pen outside her shed. I tore off the clothes she had touched, they
seemed so vile to me. I was so shamed that I held my hands to my throat
so that I could die, but she came and fastened them with a cord. She
kept me there all the evening, and the men looked over the pen and
laughed at 'Mother Murray's prisoner.' After awhile I did not heed them.
The moon came up, and I cried then thinking if mother or Joe could know
what had come to me. _Then I made up my mind what to do._ I prayed to
the Lord Jesus; but I thought, through all, what I would do. She brought
me some food, but I would not touch it, though I was sick with hunger.
When the drum had beat and the camp was all quiet, there was a sentry
came walking up and down before the pen. He had a kind, good face: he
whistled to keep himself awake. Afterwards he stopped it, and, leaning
over the log-fence, said, 'Forgive me. I didn't think of your being a
prisoner, or I would not have whistled.' It was so sudden, his kind way
of speaking, that I began to cry, sitting back in the corner. He bade me
never heed, for that I would be free in the morning. 'You're no spy,' he
said,--'only Captain Roberts heard Mother Murray's story, and put me
here till he could see for himself in the morning.' Then he asked me
questions, and somehow it did me good to tell all about Joe, and how I
had not found him. He stood there when I had done, thinking, and
whistling again, soft to himself. 'Just you wait, Ellen,' he says,--'I
know what you want.' And with that he takes out a little Testament, and,
sitting down, he reads to me. Then he asked me what verses I liked, and
talked of the chapters, till I began to forget all that had happened.
Then he put the book in his pocket, and talked of other things, and made
me laugh once or twice; and at last he took a card out of his pocket,
and thought for a good while. Then he wrote a name on it, Mrs. Jane
Burroughs, Xenia, Ohio, and gave it to me. 'That is my mother,' he said,
very gravely,--'as good a woman as God lets live. Do you go to her,
Ellen, when you're out of this den, and tell her I sent you, and, if I
should die in this bloody business, to remember I said to be good to
you.' Soon after that another man came and took his place, and I saw him
no more. He was very kind. But I knew what _I_ would do,"--with the same
dropping of the voice.
In the morning Ellen was released, and the soldiers forbidden to molest
her. She hurried along the road to Fairmont. There is a long bridge
there, spanning the Monongahela. "I saw it when I was in the cars, and
the sight of the water below it came back to me through all my trouble.
It was noon when I came to it again. I don't think I stopped at all, to
think about Joe, or to think good-bye to him. But," her eye wandering
vaguely, "I said good-bye to my little basket I had packed it at home
for my journey, you know. I thought Joe would laugh when he saw some
things I had there. But it was all over now. So I went down to the
water's edge, and set it down; and then I went up, and climbed up on the
parapet of the bridge, and then I heard a cry, and I was jerked down to
the ground. When I came to myself, I was in a bed. They had ice on my
head. They told me they had found my basket, and so knew my name. I laid
there for several days. It was soldiers that found me. They paid for me
at the tavern. But the regiment was going on. One day, when I was able
to sit up, two of them said to me, they would take me to see Joe. They
took me on the cars; all the way I had to lie down, with ice to my head.
We came a long way; every time we stopped, they said we were going to
Joe. I didn't know, my brain was like fire in my head."
Ellen was sent on by the officers of this regiment, and lodged by them
for safe-keeping in the jail at Wheeling. The long-suspended brain-fever
had set in. She was taken through the streets, her clothes ragged and
muddy, her head bare, followed by a curious crowd of idlers, with just
enough reason left to know what the house was in which they lodged her.
Cruel as they were in act, it proved a kindness to the girl. The jailer
and his family nursed her carefully, and gave her a large, airy room in
the old debtors' prison.
After she had been there three weeks, a person who had accidentally seen
Ellen that first day on the street went to the jail and asked to see
her. A whim, perhaps, the fruit of idleness or curiosity. But Ellen
thought otherwise. She was clothed and in her right mind now, and sat
inside of the iron door, looking with her large, grave, blue eyes
searchingly at her visitor. "God sent you," she said, quietly.
That night she told the jailer's wife that her new friend had promised
to come the next morning and take her out.
"She may disappoint you, Ellen."
"No. I know God meant her to come, and I shall see my brother again."
She was strangely cheerful; it seemed as if, in that long torpor, some
vision of the future had in truth been given to her.
"I shall see Joe," she would repeat steadily, a great glow on her face,
"I know."
She carried her little basket, going to her friend's house. It was here
I saw Ellen. She was not pretty,--with an awkward, ungainly build, and
homely face; but there hung about her a great innocence and purity; and
she had a certain trustful manner that went home to the roughest and
gained their best feeling from them. Her voice, I remember, was low and
remarkably sweet. It was curious to see how all, from the servants in
the house to _blase_ young men of society, were touched by some potent
charm, and tried in simple, natural ways to aid her. I used to think
Ellen was sent into the world to show how near one of the very least of
these, His brethren, came to Him. She grew restless,--her disease
working with her. "She must go on to Columbus,--to the gate-keeper and
his wife. She would live with them as their child."
Meanwhile every effort had been made to communicate with her brother, or
to gain a furlough for him. But all failed; the regiment was in the
wilds of the Virginia border in active service. No message could reach
him. There was no system then in the army.
What could be done for Ellen's comfort in the future her friends did
anxiously, and then sent her on to Columbus. She remained with the old
people but a week, however. "She was very happy with us," the
gate-keeper's wife said. Governor Dennison promised to procure Joe a
furlough, and, if possible, a dismissal, as soon as the regiment could
be reached by letter. In the mean while she busied herself in making a
dress and little useful things for housekeeping, to please her brother
when he should come; used to talk all day of her plans,--how they would
live near us in some quiet little house. Her trouble seemed all
forgotten.
But one day she went out and saw the camp. The sight of the armed men
and the uniforms seemed to bring back all she had suffered in Virginia.
She was uneasy and silent that night,--said once or twice that she must
go on, go on,--got her basket and packed it again. The next morning she
went across the field without it, as if to take a walk. When an hour
passed we searched for her, and found she had gone into town and taken
passage on the Western Railroad.
My story ends here. We never could trace her, though no effort was left
untried. I confess that this is one, though almost hopeless. Yet I
thought that some chance reader might be able to finish the story for
me.
Whether Joe fell in his country's service or yet lives in some "little
house" for Ellen, or whether she has found a longer, surer rest, in a
house made ready for her long ago by other hands than his, I may never
know; but I am sure, that, living or dead, He who is loving and over all
has the poor "natural" in His tenderest keeping, and that some day she
will go home to Him and to Joe.
WINTER-LIFE IN ST. PETERSBURG.
As September drew to an end, with only here and there a suggestion of
autumn in chrome-colored leaves on the ends of birch-branches, we were
told that any day might suddenly bring forth winter. I remember, that,
five years before, in precisely the same season, I had travelled from
Upsala to Stockholm in a violent snow-storm, and therefore accepted the
announcement as a part of the regular programme of the year. But the
days came and went; fashionable equipages forsook their summer ground of
the Islands, and crowded the Nevskoi Prospekt; the nights were cold and
raw; the sun's lessening declination was visible from day to day, and
still Winter delayed to make his appearance.
The Island drive was our favorite resort of an afternoon; and we
continued to haunt it long after every summer guest had disappeared, and
when the _datchas_ and palaces showed plank and matting in place of
balcony and window. In the very heart of St. Petersburg the one full
stream of the Nevada splits into three main arms, which afterwards
subdivide, each seeking the Gulf of Finland at its own swift, wild will.
The nearest of these islands, Vassili Ostrow, is a part of the solid
city: on Kammenoi and Aptekarskoi you reach the commencement of gardens
and groves; and beyond these the rapid waters mirror only palace, park,
and summer theatre. The widening streams continually disclose the
horizon-line of the Gulf; and at the farthest point of the drive, where
the road turns sharply back again from the freedom of the shore into
mixed woods of birch and pine, the shipping at Cronstadt--and sometimes
the phantoms of fortresses--detach themselves from the watery haze, and
the hill of Pargola, in Finland, rises to break the dreary level of the
Ingrian marshes.
During the sunny evenings and the never-ending twilights of mid-summer,
all St. Petersburg pours itself upon these islands. A league-long wall
of dust rises from the carriages and droschkies in the main highway; and
the branching Neva-arms are crowded with skiffs and diminutive steamers
bound for pleasure-gardens where gypsies sing and Tyrolese _yodel_ and
jugglers toss their knives and balls, and private rooms may be had for
gambling and other cryptic diversions. Although with shortened days and
cool evenings the tide suddenly took a reflux and the Nevskoi became a
suggestion of Broadway, (which, of all individual streets, it most
nearly resembles,) we found an indescribable charm in the solitude of
the fading groves and the waves whose lamenting murmur foretold their
speedy imprisonment. We had the whole superb drive to ourselves. It is
true that Ivan, upon the box, lifted his brows in amazement, and sighed
that his jaunty cap of green velvet should be wasted upon the desert
air, whenever I said, "_Na Ostrowa_," but he was too genuine a Russian
to utter a word of remonstrance.
Thus, day by day, unfashionable, but highly satisfied, we repeated the
lonely drive, until the last day came, as it always will. I don't think
I shall ever forget it. It was the first day of November. For a
fortnight the temperature had been a little below the freezing-point,
and the leaves of the alder-thickets, frozen suddenly and preserved as
in a great out-door refrigerator, maintained their green. A pale-blue
mist rose from the Gulf and hung over the islands, the low sun showing
an orange disk, which touched the shores with the loveliest color, but
gave no warmth to the windless air. The parks and gardens were wholly
deserted, and came and went, on either side, phantom-like in their soft,
gray, faded tints. Under every bridge flashed and foamed the clear
beryl-green waters. And nobody in St. Petersburg, except ourselves, saw
this last and sunniest flicker of the dying season!
The very next day was cold and dark, and so the weather remained, with
brief interruptions, for months. On the evening of the 6th, as we drove
over the Nikolai Bridge to dine with a friend on Vassili Ostrow, we
noticed fragments of ice floating down the Neva. Looking up the stream,
we were struck by the fact that the remaining bridges had been detached
from the St. Petersburg side, floated over, and anchored along the
opposite shore. This seemed a needless precaution, for the pieces of
drift-ice were hardly large enough to have crushed a skiff. How
surprised were we, then, on returning home, four hours later, to find
the noble river gone, not a green wave to be seen, and, as far as the
eye could reach, a solid floor of ice, over which people were already
crossing to and fro!
Winter, having thus suddenly taken possession of the world, lost no time
in setting up the signs of his rule. The leaves, whether green or brown,
disappeared at one swoop; snow-gusts obscured the little remaining
sunshine; the inhabitants came forth in furs and bulky wrappings;
oysters and French pears became unreasonably dear; and sledges of frozen
fish and game crowded down from the northern forests. In a few days the
physiognomy of the capital was completely changed. All its life and stir
withdrew from the extremities and gathered into a few central
thoroughfares, as if huddling together for mutual warmth and
encouragement in the cold air and under the gloomy sky.
For darkness, rather than cold, is the characteristic of the St.
Petersburg winter. The temperature, which at Montreal or St. Paul would
not be thought remarkably low, seems to be more severely felt here,
owing to the absence of pure daylight. Although both Lake Ladoga and the
Gulf of Finland are frozen, the air always retains a damp, raw,
penetrating quality, and the snow is more frequently sticky and clammy
than dry and crystalline. Few, indeed, are the days which are not
cheerless and depressing. In December, when the sky is overcast for
weeks together, the sun, rising after nine o'clock, and sliding along
just above the horizon, enables you to dispense with lamplight somewhere
between ten and eleven; but by two in the afternoon you must call for
lights again. Even when a clear day comes, the yellow, level sunshine is
a combination of sunrise and sunset, and neither tempers the air nor
mitigates the general expression of gloom, almost of despair, upon the
face of Nature.
The preparations for the season, of course, have been made long before.
In most houses the double windows are allowed to remain through the
summer, but they must be carefully examined, the layer of cotton between
them, at the bottom, replenished, a small vessel of salt added to absorb
the moisture and prevent it from freezing on the panes, and strips of
paper pasted over every possible crack. The outer doors are covered with
wadded leather, overlapping the frames on all sides. The habitations
being thus almost hermetically sealed, they are easily warmed by the
huge porcelain stoves, which retain warmth so tenaciously that one fire
per day is sufficient for the most sensitive constitutions. In my own
room, I found that one armful of birch-wood reduced to coal, every
alternate morning, created a steady temperature of 64 deg. Although the
rooms are always spacious, and arranged in suites of from three to a
dozen, according to the extent and splendor of the residence, the
atmosphere soon becomes close and characterized by an unpleasant odor,
suggesting its diminished vitality; for which reason pastilles are
burned, or _eau de Cologne_ reduced to vapor in a heated censer,
whenever visits are anticipated. It was a question with me, whether or
not the advantage of a thoroughly equable temperature was
counterbalanced by the lack of circulation. The physical depression we
all felt seemed to result chiefly from the absence of daylight.
One winter picture remains clearly outlined upon my memory. In the
beginning of December we happened once to drive across the Admiralty
Square in the early evening twilight,--three o'clock in the afternoon.
The temperature was about 10 deg. below zero, the sky a low roof of moveless
clouds, which seemed to be frozen in their places. The pillars of St.
Isaac's Cathedral--splendid monoliths of granite, sixty feet high--had
precipitated the moisture of the air, and stood, silvered with rime from
base to capital. The Column of Alexander, the bronze statue of Peter,
with his horse poised in air on the edge of the rock, and the trees on
the long esplanade in front of the Admiralty, were all similarly coated,
every twig rising as rigid as iron in the dark air. Only the huge golden
hemisphere of the Cathedral dome, and the tall, pointed golden spire of
the Admiralty, rose above the gloom, and half shone with a muffled,
sullen glare. A few people, swaddled from head to foot, passed rapidly
to and fro, or a droschky, drawn by a frosted horse, sped away to the
entrance of the Nevskoi Prospekt. Even these appeared rather like wintry
phantoms than creatures filled with warm blood and breathing the breath
of life. The vast spaces of the capital, the magnitude of its principal
edifices, and the display of gold and colors strengthened the general
aspect of unreality, by introducing so many inharmonious elements into
the picture. A bleak moor, with the light of a single cottage-window
shining across it, would have been less cold, dead, and desolate.
The temperature, I may here mention, was never very severe. There were
three days when the mercury fluctuated between 15 deg. and 20 deg. below
zero, five days when it reached 10 deg. below, and perhaps twenty when it
fell to zero, or a degree or two on either side. The mean of the five
winter months was certainly not lower than +12 deg. Quite as much rain
fell as snow. After two or three days of sharp cold, there was almost
invariably a day of rain or fog, and for many weeks walking was so
difficult that we were obliged to give up all out-door exercise except
skating or sliding. The streets were either coated with glassy ice or they
were a foot deep in slush. There was more and better sleighing in the
vicinity of Boston last winter than in St. Petersburg during the winter of
1862-3. In our trips to the Observatory of Pulkova, twelve miles
distant, we were frequently obliged to leave the highway and put our
sled-runners upon the frosted grass of the meadows. The rapid and
continual changes of temperature were more trying than any amount of
steady cold. _Grippe_ became prevalent, and therefore fashionable, and
all the endemic diseases of St. Petersburg showed themselves in force.
The city, it is well known, is built upon piles, and most of the
inhabitants suffer from them. Children look pale and wilted, in the
absence of the sun, and special care must be taken of those under five
years of age. Some little relatives of mine, living in the country, had
their daily tumble in the snow, and thus kept ruddy; but in the city
this is not possible, and we had many anxious days before the long
darkness was over.
As soon as snow had fallen and freezing weather set in, the rough,
broken ice of the Neva was flooded in various places for skating-ponds,
and the work of erecting ice-hills commenced. There were speedily a
number of the latter in full play, in the various suburbs,--a space of
level ground, at least a furlong in length, being necessary. They are
supported by subscription, and I had paid ten rubles for permission to
use a very fine one on the farther island, when an obliging card of
admission came for the gardens of the Taurida Palace, where the younger
members of the Imperial family skate and slide. My initiation, however,
took place at the first-named locality, whither we were conducted by an
old American resident of St. Petersburg.
The construction of these ice-hills is very simple. They are rude towers
of timber, twenty to thirty feet in height, the summit of which is
reached by a staircase at the back, while in front descends a steep
concave of planking upon which water is poured until it is covered with
a six-inch coating of solid ice. Raised planks at the side keep the sled
in its place until it reaches the foot, where it enters upon an icy
plain two to four hundred yards in length, (in proportion to the height
of the hill,) at the extremity of which rises a similar hill, facing
towards the first, but a little on one side, so that the sleds from the
opposite ends may pass without collision.
The first experience of this diversion is fearful to a person of
delicate nerves. The pitch of the descent is so sheer, the height so
great, (apparently,) the motion of the sled so swift, and its course so
easily changed,--even the lifting of a hand is sufficient,--that the
novice is almost sure to make immediate shipwreck. The sleds are small
and low, with smooth iron runners, and a plush cushion, upon which the
navigator sits bolt upright with his legs close together, projecting
over the front. The runners must be exactly parallel to the lines of the
course at starting, and the least tendency to sway to either side must
be instantly corrected by the slightest motion of the hand.
I engaged one of the _mujiks_ in attendance to pilot me on my first
voyage. The man having taken his position well forward on the little
sled, I knelt upon the rear end, where there was barely space enough for
my knees, placed my hands upon his shoulders, and awaited the result. He
shoved the sled with his hands, very gently and carefully, to the brink
of the icy steep: then there was a moment's adjustment: then a poise:
then--sinking of the heart, cessation of breath, giddy roaring and
whistling of the air, and I found myself scudding along the level with
the speed of an express train. I never happened to fall out of a
fourth-story window, but I immediately understood the sensations of the
unfortunate persons who do. It was so frightful that I shuddered when we
reached the end of the course and the man coolly began ascending the
steps of the opposite hill, with the sled under his arm. But my
companions were waiting to see me return, so I mounted after him, knelt
again, and held my breath. This time, knowing what was coming, I caught
a glimpse of our descent, and found that only the first plunge from the
brink was threatening. The lower part of the curve, which is nearly a
parabolic line, is more gradual, and the seeming headlong fall does not
last more than the tenth part of a second. The sensation, nevertheless,
is very powerful, having all the attraction, without the reality, of
danger.
The ice-hills in the Taurida Gardens were not so high, and the descent
was less abrupt: the course was the smooth floor of an intervening lake,
which was kept clear for skating. Here I borrowed a sled, and was so
elated at performing the feat successfully, on the first attempt, that I
offered my services as charioteer to a lady rash enough to accept them.
The increased weight gave so much additional impetus to the sled, and
thus rendered its guidance a more delicate matter. Finding that it began
to turn even before reaching the bottom, I put down my hand suddenly
upon the ice. The effect was like an explosion; we struck the edge of a
snow-bank, and were thrown entirely over it and deeply buried in the
opposite side. The attendants picked us up without relaxing a muscle of
their grave, respectful faces, and quietly swept the ice for another
trial. But after that I preferred descending alone.
Good skaters will go up and down these ice-hills on their skates. The
feat has a hazardous look, but I have seen it performed by boys of
twelve. The young Grand-Dukes who visited the Gardens generally
contented themselves with skating around the lake at not too violent a
speed. Some ladies of the court circle also timidly ventured to try the
amusement, but its introduction was too recent for them to show much
proficiency. On the Neva, in fact, the English were the best skaters.
During the winter, one of them crossed the Gulf to Cronstadt, a distance
of twenty-two miles, in about two hours.
Before Christmas, the Lapps came down from the North with their
reindeer, and pitched their tents on the river, in front of the Winter
Palace. Instead of the canoe-shaped _pulk_, drawn by a single deer, they
hitched four abreast to an ordinary sled, and took half a dozen
passengers at a time, on a course of a mile, for a small fee. I tried it
once, for a child's sake, but found that the romance of reindeer travel
was lost without the pulk. The Russian sleighs are very similar to our
own for driving about the city: in very cold weather, or for trips into
the country, the _kibitka_, a heavy closed carriage on runners, is used.
To my eye, the most dashing team in the world is the _troika_, or
three-span, the thill-horse being trained to trot rapidly, while the
other two, very lightly and loosely harnessed, canter on either side of
him. From the ends of the thills springs a wooden arch, called the
_duga_, rising eighteen inches above the horse's shoulder, and usually
emblazoned with gilding and brilliant colors. There was one magnificent
troika on the Nevskoi Prospekt, the horses of which were full-blooded,
jet-black matches, and their harness formed of overlapping silver
scales. The Russians being the best coachmen in the world, these teams
dash past each other at furious speed, often escaping collision by the
breadth of a hair, but never coming in violent contact.