A heathery land and misty sky,
And turned on rocks and raging surf
His golden eye.
"But, petted, in our climate cold
He lived and chattered many a day,
Until, with age, from green and gold
His wings grew gray.
"At last, when, blind, and seeming dumb,
He scolded, laughed, and spoke no more,
A Spanish stranger chanced to come
To Mulla's shore.
"He hailed the bird in Spanish speech;
The bird in Spanish speech replied,
Flapped round his cage with joyous screech,
Dropped down, and died."
If perfect sunshine, gentle breezes, and a smooth sea could lure one
into unconsciousness of the surrounding desolation and into
forgetfulness of the elemental warfare to which these Hebridean regions
are exposed, we had complete antidotes to melancholy or dread, so
perfect was the day chosen for our excursion; and yet I never think of
that part of our passage in which we threaded the islands lying north of
Staffa without a gentle shade of sadness mingling with my recollections.
But that the sage Johnson, the romantic Campbell, and the unreflecting
parrot all indorse these emotions as instinctive, I should feel bound in
honor (honor to the landscape) to ascribe them to that occasional thrill
of homesickness which I have known take possession of me in the crowded
streets of London or Edinburgh as well as here, making me inwardly
exclaim, like the old woman from the wilds of Vermont, on her first
visit to the metropolis, "All this may be very fine, but I wonder the
folks can bear to live so far away."
That I was the victim of a momentary sense of exile is rendered the more
probable from the fact that about this time Christie was stretched in
the cabin below, a victim to sea-sickness, in spite of the comparatively
smooth sea, and that the Bailie had gone forward to smoke a pipe, thus
leaving me alone with my meditations. That they were not wholly of the
regretful or sentimental cast is evident, however, from the fact that I
improved this opportunity to indulge in more than one observation upon
the company, my gossip (that is, my imagination) and I making many a
little comment on my human surroundings, especially those three
specimens of English girls whom, as I had met them once before, I was
beginning to recognize as acquaintances.
And what we commented on them, I and another friendly gossip, namely,
memory, often rehearse; for that trio still stand out to my recollection
as excellent, let us hope average, types of English maidenhood of the
best blood and breeding,--blood not a whit purer, to my thinking, than
flows in any honest veins,--breeding no higher than may be attained in
the humblest household in which Christian politeness is the ruling
standard.
"How pretty they were!" says Memory.
_I._ Yes,--just pretty enough to gladden a mother's heart now and a
lover's by-and-by, but mercifully sparing us those ecstasies on their
beauty which are so tiresome.
_Memory._ Theirs was chiefly the beauty of youth, health, and happiness;
they were all well-featured, though, and had faces which grew more and
more interesting on acquaintance.
_I._ How hard it was to distinguish them one from another!
_Memory._ Yes, at first. But you must recollect that on closer
observation one proved to be the taller, one the plumper, and one
decidedly the younger of the three; then, although they were dressed so
exactly alike,--according to what be, I suspect, a sumptuary law in
England--and although their stout travelling-dresses, drab cloaks, thick
boots, the shaggy shawls severally carried by each on one arm, the faded
blue cravats tied round their throats, were so precisely alike and had
been subjected to so exactly the same amount of wear that you could have
sworn each article was its fellow, you know you did detect a trifling
difference in the feathers of their hats, sufficient to prove afterwards
a distinguishing badge.
Here Reflection steps in and suggests whether this exact uniformity of
dress among British children of one family may not be the outward sign
of that harmony and subjection to rule which, far as I have had an
opportunity of judging, prevail in English households, Where could you
find such a degree of conformity among American girls as to induce
unqualified submission to one standard of taste, and that the maternal?
I am not sure that it is desirable to quench all individuality, even in
a matter so comparatively insignificant as that of dress. But who can
prize too highly the reverence for authority, the sweet feminine
modesty, the domestic harmony, which are expressed in this sisterly
uniformity of costume? All this might have been spurious in the case
just cited, and this harmonious effect at only after an infinite amount
of petty squabbling and rebellion; but such unworthy skepticism is
rebuked by my faithful Memory, who reminds me of the filial respect
combined with girlish gayety and absence of all self-consciousness which
forbade the idea for a moment that these young lives were regulated by
harsh or compulsory discipline Still it was discipline, there could be
no doubt of that, and of the most healthy order, which gave such a charm
to Sir Thomas's daughters. Perhaps they had reaped in their family
circle all and more than all the benefits which school-training and
contact with numbers are capable of affording, without out the loss of
home-influences; for I overheard their mother (rather a loud-voiced
woman, by the way) telling somebody,--the clergyman's wife, I
suspect,--that she had already married off two similar trios of
daughters, and that these were the younger children. Blessings on the
children who belong to so well filled a quiver, if they all attain to
such a degree of sweetness and decorum as to impress the most casual
observer, and one of their own sex, too, with such lasting recollections
of their maiden loveliness! I saw them under various circumstances, both
flattering and the reverse: saw them, when, with their own servants in
attendance, and the advantages of social position, they might not
unnaturally have laid claim to precedence; saw them and their
drawing-materials shuffled hastily from the steamer's cabin one rainy
day, to make way for the dinner-cloth, in accordance with steamboat
regulations, and in spite of their mild expostulations; saw one of them,
at least, subjected to the presumptuous advances of a chance admirer:
but I never saw any instance in which their behavior was not marked by
modesty and good-nature, accompanied by a quiet dignity and self-respect
which repelled intrusion so effectually as to justify their experienced
mother in giving them the freedom of steamboats, rocks, caves, and
crowds, to a degree which is seldom exceeded by the boasted independence
of American girls.
But Memory reminds me that I did not see all this during that noonday
hour when the Pioneer was bearing down upon Staffa, and that long before
these English girls had established themselves so high in my good
opinion we had skirted nearly the whole of the eastern shore of the
island. The steamer is now gradually slackening her speed, preparatory
to coming to a full stop not far from the southeastern extremity, and we
realize that the first goal of this day's hopes is gained.
THE CHANGELING.
A.D. 1691.
For the fairest maid in Hampton
They needed not to search,
Who saw young Anna Favor
Come walking into church,--
Or bringing from the meadows,
At set of harvest-day,
The frolic of the blackbirds,
The sweetness of the hay.
Now the weariest of all mothers,
The saddest two-years bride,
She scowls in the face of her husband,
And spurns her child aside.
"Rake out the red coals, goodman,--
For there the child shall lie,
Till the black witch comes to fetch her,
And both up chimney fly.
"It's never my own little daughter,
It's never my own," she said;
"The witches have stolen my Anna,
And left me an imp instead.
"Oh, fair and sweet was my baby,
Blue eyes, and hair of gold;
But this is ugly and wrinkled,
Cross, and cunning, and old.
"I hate the touch of her fingers,
I hate the feel of her skin;
It's not the milk from my bosom,
But my blood, that she sucks in.
"My face grows sharp with the torment;
Look! my arms are skin and bone!--
Rake open the red coals, goodman,
And the witch shall have her own.
"She'll come when she hears it crying,
In the shape of an owl or bat,
And she'll bring us our darling Anna
In place of her screeching brat."
Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton,
Laid his hand upon her head:
"Thy sorrow is great, O woman!
I sorrow with thee," he said.
"The paths to trouble are many,
And never but one sure way
Leads out to the light beyond it:
My poor wife, let us pray."
Then he said to the great All-Father,
"Thy daughter is weak and blind;
Let her sight come back, and clothe her
Once more in her right mind.
"Lead her out of this evil shadow,
Out of these fancies wild;
Let the holy love of the mother
Turn again to her child.
"Make her lips like the lips of Mary
Kissing her blessed Son;
Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus,
Rest on her little one.
"Comfort the soul of thy handmaid,
Open her prison-door,
And thine shall be all the glory
And praise forevermore."
Then into the face of its mother
The baby looked up and smiled;
And the cloud of her soul was lifted,
And she knew her little child.
A beam of the slant west sunshine
Made the wan face almost fair,
Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder,
And the rings of pale gold hair.
She kissed it on lip and forehead,
She kissed it on cheek and chin
And she bared her snow-white bosom
To the lips so pale and thin.
Oh, fair on her bridal morning
Was the maid who blushed and smiled,
But fairer to Ezra Dalton
Looked the mother of his child.
With more than a lover's fondness
He stooped to her worn young face,
And the nursing child and the mother
He folded in one embrace.
"Blessed be God!" he murmured.
"Blessed be God!" she said;
"For I see, who once was blinded,--
I live, who once was dead.
"Now mount and ride, my goodman,
As thou lovest thy own soul!
Woe's me, if my wicked fancies
Be the death of Goody Cole!"
His horse he saddled and bridled,
And into the night rode he,--
Now through the great black woodland,
Now by the white-beached sea.
He rode through the silent clearings,
He came to the ferry wide,
And thrice he called to the boatman
Asleep on the other side.
He set his horse to the river,
He swam to Newbury town,
And he called up Justice Sewall
In his nightcap and his gown.
And the grave and worshipful justice
(Upon whose soul be peace!)
Set his name to the jailer's warrant
For Goodwife Cole's release.
Then through the night the hoof-beats
Went sounding like a flail;
And Goody Cole at cockcrow
Came forth from Ipswich jail.
ELLEN.
If the publishers of the "Atlantic" will permit me, I should like to
tell a little incident, growing out of the War, which came under my
notice in the summer of 1861. I can give it only as a fragment, for I
never heard the end of it, and that, to be candid, is my principal
reason for telling it at all,--in the hope, slight enough, it is true,
that some chance reader may be able to supply to me what is wanting. For
this reason I shall give the true names of persons and places, and the
dates also, as nearly as I can recollect them. It is only a simple story
of a private in the Twenty-Fourth Ohio Volunteer Militia, and his
sister, and may not touch others as it did me, for I can give but the
bald facts; but I, seeing the reality, can remember nothing in the war
which troubles me with such a sense of pain and simple pathos.
* * * * *
About thirty years ago, a family named Carrol, or Carryl, emigrated
from the North of Ireland, and settled in Coldwater, a little
fishing-village of Michigan.
They were sober and hard-working, but dull and ignorant, and in no way
different from others of their class, except in their unusual strong
affection for each other. Old Carrol, however, a rheumatic old man of
sixty, with this weak, jealous pride in his "b'ys," working late and
early to keep them clothed, to pay his wife's doctor's-bills, and trying
to lay up enough to buy the two girls a feather-bed and a clock when
they were married, stood in no need of whiskey or dances to keep him
alive; this and his wife's ill health separated them from the fighting,
rollicking Irish crew of the hamlet,--set them apart, so to speak, to
act upon each other. Carrol, with one of his sons, worked in a saw-mill,
and the other boys, as they grew old enough, easily found jobbing, being
known as honest, plodding fellows. The little drama of their lives bade
fair to be quiet, and the characters wrought out of it commonplace
enough, had not Death thrust his grim face into the scene.
The youngest child was a girl, Ellen, born long after the others, and,
like most children coming in the advanced age of their parents, was
peculiar: the family traits had worn themselves out, new elements came
in. The Irish neighbors, seeing how closely the girl was kept in-doors,
and the anxious guard held over her by her father and brothers, thought
her a "natural" or "innocent," whether she was or not. The Carrols kept
their own counsel, and warded off gossip as best they could. It was from
Ellen I heard how the change came among them first. "It was a fever,"
she said. "John took it, and little Phil, and then Jane. Jane was the
oldest of us; it was she as nursed mother and kept the house. She looked
as old as mother. Evenings she'd put on a white apron, and take me on
her knee and sing for us. But she took the fever, and they're all three
gone away"; which was always Ellen's phrase for death. She stopped
there, adding afterwards quietly, that it was about that time the
trouble in her head first came. Ellen took her sister's place in
"keeping the house"; she had enough mind to learn the daily routine of
cleaning and the little cooking. Her mother was a cripple for life,
confined to her bed most of the time: a credulous, nervous woman,--the
one idea in her narrow brain a passionate love for her husband and
children.
After the three who had "gone away" were buried in the little Catholic
graveyard by the creek, the others crept closer together. Joe, nearest
Ellen in age, was kept at home to help with the house-and yard-work,
and, partly from being a simple-minded fellow, and partly to humor
Ellen, fell into her girl's ways. "Joe and me," she said, "churned and
cooked together, and then he'd bring his tools into mother's room and
work. We liked that, he was so full of joking and whistling."
The old man was quieter after his children's death. One day the
machinery at the mill, being old and rotten, broke; the hands were at
work in it, underneath the beams which fell. An hour after, just as
Ellen and Joe had put the chairs about the supper-table, and sat waiting
for their father and Jim, the door was pushed open, and two heaps,
shapeless, and covered closely with a quilt, were brought in upon a
door. Whatever was the pain or loss of the widow or Joe, they had no
time to indulge it; Ellen needed all their care after that for a year or
two. She was "troubled," was all the satisfaction they gave to the
neighbors' curiosity, who never saw her in that time.
In the second autumn, however, she began to go about again through the
village; and Joe, after watching her anxiously for some time, found work
as a hand on a schooner running to Sandusky, Ohio. This was in the
autumn of 1860. Once in a while, during the winter, he came home to stay
over-night. "Often," Ellen said, "when Joe came, we hadn't seen anybody
cross the doorstep since he went out of it, mother and I lived alone so
much; but mother, in her worst days with pain, had a joking, laughing
way with her that kept it pleasant in-doors."
The Carrols were noted as being a scrupulously clean folk; so it is
probable that the little kitchen and bed-room were still the best idea
Joe had of the world,--knowing nothing beyond, indeed, but the schooner
and the deck of the wharf-boat in Sandusky. To understand what follows,
you must remember the utter ignorance dominant in such fishing-stations
as Coldwater. The poorer inhabitants, who stared at Ellen as she went
down to the beach for water, were Irish and Dutch emigrants, forwarded
there like cattle, who had settled down, sold their fish to the
trading-vessels, and never had looked outside of that to know they were
not naturalized. Ellen was little better; I do not suppose she ever had
read a newspaper in her life; yet, curiously enough, her language was
tolerably correct, her manner quiet and thorough-bred,--even the
inflections of her voice were low, and as composed as if she had learned
self-poise in the hurly-burly of society. That belonged to her
character, however, as much as to the solitude in which she had been
brought up.
The mother sank rapidly this winter; but the two children, accustomed to
her illness, were blind to the change.
When the States one by one seceded during that winter and spring, and
the country was rife with war and the terror of it, the Coldwater people
fished on dully as ever. Joe brought home stories of "fighting beyond
there," and of men he had met on the Sandusky wharf who had gone, and
then whittled and whistled as usual: the tale sounding to the two women
fearful and far-off, as if it had been in the Crimea. "Though I _had_
heard of the Virginians," said Ellen simply, when she told the story.
"There was Mr. Barker, a Methodist preacher, told us once of the
'man-hunters,' as he called them, and how they chained their slaves and
burned them alive, and hunted men with dogs. But I took him up wrong. I
thought they all were black." Ellen's idea of them was as vague as ours
is of the cannibals, and not very different, I suspect.
So far off did this country of the man-hunters seem, where "there was
fighting," that, when Joe wandered about uneasily in one of his weekly
visits, and told again and again, with furtive glances at his mother,
how half the deckhands on the schooner had gone into a regiment forming
in Sandusky, and how it was a good chance to see the world, Ellen sewed
quietly on, scarcely looking up. That Joe could have any interest in
this dim horror of a war never crossed her poor brain.
The next day after the schooner sailed her mother grew suddenly worse,
and began to sink, going faster every day for a week. It was the first
time Ellen had been left alone to face danger. "If Joe was here!" the
two poor creatures cried, through all their fright and pain. If Joe were
there, Ellen thought all would be well again. But Thursday, his usual
day for coming, passed without him. That night the mother died. Two
women of the village, hearing the story from the doctor, came to the
house in time to make the body ready for burial,--the "natural," as they
called Ellen, sitting quietly by the bed, her face hid, not answering
when they spoke.
There was a letter brought to her that night from Joe, a few lines only,
written to his mother, saying he had enlisted and would not come back to
say good-bye; he was going to do better for her and Ellen than he ever
had done before. "I do not remember about that time," Ellen said
afterward, when questioned. "My trouble came back when Joe left me." It
brought the wild, wandering look into her eyes, even to refer to it in
this way, I do not know if I spoke of the curious affection between this
brother and sister. Father and brothers and sister had watched and cared
for the girl, because of the great trouble which God had sent to her;
and now all the love and gratitude she had given to them all, when
living, was centred on this boy Joe. Joe absorbed all the world which
her weak mind knew,--just at the age, too, when women's hearts open and
are filling with thoughts of love and marriage. No matter how long Ellen
had lived, "my brother," as she gravely, respectfully called him, would
have been all, I think, she would ever have loved, and he would have
satisfied all her cravings.
Her mother was buried before she became conscious again; then her reason
came back to her; and when the woman who had stayed in the house
returned, after a few hours' gossiping, she found Ellen, her old quiet
self, going gently about the house, packing her clothes in a carpet-bag,
and putting with great care in a little hand-basket, such as ladies
carry knitting in, her Testament, their two or three silver spoons,
Joe's box of Sunday collars, and what little money was left.
"Where are you going?" asked the woman, in some trepidation.
"To Joe," Ellen said, quietly, unconscious that there was anything
unusual in the plan.
The woman speedily gathered a caucus of her cronies, with the doctor;
but to all queries or remonstrances she returned the same quiet, unmoved
answer. She was going to Joe. What else should she do? There were only
herself and her brother now: he would expect her. Who would cook for
Joe, or keep his clothes straight, if she did not go? "My plan was," she
said, gravely, long after, "that Joe would hire a little house for me
near where the regiment stayed. He could have lived with me, and gone
with them to fight when their turn came." Finally they allowed her her
own way, partly because they were puzzled to know what else to do with
her. Joe was in Sandusky with his regiment, the Twenty-Fourth Ohio, his
letter had stated.
"It rained hard," she said afterwards, "that night, when I left
Coldwater. Dr. S---- came down with me to the boat. He was very kind. We
had to wait on the shore a bit, and it rained and was so dark you could
only see the mud under foot and the great cold water beyond. When I
looked at the mud, and the rain dripping, dripping through it, I
couldn't but think of them as was lying under it up on the hill,--of
them up on the hill. And there was a black line, Sir, where the water
met the sky, and I thought I had to go beyond that,--I didn't know
where. But Joe was beyond there. I kept saying, 'Joe, Joe,' over to
myself, and 'Lord Jesus,'--thinking, if He stayed near me, I would not
be afraid. For the boat rocked when I came on board, and the water
underneath heaved up black. I never had been on the water before. But I
sat down on deck with my little basket in my hand. Dr. S---- came back
twice to speak to the Captain about me. He was very sorry for me; he
said, 'God bless you, Ellen,' before he went away up the plank. I
watched him as long as I could, but the night was dark and very wet.
Then the shore seemed to go back from us, and he went with it; and
Coldwater, and our old house, and them as were up on the hill went with
it, and we were alone on the water in the rain. But I said 'Joe,' over
and over to myself, trying to make believe he was near. I sat there
until late. The night was very dark, and I was wet; but the boat kept
heaving up and down, and there was a noise underneath like some great
beast trying to get out. I did not know what they had down there. But
the Captain came to me before morning. 'It's only the engine, Ellen,' he
said. 'Go below, poor child!' He was very kind; he was kind all the time
till we reached Sandusky. So were the boat-hands. There was no woman
aboard but me; the men swore and cursed as I never heard before, but
they always spoke respectful to me; they used to say, when they'd pass
near where I sat with my basket, 'Keep heart, Ellen, you'll find your
brother all right.' One of them said once, 'You needn't be feared:
you've got a Friend as'll take care of _you_.' I said, 'Yes: Him and
Joe.'"
It was noon of a clear day when the boat reached Sandusky City.
"I looked for Joe, quick, among the men that were on the wharf; but he
was not there." (I prefer to let Ellen tell her own story as far as
possible.) "I saw the Captain send a hand ashore, and when he came back,
ask him a question: then he came up to me: he looked anxious. 'Ellen,'
he says, 'don't be troubled, but Joe is not here. The regiment went on
to Columbus two days ago.' He said there'd be no trouble, that I could
follow him on the railroad."
The Captain kept her on board until evening, when the train for Columbus
started; then he went with her, secured her a seat, and arranged her
comfortably. He had daughters at home, he told Ellen, bidding her keep
quiet until she reached Columbus, then tell the name of her brother's
regiment, and she would be with him in twenty minutes. "I am sure," he
added, "Joe will get a furlough to attend to you."