.

As will be readily imagined, the girl became a useful member of the

family. The lost valuables restored and the warnings against mischances

given by her quite balanced her incapacity for peculiar kinds of work.

This incapacity, however, rather increased than diminished, and,

together with her fickle health, which also grew more unsettled, caused

us a great deal of care. The Creston physician--who was a keen man in

his way, for a country doctor--pronounced the case altogether undreamt

of before in Horatio's philosophy, and kept constant notes of it. Some

of these have, I believe, found their way into the medical journals.

After a while there came, like a thief in the night, that which I

suppose was poor Selphar's one unconscious, golden mission in this

world. It came on a quiet summer night, that ended a long trance of a

week's continuance. Mother had gone out into the kitchen to give an

order for breakfast. I heard a few eager words in Selphar's voice, and

then the door shut quickly, and it was an hour before it was opened.

Then my mother came to me without a particle of color in lips or cheek,

and drew me away alone, and told the secret to me.

Selphar had seen Aunt Alice.

We sat down and looked at one another. There was a singular pinched look

about my mother's mouth.

"Sarah."

"Yes."

"She says"--and then she told me what she said. She had seen Alice

Stuart in a Western town, seven hundred miles away. Among the living,

she desired to be counted of the dead. And that was all.

My mother paced the room three times back and forth, her hands locked.

"Sarah." There was a chill in her voice--it had been such a gentle

voice!--that froze me. "Sarah, the girl is an impostor."

"Mother!"

She paced the room, once more, three times, back and forth. "At any

rate, she is a poor, self-deluded creature. How _can_ she see, seven

hundred miles away, a dead woman who has been an angel all these years?

Think! an _angel_, Sarah! So much better than I, and I--I loved--"

Before or since, I never heard my mother speak like that. She broke off

sharply, and froze back into her chilling voice.

"We will say nothing about this, if you please. I do not believe a word

of it."

We said nothing about it, but Selphar did. The delusion, if delusion it

were, clung to her, haunted her, pursued her, week after week. To rid

her of it, or to silence her, was impossible. She added no new facts to

her first statement, but insisted that the long-lost dead was yet alive,

with a quiet pertinacity that it was simply impossible to ridicule,

frighten, threaten, or cross-question out of her, Clara was so

thoroughly alarmed that she would not have slept alone for any

mortal--perhaps not for any immortal--considerations. Winthrop and I

talked the matter over often and gravely when we were alone and in quiet

places. Mother's lips were sealed. From the day when Sel made the first

disclosure, she was never heard once to refer to the matter. A

perceptible haughtiness crept into her manner towards the girl. She even

talked of dismissing her; but repented it, and melted into momentary

gentleness. I could have cried over her that night. I was beginning to

understand what a pitiful struggle her life had become, and how utterly

alone she must be in it. She _would_ not believe--she knew not what. She

could not doubt the girl. And with the conflict even her children could

not intermeddle.

To understand the crisis into which she was brought, the reader must

bear in mind our long habit of belief, not only in Selphar's personal

honesty, but in the infallibility of her mysterious power. Indeed, it

had almost ceased to be mysterious to us, from daily familiarity. We had

come to regard it as the curious working of physical disease, had taken

its results as a matter of course, and had ceased, in common with

converted Creston, to doubt the girl's capacity for seeing anything that

she chose to, at any place.

Thus a year wore on. My mother grew sleepless and pallid. She laughed

often, in a nervous, shallow way, as unlike her as a butterfly is unlike

a sunset; and her face settled into an habitual sharpness and hardness

unutterably painful to me.

Once only I ventured to break into the silence of the haunting thought

that she knew, and we knew, was never escaped by either. "Mother, it

would do no harm for Winthrop to go out West, and--"

She interrupted me sternly: "Sarah, I had not thought you capable of

such childish superstition. I wish that girl and her nonsense had never

come into this house!"--turning sharply away, and out of the room.

Just what that year was to my mother, I suppose only God and she have

ever known, or will know.

But it ended. It ended at last, as I had prayed every night and morning

of it that it should end. Mother came into my room one night, locked the

door behind her, and, walking over to the window, stood with her face

turned from me.

"Sarah."

"Yes."

"Sarah."

But that was all for a little while. Then,--"Sick and in suffering,

Sarah,--the girl--she may be right, God Almighty knows! _Sick and in

suffering_, you see. I am going. I think, I--"

The voice broke and melted utterly. I stole away and left her alone.

Creston put on its spectacles and looked wise on learning, the next day,

that Mrs. Dugald had taken the earliest morning train for the West, on

sudden and important business. It was precisely what Creston expected,

and just like the Dugalds for all the world,--gone to hunt up material

for that genealogical book, or map, or tree, or something, that they

thought nobody knew they were going to publish. O yes, Creston

understood it perfectly.

Space forbids me to relate in detail the clews which Selphar had given

as to the whereabouts of the wanderer. Her trances, just at this time,

were somewhat scarce and fragmentary, and the information she had

professed to give had come in snatches and very imperfectly,--the trance

being apt to end suddenly at the moment when some important question was

pending, and then, of course, all memory of what she had said, or was

about to say, was gone. The names and appearance of persons and places

necessary to the search had, however, been given with sufficient

distinctness to serve as a guide in my mother's rather chimerical

undertaking. I suppose ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would have

thought her a candidate for the State Lunatic Asylum. Exactly what she

herself expected, hoped, or feared, I think it doubtful if she knew. I

confess to a condition of simple bewilderment, when she was fairly

gone, and Clara and I were left alone with Selphar's ghostly eyes

forever on us. One night I had to lock the poor thing into her

garret-room before I could sleep.

Just three weeks from the day mother started for the West, the coach

rattled up to the door, and two women, arm in arm, came slowly up the

walk. The one, erect, royal, with her great steadfast eyes alight; the

other, bent and worn, gray-haired and sallow and dumb, crawling feebly

through the golden afternoon sunshine, as the ghost of a glorious life

might crawl back to its grave.

Mother threw open the door, and stood there like a queen. "Children,

your aunt has come home. She is too tired to talk just now. By and by

she will be glad to see you."

We took her gently up stairs, into the room where the lilies were

mouldering to dust, and laid her down upon the bed. She closed her eyes

wearily, turned her face over to the wall, and said no word.

What was the story of those tired eyes I never asked, and I never knew.

Once, as I passed the room, a quick picture showed through the open

door. The two women lying with their arms about each other's neck, as

they used to do when they were children together; and above them, still

and watchful, the wounded Face that had waited there so many years for

this.

One was speaking with weak sobs, and very low. It was Aunt Alice. I

caught but two words,--"My husband."

But what that husband was remains unknown till the day when the grave

shall give up its dead, and the secrets of hearts oppressed and sinned

against and sorrowful shall be revealed.

She lingered weakly there, within the restful room, for seven days, and

then one morning we found her with her eyes upon the thorn-crowned face,

her own quite still and smiling.

A little funeral train wound away one night behind the church, and left

her down among those red-cup mosses that opened in so few months again

to cradle the sister who had loved her. Two words only, by mother's

orders, marked the simple headstone,--

"ALICE BROWNING."

I have given you facts. Explain them as you will. I do not attempt it,

for the simple reason that I cannot.

A word must be said as to the fate of poor Sel, which was mournful

enough. Her trances grew gradually more frequent and erratic, till she

became so thoroughly diseased in mind and body as to be entirely

unfitted for household work, and, in short, nothing but an encumbrance.

We kept her, however, for the sake of charity, and should have done so,

till her poor, tormented life wore itself out; but after the advent of a

new servant, and my mother's death, she conceived the idea that she was

a burden, cried over it a few weeks, and at last one bitter winter's

night she disappeared. We did not give up all search for her for years,

but nothing was ever heard from her. He, I hope, who permitted life to

be such a terrible mystery to her, has cared for her somehow, and

kindly, and well.

THE MINER.

Down 'mid the tangled roots of things

That coil about the central fire,

I seek for that which giveth wings,

To stoop, not soar, to my desire.

Sometimes I hear, as 't were a sigh,

The sea's deep yearning far above.

"Thou hast the secret not," I cry,

"In deeper deeps is hid my Love."

They think I burrow from the sun,

In darkness, all alone and weak;

Such loss were gain if He were won.

For 't is the sun's own Sun I seek.

The earth, they murmur, is the tomb

That vainly sought his life to prison;

Why grovel longer in its gloom?

He is not here; He hath arisen.

More life for me where He hath lain

Hidden, while ye believed him dead,

Than in cathedrals cold and vain,

Built on loose sands of "It is said."

My search is for the living gold,

Him I desire who dwells recluse,

And not his image, worn and old,

Day-servant of our sordid use.

If Him I find not, yet I find

The ancient joy of cell and church,

The glimpse, the surety undefined,

The unquenched ardor of the search.

Happier to chase a flying goal,

Than to sit counting laurelled gains,

To guess the Soul within the soul,

Than to be lord of what remains.

PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZONS.

II.

Major Coutinho and myself passed three days in the investigation of the

Serra of Errere. We found it to consist wholly of the sandstone deposits

described in my previous article, and to have exactly the same

geological constitution. In short, the Serra of Monte Alegre, and of

course all those connected with it on the northern side of the river,

lie in the prolongation of the lower beds forming the banks of the

river, their greater height being due simply to the fact that they have

not been worn to the same low level. The opposite range of Santarem,

which has the same general outline and character, shares, no doubt, the

same geological structure. In one word, all these hills were formerly

part of a continuous formation, and owe their present outline and their

isolated position to a colossal denudation. The surface of the once

unbroken strata, which in their original condition must have formed an

immense plain covered by water, has been cut into ravines or carried

away over large tracts, to a greater or less depth, leaving only such

portions standing as from their hardness could resist the floods which

swept over it. The longitudinal trend of these hills is to be ascribed

to the direction of the current which caused the denudation, while their

level summits are due to the regularity of the stratification. They are

not all table-topped, however; among them are many of smaller size, in

which the sides have been gradually worn down, producing a gently

rounded surface. Of course, under the heavy tropical rains this

denudation is still going on, though in a greatly modified form.

I cannot leave this Serra without alluding to the great beauty and

extraordinary extent of the view to be obtained from it. Indeed, it was

here that for the first time the geography of the country presented

itself to my mind as a living reality, in all its completeness.

Insignificant as is its actual height, the Serra of Errere commands a

wider prospect than is to be had from many a more imposing mountain; for

the surrounding plain, covered with forests, and ploughed by countless

rivers, stretches away for hundreds of leagues in every direction,

without any object to obstruct the view. Standing on the brow of the

Serra, with the numerous lakes intersecting the low lands at its base,

you look across the Valley of the Amazons, as far as the eye can reach,

and through its midst you follow for miles on either side the broad

flood of the great river, carrying its yellow waters to the sea. As I

stood there, panoramas from the Swiss mountains came up to my memory,

and I fancied myself standing on the Alps, looking across the plain of

Switzerland, instead of the bed of the Amazons, the distant line of the

Santarem hills on the southern bank of the river, and lower than the

northern chain, representing the Jura range. As if to complete the

comparison, I found Alpine lichens growing among cactus and palms, and a

crust of Arctic cryptogamous growth covered rocks, between which sprang

tropical flowers. On the northern flank of this Serra I found the only

genuine erratic boulders I have seen in the whole length of the

Amazonian Valley, from Para to the frontier of Peru, though there are

many detached masses of rock, as, for instance, at Pedreira, near the

junction of the Rio Negro and Rio Branco, which might be mistaken for

them, but are due to the decomposition of the rocks in place. The

boulders of Errere are entirely distinct from the rock of the Serra, and

consist of masses of compact hornblende.

It would seem that these two ranges skirting a part of the northern and

southern banks of the Lower Amazons are not the only remnants of this

arenaceous formation in its primitive altitude. On the banks of the

Japura, in the Serra of Cupati, Major Coutinho has found the same beds

rising to the same height. It thus appears, by positive evidence, that

over an extent of a thousand miles these deposits had a very

considerable thickness in the present direction of the valley. How far

they extended in width has not been ascertained by direct observation,

for we have not seen how they sink away to the northward, and towards

the south the denudation has been so complete that, except in the very

low range of hills in the neighborhood of Santarem, they do not rise

above the plain. But the fact that this formation once had a thickness

of more than eight hundred feet within the limits where we have had an

opportunity of observing it, leaves no doubt that it must have extended

to the edge of the basin, filling it to the same height throughout its

whole extent. The thickness of the deposits gives a measure for the

colossal scale of the denudations by which this immense accumulation was

reduced to its present level. Here then is a system of high hills,

having the prominence of mountains in the landscape, produced by causes

to whose agency inequalities on the earth's surface of this magnitude

have never yet been ascribed. We may fairly call them denudation

mountains.

At this stage of the inquiry we have to account for two remarkable

phenomena. First, the filling of the Amazonian bottom with coarse

arenaceous materials and finely laminated clays, immediately followed by

sandstones rising to a height of more than eight hundred feet above the

sea; the basin meanwhile having no rocky barrier towards the ocean on

its eastern side. Second, the wearing away and reduction of these

formations to their present level, by a denudation, more extensive than

any thus far recorded in the annals of geology, which has given rise to

all the most prominent hills and mountain chains along the northern bank

of the river. Before seeking an explanation of these facts, let us look

at the third and uppermost deposit.

This deposit, essentially the same as the Rio drift, has been minutely

described in my former article; but in the north, it presents itself

under a somewhat different aspect. As in Rio, it is a clayey deposit,

containing more or less sand, and reddish in color, though varying from

deep ochre to a brownish tint. It is not so absolutely destitute of

stratification here as in its more southern range, though the traces of

stratification are rare, and, when they do occur, are faint and

indistinct. The materials are also more completely comminuted, and, as I

have said above, contain hardly any large masses, though quartz pebbles

are sometimes scattered throughout the deposit, and occasionally a thin

seam of pebbles, exactly as in the Rio drift, is seen resting between it

and the underlying sandstone. In some places this bed of pebbles even

intersects the mass of the clay, giving it in such instances an

unquestionably stratified character. There can be no question that this

more recent formation rests unconformably upon the sandstone beds

beneath it; for it fills all the inequalities of their denudated

surfaces, whether they be more or less limited furrows, or wide,

undulating depressions. It may be seen everywhere along the banks of the

river, above the stratified sandstone, sometimes with the river mud

accumulated against it; at the season of the _enchente_, or high water,

it is the only formation left exposed above the water level. Its

thickness is not great; it varies from twenty or thirty to fifty feet,

and may occasionally rise nearly to a hundred feet in height, though

this is rarely the case. It is evident that this formation also was once

continuous, stretching over the whole basin at one level. Though it is

now worn down in many places, and has wholly disappeared in others, its

connection may be readily traced; since it is everywhere visible, not

only on opposite banks of the Amazons, but also on those of all its

tributaries, as far as their shores have been examined. I have said that

it rests always above the sandstone beds. This is true, with one

exception. Wherever the sandstone deposits retain their original

thickness, as in the hills of Monte Alegre and Almeyrim, the red clay is

not found on their summits, but occurs only in their ravines and

hollows, or resting against their sides. This shows that it is not only

posterior to the sandstone, but was accumulated in a shallower basin,

and consequently never reached so high a level. The boulders of Errere

do not rest on the stratified sandstone of the Serra, but are sunk in

the unstratified mass of the clay. This should be remembered, as it will

presently be seen that their position associates them with a later

period than that of the mountain itself. The unconformability of the

ochraceous clay and the underlying sandstones might lead to the idea

that the two formations belong to distinct geological periods, and are

not due to the same agency, acting at successive times. One feature,

however, shows their close connection. The ochraceous clay exhibits a

remarkable identity of configuration with the underlying sandstones. An

extensive survey of the two, in their mutual relations, shows clearly

that they were both deposited by the same water-system within the same

basin, but at different levels. Here and there the clay formation has so

pale and grayish a tint, that it may be confounded with the mud deposits

of the river. These latter, however, never rise so high as the

ochraceous clay, but are everywhere confined within the limits of high

and low water. The islands also in the main course of the Amazons

consist invariably of river-mud, while those arising from the

intersection and cutting off of portions of the land by diverging

branches of the main stream always consist of the well-known sandstones,

capped by the ochre-colored clay.

It may truly be said that there does not exist on the surface of the

earth a formation known to geologists resembling that of the Amazons.

Its extent is stupendous; it stretches from the Atlantic shore, through

the whole width of Brazil, into Peru, to the very foot of the Andes.

Humboldt speaks of it "in the vast plains of the Amazons, in the eastern

boundary of Jaen de Bracamoros," and says, "This prodigious extension of

red sandstone in the low grounds stretching along the east of the Andes

is one of the most striking phenomena I observed during my examination

of rocks in the equinoctial regions."[A] When the great natural

philosopher wrote these lines, he had no idea how much these deposits

extended beyond the field of his observations. Indeed, they are not

limited to the main bed of the Amazons; they have been followed along

the banks of its tributaries to the south and north as far as these have

been ascended. They occur on the margins of the Huallaga and the

Ucayall, on those of the Ica, the Jutahy, the Jurua, the Japura, and the

Purus. On the banks of the Japura, where Major Coutinho has traced them,

they are found as far as the Cataract of Cupati. I have followed them

along the Rio Negro to its junction with the Rio Branco; and Humboldt

not only describes them from a higher point on this same river, but also

from the valley of the Orinoco. Finally, they may be tracked along the

banks of the Madeira, the Tapajos, the Xingu, and the Tocantins, as well

as on the shores of the Guatuma, the Trombetas, and other northern

affluents of the Amazons. The observations of Martius, those of Gardner,

and the recent survey above alluded to, made by my assistant, Mr. St.

John, of the valley of the Rio Guruguea and that of the Rio Paranahyba,

show that the great basin of Piauhy is also identical in its geological

structure with the lateral valleys of the Amazons. The same is true of

the large island of Marajo, lying at the mouth of the Amazons. And yet I

believe that even this does not cover the whole ground, and that some

future writer may say of my estimate, as I have said of Humboldt's, that

it falls short of the truth; for, if my generalizations are correct, the

same formation will be found extending over the whole basin of the

Paraguay and the Rio de la Plata, and along their tributaries, to the

very heart of the Andes.

Such are the facts. The question now arises, How were these vast

deposits formed? The easiest answer, and the one which most readily

suggests itself, is that of a submersion of the continent at successive

periods to allow the accumulation of these materials, and its subsequent

elevation. I reject this explanation for the simple reason that the

deposits show no sign whatever of a marine origin. No seashells nor

remains of any marine animal have as yet been found throughout their

whole extent, over a region several thousand miles in length and from

five to seven hundred miles in width. It is contrary to all our

knowledge of geological deposits to suppose that an ocean basin of this

size, which must have been submerged during an immensely long period in

order to accumulate formations of such a thickness, should not contain

numerous remains of the animals formerly inhabiting it.[B] The only

fossil remains of any kind truly belonging to it, which I have found in

the formation, are the leaves mentioned above, taken from the lower

clays on the banks of the Solimoens at Tomantins; and these show a

vegetation similar in general character to that which prevails there

to-day. Evidently, then, this basin was a fresh-water basin; these

deposits are fresh-water deposits. But as the Valley of the Amazons

exists to-day, it is widely open to the ocean on the east, with a gentle

slope from the Andes to the Atlantic, determining a powerful seaward

current. When these vast accumulations took place, the basin must have

been closed; otherwise the loose materials would constantly have been

carried down to the ocean.

It is my belief that all these deposits belong to the ice period in its

earlier or later phases, and to this cosmic winter, which, judging from

all the phenomena connected with it, may have lasted for thousands of

centuries, we must look for the key to the geological history of the

Amazonian Valley. I am aware that this suggestion will appear

extravagant. But is it, after all, so improbable that, when Central

Europe was covered with ice thousands of feet thick; when the glaciers

of Great Britain ploughed into the sea, and when those of the Swiss

mountains had ten times their present altitude; when every lake in

Northern Italy was filled with ice, and these frozen masses extended

even into Northern Africa; when a sheet of ice, reaching nearly to the

summit of Mount Washington in the White Mountains (that is, having a

thickness of nearly six thousand feet), moved over the continent of

North America,--is it so improbable that, in this epoch of universal

cold, the Valley of the Amazons also had its glacier poured down into it

from the accumulations of snow in the Cordilleras, and swollen

laterally by the tributary glaciers descending from the table-lands of

Guiana and Brazil? The movement of this immense glacier would be

eastward, and determined as well by the vast reservoirs of snow in the

Andes as by the direction of the valley itself. It must have ploughed

the valley bottom over and over again, grinding all the materials

beneath it into a fine powder or reducing them to small pebbles, and it

must have accumulated at its lower end a moraine of proportions as

gigantic as its own; thus building a colossal sea-wall across the mouth

of the valley. I shall be asked at once whether I have found here also

the glacial inscriptions,--the furrows, striae, and polished surfaces so

characteristic of the ground over which glaciers have travelled. I

answer, not a trace of them; for the simple reason that there is not a

natural rock surface to be found throughout the whole Amazonian Valley.

The rocks themselves are of so friable a nature, and the decomposition

caused by the warm torrential rains and by exposure to the burning sun

of the tropics so great and unceasing, that it is hopeless to look for

marks which in colder climates and on harder substances are preserved

through ages unchanged. With the exception of the rounded surfaces so

well known in Switzerland as the _roches moutonnees_ heretofore alluded

to, which may be seen in many localities, and the boulders of Errere,

the direct traces of glaciers as seen in other countries are wanting

here. I am, indeed, quite willing to admit that, from the nature of the

circumstances, I have not here the positive evidence which has guided me

in my previous glacial investigations. My conviction in this instance is

founded, first, on the materials in the Amazonian Valley, which

correspond exactly in their character to materials accumulated in

glacier bottoms; secondly, on the resemblance of the upper or third

Amazonian formation to the Rio drift,[C] of the glacial origin of which

there cannot, in my opinion, be any doubt; thirdly, on the fact that

this fresh-water basin must have been closed against the sea by some

powerful barrier, the removal of which would naturally give an outlet to

the waters, and cause the extraordinary denudations, the evidences of

which meet us everywhere throughout the valley.

On a smaller scale, phenomena of this kind have long been familiar to

us. In the present lakes of Northern Italy, in those of Switzerland,

Norway, and Sweden, as well as in those of New England, especially in

the State of Maine, the waters are held back in their basins by

moraines. In the ice period these depressions were filled with glaciers,

which, in the course of time, accumulated at their lower end a wall of

loose materials. These walls still remain, and serve as dams to prevent

the escape of the waters. But for their moraines, all these lakes would

be open valleys. In the Roads of Glen Roy, in Scotland, we have an

instance of a fresh-water lake, which has now wholly disappeared, formed

in the same manner, and reduced successively to lower and lower levels

by the breaking down or wearing away of the moraines which originally

prevented its waters from flowing out. Assuming then, that, under the

low temperature of the ice period, the climatic conditions necessary for

the formation of land-ice existed in the Valley of the Amazons, and that

it was actually filled with an immense glacier, it follows that, when

these fields of ice yielded to a gradual change of climate, and slowly

melted away, the whole basin, then closed against the sea by a huge

wall of _debris_, was transformed into a vast fresh-water lake. The

first effect of the thawing process must have been to separate the

glacier from its foundation, raising it from immediate contact with the

valley bottom, and thus giving room for the accumulation of a certain

amount of water beneath it; while the valley as a whole would still be

occupied by the glacier. In this shallow sheet of water under the ice,

and protected by it from any violent disturbance, those finer triturated

materials always found at a glacier bottom, and ground sometimes to

powder by its action, would be deposited, and gradually transformed from

an unstratified paste containing the finest sand and mud, together with

coarse pebbles and gravel, into a regularly stratified formation. In

this formation the coarse materials would of course fall to the bottom,

while the most minute would settle above them. It is at this time and

under such circumstances that I believe the first formation of the

Amazonian Valley, with the coarse, pebbly sand beneath, and the finely

laminated clays above, to have been accumulated.

I shall perhaps be reminded here of my fossil leaves, and asked how any

vegetation would be possible under such circumstances. But it must be

remembered, that, in considering all these periods, we must allow for

immense lapses of time and for very gradual changes; that the close of

this first period would be very different from its beginning; and that a

rich vegetation springs on the very borders of the snow and ice fields

in Switzerland. The fact that these were accumulated in a glacial basin

would, indeed, at once account for the traces of vegetable life, and for

the absence, or at least the great scarcity, of animal remains in these

deposits. For while fruits may ripen and flowers bloom on the very edge

of the glaciers, it is also well known that the fresh-water lakes formed

by the melting of the ice are singularly deficient in life. There are

indeed hardly any animals to be found in glacial lakes.

The second formation belongs to a later period, when, the whole body of

ice being more or less disintegrated, the basin contained a larger

quantity of water. Beside that arising from the melting of the ice, this

immense valley bottom must have received, then as now, all which was

condensed from the atmosphere above, and poured into it in the form of

rain or dew. Thus an amount of water equal to that now flowing in from

all the tributaries of the main stream must have been rushing towards

the axis of the valley, seeking its natural level, but spreading over a

more extensive surface than now, until, finally gathered up as separate

rivers, it flowed in distinct beds. In its general movement toward the

central and lower part of the valley, the broad stream would carry along

all the materials small enough to be so transported, as well as those so

minute as to remain suspended in the waters. It would gradually deposit

them in the valley bottom in horizontal beds, more or less regular, or

here and there, wherever eddies gave rise to more rapid and irregular

currents, characterized by torrential stratification. Thus has been

consolidated in the course of ages that continuous sand formation

spreading over the whole Amazonian basin, and attaining a thickness of

eight hundred feet.

While these accumulations were taking place within this basin, it must

not be forgotten that the sea was beating against its outer

walls,--against that gigantic moraine which I suppose to have closed it

at its eastern end. It would seem that, either from this cause, or

perhaps in consequence of some turbulent action from within, a break was

made in this defence, and the waters rushed violently out. It is very

possible that the waters, gradually swollen at the close of this period

by the further melting of the ice, by the additions poured in from

lateral tributaries, by the rains, and also by the filling of the basin

with loose materials, would overflow, and thus contribute to destroy

the moraine. However this may be, it follows from my premises that, in

the end, these waters obtained a sudden release, and poured seaward with

a violence which cut and denuded the deposits already formed, wearing

them down to a much lower level, and leaving only a few remnants

standing out in their original thickness, where the strata were solid

enough to resist the action of the currents. Such are the hills of Monte

Alegre, of Obydos, Almeyrim, and Cupati, as well as the lower ridges of

Santarem. This escape of the waters did not, however, entirely empty the

whole basin; for the period of denudation was again followed by one of

quiet accumulation, during which was deposited the ochraceous sandy clay

resting upon the denudated surfaces of the underlying sandstone. To this

period I refer the boulders of Errere, sunk as they are in the clay of

this final deposit. I suppose them to have been brought to their present

position by floating ice at the close of the glacial period, when

nothing remained of the ice-fields except such isolated

masses,--ice-rafts as it were; or perhaps by icebergs dropped into the

basin from glaciers still remaining in the Andes and on the edges of the

plateaus of Guiana and Brazil. From the general absence of

stratification in this clay formation, it would seem that the

comparatively shallow sheet of water in which it was deposited was very

tranquil. Indeed, after the waters had sunk much below the level which

they held during the deposition of the sandstone, and the currents which

gave rise to the denudation of the latter had ceased, the whole sheet of

water would naturally become much more placid. But the time came when

the water broke through its boundaries again, perhaps owing to the

further encroachment of the sea and consequent destruction of the

moraine. In this second drainage, however, the waters, carrying away a

considerable part of the new deposit, furrowing it to its very

foundation, and even cutting through it into the underlying sandstone,

were, in the end, reduced to something like their present level, and

confined within their present beds. This is shown by the fact that in

this ochre-colored clay, and penetrating to a greater or less depth the

sandstone below, are dug, not only the great longitudinal channel of the

Amazons itself, but also the lateral furrows through which its

tributaries reach the main stream, and the network of anastomosing

branches flowing between them; the whole forming the most extraordinary

river system in the world.

My assumption that the sea has produced very extensive changes in the

coast of Brazil--changes more than sufficient to account for the

disappearance of the glacial wall which I suppose to have closed the

Amazonian Valley in the ice period--is by no means hypothetical. This

action is still going on to a remarkable degree, and is even now rapidly

modifying the outline of the shore. When I first arrived at Para, I was

struck with the fact that the Amazons, the largest river in the world,

has no delta. All the other rivers which we call great, though some of

them are insignificant as compared with the Amazons,--the Mississippi,

the Nile, the Ganges, and the Danube,--deposit extensive deltas, and the

smaller rivers also, with few exceptions, are constantly building up the

land at their mouths by the materials they bring along with them. Even

the little river Kander, emptying into the Lake of Thun, is not without

its delta. Since my return from the Upper Amazons to Para, I have made

an examination of some of the harbor islands, and also of parts of the

coast, and have satisfied myself that, with the exception of a few

small, low islands, never rising above the sea-level, and composed of

alluvial deposit, they are portions of the mainland detached from it,

partly by the action of the river itself, and partly by the encroachment

of the ocean. In fact the sea is eating away the land much faster than

the river can build it up. The great island of Marajo was originally a

continuation of the Valley of the Amazons, and is identical with it in

every detail of its geological structure. My investigation of the island

itself, in connection with the coast and the river, leads me to suppose

that, having been at one time an integral part of the deposits described

above, at a later period it became an island in the bed of the Amazons,

which, dividing in two arms, encircled it completely, and then, joining

again to form a single stream, flowed onward to the sea-shore, which in

those days lay much farther to the eastward than it now does. I suppose

the position of the island of Marajo at that time to have corresponded

very nearly to the present position of the island of Tupinambaranas,

just at the junction of the Madeira with the Amazons. It is a question

among geographers whether the Tocantins is a branch of the Amazons, or

should be considered as forming an independent river system. It will be

seen that, if my view is correct, it must formerly have borne the same

relation to the Amazons that the Madeira River now does, joining it just

where Marajo divided the main stream, as the Madeira now joins it at the

head of the island of Tupinambaranas. If in countless centuries to come

the ocean should continue to eat its way into the Valley of the Amazons,

once more transforming the lower part of the basin into a gulf, as it

was during the cretaceous period, the time might arrive when

geographers, finding the Madeira emptying almost immediately into the

sea, would ask themselves whether it had ever been indeed a branch of

the Amazons, just as they now question whether the Tocantins is a

tributary of the main stream or an independent river. But to return to

Marajo, and to the facts actually in our possession.

The island is intersected, in its south-eastern end, by a considerable

river called the Igarape Grande. The cut made through the land by this

stream seems intended to serve as a geological section, so perfectly

does it display the three characteristic Amazonian formations above

described. At its mouth, near the town of Soure, and at Salvaterra, on

the opposite bank, may be seen, lowest, the well-stratified sandstone,

with the finely laminated clays resting upon it, overtopped by a crust;

then the cross-stratified, highly ferruginous sandstone, with quartz

pebbles here and there; and, above all, the well-known ochraceous,

unstratified sandy clay, spreading over the undulating surface of the

denudated sandstone, following all its inequalities, and filling all its

depressions and furrows. But while the Igarape Grande has dug its

channel down to the sea, cutting these formations, as I ascertained, to

a depth of twenty-five fathoms, it has thus opened the way for the

encroachments of the tides, and the ocean is now, in its turn, gaining

upon the land. Were there no other evidence of the action of the tides

in this locality, the steep cut of the Igarape Grande, contrasting with

the gentle slope of the banks near its mouth, wherever they have been,

modified by the invasion of the sea, would enable us to distinguish the

work of the river from that of the ocean, and to prove that the

denudation now going on is due in part to both. But besides this, I was

so fortunate as to discover here unmistakable and perfectly convincing

evidence of the onward movement of the sea. At the mouth of the Igarape

Grande, both at Soure and at Salvaterra, on the southern side of the

Igarape, is a submerged forest. Evidently this forest grew in one of

those marshy lands constantly inundated, for between the stumps is

accumulated the loose, felt-like peat characteristic of such grounds,

and containing about as much mud as vegetable matter. Such a marshy

forest, with the stumps of the trees still standing erect in the peat,

has been laid bare on both sides of the Igarape Grande by the

encroachments of the ocean. That this is the work of the sea is

undeniable, for all the little depressions and indentations of the peat

are filled with sea-sand, and a ridge of tidal sand divides it from the

forest still standing behind. Nor is this all. At Vigia, immediately

opposite to Soure, on the continental side of the Para River, just where

it meets the sea, we have the counterpart of this submerged forest.

Another peat-bog, with the stumps of innumerable trees standing in it,

and encroached upon in the same way by tidal sand, is exposed here also.

No doubt these forests were once all continuous, and stretched across

the whole basin of what is now called the Para River.

Since I have been pursuing this inquiry, I have gathered much

information to the same effect from persons living on the coast. It is

well remembered that, twenty years ago, there existed an island, more

than a mile in width, to the northeast of the entrance of the Bay of

Vigia, which has now entirely disappeared. Farther eastward, the Bay of

Braganza has doubled its width in the last twenty years, and on the

shore, within the bay, the sea has gained upon the land for a distance

of two hundred yards during a period of only ten years. The latter fact

is ascertained by the position of some houses, which were two hundred

yards farther from the sea ten years ago than they now are. From these

and the like reports, from my own observations on this part of the

Brazilian coast, from some investigations made by Major Coutinho at the

mouth of the Amazons, on its northern continental shore, near Macapa,

and from the reports of Mr. St. John respecting the formations in the

valley of the Paranahyba, it is my belief that the changes I have been

describing are but a small part of the destruction wrought by the sea on

the northeastern shore of this continent. I think it will be found, when

the coast has been fully surveyed, that a strip of land not less than a

hundred leagues in width, stretching from Cape St. Roque to the northern

extremity of South America, has been eaten away by the ocean. If this be

so, the Paranahyba and the rivers to the northwest of it, in the

province of Maranham, were formerly tributaries of the Amazons; and all

that we know thus far of their geological character goes to prove that

this was actually the case. Such an extensive oceanic denudation must

have carried away not only the gigantic glacial moraine here assumed to

have closed the mouth of the Amazonian basin, but the very ground on

which it stood.

During the last four or five years I have been engaged in a series of

investigations, in the United States, upon the subject of the

denudations connected with the close of the glacial period there, and

the encroachments of the ocean upon the drift deposits along the

Atlantic coast. Had these investigations been published in detail, with

the necessary maps, it would have been far easier for me to explain the

facts I have lately observed in the Amazonian Valley, to connect them

with facts of a like character on the continent of North America, and to

show how remarkably they correspond with facts accomplished during the

same period in other parts of the world. While the glacial epoch itself

has been very extensively studied in the last half-century, little

attention has been paid to the results connected with the breaking up of

the geological winter and the final disappearance of the ice. I believe

that the true explanation of the presence of a large part of the

superficial deposits lately ascribed to the agency of the sea, during

temporary subsidences of the land, will be found in the melting of the

ice-fields. To this cause I would refer all those deposits which I have

designated in former publications as remodelled drift. When the sheet of

ice, extending from the Arctic regions over a great part of North

America and coming down to the sea, slowly melted away, the waters were

not distributed over the face of the country as they now are. They

rested upon the bottom deposits of the ice-fields, upon the glacial

paste, consisting of clay, sand, pebbles, boulders, etc., underlying the

ice. This bottom deposit did not, of course, present an even surface,

but must have had extensive undulations and depressions. After the

waters had been drained off from the more elevated ridges, these

depressions would still remain full. In the lakes and pools thus formed,

stratified deposits would be accumulated, consisting of the most

minutely comminuted clay, deposited in thin laminated layers, or

sometimes in considerable masses, without any sign of stratification;

such differences in the formation being determined by the state of the

water, whether perfectly stagnant or more or less agitated. Of such pool

deposits overlying the drift there are many instances in the Northern

United States. By the overflowing of some of these lakes, and by the

emptying of the higher ones into those on a lower level, channels would

gradually be formed between the depressions. So began to be marked out

our independent river-systems,--the waters always seeking their natural

level, gradually widening and deepening the channels in which they

flowed, as they worked their way down to the sea. When they reached the

shore, there followed that antagonism between the rush of the rivers and

the action of the tides,--between continental outflows and oceanic

encroachments,--which still goes on, and has led to the formation of our

eastern rivers, with their wide, open estuaries, such as the James, the

Potomac, and the Delaware. All these estuaries are embanked by drift, as

are also, in their lower course, the rivers connected with them. Where

the country was low and flat, and the drift extended far into the ocean,

the encroachment of the sea gave rise, not only to our large estuaries,

but also to the sounds and deep bays forming the most prominent

indentations of the continental coast, such as the Bay of Fundy,

Massachusetts Bay, Long Island Sound, and others. The unmistakable

traces of glacial action upon all the islands along the coast of New

England, sometimes lying at a very considerable distance from the

mainland, give an approximate, though a minimum, measure of the former

extent of the glacial drift seaward, and the subsequent advance of the

ocean upon the land. Like those of the harbor of Para, all these islands

have the same geological structure as the continent, and were evidently

continuous with it at some former period. All the rocky islands along

the coast of Maine and Massachusetts exhibit the glacial traces wherever

their surfaces are exposed by the washing away of the drift; and where

the drift remains, its character shows that it was once continuous from

one island to another, and from all the islands to the mainland.

It is difficult to determine with precision the ancient limit of the

glacial drift, but I think it can be shown that it connected the shoals

of Newfoundland with the continent; that Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard,

and Long Island made part of the mainland; that, in like manner, Nova

Scotia, including Sable Island, was united to the southern shore of New

Brunswick and Maine, and that the same sheet of drift extended thence to

Cape Cod, and stretched southward as far as Cape Hatteras;--in short,

that the line of shallow soundings along the whole coast of the United

States marks the former extent of glacial drift. The ocean has gradually

eaten its way into this deposit, and given its present outlines to the

continent. These denudations of the sea no doubt began as soon as the

breaking up of the ice exposed the drift to its invasion; in other

words, at a time when colossal glaciers still poured forth their load of

ice into the Atlantic, and fleets of icebergs, far larger and more

numerous than those now floated off from the Arctic seas, were launched

from the northeastern shore of the United States. Many such masses must

have stranded along the shore, and have left various signs of their

presence. In fact, the glacial phenomena of the United States and

elsewhere are due to two distinct periods: the first of these was the

glacial epoch proper, when the ice was a solid sheet; while to the

second belongs the breaking up of this epoch, with the gradual

disintegration and dispersion of the ice. We talk of the theory of

glaciers and the theory of icebergs in reference to these phenomena, as

if they were exclusively due to one or the other, and whoever accepted

the former must reject the latter, and _vice versa_. When geologists

have combined these now discordant elements, and consider these two

periods as consecutive,--part of the phenomena being due to the

glaciers, part to the icebergs and to freshets consequent on their

breaking up,--they will find they have covered the whole ground, and

that the two theories are perfectly consistent with each other. I think

the present disputes upon this subject will end somewhat like those

which divided the Neptunic and Plutonic schools of geologists in the

early part of this century; the former of whom would have it that all

the rocks were due to the action of water, the latter that they were

wholly due to the action of fire. The problem was solved, and harmony

restored, when it was found that both elements had been equally at work

in forming the solid crust of the globe. To the stranded icebergs

alluded to above, I have no doubt, is to be referred the origin of the

many lakes without outlet existing all over the sandy tract along our

coast of which Cape Cod forms a part. Not only the formation of these

lakes, but also that of our salt marshes and cranberry-fields, I believe

to be connected with the waning of the ice period.

I hope at some future time to publish in detail, with the appropriate

maps and illustrations, my observations on our coast changes, and upon

other phenomena connected with the close of the glacial epoch in the

United States. It is reversing the natural order of things to give

results without the investigations which have led to them; and I should

not have introduced the subject here except to show that the fresh-water

denudations and the oceanic encroachments which have formed the

Amazonian Valley, with its river system, are not isolated facts, but

that the process has been the same in both continents. The extraordinary

continuity and uniformity of the Amazonian deposits are due to the

immense size of the basin enclosed, and the identity of the materials

contained in it.

A glance at any geological map of the world will show the reader that

the Valley of the Amazons, so far as any attempt is made to explain its

structure, is represented as containing isolated tracts of Devonian,

Triassic, Jurassic, cretaceous, tertiary, and alluvial deposits. As is

shown by the above sketch, this is wholly inaccurate; and whatever may

be thought of my interpretation of the actual phenomena, I trust that,

in presenting for the first time the formations of the Amazonian basin

in their natural connection and sequence, as consisting of three uniform

sets of comparatively recent deposits, extending throughout the whole

valley, the investigations here recorded have contributed something to

the results of modern geology.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Bohn's edition of Humboldt's Personal Narrative, p. 134. Humboldt

alludes to these formations repeatedly; it is true that he refers them

to the ancient conglomerates of the Devonian age, but his description

agrees so perfectly with what I have observed along the banks of the

Amazons, that there can be no doubt he speaks of the same thing. He

wrote at a time when many of the results of modern geology were unknown,

and his explanation of the phenomena was then perfectly natural. The

passage from which the few lines in the text are taken shows that these

deposits extend even to the Llanos.

[B] I am aware that Bates mentions having heard, that at Obydos

calcareous layers, thickly studded with marine shells, had been found

interstratified with the clay, but he did not himself examine the

strata. The Obydos shells are not marine, but are fresh-water Unios,

greatly resembling Aviculas, Solens, and Arcas. Such would-be marine

fossils have been brought to me from the shore opposite to Obydos, near

Santarem, and I have readily recognised them for what they truly are,

fresh-water shells of the family of Naiades. I have myself collected

specimens of these shells in the clay beds along the banks of the

Solimoens, near Teffe, and might have mistaken them for fossils of that

formation had I not known how Naiades burrow in the mud. Their

resemblance to the marine genera mentioned above is very remarkable, and

the mistake as to their true zoological character is as natural as that

by which earlier ichthyologists, and even travellers of very recent

date, have confounded some fresh-water fishes from the Upper Amazons of

the genus Pterophyllum (Heckel) with the marine genus Platax.

[C] As I have stated in the beginning, I am satisfied that the

unstratified clay deposit of Rio and its vicinity is genuine glacial

drift, resulting from the grinding of the loose materials interposed

between the glacier and the solid rock in place, and retaining to this

day the position in which it was left by the ice. Like all such

accumulations, it is totally free from stratification. If this be so, it

is evident, on comparing the two formations, that the ochraceous sandy

clay of the Valley of the Amazons has been deposited under different

circumstances; that, while it owes its resemblance to the Rio drift to

the fact that its materials were originally ground by glaciers in the

upper part of the valley, these materials have subsequently been spread

throughout the whole basin and actually deposited under the agency of

water.

A MANIAC'S CONFESSION.

I am a maniac. I have for some years been the victim of a peculiar

insanity, which has greatly distressed several of my friends and

relatives. They generally soften it in their talk by the name

_mono_mania; but they do not hesitate to aver, when speaking their

minds, that it has in truth infected my whole soul, and made me

incapable of doing or thinking anything useful or rational. This sad

delusion, which they endeavor to remove by serious advice, by playful

banter, or by seeming to take an interest in my folly for a moment, is

encountered with great acrimony by less gentle friends. They who are not

bound to me by blood or intimacy--and some who are--deride, insult, and

revile me in every way for my subjection to a mental aberration which is

rapidly consuming a pretty property, more than average talents, and

unrivalled opportunities.

Of course, like all madmen, I think just the reverse. When the fit is on

me, I assert that this fever--this madness--far from being the bane of

my life, is a blessing to it; that I am habitually devoting money, time,

and wits to an object at once beautiful and elevating; that I have found

consolation in its visions for many sufferings, which all the amusements

offered me by my revilers are utterly inadequate to touch. I declare

that I have found a better investment for my money than all the West

Virginia coal companies that ever sunk oil-wells, and am making more

useful acquaintances than if I danced every German during the season. I

have not been shut up yet, for my friends know that, if they attempt any

such thing, the Finance Committee on the Harvard Memorial and Alumni

Hall are in possession of a bond conveying all my money to them; so I am

still at large, scolded by my brother Henry, laughed at by my sister

Bathsheba, the aversion of Beacon Street, and the scorn of Winthrop

Square.

The other day, I took a little journey to Europe, with the view of

feeding my madness on that whereby it grows. My friends did not choose

to stop me, for they thought the charms of foreign travel might win me

from my waywardness. To be sure, when they found, on my return, that I

had never left England, they were convinced, if never before, that I was

hopelessly insane; for what American, they very sanely said, "would stay

in that dull, dingy island, among those stupid, cowardly bullies, when

he might live in that lovely Paris, the most interesting and amusing

city in the world, unless he were incomprehensibly mad." And, in truth,

I begin to think I must be mad, when I find myself, like the man shut up

with eleven obstinate jurymen, alone in thinking England a gay,

beautiful, happy country, teeming with every gratification of art or

nature, and inhabited by a manly, generous, and intelligent race; and

that life in Paris, as Americans live it, is a senseless rush after

excitement, where comfort is abandoned for unreal luxury, and society

for vicious boon-companionship. Still I am very willing to admit that my

special mania can be very capitally gratified in Paris, and I am

meditating a little trip there for the purpose.

On my return from England, I was observed to be in great distress about

a certain box that I missed at Liverpool, looked for at Halifax, and all

but lost at East Boston; and when it was found and opened, it only

contained two suits of clothes, when, as Henry said, "I might have

brought forty, the only thing they did have decent in England," and all

the rest--mad, mad! I beg the readers of the Atlantic to listen to my

humble confession of madness, as it culminated in this box.

It is this. The most valuable property a man can possibly have is books;

if he has a hundred or a thousand dollars to spare, he had better at

once put it into books than into any "paying investments," or any

horses, clothes, pictures, or opera-tickets. A life passed among books,

thinking, talking, living only for books, is the most amusing and

improving life; and to make this possible, the acquisition of a library

should be the first object of any one who makes any claim to the

possession of luxuries. (My madness only allows me to make one

exception,--I do acknowledge the solemn duty of laying in a stock of old

Madeira.) But so far I have many fellow-maniacs. The special reason why

I ought always to stop the Lowell cars at Somerville is, that I consider

the reading of books only half the battle. I must have them in choice

bindings, in rare imprints, in original editions, and in the most select

forms. I must have several copies of a book I have read forty times, as

long as there is anything about each copy that makes it peculiar, _sui

generis_. I must own the first edition of Paradise Lost, because it is

the first, and in ten books; the second, because it is the first in

twelve; then Newton's, then Todd's, then Mitford's, and so on, till my

catalogue of Miltons gets to equal Jeames de la Pluche's portraits of

the "Dook." "And when," as Henry indignantly says, "he could read Milton

all he wanted to, more than I should ever want to, notes and all, in

Little and Brown's edition that father gave him, he must go spending

money on a parcel of old truck printed a thousand years ago." Mad, quite

mad.

Now, to finish the melancholy picture, I am classic mad. I prefer the

ancient authors, decidedly, to the moderns. I love them as I never can

the moderns; they are my most intimate friends, my heart's own darlings.

And how I love to lavish money on them, to see them adorned in every

way! How I love to heap them up, Aldines, and Elzevirs, and

Baskervilles, and Biponts, in all their grace and majesty. This was what

filled that London box. This was all I had to show for twenty-five or

thirty guineas of good money; a parcel of trumpery old Greek and Latin

books I had by dozens already! Mad, mad.

Will you come in and see them, ladies and gentlemen? Here they are, all

ranged out on my table, large and small, clean and dirty. What have we

first?

A goodly fat quarto in white vellum, "Plinii Panegyricus, cum notis

Schwarzii, Norimbergae, 1733." A fine, clean, fresh copy,--one of those

brave old Teutonic classics of the last century, less exquisitely

printed than the Elzevirs, less learnedly critical than the later

Germans, but perfectly trustworthy and satisfactory, and attracting

every one's eye on a library shelf, by the rich sturdiness of their

creamy binding, that smacks of the true Dutch and German burgher wealth.

The model of them all is Oudendorp's Caesar. But there is nothing very

great about Pliny's Panegyric, and a man must be a very queer

bibliomaniac who would buy up all the vellum classics of the last

century he saw. Look inside the cover; read under the book-plate the

engraved name, "Edward Gibbon, Esq." What will you, my sanest friend,

not give for a book that belonged to the author of the "Decline and

Fall"?

The next is also a large quarto, but of a very different character. It

is the Baskerville impression of the elegiac poets,--Catullus, Tibullus,

and Propertius: Birmingham, 1772. No books are more delightful to sight

and touch than the Baskerville classics. This Catullus of mine is

printed on the softest and glossiest post paper, with a mighty margin of

two inches and a half at the side, and rich broad letters,--the standard

_n_ is a tenth of an inch wide,--of a glorious blackness in spite of

their ninety-two years of age. The classics of all languages have never

been more fitly printed than by Baskerville; and the present book may

serve as an admirable lesson to those who think a large-paper book means

an ordinary octavo page printed in the middle of a quarto leaf,--for

instance; Irving's Washington. My Catullus is bound in glossy calf,

with a richly gilt back, and bears within the inscription, "From H. S.

C. | to her valued friend | Doctor Southey | Feb'y y'e 24th, 1813,"

in a true English lady's hand. This cannot be the poet Southey, who was

not made LL. D. till 1821; but it may be his brother, Henry Herbert

Southey, M. D.

Next comes a very neat and compact little Seneca, in four 18mo volumes,

bound in rich old Russia, and bearing the esteemed imprint, "Amstelodami

apud Ludovicum et Danielem Elzevirios, M.D.CLVIII." As the Baskerville

classics are the noblest for the library table, so the Elzevirs are the

neatest and prettiest for the pocket or the lecture-room. And to their

great beauty of mechanical execution is generally added a scrupulous

textual accuracy, which the great Birmingham printer did not boast. This

edition of Seneca, for instance, is that of Gronovius. His dedicatory

epistle, and the title-pages of Vols. II., III. and IV., are all dated

1658, but the general title-page in Vol. I. is 1659, as if, like White's

Shakespeare, the first volume was the last published. Contrasting a

_bijou_ edition with a magnificent one, it may be noted that in the

Elzevir the four words and two stops, "Moriar: die ergo verum," occupy

just an inch, exactly the space of the one word "compositis" in the

Baskerville; but the printing of each is in its way exquisite.

Just about a century after the Elzevirs, and contemporary with

Baskerville, an English publisher of the name of Sandby, who appears to

have been, as we should say, the University printer and bookseller at

Cambridge, projected a series of classics, which are highly prized on

large paper and not despised on small. I possess two of the latter, a

Terence and a Juvenal; the second, curiously enough, lettered

"Juvenal_u_s," a regular binder's blunder. They are called pocket

editions, but are much larger than the Elzevirs, and, though very

pretty, just miss that peculiar beauty and finish which have made the

former the delight of all scholars. There is a carelessness

somewhere--it is hard to say where--about the printing, which prevents

their being perfect; but a "Sandby" is a very nice thing.

My next "wanity" is a Virgil,--Justice's Virgil; a most elaborate and

elegant edition, in five octavo volumes, published in the middle of the

last century. It is noted, first, for the great richness and beauty of

its engravings from ancient gems, coins, and drawings, which form an

unrivalled body of illustration to the text. But, secondly, it will be

seen, on inspection, that the whole book is one vast engraving, every

line, word, and letter being cut on a metallic plate. Consequently, only

every other page is printed on. The same idea was still more perfectly

carried out by Pine, a few years later, who executed all Horace in this

way, but only lived to complete one volume of Virgil, choicer even than

Justice's. It is well bound, in perfect order, and ranks with the

choicest of ornamental classics.

Side by side with this Virgil is another, the rare Elzevir Virgil, and a

gem, if ever there was one. It is the corrected text of Heinsius, and

thus has a fair claim to rank as the earliest of the modern critical

editions of Maro. The elegance of this little book in size and shape,

the clearness and beauty of the type, and the truly classical taste and

finish of the whole design, can never be surpassed in Virgilian

bibliography, unless by Didot's matchless little copies. Elzevir Virgils

are common enough; but mine is, as I have said, the rare Elzevir, known

by the pages introductory to the Eclogues and AEneid being printed in

rubric, while the ordinary Elzevirs have them in black. It dates

1637,--the year when John Harvard left his money to the College at

Newtowne, and the first printing-press in the United States was set up

hard by.

The books, then, that I have described so far all date within the two

hundred and thirty years of our collegiate history. But I have behind

three of an earlier--a much earlier date; books which John Cotton and

Charles Chauncy might have gazed upon as old in Emmanuel College

Library.

First, I show you a pair of Aldines, and, what is better, a pair

_editionum principum_,--the first Sophocles and the first Thucydides.

Both have the proper attestation at the end that they come from the Aldi

in Venice in the year 1502,--the Thucydides in May, and the Sophocles in

August; hence the former has not the Aldine anchor at the extreme end.

Both are in exquisitely clean condition; but the Sophocles, though

taller than other known copies of the same edition, has suffered from

the knife of a modern binder, who otherwise has done his work with the

greatest elegance and judgment. The Thucydides has a grand page, over

twelve inches by eight; the Sophocles is about seven by four. The type

of both is small, and, though distinct, especially the Thucydides, not

at all what we should call elegant. In fact, elegant Greek type is a

very late invention. There is, I believe, no claim to textual criticism

in these early Aldines; the publishers printed from such manuscripts as

they could get. The Thucydides has a long dedicatory address by Aldus to

a Roman patrician; the Sophocles has no such introduction. But it is, at

any rate, most curious to consider that these two writers, who stand at

the very head of Greek, or at least Attic, prose and verse, both for

matter and style, should not have found a printer till the fifteenth

century was long past, and then in a style which, for the Sophocles, can

only be called neat. The Thucydides is handsome, but far inferior to the

glory of the _princeps_ Homer. And to own them--for a maniac--O, it is

glorious!

Last comes my special treasure,--my fifteener,--my book as old as

America,--my darling copy of my darling author. Here, at the culmination

of my madness, my friends, especially my brother Henry, are all ready to

say at once what author I mean. For it has been my special mania for

twenty years--thereby causing the deepest distress to nearly all my

friends, even those who have been thought fellow-lunatics, except

one,[D] who is for me about the only sane man alive--to prefer VIRGIL to

all authors, living or dead, and to seek to accumulate as many different

editions and copies of him as possible. I have in these pages chronicled

two. My library holds twelve more, besides two translations, and I

consider myself very short; for to my mind no breadth of paper, no

weight of binding, no brilliancy of print, no delicacy of engraving, no

elaboration of learning, can ever do honor enough to the last and best

of the ancients, who was all but the first of the Christians,--who would

have been, if his frame had not broken down under a genius too mighty

and a soul too sweet for earth. (Mad, you see, beyond all question.

Virgil is allowed to be a servile copyist, far inferior to Lucretius.

Compare Lucr. V. 750 with Georg. II. 478, and Heyne's note.) This Virgil

of mine bears the imprint of Antony Koburger, Nuremberg, 1492. It is in

the original binding of very solid boards overlaid with stamped vellum,

and is still clasped with the original skin and metal. It is a small

folio, on very coarse paper, and the only one of my rare classics not in

the cleanest condition. Its stains appear to be caused by its use in a

school; for it is covered with notes, in German current hand, very

antiquated, and very elementary in their scholarship. It has all the

poetry ascribed to Virgil, and the Commentaries of Servius and Landini,

which are so voluminous that the page looks like a ha'p'orth of sack to

an intolerable deal of very dry bread. It is very rare, being unknown to

the great Dibdin, and was snapped up by me for three guineas out of a

London bookseller's catalogue. A Virgil printed by Koburger in the year

America was discovered, original binding and clasps, not in Dibdin, for

three guineas! Hurrah! It excites my madness so that I must rush

straight to Piper's and buy right and left. Kind friends, come and take

me away ere I am reduced to beggary.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] F. W. H. M., you know I mean you.

THE GREAT DOCTOR.

A STORY IN TWO PARTS.

II.

Five or six years of the life of our hero we must now pass over in

silence, saying of them, simply, that Fancy had not cheated much in her

promises concerning them. The first rude cabin had given place to a

whitewashed cottage; the chimney-corner was bright and warm; the

easy-chair was in it, and the Widow Walker often sat there with her

grandson on her knee, getting much comfort from the reflection that he

looked just as her own Johnny did when he was a baby!

The garden smiled at the doorside, and the village had sprung up just as

Fancy promised; and Hobert and Jenny walked to church of a Sunday, and

after service shook hands with their neighbors,--for everybody delighted

to take their strong, willing hands, and look into their honest,

cheerful faces,--they were amongst the first settlers of the place, and

held an honored position in society. Jenny was grown a little more

stout, and her cheek a little more ruddy, than it used to be; but the

new country seemed not so well suited to Hobert, and the well-wishing

neighbor often said when he met him, "You mustn't be too ambitious, and

overdo! Your shoulders ain't so straight as they was when you come here!

Be careful in time; nothing like that, Walker, nothing like that." And

Hobert laughed at these suggestions, saying he was as strong as the rest

of them; and that, though his cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, he

was a better man than he seemed.

The summer had been one of the wildest luxuriance ever known in the

valley of the Wabash; for it was in that beautiful valley that our

friend Hobert had settled. The woods cast their leaves early, and the

drifts lay rotting knee-deep in places. Then came the long, hot, soaking

rains, with hotter sunshine between. Chills and fever prevailed, and

half the people of the neighborhood were shivering and burning at once.

It was a healthy region, everybody said, but the weather had been

unusually trying; as soon as the frost came, the ague would vanish; the

water was the best in the world, to be sure, and the air the purest.

Hobert was ploughing a piece of low ground for wheat, cutting a black

snake in two now and then, and his furrow behind him fast filling with

water that looked almost as black as the soil. Often he stopped to

frighten from the quivering flank of the brown mare before him the

voracious horse-flies, colored like the scum of the stagnant pools, and

clinging and sucking like leeches. She was his favorite, the pride of

his farm,--for had she not, years before, brought Jenny on her faithful

shoulder to the new, happy home? Many a fond caress her neck had had

from his arm; and the fine bridle with the silver bit, hanging on the

wall at home, would not have been afforded for any other creature in the

world. Hobert often said he would never sell her as long as he lived;

and in the seasons of hard work he favored her more than he did himself.

She had been named Fleetfoot, in honor of her successful achievement

when her master had intrusted to her carrying the treasure of his life;

but that name proving too formal, she was usually called Fleety. She

would put down her forehead to the white hands of little Jenny, four

years old and upward now, and tread so slow and so carefully when she

had her on her back! Even the white dress of Johnny Hobert had swept

down her silken side more than once, while his dimpled hands clutched

her mane, and his rosy feet paddled against her. He was going to be her

master after a while, and take care of her in her old age, when the time

of her rest was come; he knew her name as well as he knew his own, and

went wild with delight when he saw her taking clover from the tiny hand

of his sister or drinking water from the bucket at the well.

"She grows handsomer every year," Hobert often said; "and with a little

training I would not be afraid to match her against the speediest racer

they can bring." And this remark was always intended as in some sort a

compliment to Jenny, and was always so received by her.

On this special day he had stopped oftener in the furrow than common;

and as often as he stopped Fleety twisted round her neck, bent her soft

eyes upon him, and twitched her little ears as though she would say, "Is

not all right, my master?" And then he would walk round to her head, and

pass his hand along her throat and through her foretop, calling her by

her pet name, and pulling for her handfuls of fresh grass, and while she

ate it resting himself against her, and feeling in her nearness almost a

sense of human protection. His feet seemed to drag under him, and there

was a dull aching in all his limbs; the world appeared to be receding

from him, and at times he could hardly tell whether he stood upon solid

ground. Then he accused himself of being lazy and good for nothing, and

with fictitious energy took up the reins and started the plough.

He looked at the sun again and again. He was not used to leaving off

work while the sun shone, and the clear waters of the Wabash held as yet

no faintest evening flush. There were yet two good hours of working time

before him, when the quick shooting of a pain, like the running of a

knife through his heart, caused him to stagger in the furrow. Fleety

stopped of her own accord, and looked pityingly back. He sat down beside

the plough to gather up his courage a little. A strange sensation that

he could not explain had taken possession of him, a feeling as if the

hope of his life was cut off. The pain was gone, but the feeling of

helpless surrender remained. He opened his shirt and passed his hand

along his breast. He could feel nothing,--could see nothing; but he had,

for all that, a clearly defined consciousness as of some deadly thing

hold of him that he would fain be rid of.

He had chanced to stop his plough under an elm-tree, and, looking up, he

perceived that from the fork upward one half of it was dead; mistletoe

had sucked the life out of it, and lower and lower to the main body,

deeper and deeper to the vital heart of it, the sap was being drawn

away. An irresistible impulse impelled him to take the jack-knife from

his pocket, and as far as he could reach cut away this alien and deadly

growth. The sympathy into which he was come with the dying tree was

positively painful to him, and yet he was withheld from moving on by a

sort of fascination,--_he_ was that tree, and the mistletoe was rooted

in his bosom!

The last yellow leaves fluttered down and lodged on his head and

shoulders and in his bosom,--he did not lift his hand to brush them

away; the blue lizard slid across his bare ankle and silently vanished

out of sight, but he did not move a muscle. The brown mare bent her side

round like a bow, and stretched her slender neck out more and more, and

at last her nose touched his cheek, and then he roused himself and shook

the dead leaves from his head and shoulders, and stood up. "Come,

Fleety," he said, "we won't leave the plough in the middle of the

furrow." She did not move. "Come, come!" he repeated, "it seems like a

bad sign to stop here";--and then he put his hand suddenly to his heart,

and an involuntary shudder passed over him. Fleety had not unbent her

side, and her dumb, beseeching eyes were still upon him. He looked at

the sun, low, but still shining out bright, and almost as hot as ever;

he looked at his shadow stretching so far over the rough, weedy ground,

and it appeared to him strange and fantastic. Then he loosed the traces,

and, winding up the long rein, hung it over the harness; the plough

dropped aslant, and Fleety turned herself about and walked slowly

homeward,--her master following, his head down and his hands locked

together behind him.

The chimney was sending up its hospitable smoke, and Jenny was at the

well with the teakettle in her hand when he came into the dooryard.

"What in the world is going to happen?" she exclaimed, cheerfully. "I

never knew you to leave work before while the sun shone. I am glad you

have, for once. But what is the matter?"

He had come nearer now, and she saw that something of light and hope had

gone out of his face. And then Hobert made twenty excuses,--there wasn't

anything the matter, he said, but the plough was dull, and the ground

wet and heavy, and full of green roots; besides, the flies were bad, and

the mare tired.

"But you look so worn out, I am afraid you are sick, yourself!"

interposed the good wife; and she went close to him, and pushed the

hair, growing thinner now, away from his forehead, and looked anxiously

in his face,--so anxiously, so tenderly, that he felt constrained to

relieve her fears, even at some expense of the truth.

"Not to look well in your eyes is bad enough," he answered, with forced

cheerfulness, "but I feel all right; never better, never better, Jenny!"

And stooping to his little daughter, who was holding his knees, he

caught her up, and tossed her high in the air, but put her down at once,

seeming almost to let her fall out of his hands, and, catching for

breath, leaned against the well-curb.

"What is it, Hobert? what is it?" and Jenny had her arm about him, and

was drawing him toward the house.

"Nothing, nothing,--a touch of rheumatism, I guess,--no, no! I must take

care of the mare first." And as she drank the water from the full bucket

he held poised on the curb for her, he thought of the elm-tree in the

field he had left, of the mistletoe sucking the life out of it, and of

the unfinished furrow. "Never mind, Fleety," he said, as he led her away

to the stable, "we'll be up betimes to-morrow, and make amends, won't

we?"

"I believe, mother, I'll put on the new teacups!" Jenny said, as she set

a chair before the cupboard, and climbed on it so as to reach the upper

shelf. She had already spread the best table-cloth.

"Why, what for?" asked the provident mother, looking up from the sock

she was knitting.

"O, I don't know; I want to make things look nice, that's all."

But she did know, though the feeling was only half defined. It seemed to

her as if Hobert were some visitor coming,--not her husband. A shadowy

feeling of insecurity had touched her; the commonness of custom was

gone, and she looked from the window often, as the preparation for

supper went on, with all the sweetness of solicitude with which she used

to watch for his coming from under the grape-vines. Little Jenny was

ready with the towel when he came with his face dripping, and the

easy-chair was set by the door that looked out on the garden. "I don't

want it," the good grandmother said, as he hesitated; "I have been

sitting in it all day, and am tired of it!"

And as he sat there with his boy on his knee, and his little girl, who

had climbed up behind him, combing his hair with her slender white

fingers,--his own fields before him, and his busy wife making music

about the house with her cheerful, hopeful talk,--he looked like a man

to be envied; and so just then he was.

The next morning he did not fulfil his promise to himself by rising

early; he had been restless and feverish all night, and now was chilly.

If he lay till breakfast was ready, he would feel better, Jenny said;

she could milk, to be sure, and do all the rest of the work, and so he

was persuaded. But when the breakfast was ready the chilliness had

become a downright chill, so that the blankets that were over him shook

like leaves in a strong wind.

Jenny had a little money of her own hidden away in the bottom of the new

cream-pitcher. She had saved it, unknown to Hobert, from the sale of

eggs and other trifles, and had meant to surprise him by appearing in a

new dress some morning when the church-bell rang; but now she turned the

silver into her hand and counted it, thinking what nice warm flannel it

would buy to make shirts for Hobert. Of course he had them, and Jenny

had not made any sacrifice that she knew of,--indeed, that is a word of

which love knows not the meaning.

"We will have him up in a day or two," the women said, one to the other,

as they busied themselves about the house, or sat at the bedside, doing

those things that only the blessed hands of women can do, making those

plans that only the loving hearts of women can make. But the day or two

went by, and they didn't have Hobert up. Then they said to one another,

"We must set to work in earnest; we have really done nothing for him as

yet." And they plied their skill of nursing with new hope and new

energy. Every morning he told them he was better, but in the afternoon

it happened that he didn't feel quite like stirring about; he was still

better, but he had a little headache, and was afraid of bringing on a

chill.

"To be sure! you need rest and quiet; you have been working too hard,

and it's only a wonder you didn't give out sooner!" So the two women

said to him; and then they told him he looked better than he did

yesterday, and, with much tender little caressing of neck and arms and

hands, assured him that his flesh felt as healthy and nice as could be.

Nevertheless, his eyes settled deeper and deeper, and gathered more and

more of a leaden color about them; his skin grew yellow, and fell into

wrinkles that were almost rigid, and that beseeching, yearning

expression, made up of confidence in you, and terror of some nameless

thing,--that look, as of a soul calling and crying to you, which follows

you when you go farther than common from a sick-pillow,--all that

terrible appealing was in his face; and often Jenny paused with her eyes

away from him, when she saw that look,--paused, and steadied up her

heart, before she could turn back and meet him with a smile.

And friendly neighbors came in of an evening, and told of the sick wife

or boy at home; of the mildewed crop, and the lamed horse; of the

brackish well, and of the clock bought from the pedler that wouldn't go,

and wouldn't strike when it did go;--dwelling, in short, on all the

darker incidents and accidents of life, and thus establishing a nearness

and equality of relation to the sick man, that somehow soothed and

cheered him. At these times he would be propped up in bed, and listen

with sad satisfaction, sometimes himself entering with a sort of

melancholy animation into the subject.

He would not as yet accept any offers of assistance. The wood-pile was

getting low, certainly, and the plough still lying slantwise in the

furrow; the corn-crop was to be gathered, and the potatoes to be got out

of the ground,--but there was time enough yet! He didn't mean to indulge

his laziness much longer,--not he!

And then the neighbor who had offered to serve him would laugh, and

answer that he had not been altogether disinterested: he had only

proposed to _lend_ a helping hand, expecting to need the like himself

some day. "Trouble comes to us all, Mr. Walker, and we don't know whose

turn it will be next. I want to take out a little insurance,--that's

all!"

"Well, another day, if I don't get better!"

And the long hot rains were over at last; the clouds drew themselves

off, and the sharp frosts, of a morning, were glistening far and near;

the pumpkin-vines lay black along the ground, and the ungathered ears of

corn hung black on the stalk.

Hobert was no better. But still the two women told each other they

didn't think he was any worse. His disease was only an ague, common to

the time of year and to the new country. It had come on so late it was

not likely now that he would get the better of it before spring; making

some little sacrifices for the present, they must all be patient and

wait; and the nursing went on, till every device of nursing was

exhausted, and one remedy after another was tried, and one after another

utterly failed, and the fond hearts almost gave out. But there was the

winter coming on, cold and long, and there was little Hobert, only

beginning to stand alone, and prattling Jenny, with the toes coming

through her shoes, and her shoulder showing flat and thin above her

summer dress. Ah! there could be no giving out; the mother's petticoat

must be turned into aprons for the pinched shoulders, and the knit-wool

stockings must make amends for the worn-out shoes. So they worked, and

work was their greatest blessing. A good many things were done without

consulting Hobert at all, and he was led to believe that all went easily

and comfortably; the neighbors, from time to time, lent the helping

hand, without so much as asking leave; and by these means there were a

few potatoes in the cellar, a little corn in the barn, and a load of

wood under the snow at the door.

The table was not spread in the sickroom any more, as it had been for a

while. They had thought it would amuse Hobert to see the little

household ceremonies going on; but now they said it was better to avoid

all unnecessary stir. Perhaps they thought it better that he should not

see their scantier fare. Still they came into his presence very

cheerfully, never hinting of hardship, never breathing the apprehension

that began to trouble their hearts.

It was during these long winter evenings, when the neighbors sat by the

fire and did what they could to cheer the sick man and the sad women,

that the wonderful merits of the great Doctor Killmany began to be

frequently discussed. Marvellous stories were told of his almost

superhuman skill. He had brought back from the very gate of death scores

of men and women who had been given up to die by their physicians,--so

it was said; and special instances of cures were related that were

certainly calculated to inspire hope and confidence. None of these good

people could of their own knowledge attest these wonderful cures; but

there were many circumstances that added weight to the force of the

general rumor.

Dr. Killmany lived a great way off, and he charged a great price. He

would not look at a man for less than a hundred dollars, so report said,

and that was much in his favor. He had a very short way with

patients,--asked no questions, and never listened to explanations,--but

could tie down a man and take off his leg or arm, as the case might be,

in an incredibly short space of time, paying as little heed to the cries

and groans as to the buzzing of the flies. If anything further had been

needed to establish his fame, it would have been found in the fact that

he was very rich, wearing diamonds in his shirt-bosom, driving fine

horses, and being, in fact, surrounded with all the luxuries that money

can procure. Of course, he was a great doctor. How could it be

otherwise? And it was enough to know that a Mr. A had seen a Mr. B who

knew a Mr. C whose wife's mother was cured by him!

At first these things were talked of in hearing of the sick man; then

there began to be whispers about the fire as to the possibility of

persuading him to sell all that he had and go to the great Doctor; for

it was now pretty generally felt that the ague was only the

accompaniment of a more terrible disease.

Then at last it was suggested, as a wild pleasantry, by some daring

visitor, "Suppose, Hobert, we should send you off one of these days,

and have you back after a few weeks, sound and vigorous as a young colt!

What should you say to that, my boy?"

To the surprise of everybody, Hobert replied that he only wished it were

possible.

"Possible! Why, of course it's possible! Where there's a will, you

know!" And then it began to be talked of less as an insane dream.

One morning, as Jenny came into the sick man's room, she found him

sitting up in bed with his shirt open and his hand on his breast.

"What is it, Hobert?" she said; for there was a look in his eyes that

made her tremble.

"I don't know, Jenny; but whatever it is, it will be my death," he

answered, and, falling upon her shoulder,--for she had come close to him

and had her arm about his neck,--he sobbed like a child.

The little hand was slipped under his, but Jenny said she could feel

nothing; and I think she will be forgiven for that falsehood. He was

sick, she said, worn out, and it was no wonder that strange fancies

should take possession of him. She had neglected him too much; but now,

though everything should go to pieces, he should have her first care,

and her last care, and all her care; he should not be left alone any

more to conjure up horrors; and when he said he was weak and foolish and

ashamed of his tears, she pacified him with petting and with praises. He

was everything that was right, everything that was strong and manly. A

little more patience, and then it would be spring, and the sunshine

would make him well. She put the hair away from his forehead, and told

him how fair in the face he was grown; and then she shoved his sleeve to

his elbow, and told him that his arms were almost as plump as they ever

were; and so he was comforted, cheered even, and they talked over the

plans and prospects of years to come. At last he fell asleep with a

bright smile of hope in his face, and Jenny stooped softly and kissed

him, and, stealing away on tiptoe, hid herself from her good old mother

and from the eyes of her children, and wept long and bitterly.

And the spring came, and Hobert crept out into the sunshine; but his

cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, and there was more than the old

listlessness upon him. As a tree that is dying will sometimes put forth

sickly leaves and blossoms, and still be dying all the while, so it was

with him. His hand was often on his breast, and his look often said,

"This will be the death of me." The bees hummed in the flowers about his

feet, the birds built their nests in the boughs above his head, and his

children played about his knees; but his thoughts were otherwhere,--away

beyond the dark river, away in that beautiful country where the

inhabitants never say, "I am sick."

It was about midsummer that one Mrs. Brown, well known to Mrs. Walker's

family, and to all the people of the neighborhood, as having suffered

for many years with some strange malady which none of the doctors

understood, sold the remnant of her property, having previously wasted

nearly all she had upon physicians, and betook herself to the great Dr.

Killmany. What her condition had actually been is not material to my

story, nor is it necessary to say anything about the treatment she

received at the hands of the great doctor. It is enough to say that it

cost her her last dollar,--that she worked her slow way home as best she

could, arriving there at last with shoes nearly off her feet and gown

torn and faded, but with health considerably improved. That she had sold

her last cow, and her feather-bed, and her teakettle, and her

sheep-shears, and her grandfather's musket, all added wonderfully to the

great doctor's reputation.

"You can't go to him if you don't go full-handed," said one to another;

and he that heard it, and he that said it, laughed as though it were a

good joke.

Some said he could see right through a man: there was no need of words

with him! And others, that he could take the brains out of the skull, or

the bones out of the ankles, and leave the patient all the better for

it. In short, there was nothing too extravagant to be said of

him; and as for Mrs. Brown, the person who had seen her became

semi-distinguished. She was invited all over the neighborhood, and her

conversation was the most delightful of entertainments. Amongst the

rest, she visited Mr. Walker; and through her instrumentality, his

strong desire to see the great Dr. Killmany was shaped into purpose.

Two of the cows were sold, most of the farming implements, and such

articles of household furniture as could be spared; and with all this

the money realized was but a hundred and fifty dollars. Then Jenny

proposed to sell her side-saddle; and when that was gone, she said

Fleety might as well go with it. "If you only come home well, Hobert,"

she said, "we will soon be able to buy her back again; and if you

don't--but you will!"

So Fleetfoot went with the rest; and when for the last time she was led

up before the door, and ate grass from the lap of little Jenny, and put

her neck down to the caressing hands of young Hobert, it was a sore

trial to them all. She seemed half conscious herself, indeed, and

exhibited none of her accustomed playfulness with the children, but

stood in a drooping attitude, with her eye intent upon her master; and

when they would have taken her away, she hung back, and, stretching her

neck till it reached his knees, licked his hands with a tenderness that

was pitiful to see.

"Don't, Hobert, don't take on about it," Jenny said, putting back the

heart that was in her mouth; "we will have her back again, you

know!"--and she gave Fleetfoot a little box on the ear that was half

approval and half reproach, and so led Hobert back into the house.

And that day was the saddest they had yet seen. And that night, when the

sick man was asleep, the two women talked together and cried together,

and in the end got such comfort as women get out of great sacrifices and

bitter tears.

They counted their little hoard. They had gathered three hundred dollars

now, and there required to be yet as much more; and then they made plans

as to what yet remained to be done. "We must mortgage the land," Jenny

said, "that is all,--don't mind, mother. I don't mind anything, so that

we only have Hobert well again." And then they talked of what they would

do another year when they should be all together once more, and all

well. "Think what Dr. Killmany has done for Mrs. Brown!" they said.

And now came busy days; and in the earnestness of the preparation the

sorrow of the coming parting was in some sort dissipated. Hobert's

wearing-apparel was all brought out, and turned and overturned, and the

most and the best made of everything. The wedding coat and the wedding

shirt were almost as good as ever, Jenny said; and when the one had been

brushed and pressed, and the other done up, she held them up before them

all, and commented upon them with pride and admiration. The fashions had

changed a little, to be sure, but what of that? The new fashions were

not so nice as the old ones, to her thinking. Hobert would look smart in

the old garments, at any rate, and perhaps nobody would notice. She was

only desirous that he should make a good impression on the Doctor. And

all that could be done to that end was done, many friends contributing,

by way of little presents, to the comfort and respectability of the

invalid. "Here is a leather pouch," said one, "that I bought of a pedler

the other day. I don't want it; but as you are going to travel, may be

you can make use of it, Walker; take it, any how."

"I have got a new pair of saddle-bags," said the circuit-rider, "but I

believe I like the old ones best. So, Brother Walker, you will oblige me

by taking these off my hands. I find extra things more trouble to take

care of than they are worth."

It was not proposed that Hobert should travel with a trunk, so the

saddle-bags were just what was required.

"Here is a pair of shoes," said another. "Try them on, Walker, and see

if you can wear them: they are too small for my clumsy feet!" They had

been made by the village shoemaker to Mr. Walker's measure. Of course

they fitted him, and of course he had them.

"I'll bet you a new hat," said another, "that I come to see you ag'in,

day after to-morrer, fur off as I live."

The day after the morrow he did not come: he was "onaccountably

hendered," he said; but when he did come he brought the new hat. He

thought he would be as good as his word in one thing if not in another,

and redeem his bet at any rate.

"I'll bring my team: I want to go to town anyhow; and we'll all see you

off together!" This was the offer of the farmer whose land adjoined Mr.

Walker's; and the day of departure was fixed, and the morning of the day

saw everything in readiness.

"Hobert looks a'most like a storekeeper or a schoolmaster, don't he,

mother?" Jenny said, looking upon him proudly, when he was arrayed in

the new hat and the wedding coat.

"Why, you are as spry as a boy!" exclaimed the farmer who was to drive

them to town, seeing that Hobert managed to climb into the wagon without

assistance. "I don't believe there is any need of Dr. Killmany, after

all!" And the neighbors, as one after another they leaned over the

sideboard of the wagon, and shook hands with Mr. Walker, made some

cheerful and light-hearted remark, calculated to convey the impression

that the leave-taking was a mere matter of form, and only for a day.

As Jenny looked back at the homestead, and thought of the possibilities,

the tears would come; but the owner of the team, determined to carry it

bravely through, immediately gathered up the slack reins, and, with a

lively crack of his whip, started the horses upon a brisk trot.

"Don't spare the money," Jenny entreated, as she put the pocket-book in

Hobert's hand; but she thought in her heart that Dr. Killmany would be

touched when he saw her husband, and knew how far he had travelled to

see him, and what sacrifices he had made to do so. "He must be good, if

he is so great as they say," she argued; "and perhaps Hobert may even

bring home enough to buy back Fleety." This was a wild dream. And the

last parting words were said, the last promises exacted and given; the

silent tears and the lingering looks all were past, and the farmer's

wagon, with an empty chair by the side of Jenny's, rattled home again.

It was perhaps a month after this that a pale, sickly-looking man, with

a pair of saddle-bags over his arm, went ashore from the steamboat Arrow

of Light, just landed at New Orleans, and made his slow way along the

wharf, crowded with barrels, boxes, and cotton-bales, and thence to the

open streets. The sun was oppressively hot, and the new fur hat became

almost intolerable, so that the sick man stopped more than once in the

shade of some friendly tree, and, placing the saddle-bags on the ground,

wiped the sweat from his forehead, and looked wistfully at the strange

faces that passed him by.

"Can you tell me, my friend," he said at last, addressing a slave-woman

who was passing by with a great bundle on her head,--"Can you tell me

where to find Doctor Killmany, who lives somewhere here?"

The woman put her bundle on the ground, and, resting her hands on her

hips, looked pitifully upon the stranger. "No, masser, cante say, not

for sure," she answered. "I knows dar's sich a doctor somewhars 'bout,

but just whars I cante say, an' he's a poor doctor fur the likes o'

you,--don't have noffen to do with him, nohow."

"A poor doctor!" exclaimed the stranger. "Why, I understood he was the

greatest doctor in the world; and I've come all the way from the Wabash

country to see him."

"Warbash! whar's dat? Norf, reckon; well you jes be gwine back Norf de

fus boat, an dat's de bery bes' advice dis yere nigger can guv."

"But what do you know about Dr. Killmany."

"I knows dis yere, masser: he mos'ly sends dem ar' as ar' doctored by

him to dar homes in a box!"

Mr. Walker shuddered. "I don't want your advice," he said directly; "I

only want to know where Dr. Killmany lives."

"Cante say, masser, not percisely, as to dat ar'; kind o' seems to me

he's done gone from hur, clar an' all; but jes over thar's a mighty good

doctor; you can see his name afore the door if you'll step this yere way

a bit. He doctors all de pour, an' dem dat ar' halt, and dem dat ar'

struck with paralasy, jes for de love ob de ark and de covenant; an'

he's jes de purtiest man to look at dat you ever sot eyes onto. Go in

dar whar ye sees de white bline at de winder an' ax for Dr. Shepard, an'

when you's once seen him, I reckon you won't want to find de udder man;

but if you does, why he can pint de way. An' de Lord bless you and hab

mercy on your soul."

The sick man felt a good deal discouraged by what the old slave had

said, and her last words impressed him with feelings of especial

discomfort. He knew not which way to turn; and, in fact, found himself

growing dizzy and blind, and was only able, with great effort, to stand

at all. He must ask his way somewhere, however, and it might as well be

there as another place.

Dr. Shepard, who happened to be in his office, answered the inquiry

promptly. Dr. Killmany was in quite another part of the city. "You don't

look able to walk there, my good friend," he said; "but if you will sit

here and wait for an hour, I shall be driving that way, and will take

you with pleasure."

Mr. Walker gratefully accepted the proffered chair, as indeed he was

almost obliged to do; for within a few minutes the partial blindness had

become total darkness, and the whole world seemed, as it were, slipping

away from him.

When he came to himself he was lying on a sofa in an inner room, and Dr.

Shepard, who had just administered some cordial, was bending over him in

the most kindly and sympathetic manner. It seemed not so much what he

said, not so much what he did, but as though he carried about him an

atmosphere of sweetness and healing that comforted and assured without

words and without medicine. He made no pretence and no noise, but his

smile was sunshine to the heart, and the touch of his hand imparted

strength and courage to the despairing soul. It was as if good spirits

went with him, and his very silence was pleasant company. Mr. Walker was

in no haste to be gone. All his anxious cares seemed to fall away, and a

peaceful sense of comfort and security came over him; his eyes followed

Dr. Shepard as he moved about, and when a door interposed between them

he felt lost and homesick. "If this were the man I had come to see, I

should be happy." That was his thought all the while. Perhaps--who shall

say not?--it was the blessings of the poor, to whom he most generously

ministered, which gave to his manner that graciousness and charm which

no words can convey, and to his touch that magnetism which is at once

life-giving and love-inspiring.

How it was Mr. Walker could not tell, and indeed wiser men than he could

not have told, but he presently found himself opening his heart to this

new doctor, as he had never opened it to anybody in all his life,--how

he had married Jenny, how they had gone to the new country, the birth of

the boy and the girl, the slow coming on of disease, the selling of

Fleety, and the mortgaging of the farm. Doctor Shepard knew it all, and,

more than this, he knew how much money had been accumulated, and how

much of it was still left. He had examined the tumor in the breast, and

knew that it could end in but one way. He had told Mr. Walker that he

could be made more comfortable, and might live for years, perhaps, but

that he must not hope to be cured, and that to get home to his family

with all possible speed was the best advice he could give him. His words

carried with them the weight of conviction, and the sick man was almost

persuaded; but the thought of what would be said at home if he should

come back without having seen the great Dr. Killmany urged him to try

one last experiment.

"What do you suppose he will charge me to look at this?" he inquired of

Dr. Shepard, laying his hand on his breast.

"Half you have, my friend."

"And if he cuts it out?"

"The other half."

"O, dear me!"--and the sick man fell back upon the sofa, and for a good

while thought to himself. Then came one of those wild suggestions of a

vain hope. "Perhaps this man is the impostor, and not the other!" it

said. "And what do I owe you for all you have done for me to-day?" he

inquired.

"Why, nothing, my good friend. I have done nothing for you; and my

advice has certainly been disinterested. I don't want pay for that."

"And suppose you should operate?"

And then the doctor told him that he could not do that on any

terms,--that no surgeon under the sun could perform a successful

operation,--that all his hope was in quiet and care. "I will keep you

here a few days," he said, "and build you up all I can, and when the

Arrow of Light goes back again, I will see you aboard, and bespeak the

kind attentions of the captain for you on the journey." That was not

much like an impostor, and in his heart the sick man knew it was the

right course to take,--the only course; and then he thought of Mrs.

Brown and her wonderful cure, and of the great hopes they were

entertaining at home, and he became silent, and again thought to

himself.

Three days he remained with Dr. Shepard, undecided, and resting and

improving a little all the while. On the morning of the fourth day he

said, placing his hand on his breast, "If I were only rid of this, I

believe I should get quite well again." He could not give up the great

Dr. Killmany. "I do not intend to put myself in his hands,--indeed, I am

almost resolved that I will not do so," he said to Dr. Shepard; "but I

will just call at his office, so that I can tell my folks I have seen

him."

"I must not say more to discourage you," replied Dr. Shepard; "perhaps I

have already said too much,--certainly I have said much more than it is

my habit to say, more than in any ordinary circumstances I would permit

myself to say; but in your case I have felt constrained to acquit myself

to my conscience";--and he turned away with a shadow of the tenderest

and saddest gloom upon his face.

"Are you, sir, going to Dr. Killmany?" asked an old man, who had been

sitting by, eying Mr. Walker with deep concern; and on receiving an

affirmative nod, he went on with zeal, if not with discretion: "Then,

sir, you might as well knock your own brains out! I regard him, sir, as

worse than a highway robber,--a good deal worse! The robber will

sometimes spare your life, if he can as well as not, but Dr. Killmany

has no more regard for human life than you have for that of a fly. He

has a skilful hand to be sure, but his heart is as hard as flint. In

short, sir, he is utterly without conscience, without humanity, without

principle. Gain is his first object, his last object, his sole object;

and if he ever did any good, it was simply incidental. Don't put

yourself in his hands, whatever you do,--certainly not without first

making your will!" And the old man, with a flushed and angry

countenance, went away.

Presently the sick man, relapsing into silent thought, drowsed into

sleep, and a strange dream came to him. He seemed at home, sitting under

the tree with the mistletoe in its boughs; he was tired and hungry, and

there came to him a raven with food in its mouth, and the shadow of its

wings was pleasant. He thought, at first, the food was for him; but the

bird, perching on his shoulder, devoured the food, and afterward pecked

at his breast until it opened a way to his heart, and with that in its

claws flew away; and when it was gone, he knew it was not a bird, but

that it was Dr. Killmany who had thus taken out his heart. "I will go

home," he thought, "and tell Jenny"; and when he arose and put his hand

on the neck of Fleety, who had been standing in the furrow close by, she

became a shadow, and instantly vanished out of sight. He then strove to

walk, and, lo! the strength was gone out of his limbs, and, as he sank

down, the roots of the mistletoe struck in his bosom, ran through and

through him, and fastened themselves in the earth beneath, and he became

as one dead, only with the consciousness of being dead.

When he awoke, he related the dream, having given it, as it appeared, a

melancholy interpretation, for he expressed himself determined to return

home immediately. "I will take passage on the Arrow," he said to Dr.

Shepard; and then he counted up the number of days that must go by

before he could have his own green fields beneath his eyes, and his

little ones climbing about his knees.

"I wish I had never left my home," he said; "I wish I had never heard of

Dr. Killmany!" and then he returned to his dream and repeated portions

of it; and then he said, seeming to be thinking aloud, "My good old

mother! my dear, poor Jenny!"

"The sick man's brain is liable to strange fancies," says Dr. Shepard;

"you must not think too seriously of it, but your resolve is very wise."

He then said he would see the captain of the Arrow, as he had promised,

and went away with a smile on his face, and a great weight lifted off

his heart.

A few minutes after this, Hobert Walker was again in the street, the

heavy fur hat on his head, and the well-filled saddle-bags across his

arm.

Perhaps sickness is in some sort insanity. At any rate, he no sooner

found himself alone than the desire to see the great Dr. Killmany came

upon him with all the force of insanity; his intention probably being to

go and return within an hour, and keep his little secret to himself.

Perhaps, too, he wished to have it to say at home that he had seen the

great man for himself, and decided against him of his own knowledge.

Dr. Killmany was found without much difficulty; but his rooms were

crowded with patients, and there was no possibility of access to him for

hours.

"It cannot be that so many are deceived," thought Hobert. "I will wait

with the rest." Then came the encouraging hope, "What if I should go

home cured, after all!" He felt almost as if Dr. Shepard had defrauded

him out of two or three days, and talked eagerly with one and another,

as patient after patient came forth from consultation with Dr. Killmany,

all aglow with hope and animation. It was near sunset when his turn

came. He had waited five hours, but it was come at last; and with his

heart in his mouth, and his knees shaking under him, he stood face to

face with the arbitrator of his destiny. There was no smile on the face

of the man, no sweetness in his voice as he said, looking at Hobert from

under scowling brows, "What brings _you_, sir? Tell it, and be brief:

time with me is money."

Then Hobert, catching at a chair to sustain himself, for he was not

asked to sit, explained his condition as well as fright and awkwardness

would permit him to do; going back to the commencement of his disease,

and entering unnecessarily into many particulars, as well as making

superfluous mention of wife and mother. "It isn't with your wife and

mother that I have to deal," interposed Dr. Killmany;--"dear to you, I

dare say, but nothing to me, sir,--nothing at all. I have no time to

devote to your relatives. Open your shirt, sir! there, that'll do! A

mere trifle, sir, but it is well you have come in time."

"Do you mean to say you can cure me?" inquired Hobert, all his heart

a-flutter with the excitement of hope.

"Exactly so. I can remove that difficulty of yours in five minutes, and

have you on your feet again,--operation neglected, death certain within

a year, perhaps sooner. Done with you sir. You now have your choice,

make way!"

Hobert went staggering out of the room, feeling as if the raven of his

dream already had its beak in his heart, when a pert official reached

out his hand with the demand, "Consultation fee, if you please, sir."

"How much?" asked Hobert, leaning against the wall, and searching for

his pocket-book.

"Fifty dollars, sir,"--and the official spoke as though that were a

trifle scarcely worth mentioning. The hands of the sick man trembled,

and his eyes grew blind as he sought to count up the sum; and as his

entire treasure was formed out of the smallest notes, the process was a

slow one, and before it was accomplished it seemed to him that not only

Fleety was turning to a shadow, but the whole world as well.

Somehow, he hardly knew how, he found himself in the fresh air, and the

official still at his elbow. "You are not going to leave us this way?"

he said. "You will only have thrown your money away." And he pocketed

the sum Hobert had just put in his hand.

"Better that than more," Hobert answered, and was turning sadly away.

"Allow me to detain you, sir, one moment, only just one moment!" And the

official, or rather decoy, whispered in his ear tales of such wonderful

cures as almost dissuaded him from his purpose.

"But I am resolved to go home on the Arrow," he said, making a last

stand, "and I must have something to leave my poor Jenny."

And then the official told him that he could go home aboard the Arrow,

if he chose, and go a well man, or the same as a well man; and what

could he bring to his wife so acceptable as himself, safe and sound! And

then he told other tales of sick men who had been carried to Dr.

Killmany on their beds, and within a few hours walked away on their

feet, blessing his name, and publishing his fame far and wide.

Hobert began to waver, nor is it strange; for what will not a man give

for his life? The world had not loosened its hold upon him much as yet;

the grass under his feet and the sunshine over his head were pleasant

things to him, and his love for his good little wife was still invested

with all the old romance; and to die and go he knew not where, there was

a terror about that which his faith was not strong enough to dissipate.

The decoy watched and waited. He contrasted the husband returning home

with haggard cheek and listless step and the shadow of dark doom all

about him, having a few hundred dollars in his pocket, with a husband

empty-handed, but with bright cheeks, and cheerful spirits, and with

strong legs under him! Then Hobert repeated the story he had told to Dr.

Shepard,--all about the little treasure with which he had set out, how

hardly it had been gathered together, what had been already fruitlessly

expended, and just how much remained,--he told it all as he had told it

in the first instance, but with what different effect!

Dr. Killmany never touched any case for a sum like that! Indeed, his

services were in such requisition, it was almost impossible to obtain

them on any terms; but he, the decoy, for reasons which he did not

state, would exert to the utmost his own personal influence in Hobert's

favor. "I cannot promise you a favorable answer," he said; "there is

just a possibility, and that is all. A man like Dr. Killmany, sir, can't

be haggling about dollars and cents!" And then he intimated that such

things might be well enough for Dr. Shepard and his sort of practice.

There was some further talk, and the time ran by, and it was night.

Against his will almost, Hobert had been persuaded. He was to sleep in

the Doctor's office that night, and his case was to be the first

attended to in the morning. "You can rest very well on the floor, I

suppose," the decoy had said, "taking your saddle-bags for a pillow. The

whole thing will be over in half an hour, and I myself will see you

aboard the Arrow before ten o'clock, and so you need take no more

thought for yourself."

That night, when at last Hobert made a pillow of his saddle-bags and

coiled himself together, he felt as if a circle of fire were narrowing

around him, and yet utter inability to escape.

"You need take no more thought for yourself." These words kept ringing

in his ears like a knell, and the mistletoe striking through his bosom,

and the beak of the raven in his heart,--these were the sensations with

which, long after midnight, he drowsed into sleep.

When he awoke, there was a rough hand on his shoulder and a harsh voice

in his ear. The room was light with the light of morning, but dark with

the shadow of coming doom. There came upon him a strange and great

calmness when he found himself in the operating-room. There were all the

frightful preparations,--the water, the sponges, the cloths and

bandages, the Doctor with his case of instruments before him, and

looking more like a murderer than a surgeon. Almost his heart misgave

him as he looked around, and remembered Jenny and the little ones at

home; but the carriage that was to take him aboard the Arrow already

waited at the door, and the sight of it reassured him.

"You will hardly know where you are till you find yourself safe in your

berth," said Dr. Killmany; "and to avoid any delay after the operation,

from which you will necessarily be somewhat weak, you had perhaps better

pay me now." And these were the most civil words he had yet spoken.

So Hobert paid into his hand the last dollar he had.

"Now, sir," he said; and Hobert laid himself down on the table. A

minute, and of what befell him after that he was quite unconscious. It

was as the doctor had told him; he knew not where he was until he found

himself in his berth aboard the Arrow. "Where am I?" was his first

inquiry, feeling a sense of strangeness,--feeling, indeed, as though he

were a stranger to himself.

"You are going home, my poor friend,--going home a little sooner than

you expected,--that is all."

Then the sick man opened his eyes; for he had recognized the tender

voice, and saw Dr. Shepard bending over him, and he knew where he was,

and what had happened; for he was shivering from head to foot. The

sleeve of his right arm was red and wet, and there was a dull, slow

aching in his bosom. "Ay, Doctor," he answered, pressing faintly the

hand that held his, "I am going home,--home to a better country. 'T is

all like a shadow about me now, and I am cold,--so cold!" He never came

out of that chill, and these were the last words he ever spoke.

"That man has been just the same as murdered, I take it!" exclaimed the

captain of the Arrow, meeting Dr. Shepard as he turned away from the

bedside.

"I must not say that," replied the Doctor; "but if I had performed the

operation, under the circumstances, I should think myself his murderer."

"And if you had taken his money, you would perhaps think yourself a

thief, too! At any rate, I should think you one," was the answer of the

captain. And he then related to Dr. Shepard how the man, in an almost

dying condition, had been brought aboard the Arrow by one of Dr.

Killmany's menials, hustled into bed, and so left to his fate; and he

concluded by saying, "And what are we to do now, Doctor?"

What the Doctor's reply was need not be reported at length. Suffice it

to say, that the departure of the Arrow was deferred for an hour, and

when she sailed the state-room in which Hobert had breathed his last was

occupied by a lively little lady and two gayly-dressed children, and on

the wall from which the fur hat and the saddle-bags had been removed

fluttered a variety of rainbow-hued scarfs and ribbons, and in the

window where the shadow had been a golden-winged bird was singing in the

sunshine.

Some two or three weeks went by, and the farmer who had driven to town

when Hobert was about to set out on his long journey, starting so

smartly, and making so light of the farewells, drove thither again, and

this time his wagon-bed was empty, except for the deep cushion of straw.

He drove slowly and with downcast looks; and as he returned, a dozen men

met him at the entrance of the village, and at sober pace followed to

the meeting-house, the door of which stood wide.

A little low talk as they all gathered round, and then four of them

lifted from the wagon the long box it contained, and bore it on their

shoulders reverently and tenderly within the open gate, through the wide

door, along the solemn aisle and close beneath the pulpit, where they

placed it very softly, and then stood back with uncovered heads, while a

troop of little girls, who waited, with aprons full of flowers, drew

near and emptied them on the ground, so that nothing was to be seen but

a great heap of flowers; and beneath them was the body of HOBERT WALKER.

MY FARM: A FABLE.

Within a green and pleasant land

I own a favorite plantation,

Whose woods and meads, if rudely planned,

Are still, at least, my own creation.

Some genial sun or kindly shower

Has here and there wooed forth a flower,

And touched the fields with expectation.

I know what feeds the soil I till,

What harvest-growth it best produces.

My forests shape themselves at will,

My grapes mature their proper juices.

I know the brambles and the weeds,

But know the fruits and wholesome seeds,--

Of those the hurt, of these the uses.

And working early, working late,

Directing crude and random Nature,

'T is joy to see my small estate

Grow fairer in the slightest feature.

If but a single wild-rose blow,

Or fruit-tree bend with April snow,

That day am I the happiest creature!

But round the borders of the land

Dwell many neighbors, fond of roving;

With curious eye and prying hand

About my fields I see them moving.

Some tread my choicest herbage down,

And some of weeds would weave a crown,

And bid me wear it, unreproving.

"What trees!" says one; "whoever saw

A grove, like this, of _my_ possessing?

This vale offends my upland's law;

This sheltered garden needs suppressing.

My rocks this grass would never yield,

And how absurd the level field!

What here will grow is past my guessing."

"Behold the slope!" another cries:

"No sign of bog or meadow near it!

A varied surface I despise:

There's not a stagnant pool to cheer it!"

"Why plough at all?" remarked a third,

"Heaven help the man!" a fourth I heard,--

"His farm's a jungle: let him clear it!"

No friendly counsel I disdain:

My fields are free to every comer;

Yet that, which one to praise is fain,

But makes another's visage glummer.

I bow them out, and welcome in,

But while I seek some truth to win

Goes by, unused, the golden summer!

Ah! vain the hope to find in each

The wisdom each denies the other;

These mazes of conflicting speech

All theories of culture smother.

I'll raise and reap, with honest hand,

The native harvest of my land;

Do thou the same, my wiser brother!

PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.

VIII.

Concord, _Saturday, August 13, 1842._--My life, at this time, is more

like that of a boy, externally, than it has been since I was really a

boy. It is usually supposed that the cares of life come with matrimony;

but I seem to have cast off all care, and live on with as much easy

trust in Providence as Adam could possibly have felt before he had

learned that there was a world beyond Paradise. My chief anxiety

consists in watching the prosperity of my vegetables, in observing how

they are affected by the rain or sunshine, in lamenting the blight of

one squash and rejoicing at the luxurious growth of another. It is as if

the original relation between man and Nature were restored in my case,

and that I were to look exclusively to her for the support of my Eve and

myself,--to trust to her for food and clothing, and all things needful,

with the full assurance that she would not fail me. The fight with the

world,--the struggle of a man among men,--the agony of the universal

effort to wrench the means of living from a host of greedy

competitors,--all this seems like a dream to me. My business is merely

to live and to enjoy; and whatever is essential to life and enjoyment

will come as naturally as the dew from heaven. This is, practically at

least, my faith. And so I awake in the morning with a boyish

thoughtlessness as to how the outgoings of the day are to be provided

for, and its incomings rendered certain. After breakfast, I go forth

into my garden, and gather whatever the bountiful Mother has made fit

for our present sustenance; and of late days she generally gives me two

squashes and a cucumber, and promises me green corn and shell-beans very

soon. Then I pass down through our orchard to the river-side, and ramble

along its margin in search of flowers. Usually I discern a fragrant

white lily, here and there along the shore, growing, with sweet

prudishness, beyond the grasp of mortal arm. But it does not escape me

so. I know what is its fitting destiny better than the silly flower

knows for itself; so I wade in, heedless of wet trousers, and seize the

shy lily by its slender stem. Thus I make prize of five or six, which

are as many as usually blossom within my reach in a single

morning;--some of them partially worm-eaten or blighted, like virgins

with an eating sorrow at the heart; others as fair and perfect as

Nature's own idea was, when she first imagined this lovely flower. A

perfect pond-lily is the most satisfactory of flowers. Besides these, I

gather whatever else of beautiful chances to be growing in the moist

soil by the river-side,--an amphibious tribe, yet with more richness and

grace than the wild-flowers of the deep and dry woodlands and

hedge-rows,--sometimes the white arrow-head, always the blue spires and

broad green leaves of the pickerel-flower, which contrast and harmonize

so well with the white lilies. For the last two or three days, I have

found scattered stalks of the cardinal-flower, the gorgeous scarlet of

which it is a joy even to remember. The world is made brighter and

sunnier by flowers of such a hue. Even perfume, which otherwise is the

soul and spirit of a flower, may be spared when it arrays itself in this

scarlet glory. It is a flower of thought and feeling, too; it seems to

have its roots deep down in the hearts of those who gaze at it. Other

bright flowers sometimes impress me as wanting sentiment; but it is not

so with this.

Well, having made up my bunch of flowers, I return home with them....

Then I ascend to my study, and generally read, or perchance scribble in

this journal, and otherwise suffer Time to loiter onward at his own

pleasure, till the dinner-hour. In pleasant days, the chief event of the

afternoon, and the happiest one of the day, is our walk.... So comes the

night; and I look back upon a day spent in what the world would call

idleness, and for which I myself can suggest no more appropriate

epithet, but which, nevertheless, I cannot feel to have been spent

amiss. True, it might be a sin and shame, in such a world as ours, to

spend a lifetime in this manner; but for a few summer weeks it is good

to live as if this world were heaven. And so it is, and so it shall be,

although, in a little while, a flitting shadow of earthly care and toil

will mingle itself with our realities.

* * * * *

_Monday, August 15th._--George Hillard and his wife arrived from Boston

in the dusk of Saturday evening, to spend Sunday with us. It was a

pleasant sensation, when the coach rumbled up our avenue, and wheeled

round at the door; for I felt that I was regarded as a man with a

household,--a man having a tangible existence and locality in the

world,--when friends came to avail themselves of our hospitality. It was

a sort of acknowledgment and reception of us into the corps of married

people,--a sanction by no means essential to our peace and well-being,

but yet agreeable enough to receive. So we welcomed them cordially at

the door, and ushered them into our parlor, and soon into the

supper-room.... The night flitted over us all, and passed away, and up

rose a gray and sullen morning,... and we had a splendid breakfast of

flapjacks, or slapjacks, and whortleberries, which I gathered on a

neighboring hill, and perch, bream, and pout, which I hooked out of the

river the evening before. About nine o'clock, Hillard and I set out for

a walk to Walden Pond, calling by the way at Mr. Emerson's, to obtain

his guidance or directions, and he accompanied us in his own illustrious

person. We turned aside a little from our way, to visit Mr. ----, a

yeoman, of whose homely and self-acquired wisdom Mr. Emerson has a very

high opinion. We found him walking in his fields, a short and stalwart

and sturdy personage of middle age, with a face of shrewd and kind

expression, and manners of natural courtesy. He had a very free flow of

talk, and not much diffidence about his own opinions; for, with a little

induction from Mr. Emerson, he began to discourse about the state of the

nation, agriculture, and business in general, uttering thoughts that had

come to him at the plough, and which had a sort of flavor of the fresh

earth about them. I was not impressed with any remarkable originality in

his views; but they were sensible and characteristic, and had grown in

the soil where we found them;... and he is certainly a man of

intellectual and moral substance, a sturdy fact, a reality, something to

be felt and touched, whose ideas seem to be dug out of his mind as he

digs potatoes, beets, carrots, and turnips out of the ground.

After leaving Mr. ----, we proceeded through wood paths to Walden Pond,

picking blackberries of enormous size along the way. The pond itself was

beautiful and refreshing to my soul, after such long and exclusive

familiarity with our tawny and sluggish river. It lies embosomed among

wooded hills,--it is not very extensive, but large enough for waves to

dance upon its surface, and to look like a piece of blue firmament,

earth-encircled. The shore has a narrow, pebbly strand, which it was

worth a day's journey to look at, for the sake of the contrast between

it and the weedy, oozy margin of the river. Farther within its depths,

you perceive a bottom of pure white sand, sparkling through the

transparent water, which, methought, was the very purest liquid in the

world. After Mr. Emerson left us, Hillard and I bathed in the pond, and

it does really seem as if my spirit, as well as corporeal person, were

refreshed by that bath. A good deal of mud and river slime had

accumulated on my soul; but these bright waters washed it all away.

We returned home in due season for dinner.... To my misfortune, however,

a box of Mediterranean wine proved to have undergone the acetous

fermentation; so that the splendor of the festival suffered some

diminution. Nevertheless, we ate our dinner with a good appetite, and

afterwards went universally to take our several siestas. Meantime there

came a shower, which so besprinkled the grass and shrubbery as to make

it rather wet for our after-tea ramble. The chief result of the walk was

the bringing home of an immense burden of the trailing clematis-vine,

now just in blossom, and with which all our flower-stands and vases are

this morning decorated. On our return we found Mr. and Mrs. S----, and

E. H----, who shortly took their leave, and we sat up late, telling

ghost-stories. This morning, at seven, our friends left us. We were both

pleased with the visit, and so I think were our guests.

* * * * *

_Monday, August 22nd._--I took a walk through the woods yesterday

afternoon, to Mr. Emerson's, with a book which Margaret Fuller had left,

after a call on Saturday eve. I missed the nearest way, and wandered

into a very secluded portion of the forest; for forest it might justly

be called, so dense and sombre was the shade of oaks and pines. Once I

wandered into a tract so overgrown with bushes and underbrush that I

could scarcely force a passage through. Nothing is more annoying than a

walk of this kind, where one is tormented by an innumerable host of

petty impediments. It incenses and depresses me at the same time. Always

when I flounder into the midst of bushes, which cross and intertwine

themselves about my legs, and brush my face, and seize hold of my

clothes, with their multitudinous grip,--always, in such a difficulty, I

feel as if it were almost as well to lie down and die in rage and

despair as to go one step farther. It is laughable, after I have got out

of the moil, to think how miserably it affected me for the moment; but I

had better learn patience betimes, for there are many such bushy tracts

in this vicinity, on the margins of meadows, and my walks will often

lead me into them. Escaping from the bushes, I soon came to an open

space among the woods,--a very lovely spot, with the tall old trees

standing around as quietly as if no one had intruded there throughout

the whole summer. A company of crows were holding their Sabbath on their

summits. Apparently they felt themselves injured or insulted by my

presence; for, with one consent, they began to Caw! caw! caw! and,

launching themselves sullenly on the air, took flight to some securer

solitude. Mine, probably, was the first human shape that they had seen

all day long,--at least, if they had been stationary in that spot; but

perhaps they had winged their way over miles and miles of country, had

breakfasted on the summit of Greylock, and dined at the base of

Wachusett, and were merely come to sup and sleep among the quiet woods

of Concord. But it was my impression at the time, that they had sat

still and silent on the tops of the trees all through the Sabbath day,

and I felt like one who should unawares disturb an assembly of

worshippers. A crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, in

spite of his gravity of mien and black attire. Crows are certainly

thieves, and probably infidels. Nevertheless, their voices yesterday

were in admirable accordance with the influences of the quiet, sunny,

warm, yet autumnal afternoon. They were so far above my head that their

loud clamor added to the quiet of the scene, instead of disturbing it.

There was no other sound, except the song of the cricket, which is but

an audible stillness; for, though it be very loud and heard afar, yet

the mind does not take note of it as a sound, so entirely does it mingle

and lose its individuality among the other characteristics of coming

autumn. Alas for the summer! The grass is still verdant on the hills and

in the valleys; the foliage of the trees is as dense as ever, and as

green; the flowers are abundant along the margin of the river, and in

the hedge-rows, and deep among the woods; the days, too, are as fervid

as they were a month ago; and yet in every breath of wind and in every

beam of sunshine there is an autumnal influence. I know not how to

describe it. Methinks there is a sort of coolness amid all the heat, and

a mildness in the brightest of the sunshine. A breeze cannot stir,

without thrilling me with the breath of autumn, and I behold its pensive

glory in the far, golden gleams among the long shadows of the trees. The

flowers, even the brightest of them,--the golden-rod and the gorgeous

cardinals,--the most glorious flowers of the year,--have this gentle

sadness amid their pomp. Pensive autumn is expressed in the glow of

every one of them. I have felt this influence earlier in some years than

in others. Sometimes autumn may be perceived even in the early days of

July. There is no other feeling like that caused by this faint,

doubtful, yet real perception, or rather prophecy, of the year's decay,

so deliciously sweet and sad at the same time.

After leaving the book at Mr. Emerson's I returned through the woods,

and, entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived a lady reclining near the path

which bends along its verge. It was Margaret herself. She had been there

the whole afternoon, meditating or reading; for she had a book in her

hand, with some strange title, which I did not understand, and have

forgotten. She said that nobody had broken her solitude, and was just

giving utterance to a theory that no inhabitant of Concord ever visited

Sleepy Hollow, when we saw a group of people entering the sacred

precincts. Most of them followed a path which led them away from us; but

an old man passed near us, and smiled to see Margaret reclining on the

ground, and me sitting by her side. He made some remark about the beauty

of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into the shadow of the wood. Then

we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures of being lost in the

woods, and about the crows, whose voices Margaret had heard; and about

the experiences of early childhood, whose influence remains upon the

character after the recollection of them has passed away; and about the

sight of mountains from a distance, and the view from their summits; and

about other matters of high and low philosophy. In the midst of our

talk, we heard footsteps above us, on the high bank; and while the

person was still hidden among the trees, he called to Margaret, of whom

he had gotten a glimpse. Then he emerged from the green shade, and,

behold! it was Mr. Emerson. He appeared to have had a pleasant time; for

he said that there were Muses in the woods to-day, and whispers to be

heard in the breezes. It being now nearly six o'clock, we

separated,--Margaret and Mr. Emerson towards his home, and I towards

mine....

Last evening there was the most beautiful moonlight that ever hallowed

this earthly world; and when I went to bathe in the river, which was as

calm as death, it seemed like plunging down into the sky. But I had

rather be on earth than even in the seventh heaven, just now.

* * * * *

_Wednesday, August 24th._--I left home at five o'clock this morning to

catch some fish for breakfast. I shook our summer apple-tree, and ate

the golden apple which fell from it. Methinks these early apples, which

come as a golden promise before the treasures of autumnal fruit, are

almost more delicious than anything that comes afterwards. We have but

one such tree in our orchard; but it supplies us with a daily abundance,

and probably will do so for at least a week to come. Meantime other

trees begin to cast their ripening windfalls upon the grass; and when I

taste them, and perceive their mellowed flavor and blackening seeds, I

feel somewhat overwhelmed with the impending bounties of Providence. I

suppose Adam, in Paradise, did not like to see his fruits decaying on

the ground, after he had watched them through the sunny days of the

world's first summer. However, insects, at the worst, will hold a

festival upon them, so that they will not be thrown away, in the great

scheme of Nature. Moreover, I have one advantage over the primeval Adam,

inasmuch as there is a chance of disposing of my superfluous fruits

among people who inhabit no Paradise of their own.

Passing a little way down along the river-side, I threw in my line, and

soon drew out one of the smallest possible of fishes. It seemed to be a

pretty good morning for the angler,--an autumnal coolness in the air, a

clear sky, but with a fog across the lowlands and on the surface of the

river, which a gentle breeze sometimes condensed into wreaths. At first

I could barely discern the opposite shore of the river; but, as the sun

arose, the vapors gradually dispersed, till only a warm, smoky tint was

left along the water's surface. The farm-houses across the river made

their appearance out of the dusky cloud; the voices of boys were heard,

shouting to the cattle as they drove them to the pastures; a man whetted

his scythe, and set to work in a neighboring meadow. Meantime, I

continued to stand on the oozy margin of the stream, beguiling the

little fish; and though the scaly inhabitants of our river partake

somewhat of the character of their native element, and are but sluggish

biters, still I contrived to pull out not far from two dozen. They were

all bream, a broad, flat, almost circular fish, shaped a good deal like

a flounder, but swimming on their edges, instead of on their sides. As

far as mere pleasure is concerned, it is hardly worth while to fish in

our river, it is so much like angling in a mud-puddle; and one does not

attach the idea of freshness and purity to the fishes, as we do to those

which inhabit swift, transparent streams, or haunt the shores of the

great briny deep. Standing on the weedy margin, and throwing the line

over the elder-bushes that dip into the water, it seems as if we could

catch nothing but frogs and mud-turtles, or reptiles akin to them. And

even when a fish of reputable aspect is drawn out, one feels a shyness

about touching him. As to our river, its character was admirably

expressed last night by some one who said "it was too lazy to keep

itself clean." I might write pages and pages, and only obscure the

impression which this brief sentence conveys. Nevertheless, we made bold

to eat some of my fish for breakfast, and found them very savory; and

the rest shall meet with due entertainment at dinner, together with some

shell-beans, green corn, and cucumbers from our garden; so this day's

food comes directly and entirely from beneficent Nature, without the

intervention of any third person between her and us.

* * * * *

_Saturday, August 27th._--A peach-tree, which grows beside our house and

brushes against the window, is so burdened with fruit that I have had to

prop it up. I never saw more splendid peaches in appearance,--great,

round, crimson-cheeked beauties, clustering all over the tree. A

pear-tree, likewise, is maturing a generous burden of small, sweet

fruit, which will require to be eaten at about the same time as the

peaches. There is something pleasantly annoying in this superfluous

abundance; it is like standing under a tree of ripe apples, and giving

it a shake, with the intention of bringing down a single one, when,

behold, a dozen come thumping about our ears. But the idea of the

infinite generosity and exhaustless bounty of our Mother Nature is well

worth attaining; and I never had it so vividly as now, when I find

myself, with the few mouths which I am to feed, the sole inheritor of

the old clergyman's wealth of fruits. His children, his friends in the

village, and the clerical guests who came to preach in his pulpit, were

all wont to eat and be filled from these trees. Now, all these hearty

old people have passed away, and in their stead is a solitary pair,

whose appetites are more than satisfied with the windfalls which the

trees throw down at their feet. Howbeit, we shall have now and then a

guest to keep our peaches and pears from decaying.

G---- B----, my old fellow-laborer at the community at Brook Farm,

called on me last evening, and dined here to-day. He has been

cultivating vegetables at Plymouth this summer, and selling them in the

market. What a singular mode of life for a man of education and

refinement,--to spend his days in hard and earnest bodily toil, and then

to convey the products of his labor, in a wheelbarrow, to the public

market, and there retail them out,--a peck of peas or beans, a bunch of

turnips, a squash, a dozen ears of green corn! Few men, without some

eccentricity of character, would have the moral strength to do this; and

it is very striking to find such strength combined with the utmost

gentleness, and an uncommon regularity of nature. Occasionally he

returns for a day or two to resume his place among scholars and idle

people, as, for instance, the present week, when he has thrown aside his

spade and hoe to attend the Commencement at Cambridge. He is a rare

man,--a perfect original, yet without any one salient point; a character

to be felt and understood, but almost impossible to describe: for,

should you seize upon any characteristic, it would inevitably be altered

and distorted in the process of writing it down.

Our few remaining days of summer have been latterly grievously darkened

with clouds. To-day there has been an hour or two of hot sunshine; but

the sun rose amid cloud and mist, and before he could dry up the

moisture of last night's shower upon the trees and grass, the clouds

have gathered between him and us again. This afternoon the thunder

rumbles in the distance, and I believe a few drops of rain have fallen;

but the weight of the shower has burst elsewhere, leaving us nothing but

its sullen gloom. There is a muggy warmth in the atmosphere, which takes

all the spring and vivacity out of the mind and body.

* * * * *

_Sunday, August 28th._--Still another rainy day,--the heaviest rain, I

believe, that has fallen since we came to Concord (not two months ago).

There never was a more sombre aspect of all external nature. I gaze from

the open window of my study, somewhat disconsolately, and observe the

great willow-tree which shades the house, and which has caught and

retained a whole cataract of rain among its leaves and boughs; and all

the fruit-trees, too, are dripping continually, even in the brief

intervals when the clouds give us a respite. If shaken to bring down the

fruit, they will discharge a shower upon the head of him who stands

beneath. The rain is warm, coming from some southern region; but the

willow attests that it is an autumnal spell of weather, by scattering

down no infrequent multitude of yellow leaves, which rest upon the

sloping roof of the house, and strew the gravel-path and the grass. The

other trees do not yet shed their leaves, though in some of them a

lighter tint of verdure, tending towards yellow, is perceptible. All day

long we hear the water drip, drip, dripping, splash, splash, splashing,

from the eaves, and babbling and foaming into the tubs which have been

set out to receive it. The old unpainted shingles and boards of the

mansion and out-houses are black with the moisture which they have

imbibed. Looking at the river, we perceive that its usually smooth and

mirrored surface is blurred by the infinity of rain-drops; the whole

landscape--grass, trees, and houses--has a completely water-soaked

aspect, as if the earth were wet through. The wooded hill, about a mile

distant, whither we went to gather whortleberries, has a mist upon its

summit, as if the demon of the rain were enthroned there; and if we look

to the sky, it seems as if all the water that had been poured down upon

us were as nothing to what is to come. Once in a while, indeed, there is

a gleam of sky along the horizon, or a half-cheerful, half-sullen

lighting up of the atmosphere; the rain-drops cease to patter down,

except when the trees shake off a gentle shower; but soon we hear the

broad, quiet, slow, and sure recommencement of the rain. The river, if I

mistake not, has risen considerably during the day, and its current will

acquire some degree of energy.

In this sombre weather, when some mortals almost forget that there ever

was any golden sunshine, or ever will be any hereafter, others seem

absolutely to radiate it from their own hearts and minds. The gloom

cannot pervade them; they conquer it, and drive it quite out of their

sphere, and create a moral rainbow of hope upon the blackest cloud. As

for myself, I am little other than a cloud at such seasons, but such

persons contrive to make me a sunny one, shining all through me. And

thus, even without the support of a stated occupation, I survive these

sullen days and am happy.

This morning we read the Sermon on the Mount. In the course of the

forenoon, the rain abated for a season, and I went out and gathered some

corn and summer-squashes, and picked up the windfalls of apples and

pears and peaches. Wet, wet, wet,--everything was wet; the blades of the

corn-stalks moistened me; the wet grass soaked my boots quite through;

the trees threw their reserved showers upon my head; and soon the

remorseless rain began anew, and drove me into the house. When shall we

be able to walk again to the far hills, and plunge into the deep woods,

and gather more cardinals along the river's margin? The track along

which we trod is probably under water now. How inhospitable Nature is

during a rain! In the fervid heat of sunny days, she still retains some

degree of mercy for us; she has shady spots, whither the sun cannot

come; but she provides no shelter against her storms. It makes one

shiver to think how dripping with wet are those deep, umbrageous nooks,

those overshadowed banks, where we find such enjoyment during sultry

afternoons. And what becomes of the birds in such a soaking rain as

this? Is hope and an instinctive faith so mixed up with their nature,

that they can be cheered by the thought that the sunshine will return?

or do they think, as I almost do, that there is to be no sunshine any

more? Very disconsolate must they be among the dripping leaves; and when

a single summer makes so important a portion of their lives, it seems

hard that so much of it should be dissolved in rain. I, likewise, am

greedy of the summer-days for my own sake: the life of man does not

contain so many of them that one can be spared without regret.

_Tuesday, August 30th._--I was promised, in the midst of Sunday's rain,

that Monday should be fair, and, behold! the sun came back to us, and

brought one of the most perfect days ever made since Adam was driven out

of Paradise. By the by, was there ever any rain in Paradise? If so, how

comfortless must Eve's bower have been! It makes me shiver to think of

it. Well, it seemed as if the world was newly created yesterday morning,

and I beheld its birth; for I had risen before the sun was over the

hill, and had gone forth to fish. How instantaneously did all dreariness

and heaviness of the earth's spirit flit away before one smile of the

beneficent sun! This proves that all gloom is but a dream and a shadow,

and that cheerfulness is the real truth. It requires many clouds, long

brooding over us, to make us sad, but one gleam of sunshine always

suffices to cheer up the landscape. The banks of the river actually

laughed when the sunshine fell upon them; and the river itself was alive

and cheerful, and, by way of fun and amusement, it had swept away many

wreaths of meadow-hay, and old, rotten branches of trees, and all such

trumpery. These matters came floating downwards, whirling round and

round in the eddies, or hastening onward in the main current; and many

of them, before this time, have probably been carried into the

Merrimack, and will be borne onward to the sea. The spots where I stood

to fish, on my preceding excursion, were now under water; and the tops

of many of the bushes, along the river's margin, barely emerged from the

stream. Large spaces of meadow are overflowed.

There was a northwest wind throughout the day; and as many clouds, the

remnants of departed gloom, were scattered about the sky, the breeze was

continually blowing them across the sun. For the most part, they were

gone again in a moment; but sometimes the shadow remained long enough to

make me dread a return of sulky weather. Then would come the burst of

sunshine, making me feel as if a rainy day were henceforth an

impossibility....

In the afternoon Mr. Emerson called, bringing Mr. ----. He is a good

sort of humdrum parson enough, and well fitted to increase the stock of

manuscript sermons, of which there must be a fearful quantity already in

the world. Mr. ----, however, is probably one of the best and most

useful of his class, because no suspicion of the necessity of his

profession, constituted as it now is, to mankind, and of his own

usefulness and success in it, has hitherto disturbed him; and therefore

he labors with faith and confidence, as ministers did a hundred years

ago.

After the visitors were gone, I sat at the gallery window, looking down

the avenue, and soon there appeared an elderly woman,--a homely, decent

old matron, dressed in a dark gown, and with what seemed a manuscript

book under her arm. The wind sported with her gown, and blew her veil

across her face, and seemed to make game of her, though on a nearer view

she looked like a sad old creature, with a pale, thin countenance, and

somewhat of a wild and wandering expression. She had a singular gait,

reeling, as it were, and yet not quite reeling, from one side of the

path to the other; going onward as if it were not much matter whether

she went straight or crooked. Such were my observations as she

approached through the scattered sunshine and shade of our long avenue,

until, reaching the door, she gave a knock, and inquired for the lady of

the house. Her manuscript contained a certificate, stating that the old

woman was a widow from a foreign land, who had recently lost her son,

and was now utterly destitute of friends and kindred, and without means

of support. Appended to the certificate there was a list of names of

people who had bestowed charity on her, with the amounts of their

several donations,--none, as I recollect, higher than twenty-five cents.

Here is a strange life, and a character fit for romance and poetry. All

the early part of her life, I suppose, and much of her widowhood were

spent in the quiet of a home, with kinsfolk around her, and children,

and the life-long gossiping acquaintances that some women always create

about them. But in her decline she has wandered away from all these, and

from her native country itself, and is a vagrant, yet with something of

the homeliness and decency of aspect belonging to one who has been a

wife and mother, and has had a roof of her own above her head,--and,

with all this, a wildness proper to her present life. I have a liking

for vagrants of all sorts, and never, that I know of, refused my mite to

a wandering beggar, when I had anything in my own pocket. There is so

much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any

mortal professing to need our assistance; and even should we be

deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth

more than the trifle by which we purchase it. It is desirable, I think,

that such persons should be permitted to roam through our land of

plenty, scattering the seeds of tenderness and charity, as birds of

passage bear the seeds of precious plants from land to land, without

even dreaming of the office which they perform.

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.

VIII.

HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY?

"The fact is," said Marianne, "we must have a party. Bob don't like to

hear of it, but it must come. We are in debt to everybody: we have been

invited everywhere, and never had anything like a party since we were

married, and it won't do."

"For my part, I hate parties," said Bob. "They put your house all out of

order, give all the women a sick-headache, and all the men an

indigestion; you never see anybody to any purpose; the girls look

bewitched, and the women answer you at cross-purposes, and call you by

the name of your next-door neighbor, in their agitation of mind. We stay

out beyond our usual bedtime, come home and find some baby crying, or

child who has been sitting up till nobody knows when; and the next

morning, when I must be at my office by eight, and wife must attend to

her children, we are sleepy and headachy. I protest against making

overtures to entrap some hundred of my respectable married friends into

this snare which has so often entangled me. If I had my way, I would

never go to another party; and as to giving one--I suppose, since my

empress has declared her intentions, that I shall be brought into doing

it; but it shall be under protest."

"But, you see, we must keep up society," said Marianne.

"But I insist on it," said Bob, "it isn't keeping up society. What

earthly thing do you learn about people by meeting them in a general

crush, where all are coming, going, laughing, talking, and looking at

each other? No person of common sense ever puts forth any idea he cares

twopence about, under such circumstances; all that is exchanged is a

certain set of common-places and platitudes which people keep for

parties, just as they do their kid gloves and finery. Now there are our

neighbors, the Browns. When they drop in of an evening, she knitting,

and he with the last article in the paper, she really comes out with a

great deal of fresh, lively, earnest, original talk. We have a good

time, and I like her so much that it quite verges on loving; but see her

in a party, when she manifests herself over five or six flounces of pink

silk and a perfect egg-froth of tulle, her head adorned with a thicket

of craped hair and roses, and it is plain at first view that _talking_

with her is quite out of the question. What has been done to her head on

the outside has evidently had some effect within, for she is no longer

the Mrs. Brown you knew in her every-day dress, but Mrs. Brown in a

party state of mind, and too distracted to think of anything in

particular. She has a few words that she answers to everything you say,

as, for example, 'O, very!' 'Certainly!' 'How extraordinary!' 'So happy

to,' &c. The fact is, that she has come into a state in which any real

communication with her mind and character must be suspended till the

party is over and she is rested. Now I like society, which is the reason

why I hate parties."

"But you see," said Marianne, "what are we to do? Everybody can't drop

in to spend an evening with you. If it were not for these parties, there

are quantities of your acquaintances whom you would never meet."

"And of what use is it to meet them? Do you really know them any better

for meeting them, got up in unusual dresses, and sitting down together

when the only thing exchanged is the remark that it is hot or cold, or

it rains, or it is dry, or any other patent surface-fact that answers

the purpose of making believe you are talking when neither of you is

saying a word?"

"Well, now, for my part," said Marianne, "I confess I _like_ parties:

they amuse me. I come home feeling kinder and better to people, just for

the little I see of them when they are all dressed up and in good humor

with themselves. To be sure we don't say anything very profound,--I

don't think the most of us have anything very profound to say; but I ask

Mrs. Brown where she buys her lace, and she tells me how she washes it,

and somebody else tells me about her baby, and promises me a new

sack-pattern. Then I like to see the pretty, nice young girls flirting

with the nice young men; and I like to be dressed up a little myself,

even if my finery is all old and many times made over. It does me good

to be rubbed up and brightened."

"Like old silver," said Bob.

"Yes, like old silver, precisely; and even if I do come home tired, it

does my mind good to have that change of scene and faces. You men do not

know what it is to be tied to house and nursery all day, and what a

perfect weariness and lassitude it often brings on us women. For my

part, I think parties are a beneficial institution of society, and that

it is worth a good deal of fatigue and trouble to get one up."

"Then there's the expense," said Bob. "What earthly need is there of a

grand regale of oysters, chicken-salad, ice-creams, coffee, and

champagne, between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, when no one of us

would ever think of wanting or taking any such articles upon our

stomachs in our own homes? If we were all of us in the habit of having a

regular repast at that hour, it might be well enough to enjoy one with

our neighbor; but the party fare is generally just so much in addition

to the honest three meals which we have eaten during the day. Now, to

spend from fifty to one, two, or three hundred dollars in giving all our

friends an indigestion from a midnight meal, seems to me a very poor

investment. Yet if we once begin to give the party, we must have

everything that is given at the other parties, or wherefore do we live?

And caterers and waiters rack their brains to devise new forms of

expense and extravagance; and when the bill comes in, one is sure to

feel that one is paying a great deal of money for a great deal of

nonsense. It is, in fact, worse than nonsense, because our dear friends

are in half the cases, not only no better, but a great deal worse, for

what they have eaten."

"But there is this advantage to society," said Rudolph,--"it helps us

young physicians. What would the physicians do if parties were

abolished? Take all the colds that are caught by our fair friends with

low necks and short sleeves, all the troubles from dancing in tight

dresses and inhaling bad air, and all the headaches and indigestions

from the _melange_ of lobster-salad, two or three kinds of ice-cream,

cake, and coffee on delicate stomachs, and our profession gets a degree

of encouragement that is worthy to be thought of."

"But the question arises," said my wife, "whether there are not ways of

promoting social feeling less expensive, more simple and natural and

rational. I am inclined to think that there are."

"Yes," said Theophilus Thoro; "for large parties are not, as a general

thing, given with any wish or intention of really improving our

acquaintance with our neighbors. In many cases they are openly and

avowedly a general tribute paid at intervals to society, for and in

consideration of which you are to sit with closed blinds and doors and

be let alone for the rest of the year. Mrs. Bogus, for instance, lives

to keep her house in order, her closets locked, her silver counted and

in the safe, and her china-closet in undisturbed order. Her 'best

things' are put away with such admirable precision, in so many wrappings

and foldings, and secured with so many a twist and twine, that to get

them out is one of the seven labors of Hercules, not to be lightly or

unadvisedly taken in hand, but reverently, discreetly, and once for

all, in an annual or biennial party. Then says Mrs. Bogus, 'For Heaven's

sake, let's have every creature we can think of, and have 'em all over

with at once. For pity's sake, let's have no driblets left that we shall

have to be inviting to dinner or to tea. No matter whether they can come

or not,--only send them the invitation, and our part is done; and, thank

Heaven! we shall be free for a year.'"

"Yes," said my wife; "a great stand-up party bears just the same

relation towards the offer of real hospitality and good-will as Miss

Sally Brass's offer of meat to the little hungry Marchioness, when, with

a bit uplifted on the end of a fork, she addressed her, 'Will you have

this piece of meat? No? Well, then, remember and don't say you haven't

had meat _offered_ to you!' You are invited to a general jam, at the

risk of your life and health; and if you refuse, don't say you haven't

had hospitality offered to you. All our debts are wiped out and our

slate clean; now we will have our own closed doors, no company and no

trouble, and our best china shall repose undisturbed on its shelves.

Mrs. Bogus says she never could exist in the way that Mrs. Easygo does,

with a constant drip of company,--two or three to breakfast one day,

half a dozen to dinner the next, and little evening gatherings once or

twice a week. It must keep her house in confusion all the time; yet, for

real social feeling, real exchange of thought and opinion, there is more

of it in one half-hour at Mrs. Easygo's than in a dozen of Mrs. Bogus's

great parties.

"The fact is, that Mrs. Easygo really does like the society of human

beings. She is genuinely and heartily social; and, in consequence,

though she has very limited means, and no money to spend in giving great

entertainments, her domestic establishment is a sort of social exchange,

where more friendships are formed, more real acquaintance made, and more

agreeable hours spent, than in any other place that can be named. She

never has large parties,--great general pay-days of social debts,--but

small, well-chosen circles of people, selected so thoughtfully, with a

view to the pleasure which congenial persons give each other, as to make

the invitation an act of real personal kindness. She always manages to

have something for the entertainment of her friends, so that they are

not reduced to the simple alternatives of gaping at each other's dresses

and eating lobster-salad and ice-cream. There is either some choice

music, or a reading of fine poetry, or a well-acted charade, or a

portfolio of photographs and pictures, to enliven the hour and start

conversation; and as the people are skilfully chosen with reference to

each other, as there is no hurry or heat or confusion, conversation, in

its best sense, can bubble up, fresh, genuine, clear, and sparkling as a

woodland spring, and one goes away really rested and refreshed. The

slight entertainment provided is just enough to enable you to eat salt

together in Arab fashion,--not enough to form the leading feature of the

evening. A cup of tea and a basket of cake, or a salver of ices,

silently passed at quiet intervals, do not interrupt conversation or

overload the stomach."

"The fact is," said I, "that the art of society among us Anglo-Saxons is

yet in its ruder stages. We are not, as a race, social and confiding,

like the French and Italians and Germans. We have a word for home, and

our home is often a moated grange, an island, a castle with its

drawbridge up, cutting us off from all but our own home-circle. In

France and Germany and Italy there are the boulevards and public

gardens, where people do their family living in common. Mr. A is

breakfasting under one tree, with wife and children around, and Mr. B is

breakfasting under another tree, hard by; and messages, nods, and smiles

pass backward and forward. Families see each other daily in these public

resorts, and exchange mutual offices of good-will. Perhaps from these

customs of society come that naive simplicity and _abandon_ which one

remarks in the Continental, in opposition to the Anglo-Saxon, habits of

conversation. A Frenchman or an Italian will talk to you of his feelings

and plans and prospects with an unreserve that is perfectly

unaccountable to you, who have always felt that such things must be kept

for the very innermost circle of home privacy. But the Frenchman or

Italian has from a child been brought up to pass his family life in

places of public resort, in constant contact and intercommunion with

other families; and the social and conversational instinct has thus been

daily strengthened. Hence the reunions of these people have been

characterized by a sprightliness and vigor and spirit that the

Anglo-Saxon has in vain attempted to seize and reproduce. English and

American _conversazioni_ have very generally proved a failure, from the

rooted, frozen habit of reticence and reserve which grows with our

growth and strengthens with our strength. The fact is, that the

Anglo-Saxon race as a race does not enjoy talking, and, except in rare

instances, does not talk well. A daily convocation of people, without

refreshments or any extraneous object but the simple pleasure of seeing

and talking with each other, is a thing that can scarcely be understood

in English or American society. Social entertainment presupposes in the

Anglo-Saxon mind _something to eat_, and not only something, but a great

deal. Enormous dinners or great suppers constitute the entertainment.

Nobody seems to have formed the idea that the talking--the simple

exchange of the social feelings--_is_, of itself, the entertainment, and

that _being together_ is the pleasure.

"Madame Recamier for years had a circle of friends who met every

afternoon in her _salon_, from four to six o'clock, for the simple and

sole pleasure of talking with each other. The very first wits and men of

letters and statesmen and _savans_ were enrolled in it, and each brought

to the entertainment some choice _morceau_ which he had laid aside from

his own particular field to add to the feast. The daily intimacy gave

each one such perfect insight into all the others' habits of thought,

tastes, and preferences, that the conversation was like the celebrated

music of the _Conservatoire_ in Paris, a concert of perfectly chorded

instruments taught by long habit of harmonious intercourse to keep exact

time and tune together.

"_Real_ conversation presupposes intimate acquaintance. People must see

each other often enough to wear off the rough bark and outside rind of

common-places and conventionalities in which their real ideas are

enwrapped, and give forth without reserve their innermost and best

feelings. Now what is called a large party is the first and rudest form

of social intercourse. The most we can say of it is, that it is better

than nothing. Men and women are crowded together like cattle in a pen.

They look at each other, they jostle each other, exchange a few common

bleatings, and eat together; and so the performance terminates. One may

be crushed evening after evening against men or women, and learn very

little about them. You may decide that a lady is good-tempered, when any

amount of trampling on the skirt of her new silk dress brings no cloud

to her brow. But _is_ it good temper, or only wanton carelessness, which

cares nothing for waste? You can see that a man is not a gentleman who

squares his back to ladies at the supper-table, and devours boned turkey

and _pate de fois gras_, while they vainly reach over and around him for

something, and that another is a gentleman so far as to prefer the care

of his weaker neighbors to the immediate indulgence of his own

appetites; but further than this you learn little. Sometimes, it is

true, in some secluded corner, two people of fine nervous system,

undisturbed by the general confusion, may have a sociable half-hour, and

really part feeling that they like each other better, and know more of

each other than before. Yet these general gatherings have, after all,

their value. They are not so good as something better would be, but

they cannot be wholly dispensed with. It is far better that Mrs. Bogus

should give an annual party, when she takes down all her bedsteads and

throws open her whole house, than that she should never see her friends

and neighbors inside her doors at all. She may feel that she has neither

the taste nor the talent for constant small reunions. Such things, she

may feel, require a social tact which she has not. She would be utterly

at a loss how to conduct them. Each one would cost her as much anxiety

and thought as her annual gathering, and prove a failure after all;

whereas the annual demonstration can be put wholly into the hands of the

caterer, who comes in force, with flowers, silver, china, servants, and,

taking the house into his own hands, gives her entertainment for her,

leaving to her no responsibility but the payment of the bills; and if

Mr. Bogus does not quarrel with them, we know no reason why any one else

should; and I think Mrs. Bogus merits well of the republic, for doing

what she can do towards the hospitalities of the season. I'm sure I

never cursed her in my heart, even when her strong coffee has held mine

eyes open till morning, and her superlative lobster-salads have given me

the very darkest views of human life that ever dyspepsia and east wind

could engender. Mrs. Bogus is the Eve who offers the apple; but, after

all, I am the foolish Adam who take and eat what I know is going to hurt

me, and I am too gallant to visit my sins on the head of my too obliging

tempter. In country places in particular, where little is going on and

life is apt to stagnate, a good, large, generous party, which brings the

whole neighborhood into one house to have a jolly time, to eat, drink,

and be merry, is really quite a work of love and mercy. People see one

another in their best clothes, and that is something; the elders

exchange all manner of simple pleasantries and civilities, and talk over

their domestic affairs, while the young people flirt, in that wholesome

manner which is one of the safest of youthful follies. A country party,

in fact, may be set down as a work of benevolence, and the money

expended thereon fairly charged to the account of the great cause of

peace and good-will on earth."

"But don't you think," said my wife, "that, if the charge of providing

the entertainment were less laborious, these gatherings could be more

frequent? You see, if a woman feels that she must have five kinds of

cake, and six kinds of preserves, and even ice-cream and jellies in a

region where no confectioner comes in to abbreviate her labors, she will

sit with closed doors, and do nothing towards the general exchange of

life, because she cannot do as much as Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Parsons. If

the idea of meeting together had some other focal point than eating, I

think there would be more social feeling. It might be a musical reunion,

where the various young people of a circle agreed to furnish each a song

or an instrumental performance. It might be an impromptu charade party,

bringing out something of that taste in arrangement of costume, and

capacity for dramatic effect, of which there is more latent in society

than we think. It might be the reading of articles in prose and poetry

furnished to a common paper or portfolio, which would awaken an

abundance of interest and speculation on the authorship, or it might be

dramatic readings and recitations. Any or all of these pastimes might

make an evening so entertaining that a simple cup of tea and a plate of

cake or biscuit would be all the refreshment needed."

"We may with advantage steal a leaf now and then from some foreign

book," said I. "In France and Italy, families have their peculiar days

set apart for the reception of friends at their own houses. The whole

house is put upon a footing of hospitality and invitation, and the whole

mind is given to receiving the various friends. In the evening the

_salon_ is filled. The guests, coming from week to week, for years,

become in time friends; the resort has the charm of a home circle; there

are certain faces that you are always sure to meet there. A lady once

said to me of a certain gentleman and lady whom she missed from her

circle, 'They have been at our house every Wednesday evening for twenty

years.' It seems to me that this frequency of meeting is the great

secret of agreeable society. One sees, in our American life, abundance

of people who are everything that is charming and cultivated, but one

never sees enough of them. One meets them at some quiet reunion, passes

a delightful hour, thinks how charming they are, and wishes one could

see more of them. But the pleasant meeting is like the encounter of two

ships in mid-ocean: away we sail, each on his respective course, to see

each other no more till the pleasant remembrance has died away. Yet were

there some quiet, home-like resort where we might turn in to renew from

time to time the pleasant intercourse, to continue the last

conversation, and to compare anew our readings and our experiences, the

pleasant hour of liking would ripen into a warm friendship.

"But in order that this may be made possible and practicable, the utmost

simplicity of entertainment must prevail. In a French _salon_, all is,

to the last degree, informal. The _bouilloire_, the French teakettle, is

often tended by one of the gentlemen, who aids his fair neighbors in the

mysteries of tea-making. One nymph is always to be found at the table

dispensing tea and talk; and a basket of simple biscuit and cakes,

offered by another, is all the further repast. The teacups and

cake-basket are a real addition to the scene, because they cause a

little lively social bustle, a little chatter and motion,--always of

advantage in breaking up stiffness, and giving occasion for those

graceful, airy nothings that answer so good a purpose in facilitating

acquaintance.

"Nothing can be more charming than the description which Edmond About

gives, in his novel of 'Tolla,' of the reception evenings of an old

noble Roman family,--the spirit of repose and quietude through all the

apartments,--the ease of coming and going,--the perfect homelike spirit

in which the guests settle themselves to any employment of the hour that

best suits them,--some to lively chat, some to dreamy, silent lounging,

some to a game, others, in a distant apartment, to music, and others

still to a promenade along the terraces.

"One is often in a state of mind and nerves which indisposes for the

effort of active conversation; one wishes to rest, to observe, to be

amused without an effort; and a mansion which opens wide its hospitable

arms, and offers itself to you as a sort of home, where you may rest,

and do just as the humor suits you, is a perfect godsend at such times.

You are at home there, your ways are understood, you can do as you

please,--come early or late, be brilliant or dull,--you are always

welcome. If you can do nothing for the social whole to-night, it matters

not. There are many more nights to come in the future, and you are

entertained on trust, without a challenge.

"I have one friend,--a man of genius, subject to the ebbs and flows of

animal spirits which attend that organization. Of general society he has

a nervous horror. A regular dinner or evening party is to him a terror,

an impossibility; but there is a quiet parlor where stands a much-worn

old sofa, and it is his delight to enter without knocking, and be found

lying with half-shut eyes on this friendly couch, while the family life

goes on around him without a question. Nobody is to mind him, to tease

him with inquiries or salutations. If he will, he breaks into the stream

of conversation, and sometimes, rousing up from one of these dreamy

trances, finds himself, ere he or they know how, in the mood for free

and friendly talk. People often wonder, 'How do you catch So-and-so? He

is so shy! I have invited and invited, and he never comes.' We never

invite, and he comes. We take no note of his coming or his going; we do

not startle his entrance with acclamation, nor clog his departure with

expostulation; it is fully understood that with us he shall do just as

he chooses; and so he chooses to do much that we like.

"The sum of this whole doctrine of society is, that we are to try the

value of all modes and forms of social entertainment by their effect in

producing real acquaintance and real friendship and good-will. The first

and rudest form of seeking this is by a great promiscuous party, which

simply effects this,--that people at least see each other on the

outside, and eat together. Next come all those various forms of reunion

in which the entertainment consists of something higher than staring and

eating,--some exercise of the faculties of the guests in music, acting,

recitation, reading, etc.; and these are a great advance, because they

show people what is in them, and thus lay a foundation for a more

intelligent appreciation and acquaintance. These are the best substitute

for the expense, show, and trouble of large parties. They are in their

nature more refining and intellectual. It is astonishing, when people

really put together, in some one club or association, all the different

talents for pleasing possessed by different persons, how clever a circle

may be gathered--in the least promising neighborhood. A club of ladies

in one of our cities has had quite a brilliant success. It is held every

fortnight at the house of the members, according to alphabetical

sequence. The lady who receives has charge of arranging what the

entertainment shall be,--whether charade, tableau, reading, recitation,

or music; and the interest is much increased by the individual taste

shown in the choice of the diversion and the variety which thence

follows.

"In the summer time, in the country, open-air reunions are charming

forms of social entertainment. Croquet parties, which bring young people

together by daylight for a healthy exercise, and end with a moderate

share of the evening, are a very desirable amusement. What are called

'lawn teas' are finding great favor in England and some parts of our

country. They are simply an early tea enjoyed in a sort of picnic style

in the grounds about the house. Such an entertainment enables one to

receive a great many at a time, without crowding, and, being in its very

idea rustic and informal, can be arranged with very little expense or

trouble. With the addition of lanterns in the trees and a little music,

this entertainment may be carried on far into the evening with a very

pretty effect.

"As to dancing, I have this much to say of it. Either our houses must be

all built over and made larger, or female crinolines must be made

smaller, or dancing must continue as it now is, the most absurd and

ungraceful of all attempts at amusement. The effort to execute round

dances in the limits of modern houses, in the prevailing style of dress,

can only lead to developments more startling than agreeable. Dancing in

the open air, on the shaven green of lawns, is a pretty and graceful

exercise, and there only can full sweep be allowed for the present

feminine toilet.

"The English breakfast is an institution growing in favor here, and

rightfully, too; for a party of fresh, good-natured, well-dressed

people, assembled at breakfast on a summer morning, is as nearly perfect

a form of reunion as can be devised. All are in full strength from their

night's rest; the hour is fresh and lovely, and they are in condition to

give each other the very cream of their thoughts, the first keen sparkle

of the uncorked nervous system. The only drawback is, that, in our busy

American life, the most desirable gentlemen often cannot spare their

morning hours. Breakfast parties presuppose a condition of leisure; but

when they can be compassed, they are perhaps the most perfectly

enjoyable of entertainments."

"Well," said Marianne, "I begin to waver about my party. I don't know,

after all, but the desire of paying off social debts prompted the idea;

perhaps we might try some of the agreeable things suggested. But, dear

me! there's the baby. We'll finish the talk some other time."

GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.

CHAPTER XXXII.

He went straight to the stable, and saddled Black Dick.

But, in the very act, his nature revolted. What, turn his back on her

the moment he had got hold of her money, to take to the other. He could

not do it.

He went back to her room, and came so suddenly that he caught her

crying. He asked her what was the matter.

"Nothing," said she, with a sigh: "only a woman's foolish misgivings. I

was afraid perhaps you would not come back. Forgive me."

"No fear of that," said he. "However, I have taken a resolve not to go

to-day. If I go to-morrow, I shall be just in time; and Dick wants a

good day's rest."

Mrs. Gaunt said nothing; but her expressive face was triumphant.

Griffith and she took a walk together; and he, who used to be the more

genial of the two, was dull, and she full of animation.

This whole day she laid herself out to bewitch her husband, and put him

in high spirits.

It was up-hill work; but when such a woman sets herself in earnest to

delight a man, she reads our sex a lesson in the art, that shows us we

are all babies at it.

However, it was at supper she finally conquered.

Here the lights, her beauty set off with art, her deepening eyes, her

satin skin, her happy excitement, her wit and tenderness, and joyous

sprightliness, enveloped Griffith in an atmosphere of delight, and drove

everything out of his head but herself; and with this, if the truth must

be told, the sparkling wines co-operated.

Griffith plied the bottle a little too freely. But Mrs. Gaunt, on this

one occasion, had not the heart to check him. The more he toasted her,

the more uxorious he became, and she could not deny herself even this

joy; but, besides, she had less of the prudent wife in her just then

than of the weak, indulgent mother. Anything rather than check his love:

she was greedy of it.

At last, however, she said to him, "Sweetheart, I shall go to bed; for,

I see, if I stay longer, I shall lead thee into a debauch. Be good now;

drink no more when I am gone. Else I'll say thou lovest thy bottle more

than thy wife."

He promised faithfully. But, when she was gone, modified his pledge by

drinking just one bumper to her health, which bumper let in another;

and, when at last he retired to rest, he was in that state of mental

confusion wherein the limbs appear to have a memory independent of the

mind.

In this condition do some men's hands wind up their watches, the mind

taking no appreciable part in the ceremony.

By some such act of what physicians call "organic memory," Griffith's

feet carried him to the chamber he had slept in a thousand times, and

not into the one Mrs. Rider had taken him to the night before.

The next morning he came down rather late for him, and found himself

treated with a great access of respect by the servants.

His position was no longer doubtful; he was the master of the house.

Mrs. Gaunt followed in due course, and sat at breakfast with him,

looking young and blooming as Hebe, and her eye never off him long.

She had lived temperately, and had not yet passed the age when happiness

can restore a woman's beauty and brightness in a single day.

As for him, he was like a man in a heavenly dream: he floated in the

past and the present: the recent and the future seemed obscure and

distant, and comparatively in a mist.

* * * * *

But that same afternoon, after a most affectionate farewell, and many

promises to return as soon as ever he had discharged his obligations,

Griffith Gaunt started for the "Packhorse," to carry to Mercy Leicester,

alias Vint, the money Catharine Gaunt had saved by self-denial and

economy.

And he went south a worse man than he came.

When he left Mercy Leicester, he was a bigamist in law, but not at

heart. Kate was dead to him: he had given her up forever, and was

constant and true to his new wife.

But now he was false to Mercy, yet not true to Kate; and, curiously

enough, it was a day or two passed with his lawful wife that had

demoralized him. His unlawful wife had hitherto done nothing but improve

his character.

A great fault once committed is often the first link in a chain of acts

that look like crimes, but are, strictly speaking, consequences.

This man, blinded at first by his own foible, and after that the sport

of circumstances, was single-hearted by nature; and his conscience was

not hardened. He desired earnestly to free himself and both his wives

from the cruel situation; but to do this, one of them, he saw, must be

abandoned entirely; and his heart bled for her.

A villain or a fool would have relished the situation; many men would

have dallied with it; but, to do this erring man justice, he writhed and

sorrowed under it, and sincerely desired to end it.

And this was why he prized Kate's money so. It enabled him to render a

great service to her he had injured worse than he had the other, to her

he saw he must abandon.

But this was feeble comfort, after all. He rode along a miserable man;

none the less wretched and remorseful, that, ere he got into Lancashire,

he saw his way clear. This was his resolve: to pay old Vint's debts with

Kate's money; take the "Packhorse," get it made over to Mercy, give her

the odd two hundred pounds and his jewels, and fly. He would never see

her again; but would return home, and get the rest of the two thousand

pounds from Kate, and send it Mercy by a friend, who should tell her he

was dead, and had left word with his relations to send her all his

substance.

At last the "Packhorse" came in sight. He drew rein, and had half a mind

to turn back; but, instead of that, he crawled on, and very sick and

cold he felt.

Many a man has marched to the scaffold with a less quaking heart than he

to the "Packhorse."

His dejection contrasted strangely with the warm reception he met from

everybody there. And the house was full of women; and they seemed,

somehow, all cock-a-hoop, and filled with admiration of _him_.

"Where is she?" said he, faintly.

"Hark to the poor soul!" said a gossip. "Dame Vint, where's thy

daughter? gone out a-walking be-like?"

At this, the other women present chuckled and clucked.

"I'll bring you to her," said Mrs. Vint; "but prithee be quiet and

reasonable; for to be sure she is none too strong."

There was some little preparation, and then Griffith was ushered into

Mercy's room, and found her in bed, looking a little pale, but sweeter

and comelier than ever. She had the bedclothes up to her chin.

"You look wan, my poor lass," said he; "what ails ye?"

"Naught ails me now thou art come," said she, lovingly.

Griffith put the bag on the table. "There," said he, "there's five

hundred pounds in gold. I come not to thee empty-handed."

"Nor I to thee," said Mercy, with a heavenly smile. "See!"

And she drew down the bedclothes a little, and showed the face of a

babe scarcely three days old,--a little boy.

She turned in the bed, and tried to hold him up to his father, and said,

"Here's _my_ treasure for thee!" And the effort, the flush on her cheek,

and the deep light in her dove-like eyes, told plainly that the poor

soul thought she had contributed to their domestic wealth something far

richer than Griffith had with his bag of gold.

* * * * *

The father uttered an ejaculation, and came to her side, and, for a

moment, Nature overpowered everything else. He kissed the child; he

kissed Mercy again and again.

"Now God be praised for both," said he, passionately; "but most for

thee, the best wife, the truest friend--" Here, thinking of her virtues,

and the blow he had come to strike her, he broke down, and was almost

choked with emotion; whereupon Mrs. Vint exerted female authority, and

bundled him out of the room. "Is that the way to carry on at such an a

time?" said she. "'T was enow to upset her altogether. O, but you men

have little sense in women's matters. I looked to you to give her

courage, not to set her off into hysterics after a manner. Nay, keep up

her heart, or keep your distance, say I, that am her mother."

Griffith took this hint, and ever after took pity on Mercy's weak

condition; and, suspending the fatal blow, did all he could to restore

her to health and spirits.

Of course, to do that, he must deceive her; and so his life became a

lie.

For, hitherto, she had never looked forward much; but now her eyes were

always diving into futurity; and she lay smiling and discussing the

prospects of her boy; and Griffith had to sit by her side, and see her

gnaw the boy's hand, and kiss his feet, and anticipate his brilliant

career. He had to look and listen with an aching heart, and assent with

feigned warmth, and an inward chill of horror and remorse.

One Drummond, a travelling artist, called; and Mercy, who had often

refused to sit to him, consented now; "for," she said, "when he grows

up, he shall know how his parents looked in their youth, the very year

their darling was born." So Griffith had to sit with her, and excellent

likenesses the man produced; but a horrible one of the child. And

Griffith thought, "Poor soul! a little while and this picture will be

all that shall be left to thee of me."

For all this time he was actually transacting the preliminaries of

separation. He got a man of law to make all sure. The farm, the stock,

the furniture and good-will of the "Packhorse," all these he got

assigned to Mercy Leicester for her own use, in consideration of three

hundred and fifty pounds, whereof three hundred were devoted to clearing

the concern of its debts, the odd fifty was to sweeten the pill to Harry

Vint.

When the deed came to be executed, Mercy was surprised, and uttered a

gentle remonstrance. "What have I to do with it?" said she. "'T is thy

money, not mine."

"No matter," said Griffith; "I choose to have it so."

"Your will is my law," said Mercy.

"Besides," said Griffith, "the old folk will not feel so sore, nor be

afraid of being turned out, if it is in thy name."

"And that is true," said Mercy. "Now who had thought of that, but my

good man?" And she threw her arms lovingly round his neck, and gazed on

him adoringly.

But his lion-like eyes avoided her dove-like eyes; and an involuntary

shudder ran through him.

The habit of deceiving Mercy led to a consequence he had not

anticipated. It tightened the chain that held him. She opened his eyes

more and more to her deep affection, and he began to fear she would die

if he abandoned her.

And then her present situation was so touching. She had borne him a

lovely boy; that must be abandoned too, if he left her; and somehow the

birth of this child had embellished the mother; a delicious pink had

taken the place of her rustic bloom; and her beauty was more refined and

delicate. So pure, so loving, so fair, so maternal, to wound her heart

now, it seemed like stabbing an angel.

One day succeeded to another, and still Griffith had not the heart to

carry out his resolve. He temporized; he wrote to Kate that he was

detained by the business; and he stayed on and on, strengthening his

gratitude and his affection, and weakening his love for the absent, and

his resolution; till, at last, he became so distracted and divided in

heart, and so demoralized, that he began to give up the idea of

abandoning Mercy, and babbled to himself about fate and destiny, and

decided that the most merciful course would be to deceive both women.

Mercy was patient. Mercy was unsuspicious. She would content herself

with occasional visits, if he could only feign some plausible tale to

account for long absences.

Before he got into this mess, he was a singularly truthful person; but

now a lie was nothing to him. But, for that matter, many a man has been

first made a liar by his connection with two women; and by degrees has

carried his mendacity into other things.

However, though now blessed with mendacity, he was cursed with a lack of

invention; and sorely puzzled how to live at Hernshaw, yet visit the

"Packhorse."

The best thing he could hit upon was to pretend to turn bagman; and so

Mercy would believe he was travelling all over England, when all the

time he was quietly living at Hernshaw.

And perhaps these long separations might prepare her heart for a final

parting, and so let in his original plan a few years hence.

He prepared this manoeuvre with some art: he told her, one day, he had

been to Lancaster, and there fallen in with a friend, who had as good as

promised him the place of a commercial traveller for a mercantile house

there.

"A traveller!" said Mercy. "Heaven forbid! If you knew how I wearied for

you when you went to Cumberland!"

"To Cumberland! How know you I went thither?"

"O, I but guessed that; but now I know it, by your face. But go where

thou wilt, the house is dull directly. Thou art our sunshine. Isn't he,

my poppet?"

"Well, well; if it kept me too long from thee, I could give it up. But,

child, we must think of young master. You could manage the inn, and your

mother the farm, without me; and I should be earning money on my side. I

want to make a gentleman of him."

"Anything for _him_," said Mercy: "anything in the world." But the tears

stood in her eyes.

In furtherance of this deceit, Griffith did one day actually ride to

Lancaster, and slept there. He wrote to Kate from that town, to say he

was detained by a slight illness, but hoped to be home in a week: and

the next day brought Mercy home some ribbons, and told her he had seen

the merchant, and his brother, and they had made him a very fair offer.

"But I've a week to think of it," said he; "so there's no hurry."

Mercy fixed her eyes on him in a very peculiar way, and made no reply.

You must know that something very curious had happened whilst Griffith

was gone to Lancaster.

A travelling pedler, passing by, was struck with the name on the

signboard. "Hallo!" said he, "why here's a namesake of mine; I'll have a

glass of his ale any way."

So he came into the public room, and called for a glass; taking care to

open his pack, and display his inviting wares. Harry Vint served him.

"Here's your health," said the pedler. "You must drink with me, you

must."

"And welcome," said the old man.

"Well," said the pedler, "I do travel five counties; but for all that,

you are the first namesake I have found. I am Thomas Leicester, too, as

sure as you are a living sinner."

The old man laughed, and said, "Then no namesake of mine are you; for

they call me Harry Vint. Thomas Leicester, he that keeps this inn now,

is my son-in-law: he is gone to Lancaster this morning."

The pedler said that was a pity, he should have liked to see his

namesake, and drink a glass with him.

"Come again to-morrow," said Harry Vint, ironically. "Dame," he cried,

"come hither. Here's another Thomas Leicester for ye, wants to see our

one."

Mrs. Vint turned her head, and inspected the pedler from afar, as if he

was some natural curiosity.

"Where do you come from, young man?" said she.

"Well, I came from Kendal last; but I am Cumberland born."

"Why, that is where t'other comes from," suggested Paul Carrick, who was

once more a frequenter of the house.

"Like enow," said Mrs. Vint.

With that she dropped the matter as one of no consequence, and retired.

But she went straight to Mercy, in the parlor, and told her there was a

man in the kitchen that called himself Thomas Leicester.

"Well, mother?" said Mercy, with high indifference, for she was trying

new socks on King Baby.

"He comes from Cumberland."

"Well, to be sure, names do run in counties."

"That is true; but, seems to me, he favors your man: much of a height,

and--There, do just step into the kitchen a moment."

"La, mother," said Mercy, "I don't desire to see any more Thomas

Leicesters than my own: 'tis the man, not the name. Isn't it, my lamb?"

Mrs. Vint went back to the kitchen discomfited; but, with quiet

pertinacity, she brought Thomas Leicester into the parlor, pack and all.

"There, Mercy," said she, "lay out a penny with thy husband's namesake."

Mercy did not reply, for at that moment Thomas Leicester caught sight of

Griffith's portrait, and gave a sudden start, and a most extraordinary

look besides.

Both the women's eyes happened to be upon him, and they saw at once that

he knew the original.

"You know my husband?" said Mercy Vint, after a while.

"Not I," said Leicester, looking askant at the picture.

"Don't tell no lies," said Mrs. Vint. "You do know him well." And she

pointed her assertion by looking at the portrait.

"O, I know him whose picture hangs there, of course," said Leicester.

"Well, and that _is_ her husband."

"O, that is her husband, is it?" And he was unaffectedly puzzled.

Mercy turned pale. "Yes, he is my husband," said she, "and this is our

child. Can you tell me anything about him? for he came a stranger to

these parts. Belike you are a kinsman of his?"

"So they say."

This reply puzzled both women.

"Any way," said the pedler, "you see we are marked alike." And he showed

a long black mole on his forehead.

Mercy was now as curious as she had been indifferent. "Tell me all about

him," said she: "how comes it that he is a gentleman and thou a pedler?"

"Well, because my mother was a gypsy, and his a gentlewoman."

"What brought him to these parts?"

"Trouble, they say."

"What trouble?"

"Nay, I know not." This after a slight but visible hesitation.

"But you have heard say."

"Well, I am always on the foot, and don't bide long enough in one place

to learn all the gossip. But I do remember hearing he was gone to sea:

and that was a lie, for he had settled here, and married you. I'fackins,

he might have done worse. He has got a bonny buxom wife, and a rare fine

boy, to be sure."

And now the pedler was on his guard, and determined he would not be the

one to break up the household he saw before him, and afflict the

dove-eyed wife and mother. He was a good-natured fellow, and averse to

make mischief with his own hands. Besides, he took for granted Griffith

loved his new wife better than the old one; and, above all, the

punishment of bigamy was severe, and was it for him to get the Squire

indicted, and branded in the hand for a felon?

So the women could get nothing more out of him; he lied, evaded,

shuffled, and feigned utter ignorance; pleading, adroitly enough, his

vagrant life.

All this, however, aroused vague suspicions in Mrs. Vint's mind, and she

went and whispered them to her favorite, Paul Carrick. "And, Paul," said

she, "call for what you like, and score it to me; only treat this pedler

till he leaks out summut: to be sure he'll tell a man more than he will

us."

Paul entered with zeal into this commission: treated the pedler to a

chop, and plied him well with the best ale.

All this failed to loose the pedler's tongue at the time, but it muddled

his judgment: on resuming his journey, he gave his entertainer a wink.

Carrick rose and followed him out.

"You seem a decent lad," said the pedler, "and a good-hearted one. Wilt

do me a favor?"

Carrick said he would, if it lay in his power.

"O, it is easy enow," said the pedler. "'T is just to give young Thomas

Leicester, into his own hand, this here trifle as soon as ever he comes

home." And he handed Carrick a hard substance wrapped up in paper.

Carrick promised.

"Ay, ay, lad," said the pedler, "but see you play fair, and give it him

unbeknown. Now don't you be so simple as show it to any of the

womenfolk. D' ye understand?"

"All right," said Carrick, knowingly. And so the boon companions for a

day shook hands and parted.

And Carrick took the little parcel straight to Mrs. Vint, and told her

every word the pedler had said.

And Mrs. Vint took the little parcel straight to Mercy, and told her

what Carrick said the pedler had said.

And the pedler went off flushed with beer and self-complacency; for he

thought he had drawn the line precisely; had faithfully discharged his

promise to his lady and benefactress, but not so as to make mischief in

another household.

Such was the power of Ale--in the last century.

Mercy undid the paper and found the bullet, on which was engraved

"I LOVE KATE."

As she read these words a knife seemed to enter her heart, the pang was

so keen.

But she soon took herself to task. "Thou naughty woman," said she.

"What! jealous of the dead?"

She wrapped the bullet up; put it carefully away; had a good cry; and

was herself again.

But all this set her watching Griffith, and reading his face. She had

subtle, vague misgivings, and forbade her mother to mention the pedler's

visit to Griffith yet awhile. Womanlike she preferred to worm out the

truth.

On the evening of his return from Lancaster, as he was smoking his pipe,

she quietly tested him. She fixed her eyes on him, and said, "One was

here to-day that knows thee, and brought thee this." She then handed him

the bullet, and watched his face.

Griffith undid the paper carelessly enough; but, at sight of the bullet,

uttered a loud cry, and his eyes seemed ready to start out of his head.

He turned as pale as ashes, and stammered piteously, "What? what? what

d'ye mean? In Heaven's name, what is this? How? Who?"

Mercy was surprised, but also much concerned at his distress; and tried

to soothe him. She also asked him piteously, whether she had done wrong

to give it him. "God knows," said she, "'t is no business of mine to go

and remind thee of her thou hast loved better mayhap than thou lovest

me. But to keep it from thee, and she in her grave,--O, I had not the

heart."

But Griffith's agitation increased instead of diminishing; and, even

while she was trying to soothe him, he rushed wildly out of the room,

and into the open air.

Mercy went, in perplexity and distress, and told her mother.

Mrs. Vint, not being blinded by affection, thought the whole thing had a

very ugly look, and said as much. She gave it as her opinion that this

Kate was alive, and had sent the token herself, to make mischief between

man and wife.

"That shall she never," said Mercy, stoutly; but now her suspicions were

thoroughly excited, and her happiness disturbed.

The next day, Griffith found her in tears. He asked her what was the

matter. She would not tell him.

"You have your secrets," said she; "and so now I have mine."

* * * * *

Griffith became very uneasy.

For now Mercy was often in tears, and Mrs. Vint looked daggers at him.

All this was mysterious and unintelligible, and, to a guilty man, very

alarming.

At last he implored Mercy to speak out. He wanted to know the worst.

Then Mercy did speak out. "You have deceived me," said she. "Kate is

alive. This very morning, between sleeping and waking, you whispered her

name; ay, false man, whispered it like a lover. You told me she was

dead. But she is alive, and has sent you a reminder, and the bare sight

of it hath turned your heart her way again. What shall I do? Why did you

marry me, if you could not forget her? I did not want you to desert any

woman for me. The desire of my heart was always for your happiness. But

O Thomas, deceit and falsehood will not bring you happiness, no more

than they will me. What shall I do? what shall I do?"

Her tears flowed freely, and Griffith sat down, and groaned with horror

and remorse, beside her.

He had not the courage to tell her the horrible truth,--that Kate was

his wife, and she was not.

"Do not thou afflict thyself," he muttered. "Of course, with you putting

that bullet in my hand so sudden, it set my fancy a wandering back to

other days."

"Ah!" said Mercy, "if it be no worse than that, there's little harm. But

why did thy namesake start so at sight of thy picture?"

"My namesake!" cried Griffith, all aghast.

"Ay, he that brought thee that love-token,--Thomas Leicester. Nay, for

very shame, feign not ignorance of him. Why, he hath thy very mole on

his temple, and knew thy picture in a moment. He is thy half-brother; is

he not?"

"I am a ruined man," cried Griffith, and sank into a chair without power

of motion.

"God help me, what is all this?" cried Mercy. "O Thomas, Thomas, I could

forgive thee aught but deceit: for both our sakes speak out, and tell me

the worst. No harm shall come near thee while I live."

"How can I tell thee? I am an unfortunate man. The world will call me a

villain; yet I am not a villain at heart. But who will believe me? I

have broken the law. Thee I could trust, but not thy folk; they never

loved me. Mercy, for pity's sake, when was that Thomas Leicester here?"

"Four days ago."

"Which way went he?"

"I hear he told Paul he was going to Cumberland."

"If he gets there before me, I shall rot in gaol."

"Now God forbid! O Thomas, then mount and ride after him."

"I will, and this very moment."

He saddled Black Dick, and loaded his pistols for the journey; but, ere

he went, a pale face looked out into the yard, and a finger beckoned. It

was Mercy. She bade him follow her. She took him to her room, where

their child was sleeping; and then she closed and even locked the door.

"No soul can hear us," said she; "now look me in the face, and tell me

God's truth. Who and what are you?"

Griffith shuddered at this exordium; he made no reply.

Mercy went to a box and took out an old shirt of his,--the one he wore

when he first came to the "Packhorse." She brought it to him and showed

him "G. G." embroidered on it with a woman's hair. (Ryder's.)

"Here are your initials," said she; "now leave useless falsehoods; be a

man, and tell me your real name."

"My name is Griffith Gaunt."

Mercy, sick at heart, turned her head away; but she had the resolution

to urge him on. "Go on," said she, in an agonized whisper: "if you

believe in God and a judgment to come, deceive me no more. The truth, I

say! the truth!"

"So be it," said Griffith, desperately: "when I have told thee what a

villain I am, I can die at thy feet, and then thou wilt forgive me.

"Who is Kate?" was all she replied.

"Kate is my wife."

* * * * *

"I thought her false; who could think any other? appearances were so

strong against her: others thought so beside me. I raised my hand to

kill her; but she never winced. I trampled on him I believed her

paramour: I fled, and soon I lay a-dying in this house for her sake. I

told thee she was dead. Alas! I thought her dead to me. I went back to

our house (it is her house) sore against the grain, to get money for

thee and thine. Then she cleared herself, bright as the sun, and pure as

snow. She was all in black for me; she had put by money, against I

should come to my senses and need it. I told her I owed a debt in

Lancashire, a debt of gratitude as well as money: and so I did. How have

I repaid it? The poor soul forced five hundred pounds on me. I had much

ado to keep her from bringing it hither with her own hands. O, villain!

villain! Then I thought to leave thee, and send thee word I was dead,

and heap money on thee. Money! But how could I? thou wast my

benefactress, my more than wife. All the riches of the world can make no

return to thee. What, what shall I do? Shall I fly with thee and thy

child across the seas? Shall I go back to her? No; the best thing I can

do is to take this good pistol, and let the life out of my dishonorable

carcass, and free two honest women from me by one resolute act."

In his despair he cocked the pistol; and, at a word from Mercy, this

tale had ended.

But the poor woman, pale and trembling, tottered across the room, and

took it out of his hand. "I would not harm thy body, nor thy soul," she

gasped. "Let me draw my breath and think."

She rocked herself to and fro in silence.

Griffith stood trembling like a criminal before his judge.

It was long ere she could speak, for anguish. Yet when she did speak, it

was with a sort of deadly calm.

"Go tell the truth to _her_, as you have done to me; and, if she can

forgive you, all the better for you. I can never forgive you, nor yet

can harm you. My child! my child! Thy father is our ruin. O, begone,

man, or the sight of you will kill us both."

Then he fell at her knees; kissed, and wept over her cold hand; and, in

his pity and despair, offered to cross the seas with her and her child,

and so repair the wrong he had done her.

"Tempt me not," she sobbed. "Go, leave me! None here shall ever know thy

crime, but she whose heart thou hast broken, and ruined her good name."

He took her in his arms, in spite of her resistance, and kissed her

passionately; but, for the first time, she shuddered at his embrace; and

that gave him the power to leave her.

He rushed from her, all but distracted, and rode away to Cumberland;

but not to tell the truth to Kate, if he could possibly help it.