"The party, Sir, that was to be copped. I've got a blank warrant

here, all right, and a pair of bracelets, in case of trouble."

"What fool's errand is this, old man?" asked the Doctor, sternly.

"What! you don't know about it? Lord! p'raps it's a sell, after all,"

said he, quite chopfallen. "But I've got my pay, anyhow, and there's

no mistake in a V on the Princeton Bank. And here's the papers," said

he, handing a note to the Doctor. "If that's slum, I'm done, that's

all."

The Doctor glanced at the scrap of paper, then handed it to me,

asking, "Is that his handwriting?"

It was a note, requiring Mr. Hullfish. to privately arrest a person

guilty of a capital offence, until now concealed. If he was not

brought to Hullfish's house between nine and ten that night, then

Hullfish was to proceed to No.--North College, where he would be

certain to find the party. The arrest must be made quietly. The

handwriting was undoubtedly Clarian's, and I told Thorne as much.

"You see, gentlemen," said Hullfish, "I wouldn't 'a' taken no notice

of it, ef it hadn't been for the money; but, thinks I, them students

a'n't in the habit of sech costly jokes, and maybe there'll be some

pinching to do, after all. So you mean to say it's a gam, do you,

Doctor? May I be so bold as to inquire what yonder chap's holding on

to 'tother about?"

"'Tother' is dangerously ill,--has a fit, Hullfish. He is the author

of that note,--very probably was out of his mind when he wrote it."

"So? Pity! Very sick? Mayn't I see him?"

But, as he stepped forward, Thorne stood in the way and effectually

intercepted his view. The constable smiled cunningly, as he drew

back, and said,--

"You're sure 'ta'n't nothing else, then? Nobody's been getting rapped

on the' head? Didn't see no blood, though,--that's true. Well, I

don't like to be sold, that's a fact,--but there's no help for it.

Here's the young man's change, Doctor,--warrant sixty-six, my fees

one dollar."

Thorne carelessly asked if there had been any rows lately,--if he had

heard of any one being hurt,--if they had been quiet recently along

the canal; and being assured that there had been no disturbance of

moment,--"only a little brush between Arch and Long Tobe, down to

Gibe's,"--he handed the money back to Hullfish.

"Keep that yourself,--it is yours by rights. And, look you, mum's the

word in this case, for two reasons: there's danger that the poor

little fellow there is going to croak before long, and you'd be sorry

to think you'd given trouble to a dead man; and what's more, if the

boys get hold of this, there'll be no end of their chaffing. There's

not a few of them would like to cook your goose for you,--I needn't

tell you why; so, if you don't want them to get the flashest kind of

a pull over you, why, you'll take my advice and keep dark."

"Nothing like slang, Ned, with the police or the prigging gentry. It

gives them a wonderful respect for your opinion," said the Doctor,

when Hullfish was gone. But his serious, almost stern look returned

immediately, as he continued,--"Now to solve this mystery, and find

out what this wretched boy has been doing. Come, you and Mac, help me

to understand him."

When we had told the Doctor all we knew of the lad, he pondered long

over our recital.

"One thing is certain," said he: "the boy is innocent in intention,

whatever he has done, and we must stand by him,--you two

particularly; for you are to blame, if he has got himself into any

predicament."

"The boy has done nothing wrong, Thorne," said Mac, sturdily; "he may

have been trapped, or got himself involved somehow, but he never

could have committed any crime capable of superinducing such an

attack as this."

The Doctor shook his head.

"You may be right, my friend,--and I hope you are, for the child's

sake, for it will certainly kill him, if he has. But I never trust an

intense imagination when morbidly excited, and I have read of some

strange freaks done by persons under the influence of that infernal

_hashish_. However, trust me, I shall find out what is the matter

before long, and bring the boy round nicely. He is improving fast

now, and all we have to do is to avert another attack."

Thank Heaven, in a day or two Clarian was pronounced to be out of

danger, and promising rapid recovery. We had removed him to our

rooms, as soon as the violence of the convulsion left him, in order

to spare him the associations connected with his own abode. Still,

the lad continued very weak, and Thorne said he had never seen so

slight an attack followed by such extreme prostration. Then it did my

heart good to see how my chum transformed himself into the tenderest,

the most efficient of nurses. He laid aside entirely his brusque

manner, talked in the softest tones, stole noiselessly about our

rooms, and showed all the tender solicitude, all the quiet

"handiness" of a gentle woman. I could see that Clarian loved to have

him at his bedside, and to feel his caressing hand.

"You see, Ned," Mac would say, in a deprecatory tone that amused me

vastly, "I really pity the poor little devil, and can't help doing

all in my power for him. He's such a soft little ass,--confound

Thorne! he makes me mad with his cursed suspicions!--and then the boy

is out of place here in this rough-and-tumble tiltyard. Reminds me of

a delicate wineglass crowded in among a ruck of ale flagons and

battered quart-cups."

But, though we rejoiced to see that Clarian's health promised to be

better than it had been for months, we did not fail to notice with

regret and apprehension, that, as he grew physically better and

mentally clearer, a darkening cloud settled over his whole being,

until he seemed on the point of drowning in the depths of an

irremediable dejection and despair. Besides this, he was ever on the

point of telling us something, which he yet failed of courage to put

into words; and Thorne, noticing this, when, one day, we were all

seated round the bed, while the lad fixed his shaded, large, mournful

eyes upon us with a painfully imploring look, said suddenly, his

fingers upon Clarian's pulse,--

"You have something to say to us,--a confession to make, Clarian."

The boy flushed and shuddered, but did not falter, as he replied,

"Yes."

"You must withhold it until you are well again. I know what it is."

Clarian quickly withdrew his hand from the Doctor's grasp.

"You know it, and yet here, touching me? Impossible! entirely

impossible!"

"Oh, as to that," said Thorne, with a cool shrug of the shoulders,

"you must remember that _our_ relations are simply those of physician

and patient. Other things have nought to do with it. And, as your

physician, I require you to withhold the matter until you are well

enough to face the world."

"No,--I must reap where I have sown. I have no right to impose upon

my friends any longer."

"Bad news travel fast enough, Clarian, and there is no wisdom in

losing a friend so long as you can retain him."

"I do not see the force of your reasoning, Dr. Thorne. I have enough

to answer for, without the additional contumely of being called an

impostor."

"For your mother's sake, Clarian, I command you to wait. Spare _her_

what pain you can, at least."

"My mother! Oh, my God, do not name her! do not name her!"

And he burst into the only tears I ever saw him shed, hiding his face

in the bed-clothes, and sobbing piteously.

"What does this mean?" said Mac, as soon as we were where Clarian

could not hear us. "What have you found out?"

"Positively nothing more than you know already," answered Thorne.

"Nothing?" echoed Mac, very indignantly; "you speak very confidently

for one having such poor grounds."

"My dear Mac," said Thorne, kindly, "do you think I am not as much

concerned about Clarian as you are? Positively, I would give half I

own to arrive at a satisfactory solution of this mystery. But what

can we do? The boy believes himself a great criminal. Do you not see

at once, that, if we permit him to confess his crime, he will insist

upon taking himself out of our keeping,--commit suicide, get himself

sent to the madhouse, or anyhow lose our care and our soothing

influence? We cannot relieve him until we restore his strength and

composure. All we can do now is to watch him, soothe him, and by all

means stave off this confession until he is stronger. It would kill

him to face a charge now. I am inquiring quietly, and, if anything

serious has happened, shall be sure to find out his connection with

it."

Though we rebelled against the Doctor's conclusions, we could not but

see the prudence of the course he advised, and so we sat down to

watch our poor little friend, gnawed with bitter anxiety, and feeling

a sad consciousness that the disease itself under which he suffered

was beyond our skilfullest surgery, and one that inevitably

threatened the saddest consequences. A man has grand powers of

recovery, so long as his _spirit_ is free; but let him once be

persuaded that his soul is chained down forever in adamantine

fetters, and, though, like Prometheus, he may endure with silence,

patience, even divinely, he is nevertheless utterly incapable of any

positive effort towards recuperation. His faith becomes, by a subtile

law of our being, his fact; the mountain is gifted with actual

motion, and rewards the temerity of his zeal by falling upon him and

crushing him forever. Such a person moves on, perchance, like a deep,

noble river, in calm and silence, but still moves on, inevitably

destined to lose himself in the common ocean. And this was the

promise of Clarian's case. Whatever was his hidden woe, however

trivial its rational results, or baseless its causes, it had beyond

remedy seized upon his soul, and we knew, that, unless it could be

done away with at the source, the end was certain: first the fury,

then the apathy of madness. He was no longer tortured with a visible

haunting presence, such as had borne him down on that fatal night,

but we saw plainly that he had taken the spectre into his own breast,

and nursed it, as a bosom serpent, upon his rapidly exhausting

energies.

Happily for us,--ere Clarian was quite beyond recovery, while Mac

still tore his hair in rage at his own impotence, while the Doctor

still pursued his researches with the sedateness of a philosopher,

and I was using what power I had to alleviate my little friend's

misery,--that subtile and mysterious agency, which, in our blindness

and need, we term Chance, interposed its offices, rolled away the

cloud from the mystery, and, like a good angel, rescued Clarian, even

as he was tottering upon the very brink of the dismal precipice to

whose borders he had innocently strayed.

I shall never forget that pleasant June day. It was the first time

that Clarian had been out since his illness; and I was his single

companion, as he strayed slowly along through the college grounds,

leaning tremulously upon my arm, dragging his feet languidly over the

pebbled walks, and drinking in the warm, fresh, quivering air with a

manner that, although apathetic, still spoke of some power of

enjoyment. It was during the hour for the forenoon recitation, and

the elm-shaded campus was entirely free of students. As Clarian

walked along, his eyes bent down, I heard him murmuring that

delicious verse of George Herbert's,--

"Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky!

The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,

For thou must die!"

"'For thou must die,'--so sad! And yet the thought itself of death is

not that which saddens us so, do you think, Ned?" he went on, I

hearing his words without heeding them,--for I was looking just then

towards the outer gate next the President's house, through which I

saw Dr. Thorne coming rapidly, accompanied by a stout, middle-aged

man, having the dress and appearance of a well-to-do farmer,--"Not

the thought, simply, 'Thou must die,'" repeated Clarian, in his

plaintive murmur, "but the feeling that all this decay and death is

of ourselves, and could be averted by ourselves, had we only

self-control, could we only keep ourselves pure, and so be ever near God

and _of_ Him. _There's_ cause for a deeper melancholy, poignanter

tears than ever Jacques shed."

Dr. Thorne and his companion were now quite near, coming towards us

on the same path, when I saw the stranger slap his thigh

energetically and catch Thorne by the arm, while he exclaimed in

tones of boisterous surprise,--

"Why, there's the very little chap, as I'm alive!"

I had half a glimpse of the Doctor's seizing his companion and

clapping one hand over his mouth, as if to prevent him from saying

more,--but it was too late. At the sound of the man's voice I felt

Clarian bound electrically. He looked up,--over his face began to

come again that terrible anguish of the night of the picture, but the

muscles seemed too weak to bring it all back,--he grew limp against

me,--his arms hung inert at his side,--a word that sounded like

"Spare me!" gurgled in his throat,--a feeble shudder shook him, and,

ere I could interpose my arm, he sank in a heap at my feet, white,

and cold, and lifeless. Before I had raised him, Thorne and the man

sprang to my aid, and the latter, bending over with eager haste, took

the thin white hands in his own, half caressing them, half fearing to

grasp them, speaking to him the while in tones of frightened

entreaty, that, on any other occasion, would have been ludicrous

enough.

"Come, now, my little man," said he,--"come, don't be afeard, _don't_

be afeard of me! Dan Buckhurst won't harm ye, not for the world, poor

child! Come, stand up! 'Twas all a joke. Come, come!--My God! Doctor,

he a'n't dead, is he?" cried he to Thorne, in horror.

"If he is, you have killed him, you damned old fool, you!" responded

Thorne, impetuously, thrusting the man aside with an angry gesture,

and bending down to examine the lad's inert form. "Thank God, Ned,"

said he at last, "it is only a swoon this time, and we'll soon have

him all right. We must get him to bed, though. Here, Buckhurst, you

are the strongest; stop whimpering there, you old jackanapes, and

bring him along."

Buckhurst quickly obeyed, lifting Clarian up in his arms as gently

and tenderly as if he had been an infant, and following Thorne, who

led the way to our rooms. There the lad was placed upon the bed with

which he had become only too familiar, and the Doctor, by means of

his restoratives, soon had the satisfaction of recalling breath and

motion. As soon as the boy's sighs gave evidence of returning

vitality, Thorne thrust us all from the room, including Mac, who had

now come in from class, saying to Buckhurst,--

"Now, Sir, tell them all about it,--and wait here; I shall want you

presently." With which words he closed the door upon us, and returned

to his patient.

Mr. Buckhurst refused the chair tendered him by Mac, and paced up and

down the room in a state of immense perturbation.

"Well, I never!" said he, "well, I never! It taken me all aback,

Sir," added he, turning to me. "Did you ever see anything like it?

Why, he's jest like a gal! Dang it, Sir! my Molly a'n't half as

nervous as he is. I hope he'll get well,--I raelly do, now. I

wouldn't hev had it happen for I dunno what, now, indeed!" And he

resumed his walk, repeating to himself, "Well, I never! Who'd 'a'

judged 'twas a child like that?"

"May I beg to know what you refer to, Mr. Buckhurst?" asked Mac, with

considerable impatience in his tones.

"Eh,--what? He's mighty delicate, a'n't he?" said the man, with his

thumb indicating the next room.

"Very delicate indeed, Sir,--perhaps you can explain the cause of his

present attack," said I, angrily; for I had begun to think, from

Buckhurst's manner, that he had been guilty of some practical joke

upon Clarian. I saw the fire of a similar suspicion blazing in Mac's

eyes; and I fear, had our conclusions been verified, the worthy Mr.

Buckhurst would have fared very badly at our hands, spite the laws of

hospitality.

"What! did he never tell you? Of course not, though, being sick ever

sence, and thinking me dead, too. Well, I'll tell you: but mind, you

mustn't banter the child about it, for he can't stand it,--though

it's only a joke. Might have been serious, to be sure, but, as things

turns out, a pretty good joke, to my notion,--though I'm rael sorry

_he's_ been so bad about it."

Mac rose, removed his coat, and marched deliberately up to our guest.

"See here, Sir," said he in his deepest bass voice, which his dark

frown made still more ominous, "do you mean us to infer that you have

been making that child Clarian the victim of any of your infernal

_jokes_, as you style them?"

Buckhurst stared a moment, and then, seeming to comprehend the drift

of Mac's words, burst into a hearty laugh.

"No, Sir!" he shouted, "the shoe's on the other foot, thank the Lord!

The boy himself played the joke, or trick, whatever it was. Dr.

Thorne tells me he was kind of crazy, from drinking laudanum, or some

sech pisonous matter. Howsever that was, I'm sure he didn't do it in

airnest,--thought so from the very first,--and now I've had a good

look at his face, I'd swear to it"

"What did he do?" asked Mac, hurriedly.

Buckhurst laughed in that hearty way of his. Said he,--

"I'll wager you a stack of hay agin them books yander you couldn't

guess in a week now. What d'ye think it was? Ho! ho! Why, why, the

little rascal shoved me into the canawl!"

"Shoved you into the canal!" echoed I, while Mac, looking first at

him, then at me, finally burst into a peal of laughter, shouting the

while,--

"Bravo! There's your 'experience' philosophy, Ned Blount! Catch me

teaching milksops again! Go on, Buckhurst, tell us all about it."

"Yes," said Mr. Buckhurst, apparently quite pleased to see that we

laughed with him. "It don't look like it was in the nature of things,

somehow, does it? Fact, though, he did indeed. Shoved me right in, so

quick I didn't know what the Devil was the matter, until I soused

kersplash! and see him taking out over the drawbridge like mad."

"When was that, Mr. Buckhurst?"

"Jest inside of a month ago, Sir, one night."

"_Sapperment_, Ned! that was the time of the 'herb Pantagruelion'!--

Well, what were you doing on the canal at that hour?" asked Mac,

slyly.

"No, you needn't, now,--I see you wink at him,--honor bright. I'd

been up to town, to take a mess o' clams at Giberson's, with maybe a

sprinklin' of his apple-jack,--nothing else,--and I was on my way

home,--to Skillman's tavern at the _dépôt_, you know,--and I'd jest

stopped a piece, and was a-standing there, looking at the moon in the

water, when he tipped me over. I tell you, I was mad when I crawled

out wet as a rat; and if I'd ketched him then, you may depend upon

it, I'd 'a' given his jacket a precious warming. As I said, he run

off, but jest as I turned towards the tavern, I see him a-coming

back, kinder wild-like; so I slipped behind a lumber-pile, hoping he

might come over the bridge, so I could lay my fingers on him. The

moon was about its highest, so I could see his face, plain as day,--

white,--skim-milk warn't a circumstance to it,--and his eyes wide

open as they could stretch. I tell you, he was wild! He looked up and

down a bit, mumbled somethin' I couldn't make out, and then what do

you think that boy did? Why, he jumped in, clothes and all, bold as a

lion,--plainly to save me from drowning, and me all the time a-spyin'

at him from behind a lumber-pile! He was sarching for me, I knowed,

for he swum up and down jest about there for the space maybe of a

quarter of an hour. And when he give it up at last, and come out, he

kinder sunk down on the tow-path, and I heard him say plain enough,

though he only whispered it,--jest like a woman actor I see down to

York oncet, playin' in Guy something or other,--she was a sort of an

old gypsy devil,--says he, 'I am a murderer, then!' Thinks I, 'Sonny,

all but the murderer!' And as he stood up again, he 'peared to suffer

so, his face was so white, and his knees so shaky, that I says to

myself, 'Dan, you've carried the joke far enough.' So I sings out to

him, and comes out from behind the lumber-stack, but, Lord bless ye!

he jest peeped round over his shoulder oncet, gave a kind of chokin'

scream like, and put out up the road as if the Devil was after him. I

knowed it warn't no use to follow him, so I got on a dry shirt and

went to bed. The next day I went home, and I'd mighty near forgot all

about it, only today I came to see Dr. Thorne for somethin' to do my

cold good, and he wantin' to know how I ketched it brought the whole

matter back again."

"You're an old brick, Buckhurst!" cried Mac, giving the jovial farmer

a thundering slap on the back, and a hearty grasp of his hand; "and

you shall drink the boy's health with Ned and me this day, or I'll

know the reason why. Ned Blount, a'n't it glorious? Said I not, you

ill-omened bird, said I not, _'Il y a toujours un Dieu pour les

enfans et pour les ivrognes'_?--So you came down with Thorne to ease

the poor little fellow's mind, did you, Buckhurst? That's right, and

you shall see the picture, by Jove! And you'll say, when you see it,

that such a picture were cheap at the cost of duckings for a dozen

Buckhursts. Now tell me truly, what do you think made him push you

in?

"Of course, it was the pison, Sir,--a baby like that wouldn't harm a

flea. I thought maybe, until I see Dr. Thorne, that he done it out of

mischieviousness, as boys will do, you know,--jest as they steal a

feller's apples, and knock his turkeys of'n the roost,--but yander's

not one of them kind; so he must 'a' been crazy, and I'm rael sorry

he's been so bad put to about it,--I am, indeed."

Here the inner door was opened, and Thorne joined us, with a moisture

about his eyes that he used afterwards to deny most vehemently.

"Buckhurst, he wants to see you; go in there," said he,--adding, in a

lower tone, "Now, mind you, the child's delicate as spun glass; so be

careful."

"Come in, Mr. Buckhurst," called Clarian.

The worthy farmer looked to right and left, as if he would much

rather have made his escape, but, impelled by a shove from the

Doctor, he ran his fingers through his coarse hair, and, with a very

red and "I-wish-I-was-out-of-this" face, went in, closing the door

behind him.

"Phew!" said Thorne, seating himself somewhat testily, after having

filled and lighted a pipe,--"Phew! So that's over, and I a'n't sorry;

it's as bad as reading the 'Diary of a Physician.' The boy will be

all right now, and the lesson won't hurt him, though it has been a

rough one. But no more metaphysics for him, Ned Blount! And, boys,

let this be a warning to you. He's too brittle a toy to be handled in

your rough fashion."

"You needn't tell us that, Thorne," said Mac, drawing a long breath.

"Catch me kicking over children's baby-houses again, or telling 'em

ghost-stories in the dark!"

"He vows never again to touch brush, crayon, or pencil; and if he is

the devotee you describe him to be, Ned, I would not advise you to

oppose him in his determination. You must keep him here till

vacation, and next term he can exchange his room. Macbeth's company

will never be very agreeable to him, I should judge; and it will not

do to let him destroy the picture."

Thorne puffed away vigorously for a minute or two.

"That boy ought to turn preacher, Mac. He touched me nearer just now

than I have been touched for an age.

"'His voice was a sweet tremble in mine ear,

Made tunable with every saddest grief,

Till those sad eyes, so spiritual and clear,'

almost persuaded me to follow the example of divine Achilles and

'refresh my soul with tears.' He has that tear-bringing privilege of

genius, to a certainty."

And so it seemed, indeed; for presently the worthy Mr. Buckhurst made

his reappearance in quite a sad state, mopping his red face and

swollen eyes most vigorously with a figured cotton handkerchief, and

proclaiming, with as much intelligibility as the cold in his head and

the peculiar circumstances of the case would admit of, that he'd "be

dagg'd ef he hadd't raver be chucked idto _two_ cadawls dad 'ave dat

iddocedt baby beggid his pardod about de codfouded duckid! Wat de

hell did _he_ care about gittid wet, he'd like to kdow?

Dodsedse!--'twad all dud id fud, adyhow!"

----"And now _you_, my dear, dear friends," said Clarian, turning his

sad, full eyes upon us, and calling us to his side, and to his arms.

But I shall draw a veil over that interview.

That night, after we had talked long and lovingly together, and were

now sitting, each absorbed in his own thoughts, and emulating the

quiet that reigned around college, Clarian softly joined us, and

placed an open book in Mac's hands.

"Will you, dear Mac?" murmured he.

Then Mac, all full of solemn emotion, read through the grand periods

of the Church Litany, and when he had finished, Clarian, with a

thrilling "Let us pray," offered up such a thanksgiving as I had

never heard, praying to the kind Father who had so mercifully

extricated him, that our paths might still be enlightened, and our

walks made humble and righteous.

"Clarian," said Mac, after a pause, when we were again on our feet,--

he laid his hands on the boy's shoulders, as he spoke, and looked

into his eyes,--"Clarian, would it have happened, if you had not

taken that foul drug?"

Clarian shuddered, and covered up his face in his hands.

"Do not ask me, dear Mac! do not ask me! Oh, be sure, my aims, I

thought, were noble, and myself I thought so pure!--but--I cannot

say, Mac, I cannot say.

"'We are so weak, we know our motives least In their confused

beginning.'"

"At least, Clarian," said Mac, after a while, his deep voice

wonderfully refined with strong emotion, "at least, the picture was

not painted in vain. Even as it is in the play, Banquo died that his

issue might reign after him; and this lesson of ours will bear fruit

far mightier than the trifling pains of its parturition. Ay, Clarian,

your picture has not been vainly painted.--And now, Ned," said he,

rising, "we must put our baby to bed; for he is to wake early

to-morrow, and know himself a man!"

SPRING.

Doves on the sunny eaves are cooing,

The chip-bird trills from the apple-tree,

Blossoms are bursting and leaves renewing,

And the crocus darts up the spring to see.

Spring has come with a smile of blessing,

Kissing the earth with her soft warm breath,

Till it blushes in flowers at her gentle caressing,

And wakes from the winter's dream of death.

Spring has come! The rills, as they glisten,

Sing to the pebbles and greening grass;

Under the sward the violets listen,

And dream of the sky as they hear her pass.

Coyest of roses feel her coming,

Swelling their buds with a promise to her,--

And the wild bee hears her, around them humming,

And booms about with a joyous stir.

Oaks, that the bark of a century covers,

Feel ye the spell, as ye groan and sigh?

Say,--does her spirit that round you hovers

Whisper of youth and love gone by?

Windows are open,--the pensive maiden

Leans o'er the sill with a wistful sigh,

Her heart with tender longings o'erladen,

And a happy sadness, she knows not why.

For we and the trees are brothers in nature;--

We feel in our veins the season's thrill

In hopes that reach to a higher stature,

In blind dim longings beyond our will.

Whence dost thou come, O joyous spirit?

From realms beyond this human ken,

To paint with beauty the earth we inherit,

And soften to love the hearts of men?

Dear angel! that blowest with breath of gladness

The trump to waken the year in its grave,

Shall we not hear, after death's deep sadness,

A voice as tender to gladden and save?

Dost thou not sing a constant promise

That joy shall follow that other voice,--

That nothing of good shall be taken from us,

But all who hear it shall rise, to rejoice?

RUFUS CHOATE.

Mr. Choate's mind was so complex, peculiar, and original,--so foreign

in temperament and spirit to the more representative traits of New

England character,--so large, philosophic, and sagacious in vision

and survey of great questions, and so dramatic and vehement in their

exposition and enforcement,--so judicial and conservative in always

maintaining in his arguments the balance and relation of

interdependent principles, and so often in details marring the most

exquisite poetry with the wildest extravagancies of style,--so free

from mere vulgar tricks of effect, and so full of imaginative

tricksiness and surprises,--so mischievous, subtle, mysterious,

elusive, Protean,--that it is no wonder he has been more admired and

more misunderstood than any eminent American of his time. It was

because of these unaccustomed qualities of mind that matter-of-fact

lawyers and judges came slowly but surely to Mr. Webster's

conclusion, that he was "the most accomplished of American lawyers,"

whether arguing to courts or juries. In the same way, critically

correct but unimaginative scholars, who "can pardon anything but a

false quantity,"--who "see the hair on the rope, but not the rope,"

and detect minute errors, but not poetic apprehension,--admitted at

last the fulness and variety of his scholastic attainments. And

perhaps the finest tribute to the power and subtlety of his influence

was, that, to the last, juries, who began cases by steeling

themselves against it, and who ended by giving him their verdicts,

maintained that they were not at all influenced by him,--so profound,

so complete, and so unconscious had been the spell this man of genius

had woven around them.

When it is remembered that a great lawyer in the United States is

called upon (as he is not in England) to practise in all our courts,

civil and criminal, law, equity, and admiralty, and, in addition to

all the complicated questions between parties, involving life,

liberty, and property, arising therein, that he is to know and

discuss our whole scheme of government, from questions under its

patent laws up to questions of jurisdiction and constitutional

law,--it will be seen what a field there is for the exhibition of the

highest talents, and how few lawyers in the country can become

eminent in all these various and important departments of mental

labor. In their whole extent Mr. Choate was not only thoroughly

informed as a student and profound as a reasoner, but his genius

produced such a fusion of imagination and understanding as to give

creativeness to argumentation and philosophy to treatment of facts.

We propose to try to give some idea of those mental characteristics

and peculiarities in which he differed from other lawyers, and to

indicate some salient points of his genius and nature which went to

make up so original and interesting an individuality. Immense labor

and talent will no more produce genius or its results, than mere

natural genius, without their aid and instrumentality, can reach and

maintain the highest rank in any of the great departments of life or

thought. With true genius, imagination is, to be sure, paramount to

great and balanced faculties; but genius is always demonstrating its

superiority to talent as well by its greater rapidity and certainty

in seizing, arranging, and holding facts, and by the extent of its

acquisitions, as by its superior philosophic and artistic grasp and

vision.

Though Mr. Choate was so much more than a mere lawyer, it was in

court that he displayed the full force and variety of his powers.

_Hic currus et arma_. We shall, however, speak more especially of his

jury-trials, because in them more of his whole nature was brought

into play, and because of them and of his management of them there is

and can be no full record. The arguments and triumphs of the great

advocate are almost as evanescent and traditionary as the

conversation of great talkers like Coleridge. In what we have to say

we cannot be expected to call up the arguments and cases themselves,

and we must necessarily be confined to a somewhat general statement

of certain mental qualities and characteristics which were of the

secret of his power. We shall be rewarded, if we succeed in giving in

mere outline some explanation of the fact, that so much of interest

and something of mystery attach themselves throughout the country to

his name and genius.

A jury-trial is in itself dramatic; but mere eloquence is but a small

part of what is demanded of a great advocate. Luther Martin and

Jeremiah Mason were the most eminent American examples of the very

many great jury-lawyers who were almost destitute of all that makes

up popular eloquence. A jury-lawyer is of course greater with it, but

he can do entirely without it. Almost all great trials appeal to the

intellects rather than to the passions of jurors. What an advocate

needs first is thorough knowledge of law, and that adaptiveness and

readiness of faculty which are never surprised into forgetfulness or

confusion, so that he can instantly see, meet, reason upon, and apply

his legal learning to the unexpected as well as the expected points

of law and evidence as they arise in a case. Secondly, he must have

thorough knowledge of human nature: he must not only profoundly

discuss motives in their relations to the laws of the human mind, and

practically reconcile motives with conduct as they relate to the

parties and witnesses in his cases, but he must prepare, present,

develop, guide, and finally argue his case, within the rules of law,

with strict reference to its effect upon the differing minds of

twelve men. It would be difficult to name any other field of public

mental effort which demands and gives scope for such variety of

faculty and accomplishment.

Whatever may have been Mr. Choate's defects of character or of style,

no competent judge ever saw his management of any case in court, from

its opening to its close, without recognizing that he was a man of

genius. It mattered not whether the amount involved was little or

great, whether the parties were rich or poor, wise or ignorant,

whether the subject-matter was dry or fertile,--such were his

imaginative insight, his knowledge of law and of human nature, his

perfection of arrangement, under which every point was treated fully,

but none unduly, his consummate tact and tactics, his command of

language in all its richness and delicacy to express the fullest

force and the nicest shades of his meaning, and his haggard beauty of

person and grace of nature, that every case rose to dramatic dignity

and to its largest relations to law, psychology, and poetry; and

thus, while giving it artistic unity and completeness, he all the

more enforced his arguments and insured his success. How widely

different in method and surroundings from the poet's exercise of the

creative faculty in the calm of thought and retirement, on a selected

topic and in selected hours of inspiration, was his entering, with

little notice or preparation, into a case involving complicated

questions of law and fact, with only a partial knowledge of the case

of his antagonist! met at point after point by unexpected evidence

and rulings of law, often involving such instantaneous decisions as

to change his whole combinations and method of attack; examining

witnesses with unerring skill, whom he was at once too chivalrous and

too wise to browbeat; arguing to the court unexpected questions of

law with full and available legal learning; carrying in his mind the

case, and the known or surmised plan of attack of his antagonist, and

shaping his own case to meet it; holding an exquisitely sensitive

physical and mental organization in such perfect control as never to

be irritated or disturbed; throwing his whole force on a given point,

and rising to a joyousness of power in meeting the great obstacles to

his success; and finally, with little or no respite for preparation,

weaving visibly, as it were, before the mental eye, from all these

elicited materials, his closing argument, which, as we have said, was

all the more effective, because profound reasoning and exquisite tact

and influence were involved in it as a work of art.

He had the temperament of the great actors,--that of the elder Kean

and the elder Booth, not of Kemble and Macready,--and, like them, had

the power of almost instantly passing into the nature and thought and

emotion of another, and of not only absolutely realizing them, but of

realizing them all the more completely because he had at the same

time perfect self-direction and self-control. The absurd question is

often asked, whether an actor is ever the character he represents

throughout a whole play. He could be so, only if insane. But every

great actor and orator must be capable of instantaneous abandonment

to his part, and of as instantaneous withdrawal from it,--like the

elder Booth, joking one minute at a side-scene and in the next having

the big tears of a realized Lear running down his cheeks. An eminent

critic says,--"Genius always lights its own fire,"--and this constant

double process of mind,--one of self-direction and self-control, the

other of absolute abandonment and identification,--each the more

complete for the other,--the dramatic poet, the impassioned orator,

and the great interpretative actor, all know, whenever the whole mind

and nature are in their highest action. Mr. Choate, therefore, from

pure force of mental constitution, threw himself into the life and

position of the parties and witnesses in a jury-case, and they

necessarily became _dramatis personae_, and moved in an atmosphere of

his own creation. His narrative was the simplest and most artistic

exhibition of his case thus seen and presented from the point of

their lives and natures, and not from the dry facts and points of his

case; and his argument was all the more perfect, because not

exhibited in skeleton nakedness, but incorporated and intertwined

with the interior and essential life of persons and events. It was in

this way that he effected the acquittal of Tirrell, whom any

matter-of-fact lawyer, however able, would have argued straight to the

gallows; and yet we have the highest judicial authority for saying

that in that case he did his simple technical duty, without

interposing his own opinions or convictions. We shall say a word,

before we close, of the charge that he surrendered himself too

completely to his client; but to a great degree the explanation and

the excuse at once lie in this dramatic imagination, which was of the

essence of his genius and influence, and through which he lived the

life, shared the views, and identified himself with a great actor's

realization, in _the part_ of his client.

In making real to himself the nature, life, and position of his

client,--in gathering from him and his witnesses, in the preparation

and trial of his case, its main facts and direction, as colored or

inflamed by his client's opinions, passions, and motives,--and in

seeking their explanation in the egotism and idiosyncrasy which his

own sympathetic insight penetrated and harmonized into a consistent

individuality,--he, of course, knew his client better than his client

knew himself; he conceived him as an actor conceives character, and,

in a great measure, saw with his eyes from his point of view, and, in

the argument of his case, gave clear expression and consistent

characterization to his nature and to his partisan views in their

relations to the history of the case. We have seen his clients sit

listening to the story of their own lives and conduct, held off in

artistic relief and in dramatic relation, with tears running down

cheeks which had not been moistened by the actual events themselves,

re-presented by his arguments in such coloring and perspective.

As a part of this power of merging his own individuality in that of

his client was his absolute freedom from egotism, conceit,

self-assertion, and personal pride of opinion. Such an instance is, of

course, exceptional. Nearly all the eminent jury-lawyers we have

known have been, consciously or unconsciously, self-asserting, and

their individuality rather than that of their clients has been

impressed upon juries. An advocate with a great jury-reputation has

two victories to win: the first, to overcome the determination of the

jury to steel themselves against his influence; the second, to

convince their judgments. Mr. Choate's self-surrender was so complete

that they soon forgot him, because he forgot himself in his case;

nothing personally demonstrative or antagonistic induced obstinacy or

opposition, and every door was soon wide open to sympathy and

conviction. If an advocate is conceited, or vain, or self-important,

or if he thinks of producing effects as well for himself as for his

client, or if his nature is hard and unadaptive,--great abilities

display these qualities, instead of hiding them, and they make a

refracting medium between a case and the minds of a jury. Mr. Choate

was more completely free from them than any able man we ever knew.

Any one of them would have been in complete contradiction to the

whole composition and current of his nature. Though conscious of his

powers, he was thoroughly and lovingly modest. It was because he

thought so little of himself and so much of his client that he never

made personal issues, and was never diverted by them from his strict

and full duty. Instead of "greatly finding quarrel in a straw," where

some supposed honor was at stake, he would suffer himself rather than

that his case should suffer. Early in his practice, when a friend

told him he bore too much from opposing counsel without rebuking

them, he said: "Do you suppose I care what those men say? I want to

get my client's case." Want of pugnacity too often passes for want of

courage. We have seen him in positions where we wished he could have

been more personally demonstrative, and (to apply the language of the

ring to the contests of the court-room) that he could have stood

still and struck straight from the shoulder; but when we remember how

perfectly he saw through and through the faults and foibles of men,

how his mischievous and genial irony, when it touched personal

character, stamped and characterized it for life, and how keen was

the edge and how fine the play of every weapon in his full armory of

sarcasm and ridicule, (of which his speech in the Senate in reply to

Mr. McDuffie's personalities gives masterly exhibition,) we are

thankful that his sensibility was so exquisite and his temper so

sweet, that he was a delight instead of a terror, and that he was

loved instead of feared. Delicacy should be commensurate to power,

that each may be complete. It would seem almost impossible that a

lawyer with a practice truly immense, passing a great part of his

life in public and heated contests and in discussing and often

severely criticizing the motives and conduct of parties and

witnesses, should not make many enemies; but he was so essentially

modest, simple, gentlemanly, and tender, so considerate of the

feelings of others, so evidently trying to mitigate the pain which it

was often his duty to inflict, that we never heard of his searching

and subtile examination of witnesses, or his profound and exhaustive

analysis of character and motive, or his instantaneous and

irresistible retorts upon counsel, creating or leaving behind him, in

the bar or out of it, malice or ill-will in a human being. One of the

most touching and beautiful things we ever saw in a court-room would

have been in other hands purely painful and repulsive. It was his

examination of the wretched women who were witnesses in the Tirrell

case. His tact in eliciting what was necessary to be known, and which

they would have concealed, was forgotten and lost in his chivalrous

and Christian recognition of their common humanity, and in his

gentlemanly thoughtfulness that even they were still women, with

feelings yet sensitive to eye and word.

In jury-trials it would be foolish to judge style by severe or

classic standards. If an advocate have skill and insight and adequate

powers of expression, his style must yield and vary with the

circumstances of different cases and the minds of different juries

and jurors. When a friend of Erskine asked him, at the close of a

jury-argument, why he so unusually and iteratively, and with such

singular illustration, prolonged one part of his case, he said,--"It

took me two hours to make that fat man with the buff waistcoat join

the eleven!"

All men of great powers of practical influence over the minds of men

know how stupid and dull of apprehension the mass of mankind are; and

no one knows better than a great jury-lawyer in how many different

ways it is often necessary to present arguments, and how they must be

pressed, urged, and _hammered_ into most men's minds. He is

endeavoring to persuade and convince twelve men upon a question in

which they have no direct pecuniary or personal interest, and he must

more or less know and adapt his reasoning and his style to each

juror's mind. He should know no audience but the judge and these

twelve men. Retainers never seek and should not find counsel who

address jurors with classical or formal correctness. Napoleon, at St.

Helena, after reading one of his bulletins, which had produced the

great and exact effect for which he had intended it, exclaimed,--"And

yet they said I couldn't write!"

The true Yankee is suspicious of eloquence, and "stops a metaphor

like a suspected person in an enemy's country." A stranger, who

looked in for a few minutes upon one of Mr. Choate's jury-arguments,

and saw a lawyer with a lithe and elastic figure of about five feet

and eleven inches, with a face not merely of a scholarly paleness,

but wrinkled all over, and, as it were, scathed with thought and with

past nervous and intellectual struggles, yet still beautiful, with

black hair curling as if from heat and dewy from heightened action

and intensity of thought and feeling, and heard a clear, sympathetic,

and varying voice uttering rapidly and unhesitatingly, sometimes with

sweet caesural and almost monotonous cadences, and again with

startling and electric shocks, language now exquisitely delicate and

poetic, now vehement in its direct force, and again decorated and

wild with Eastern extravagance and fervor of fancy, would have

thought him the last man to have been born on New England soil, or to

convince the judgments of twelve Yankee jurors. But those twelve men,

if he had opened the case himself, had been quietly, simply, and

sympathetically led into a knowledge of its facts in connection with

its actors and their motives; they had seen how calmly and with what

tact he had examined his witnesses, how ready, graceful, and unheated

had been his arguments to the court, and how complete throughout had

been his self-possession and self-control; they had, moreover,

learned and become interested in the case, and were no longer the

same hard and dispassionate men with whom he had begun, and they

knew, as the casual spectator could not know, how systematically he

was arguing while he was also vehemently enforcing his case. _He_,

meanwhile, knew his twelve men, and what arguments, appeals, and

illustrations were needed to reach the minds of one or all. He did

not care how certain extravagances of style struck the critical

spectator, if they stamped and riveted certain points of his case in

the minds of his jury. With the keenest perception of the ridiculous

himself, he did not hesitate to say things which, disconnected from

his purpose, might seem ridiculous. One consequence of these

audacities of expression was, that, when it became necessary for him

to be iterative, he was never tedious. They gave full play to his

imaginative humor and irony, and to his poetic unexpectedness and

surprises. A wise observer, hearing him try a case from first to

last, while recognizing those higher qualities of genius which we

have before described, saw, that, for all the purposes of persuasion

and argumentation, for conveying his meaning in its full force and in

its most delicate distinctions and shadings, for analytic reasoning

or for the "clothing upon" of the imagination, for all the essential

objects and vital uses of language, his style was perfect for his

purpose and for his audience. His excesses came from surplus power

and dramatic intensity, and were pardoned by all imaginative minds to

the real genius with which they were informed.

Every great advocate must, at times, especially in the trial of

capital cases, be held popularly responsible for the acquittal of men

whom the public has prejudged to be guilty. This unreasoning,

impulsive, and irresponsible public never stops to inform itself;

never discriminates between legal acumen and pettifogging trickery,

between doing one's full duty to his client and interposing or

misrepresenting his own personal opinions; and never remembers that

the functions of law and the practice of law are to prevent and to

punish crime, to ascertain the truth, and to determine and enforce

justice,--that trial by jury, and the other means and methods through

which justice is administered, are founded in the largest wisdom,

philanthropy, and experience,--that they cannot work perfectly,

because human nature is imperfect, but they constitute the best

practical system for the application of abstract principles of right

to the complicated affairs of life which the world has yet seen, and

which steadily improves as our race improves,--and that every great

lawyer is aiding in elucidating truth and in administering justice,

when doing his duty to his client under this system. Our trial by

jury has its imperfections; but, laying aside its demonstrated value

and necessity in great struggles for freedom, before and since the

time of Erskine, no better scheme can be devised to do its great and

indispensable work. The very things which seem to an uninformed man

like rejection or confusion of truth are a part of the sifting by

which it is to be reached. The admission or rejection of evidence

under sound rules of law, the presenting of the whole case of each

party and of the best argument which can be made upon it by his

counsel, the charge of the judge and the verdict of the jury,--all

are necessary parts of the process of reaching truth and justice.

Counsel themselves cannot know a whole case until tried to its end;

their clients have a right to their best services, within the limits

of personal honor; and lawyers are derelict in duty, not only to

their clients, but to justice itself, if they do not present their

cases to the best of their ability, when they are to be followed by

opposing counsel, by the judge, and by the jury. The popular judgment

is not only capricious,--it not only assumes that legal precedents,

founded in justice for the protection of the honest, are petty

technicalities or tricks through which the dishonest escape,--it is

not only formed out of the court-room, with no opportunity to see

witnesses and hear testimony, often very different in reality from

what they seem in print,--but it visits upon counsel its ignorant

prejudices against the theory and practice of the law itself, and

forgets that lawyers cannot present to the jury a particle of

evidence except with the sanction of the court under sound rules of

law, and that the law is to be laid down by the court alone.

A man thoroughly in earnest in any direction is more or less a

partisan. Histories are commonly uninfluential or worthless, unless

written with views so earnest and decided as to show bias. As the

greater interests of truth are best subserved by those whose zeal is

commensurate to their scope of mind, so it is a part of the scheme of

jury-trials, that, within the limits we have named, counsel shall

throw their whole force into their cases, that thus they may be

presented fully in all lights, and the right results more surely

reached. The scheme of jury-trials itself thus providing for a

lawyer's standing in the place of his client and deriving from him

his partisan opinions, and for urging his case in its full force

within the limits of sound rules of law, it almost invariably

follows, that, the greater the talent and zeal of the advocate, and

the more he believes in the views of his client, the more liable he

is to be charged with overstating or misstating testimony. Mr. Choate

never conceived that his duty to his client should carry him up to

the line of self-surrender drawn by Lord Brougham; but, recognizing

his client's full and just claims upon him, entering into his

opinions and nature with the sympathetic and dramatic realization we

have described, he could not faithfully perform the prescribed and

admitted duty of the advocate,--necessarily, with him, involving his

throwing the whole force of his physical and intellectual vitality

into every case he tried,--without being a vehement partisan, or

without being sometimes charged with misstating evidence or going too

far for his client. Occasionally this may have been true; but we see

the explanation in the very quality of his genius and temperament,

and not in conscious or intentional wrong-doing.

His ability and method in his strictly legal arguments to courts of

law are substantially indicated in what we have already said. His

manner, however, was here calm, his general views of his subject

large and philosophic, his legal learning full, his reasoning clear,

strong, and consequential, his discrimination quick and sure, and his

detection of a logical fallacy unerring, his style, though sometimes

fairly open to the charge of redundancy, graceful and transparent in

its exhibition of his argument, and his mind always at home, and in

its easiest and most natural exercise, when anything in his case rose

into connection with great principles.

While exhibiting in his jury-trials, as we have shown, this double

process of absolute identification and of perfect supervision and

self-control,--of instantaneous imaginative dips into his work, and

of as instantaneous withdrawal from it,--of purposely and yet

completely throwing himself in one sentence into the realization of

an emotion, thus perfectly conveying his meaning while living the

thought, and yet coming out of it to see quicker than any one that it

might be made absurd by displacement,--he always had, as it were, an

air-drawn, circle of larger thought and superintending relation far

around the immediate question into which he passed so dramatically.

Within this outer circle, attached and related to it by everything in

the subject-matter of real poetic or philosophic importance, was his

case, creatively woven and spread in artistic light and perspective;

and between the two (if we do not press our illustration beyond clear

limits) was a heat-lightning-like play of mind, showing itself, at

one moment, in unexpected flashes of poetic analogy, at another in

Puck-like mischief, and again in imaginative irony or humor.

As he recovered himself from abandonment to some part of his case or

argument to guide and mould the whole, so, going into his library, he

could, as completely, for minutes or for hours, banish and forget his

anxieties and dramatic excitements, and pass into the cooling air and

loftier and purer stimulations of the great minds of other times and

countries and of the great questions that overhang us all. His mind,

capacious, informed, wise, doubting, "looking before and after," here

found its highest pleasures, and its little, but most loved repose.

"The more a man does, the more he can do"; and, notwithstanding his

immense practice, and that by physical and intellectual constitution

he couldn't _half_ do anything, he never allowed a day of his life to

pass, without reading some, if ever so little, Greek, and it was a

surprise to those who knew him well to find that he kept up with

everything important in modern literature. Rising and going to bed

early, taking early morning exercise, having a strong constitution,

though he was subject to sudden but quickly overcome nervous and

bilious illness, wasting no time, caring nothing for the coarser

social enjoyments, leading, out of court, a self-withdrawn and

solitary life, though playful, genial, and stimulating in social

intercourse, with a memory as tenacious and ready as his apprehension

was quick, with high powers of detecting, mastering, arranging, and

fusing his acquisitions, and of penetrating to the centre of

historical characters and events,--it is not strange, though he may

not have been critically exact and nice in questions of quantity and

college exercises, that his scholarship was large and available in

all its higher aims and uses.

It will naturally be asked, how such qualities as we have described

manifested themselves in character, and in political and other fields

of thought and exertion. Fair abilities, zeal, industry, a sanguine

temperament, and some special bent or fitness for the profession of

the law, will make a good and successful lawyer. Such a man's mind

will be entirely in and limited by the immediate case in hand, and

virtually his intellectual life will be recorded in his cases. But

with Mr. Choate, the dramatic genius and large scope and vision which

made him superior to other great advocates at the same time prevented

his overestimating the value of his work in kind or degree, showed

him how ephemeral are the actual triumphs and how small the real

value of nearly all the questions he thus vitalized into artistic

reality, when compared with the great outlying truths and principles

to which he allied them. Feeling this all through his cases, at the

same time that he was moulding them and giving them dramatic

vitality, they took their true position from natural reaction and

rebound, with all the more sharpness of contrast, when he came out of

them. With such a nature, it could be assumed _a priori_ as a

psychological certainty, at any rate it was the fact with him, that a

certain unreality was at times thrown over life and its objects, that

its projects and ambitions seemed games and mockeries, and "this

brave o'erhanging firmament a pestilent congregation of vapors," and

that grave doubts and fears on the great questions of existence were

ever on the horizon of his mind. This gave perpetual play to his

irony, and made it a necessity and a relief of mind. Except when in

earnest in some larger matter, or closely occupied in accomplishing

some smaller necessary purpose or duty, his imagination loved the

tricksy play of exhibiting the petty side of life in contrast to its

realities, just as in his cases it found its exercise in lifting them

up to relations with what is poetic and permanent. But, though irony

was thus the natural language of his mind, it did not pass beyond the

limits of the mischievous and kindly, because there was nothing

scoffing or bitter in his nature. It was fresh and natural, never

studied for effect, and gave his conversation the charm of constant

novelty and surprises. He loved to condense the results of thought

and study into humorous or grotesque overstatements, which, while

they amused his hearers, conveyed his exact meaning to every one who

followed the mercurial movement of his mind. It will readily be seen

how a person with neither insight into his nature nor apprehension of

his meaning should, without intending it, misinterpret his life and

caricature his opinions,--blundering only the more deeply when trying

to be literally exact in reporting conversations or portraying

character.

It has been shrewdly said, that, "when the Lord wants anything done

in this world, he makes a man a little wrong-headed in the right

direction." With this goes the disposition to overestimate the

importance of one's work and to push principles and theories towards

extremes. The saying is true of some individuals at or before certain

crises in affairs; it is not true of the great inevitable historical

movements, any more than the history of revolutions is the history of

nations. Halifax is called a trimmer. William Wilberforce was a

reformer. Each did a great work. But it would be simply absurd,

except in the estimation of the moral purist, to call Wilberforce as

great a man or as great an historical and influential person as

Halifax. Halifax saw and acted in the clear light and large relations

in which the great historian of our own times wrote the history of

the Stuarts. Wilberforce was a purer man, who acted more

conscientiously and persistently within his smaller range of life and

thought. It would have been inconsistent with Mr. Choate's nature for

him to have been "wrong-headed" in any direction. Such largeness of

view, such dramatic and interpretative imagination, such volatile

play of thought and fancy, and such perception of the pettiness and

hollowness of nearly all the aims and ambitions of daily life we

cannot expect to find coexisting with the coarser "blood-sympathies,"

the direct passion, and the dogged and tenacious hold of temporary

and smaller objects and issues, which distinguish the American

politician, or with the narrowness of view, the zeal, and the moral

persistency which characterize the practical reformer. There was,

therefore, in his nature a certain want of the sturdier, harder, and

more robust elements of character, which, though commonly manifesting

themselves in connection with self-assertion and partisan zeal, are

indispensable to the man who, in any large and political way, would

take hold of practical circumstances and work a purpose out of them.

We admire him for what he was. We do not condemn him for the absence

of qualities not allied to such delicacy and breadth of nature. It is

simply just to state the fact.

He had too little political ambition to seek his own advancement. He

never could have been a strictly party man. His interest in our

politics was a patriotic interest in the country. While he recognized

the necessity of two great parties, he despised the arts and

intrigues of the politician. His modesty, sensibility, large views,

and want of political ambition and partisan spirit prevented

interest, as they would have precluded success in party management.

Had he spent many years instead of a few in the national Senate, he

never could have been a leader in its great party struggles. He had

not the hardier personal and constitutional qualities of mind and

character which lead and control deliberative bodies in great crises.

He would not have had that statesmanlike prescience which in the case

of Lord Chatham and others seems separable from great general scope

of thought, and which one is tempted to call a faculty for

government. But he must have been influential; for, besides being the

most eloquent man in the Senate, his speeches would have been

distinguished for amplitude and judgment in design, and for tact and

persuasiveness in enforcement. They might not have had immediate and

commanding effect, but they would have had permanent value. His

speech upon the Ashburton Treaty indicates the powers he would have

shown, with a longer training in the Senate. More than ten years had

passed between that speech and his two speeches in the Massachusetts

Constitutional Convention, upon Representation and the Judiciary, and

in that time a great maturing and solidifying work had been going on

in his mind. Indeed, it was one sure test of his genius, that his

intellect plainly grew to the day of his death. We would point to

those two speeches as giving some adequate expression of his ability

to treat large subjects simply, profoundly, artistically, and

convincingly. Many of his earlier and some of his later speeches and

addresses, though large in conception and stamped with unmistakable

genius, want solid body of thought, and are, so to speak, too fluid

in style. This obviously springs from the qualities of mind and from

the circumstances we have indicated. In court, the necessities of his

case and the determination and shaping of all his argument and

persuasion to convincing twelve men, or a court only, on questions

requiring prompt decision, kept his style free from everything

foreign to his purpose. But, released from these restraints, and

called upon for a treatment more general and comprehensive than acute

and discriminating, his style often became inflamed and decorated

with sensibility and fancy. His mind, moreover, was overtasked in his

profession. His unremitting mental labor in the preparation and trial

of so many cases was immense and exhausting. It shortened his life.

That his genius might have that free and joyous exercise necessary to

its full use and exhibition in literary or political directions, an

abandonment of a great part of his professional duties was

indispensable. This was to him neither possible nor desirable. The

mental heat and pressure, therefore, under which he wrote his

speeches and addresses, and the necessity for the exercise of

different methods of thought and treatment from those called into

play at the bar, explain why (with a few noble exceptions) they do

not give a fair or full exhibition of his genius and accomplishments.

But in them his judgment never lost its anchorage. Unlike Burke, who

was the god of his political idolatry, his sensibility never

overmastered his reasoning. Through a style sometimes Eastern in

flush and fervor, and again tropical in heat and luxuriance, were

always seen the adjusting and attempering habit of thought and

argument and the even balance of his mind.

We have said that his interest in politics was a patriotic interest

in the nation. He knew her history and her triumphs and reverses on

land and sea by heart. Though limited by no narrow love of country,

he felt from sentiment and imagination that attachment to every

symbol of patriotism and national power which makes the sailor suffer

death with joy when he sees his country's flag floating in the smoke

of victory. "The radiant ensign of the Republic" was to him the

living embodiment of her honor and her power. He had for it the pride

and passion of the boy, with the prophetic hopes of the patriot. Men

of genius are ever revivifying the commonplace expressions and

visible signs of popular enthusiasm with the poetic and historic

realities which gave them birth. He felt the glow and impulse of the

great sentiments of race and nationality in all their natural

simplicity and poetic force. It is not now the time to discuss Mr.

Choate's political preferences and opinions. No one who knew him well

can hesitate to pronounce his motives pure and patriotic. We could

not come to his conclusions on the policy and duty of our people at

the last Presidential election. Our duties to the Union forced us to

regard as paramount what he regarded as subsidiary. Our fear for the

Union sprang from other sources than his. But we believe he acted

from the highest convictions of duty, and he certainly exposed

himself with unflinching courage to obloquy and misinterpretation

when silence would have been easy and safe.

In what we have said of him as a lawyer we are sure that in every

essential respect we have not overstated or misstated his powers and

characteristics as they were known and conceded by lawyers and judges

in Massachusetts. We have confined ourselves mainly to his

jury-trials, because into them he threw the whole force and vitality of

his nature, and because we could thus more completely indicate the

variety of his accomplishments and the essential characteristics of

his genius and individuality. A knowledge of them is indispensable to

a just estimate of the man, and it must die with him and his hearers,

excepting only as it may be preserved by contemporaneous written

criticism and judgment, and by indeterminate and shadowy tradition.

The labors of so great a lawyer are as much more useful as they are

less conspicuous than those of any prominent politician or

legislator, unless he be one of the very few who have high

constructive or creative ability. There is little risk of

overestimating the value of a life devoted to mastering that complex

system of jurisprudence, the old, ever-expanding, and ever-improving

common law which is interwoven with our whole fabric of government,

property, and personal rights, and to applying it profoundly through

trial by jury and before courts of law, not merely that justice may

be obtained for clients, but that decisions shall be made determining

the rights and duties of men for generations to come. And when such a

life is not only full of immense work and achievement, but

is penetrated and informed with genius, sensibility, and

loving-kindness, it passes sweetly and untraceably, but influentially

and immortally, into the life of the nation.

THE REGICIDE COLONELS IN NEW ENGLAND.

Before the restoration of Charles the Second, in 1660, to the throne

of his ancestors, he had issued a "Declaration," promising to all

persons but such as should be excepted by Parliament a pardon of

offences committed during the late disorderly times. In the

Parliamentary Act of Indemnity which followed, such as had been

directly concerned in the death of the late King were excepted from

mercy. Colonel Whalley and Colonel Goffe were members of the High

Court of Justice which convicted and sentenced him. It was known that

they had fled from England; and one Captain Breedon, lately returned

from Boston, reported that he had seen them there. The Ministry sent

an order to Endicott, the Governor of Massachusetts, for their

apprehension and transportation to England.

The friendly welcome which had in fact been extended to the

distinguished fugitives cannot be confidently interpreted as an

indication of favorable judgment of the act by which their lives were

now endangered. No one of the New-England Colonies had formally

expressed approval of the execution of King Charles the First, nor is

there any other evidence of its having been generally regarded by

them with favor. It is likely that in New England, as in the parent

country, the opinions of patriotic men were divided in respect to the

character of that measure. In New England, remote as it was from the

scene of those crimes which had provoked so extreme a proceeding, it

may be presumed that there was greater difficulty in admitting the

force of the reasons, by which it was vindicated. And the sympathy of

New England would be more likely to be with Vane, who condemned it,

than with Cromwell. But the strangers, however one act of theirs

might be regarded, had been eminent among those who had fought for

the rights of Englishmen, and they brought introductions from men

venerated and beloved by the people among whom a refuge was sought.

Edward Whalley, a younger son of a good family, first cousin of the

Protector Oliver, and of John Hampden, distinguished himself at the

Battle of Naseby as an officer of cavalry, and was presently promoted

by Parliament to the command of a regiment. He commanded at the storm

of Banbury, and at the first capture of Worcester. He was intrusted

with the custody of the King's person at Hampton Court; he sat in the

High Court of Justice at the trial of Charles, and was one of the

signers of the death-warrant. After the Battle of Dunbar, at which he

again won renown, Cromwell left him in Scotland in command of four

regiments of horse. He was one of the Major-Generals among whom the

kingdom was parcelled out by one of the Protector's last

arrangements, and as such governed the Counties of Lincoln,

Nottingham, Derby, Warwick, and Leicester. He sat as a member for

Nottinghamshire in Cromwell's Second and Third Parliaments, and was

called up to "the other House" when that body was constituted.

William Goffe, son of a Puritan clergyman in Sussex, was a member of

Parliament, and a colonel of infantry soon after the breaking out of

the Civil War. He married a daughter of Whalley. Like his

father-in-law, he was a member of the High Court of Justice for the

King's trial, a signer of the warrant for his execution, a member of the

Protector's Third and Fourth Parliaments, and then a member of "the

other House." He commanded Cromwell's regiment at the Battle of

Dunbar, and rendered service particularly acceptable to him in the

second expurgation of Parliament. As one of the ten Major-Generals,

he held the government of Hampshire, Berkshire, and Sussex.

When Whalley and Goffe, upon the King's return, left England to

escape what they apprehended might prove the fate of regicides, the

policy of the Court in respect to persons circumstanced as they were

had not been promulgated. Arriving in Boston, in July, and having

been courteously welcomed by the Governor, they proceeded the same

day to Cambridge, which place for the present they made their home.

For several months they appeared there freely in public. They

attended the public religious meetings, and others held at private

houses, at which latter they prayed, and _prophesied_, or preached.

They visited some of the principal towns in the neighborhood, were

often in Boston, and were received, wherever they went, with

distinguished attention.

At the end of four months, intelligence came to Massachusetts of the

Act of Indemnity, and that Whalley and Goffe were among those

excepted from it, and marked for vengeance. Three months longer they

lived at Cambridge unmolested; but in the mean while affairs had been

growing critical between Massachusetts and the mother country, and,

though some members of the General Court assured them of protection,

others thought it more prudent that they should have a hint to

provide for their safety in some way which would not imply an affront

to the royal government on the part of the Colony. The Governor

called a Court of Assistants, in February, and without secrecy asked

their advice respecting his obligation to secure the refugees. The

Court refused to recommend that measure, and four days more passed,

at the end of which time--whether induced by the persuasion of

others, or by their own conviction of the impropriety of involving

their generous hosts in further embarrassment, or simply because they

had been awaiting till then the completion of arrangements for their

reception at New Haven--they set off for that place.

A journey of nine days brought them to the hospitable house of the

Reverend Mr. Davenport, where again they moved freely in the society

of the ministers and the magistrates. But they had scarcely been at

New Haven three weeks, when tidings came thither of the reception at

Boston of a proclamation issued by the King for their arrest. To

release their host from responsibility, they went to Milford, (as if

on their way to New Netherland,) and there showed themselves in

public; but returned secretly the same night to New Haven, and were

concealed in Davenport's house. This was towards the last of March.

They had been so situated a month, when their friends had information

from Boston that the search for them was to be undertaken in earnest.

Further accounts of their having been seen in that place had reached

England, and the King had sent a peremptory order to the Colonial

governments for their apprehension. Endicott, to whom it was

transmitted, could do no less than appear to interest himself to

execute it; and this he might do with the less reluctance, because,

under the circumstances, there was small likelihood that his

exertions would be effectual. Two young English merchants, Thomas

Kellond and Thomas Kirk, received from him a commission to prosecute

the search in Massachusetts, and were also furnished with letters of

recommendation to the Governors of the other Colonies. That they were

zealous Royalists, direct from England, would be some evidence to the

home government that the quest would be pursued in good faith. That

they were foreigners, unacquainted with the roads and with the habits

of the country, and betraying themselves by their deportment wherever

they should go in New England, would afford comfortable assurance to

the Governor that they would pursue their quest in vain.

From Boston, the pursuivants, early in May, went to Hartford, where

they were informed by Winthrop, Governor of Connecticut, that "the

Colonels," as they were called, had passed thence immediately before,

on their way to New Haven. Thither the messengers proceeded, stopping

on the way at Guilford, the residence of Deputy-Governor Leete. Since

the recent death of Governor Newman, Leete had been Chief Magistrate

of the Colony of New Haven, which was now, and for a few years later,

distinct from Connecticut.

The Deputy-Governor received them in the presence of several other

persons. He looked over their papers, and then "began to read them

audibly; whereupon we told him," say the messengers, "it was

convenient to be more private in such concernments as that was." They

desired to be furnished "with horses, &c.," for their further

journey, "which was prepared with some delays." They were accosted,

on coming out, by a person who told them that the Colonels were

secreted at Mr. Davenport's, "and that, without all question, Deputy

Leete knew as much"; and that "in the head of a company in the field

a-training," it had lately been "openly spoken by them, that, if they

had but two hundred friends that would stand by them, they would not

care for Old or New England."

The messengers returned to Leete, and made an application for "aid

and a power to search and apprehend" the fugitives. "He refused to

give any power to apprehend them, nor order any other, and said he

could do nothing until he had spoken with one Mr. Gilbert and the

rest of his magistrates." New Haven, the seat of government of the

Colony, was twenty miles distant from Guilford. It was now Saturday

afternoon, and for a New-England Governor to break the Sabbath by

setting off on a journey, or by procuring horses for any other

traveller, was impossible. An Indian was observed to have left

Guilford while the parley was going on, and was supposed to have gone

on an errand to New Haven.

Monday morning the messengers proceeded thither. "To our certain

knowledge," they write, "one John Meigs was sent a-horseback before

us, and by his speedy and unexpected going so early before day was to

give them an information, and the rather because by the delays was

used, it was break of day before we got to horse; so he got there

before us. Upon our suspicion, we required the Deputy that the said

John Meigs might be examined what his business was, that might

occasion so early going; to which the Deputy answered, that he did

not know any such thing, and refused to examine him." Leete was in no

haste to make his own journey to the capital. It was for the

messengers to judge whether they would use such despatch as to give

an alarm there some time before any magistrate was present, to be

invoked for aid. He arrived, they write, "within two hours, or

thereabouts, after us and came to us to the Court chamber, where we

again acquainted him with the information we had received, and that

we had cause to believe they [the fugitives] were concealed in New

Haven, and thereupon we required his assistance and aid for their

apprehension; to which he answered, that he did not believe they

were; whereupon we desired him to empower us, or order others for it;

to which he gave us this answer, the he could not, or would not, make

us magistrates... We set before him the danger of that delay and

their inevitable escape, and how much the honor and service of his

Majesty was despised and trampled on by him, and that we supposed by

his unwillingness to assist in the apprehension he was willing they

should escape. After which he left us, and went to several of the

magistrates, and were together five or six hours in consultation, and

upon breaking up of their council they told us they would not nor

could not to anything until they had called a General Court of the

freemen."

The messengers labored with great earnestness to shake this

determination, but all in vain. For precedents they appealed to the

promptness of the Governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut, "who,

upon the recite of his Majesty's pleasure and order concerning the

said persons, stood not upon such niceties and formalities." They

represented "how much the honor and justice of his Majesty was

concerned, and how ill his Sacred Majesty would resent such horrid

and detestable concealments and abettings of such traitors and

regicides as they were, and asked him whether he would honor and obey

the King or no in this affair, and set before him the danger which by

law is incurred by any one that conceals or abets traitors; to which

the Deputy Leete answered, 'We honor his Majesty, but we have tender

consciences'; to which we replied, that we believed that he knew

where they were, and only pretended tenderness of conscience for a

refusal.... We told them that for their respect to two traitors they

would do themselves injury, and possibly ruin themselves and the

whole Colony of New Haven."

"Finding them obstinate and pertinacious in their contempt of his

Majesty," the messengers, probably misled by some false information,

took the road to New Netherland, the next day, in further prosecution

of their business. The Dutch Governor at that place promised them,

that, if the Colonels appeared within his jurisdiction, he would give

notice to Endicott, and take measures to prevent their escape by sea.

Thereupon Kellond and Kirk returned by water to Boston, where they

made oath before the magistrates to a report of their proceedings.

The fugitives had received timely notice of the chase. A week before

Kellond and Kirk left Boston, they removed from Mr. Davenport's house

to that of William Jones, son-in-law of Governor Eaton, and

afterwards Deputy-Governor of Connecticut. On the day when the

messengers were debating with Governor Leete at Guilford, Whalley and

Goffe were conducted to a mill, at a short distance from New Haven,

where they were hidden two days and nights. Thence they were led to a

spot called Hatchet Harbor, about as much farther in a northwesterly

direction, where they lay two nights more. Meantime, for fear of the

effect of the large rewards which the messengers had offered for

their capture, a more secure hiding-place had been provided for them

in a hollow on the east side of West Rock, five miles from the town.

In this retreat they remained four weeks, being supplied with food

from a lonely farm-house in the neighborhood, to which they also

sometimes withdrew in stormy weather. They caused the Deputy-Governor

to be informed of their hiding-place; and on hearing that Mr.

Davenport was in danger from a suspicion of harboring them, they left

it, and for a week or two showed themselves at different times at New

Haven and elsewhere. After two months more of concealment in their

retreat on the side of West Bock, they betook themselves, just after

the middle of August, to the house of one Tomkins, in or near

Milford. There they remained in complete secrecy for two years, after

which time they indulged themselves in more freedom, and even

conducted the devotions of a few neighbors assembled in their

chamber.

But the arrival at Boston of Commissioners from the King with

extraordinary powers was now expected, and it was likely that they

would be charged to institute a new search, which might endanger the

fugitives, and would certainly be embarrassing to their protectors.

Just at this time a feud in the churches of Hartford and Wethersfield

had led to an emigration to a spot of fertile meadow forty miles

farther up the river. Mr. Russell, hitherto minister of Wethersfield,

accompanied the new settlers as their pastor. The General Court gave

their town the name of Hadley. In this remotest northwestern frontier

of New England a refuge was prepared for the fugitives. On hearing of

the arrival of the Commissioners at Boston, they withdrew to their

cave; but some Indians in hunting observed that it had been occupied,

and its secrecy could no longer be counted on. They consequently

directed their steps towards Hadley, travelling only by night, and

there, in the month of October, 1664, were received into the house of

Mr. Russell.

There--except for a remarkable momentary appearance of one of them,

and except for the visits of a few confidential friends--they

remained lost forever to the view of men. Presents were made to them

by leading persons among the colonists, and they received remittances

from friends in England. Governor Hutchinson, when he wrote his

History, had in his hands the Diary of Goffe, begun at the time of

their leaving London, and continued for six or seven years. They were

for a time encouraged by a belief, founded on their interpretation of

the Apocalypse, that the execution of their comrades was "the slaying

of the witnesses," and that their own triumph was speedily to follow.

Letters passed between Goffe and his wife, purporting to be between a

son and mother, and signed respectively with the names of Walter and

Frances Goldsmith. Four of these letters survive; tender,

magnanimous, and devout, they are scarcely to be read without tears.

In the tenth year of his abode at Hadley Whalley had become extremely

infirm in mind and body, and he probably did not outlive that year.

Mr. Russell's house was standing till within a little more than half

a century ago. At its demolition, the removal of a slab in the cellar

discovered human remains of a large size. They are believed to have

belonged to the stout frame which swept through Prince Rupert's lines

at Naseby. Goffe survived his father-in-law nearly five years, at

least; how much longer, is not known. Once he was seen abroad, after

his retirement to Mr. Russell's house. The dreadful war, to which the

Indian King Philip bequeathed his long execrated name, was raging

with its worst terrors in the autumn of 1675. On the first day of

September, the people of Hadley kept a fast, to implore the Divine

protection in their distress. While they were engaged in their

worship, a sentry's shot gave notice that the stealthy savages were

upon them. Hutchinson, in his History, relates what follows, as he

had received it from the family of Governor Leverett, who was one of

the few visitors of Goffe in his retreat. "The people were in the

utmost confusion. Suddenly a grave, elderly person appeared in the

midst of them. In his mien and dress he differed from the rest of the

people. He not only encouraged them to defend themselves, but put

himself at their head, rallied, instructed, and led them on to

encounter the enemy, who by this means were repulsed. As suddenly the

deliverer of Hadley disappeared. The people were left in

consternation, utterly unable to account for this strange phenomenon.

It is not probable that they were ever able to explain it."

In the first years of the retirement of the Colonels at Hadley, they

enjoyed the society of a former friend, who did not feel obliged to

use the same strict precautions against discovery. John Dixwell, like

themselves, was a colonel in the Parliamentary service, a member of

the High Court of Justice, and a signer of the death-warrant of the

King. Nothing is known of his proceedings after the restoration of

the monarchy, till he came to Hadley, three or four months later than

Whalley and Goffe. After a residence of some years in their

neighborhood, he removed to New Haven, where, bearing the name of

James Davids, and affecting no particular privacy, he lived to old

age. The home-government never traced him to America; and though,

among his acquaintance, it was understood that he had a secret to

keep, there was no disposition to penetrate it. He married twice at

New Haven, and by his second nuptials established a family, one

branch of which survives. In testamentary documents, as well as in

communications, while he lived, to his minister and others, he

frankly made known his character and history. He died just too early

to hear the tidings, which would have renewed his strength like the

eagle's, of the expulsion of the House of Stuart. A fit monument

directs the traveller to the place of his burial, in the square

bounded on one side by the halls of Yale College.

TO THE CAT-BIRD.

You, who would with wanton art

Counterfeit another's part,

And with noisy utterance claim

Right to an ignoble name,--

Inharmonious!--why must you,

To a better self untrue,

Gifted with the charm of song,

Do the generous gift such wrong?

Delicate and downy throat,

Shaped for pure, melodious note,--

Silvery wing of softest gray,--

Bright eyes glancing every way,--

Graceful outline,--motion free:

Types of perfect harmony!

Ah! you much mistake your duty,

Mating discord thus with beauty,--

'Mid these heavenly sunset gleams,

Vexing the smooth air with screams,--

Burdening the dainty breeze

With insane discordancies.

I have heard you tell a tale

Tender as the nightingale,

Sweeter than the early thrush

Pipes at day-dawn from the bush.

Wake once more the liquid strain

That you poured, like music-rain,

When, last night, in the sweet weather,

You and I were out together.

Unto whom two notes are given,

One of earth, and one of heaven,

Were it not a shameful tale

That the earth-note should prevail?

For the sake of those who love us,

For the sake of God above us,

Each and all should do their best

To make music for the rest.

So will I no more reprove,

Though the chiding be in love:

Uttering harsh rebuke to you,

That were inharmonious, too.

THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.

CHAPTER XIII.

CURIOSITY.

People will talk. _Ciascun lo dice_ is a tune that is played oftener

than the national air of this country or any other.

"That's what they say. Means to marry her, if she _is_ his cousin.

Got money himself,--that's the story,--but wants to come and live in

the old place, and get the Dudley property by-and-by."--"Mother's

folks was wealthy."--"Twenty-three to twenty-five year old."--"He

a'n't more'n twenty, or twenty-one at the outside."--"Looks as if he

knew too much to be only twenty year old."--"Guess he's been through

the mill,--don't look so green, anyhow,--hey? Did y' ever mind that

cut over his left eyebrow?"

So they gossipped in Rockland. The young fellows could make nothing

of Dick Venner. He was shy and proud with the few who made advances

to him. The young ladies called him handsome and romantic, but he

looked at them like a many-tailed pacha who was in the habit of

ordering his wives by the dozen.

"What do you think of the young man over there at the Venners'?" said

Miss Arabella Thornton to her father.

"Handsome," said the Judge, "but dangerous-looking. His face is

indictable at common law. Do you know, my dear, I think there is a

blank at the Sheriff's office, with a place for his name in it?"

The Judge paused and looked grave, as if he had just listened to the

verdict of the jury and was going to pronounce sentence.

"Have you heard anything against him?" said the Judge's daughter.

"Nothing. But I don't like these mixed bloods and half-told stories.

Besides, I have seen a good many desperate fellows at the bar, and I

have a fancy they all have a look belonging to them. The worst one I

ever sentenced looked a good deal like this fellow. A wicked mouth.

All our other features are made for us; but a man makes his own

mouth."

"Who was the person you sentenced?"

"He was a young fellow that undertook to garrote a man who had won

his money at cards. The same slender shape, the same cunning, fierce

look, smoothed over with a plausible air. Depend upon it, there is an

expression in all the sort of people that live by their wits when

they can, and by worse weapons when their wits fail them, that we old

law-doctors know just as well as the medical counselors know the

marks of disease in a man's face. Dr. Kittredge looks at a man and

says he is going to die; I look at another man and say he is going to

be hanged, if nothing happens. I don't say so of this one, but I

don't like his looks. I wonder Dudley Venner takes to him so kindly."

"It's all for Elsie's sake," said Miss Thornton; "I feel quite sure

of that. He never does anything that is not meant for her in some

way. I suppose it amuses her to have her cousin about the house. She

rides a good deal since he has been here. Have you seen them

galloping about together? He looks like my idea of a Spanish bandit

on that wild horse of his."

"Possibly he has been one,--or is one," said the Judge,--smiling as

men smile whose lips have often been freighted with the life and

death of their fellow-creatures. "I met them riding the other day.

Perhaps Dudley is right, if it pleases her to have a companion. What

will happen, though, if he makes love to her? Will Elsie be easily

taken with such a fellow? You young folks are supposed to know more

about these matters than we middle-aged people."

"Nobody can tell. Elsie is not like anybody else. The girls that have

seen most of her think she hates men, all but 'Dudley,' as she calls

her father. Some of them doubt whether she loves him. They doubt

whether she can love anything human, except perhaps the old black

woman that has taken care of her since she was a baby. The village

people have the strangest stories about her: you know what they call

her?"

She whispered three words in her father's ear. The Judge changed

color as she spoke, sighed deeply, and was silent as if lost in

thought for a moment.

"I remember her mother," he said, "so well! A sweeter creature never

lived. Elsie has something of her in her look, but those are not the

Dudley eyes. They were dark, but soft, in all I ever saw of the race.

Her father's are dark too, but mild, and even tender, I should say. I

don't know what there is about Elsie's,--but do you know, my dear, I

find myself curiously influenced by them? I have had to face a good

many sharp eyes and hard ones,--murderers' eyes and pirates',--men

that had to be watched in the bar, where they stood on trial, for

fear they should spring on the prosecuting officers like tigers,--but

I never saw such eyes as Elsie's; and yet they have a kind of drawing

virtue or power about them,--I don't know what else to call it: have

you never observed this?"

His daughter smiled in her turn.

"Never observed it? Why, of course, nobody could be with Elsie Venner

and not observe it. There are a good many other strange things about

her: did you ever notice how she dresses?"

"Why, handsomely enough, I should think," the Judge answered. "I

suppose she dresses as she likes, and sends to the city for what she

wants. What do you mean in particular? We men notice effects in

dress, but not much in detail."

"You never noticed the colors and patterns of her dresses? You never

remarked anything curious about her ornaments? Well! I don't believe

you men know, half the time, whether a lady wears a ninepenny collar

or a thread-lace cape worth a thousand dollars. I don't believe you

know a silk dress from a bombazine one. I don't believe you can tell

whether a woman is in black or in colors, unless you happen to know

she is a widow. Elsie Venner has a strange taste in dress, let me

tell you. She sends for the oddest patterns of stuffs, and picks out

the most curious things at the jeweller's, whenever she goes to town

with her father. They say the old Doctor tells him to let her have

her way about all such matters. Afraid of her mind, if she is

contradicted, I suppose.--You've heard about her going to school at

that place,--the 'Institoot,' as those people call it? They say she's

bright enough in her way,--has studied at home, you know, with her

father a good deal,--knows some modern languages and Latin, I

believe: at any rate, she would have it so,--she must go to the

'Institoot.' They have a very good female teacher there, I hear; and

the new master, that young Mr. Langdon, looks and talks like a

well-educated young man. I wonder what they'll make of Elsie, between

them!"

So they talked at the Judge's, in the calm, judicial-looking

mansion-house, in the grave, still library, with the troops of wan-hued

law-books staring blindly out of their titles at them as they talked,

like the ghosts of dead attorneys fixed motionless and speechless,

each with a thin, golden film over his unwinking eyes.

In the mean time, everything went on quietly enough after Cousin

Richard's return. A man of sense,--that is, a man who knows perfectly

well that a cool head is worth a dozen warm hearts in carrying the

fortress of a woman's affections, (not yours, "Astarte," nor yours,

"Viola,")--who knows that men are rejected by women every day because

they, the men, love them, and are accepted every day because they do

not, and therefore can study the arts of pleasing,--a man of sense,

when he finds he has established his second parallel too soon,

retires quietly to his first, and begins working on his covered ways

again. [The whole art of love may be read in any Encyclopaedia under

the title _Fortification_, where the terms just used are explained.]

After the little adventure of the necklace, Dick retreated at once to

his first parallel. Elsie loved riding,--and would go off with him on

a gallop now and then. He was a master of all those strange Indian

horseback-feats which shame the tricks of the circus-riders, and used

to astonish and almost amuse her sometimes by disappearing from his

saddle, like a phantom horseman, lying flat against the side of the

bounding creature that bore him, as if he were a hunting leopard with

his claws in the horse's flank and flattening himself out against his

heaving ribs. Elsie knew a little Spanish too, which she had learned

from the young person who had taught her dancing, and Dick enlarged

her vocabulary with a few soft phrases, and would sing her a song

sometimes, touching the air upon an ancient-looking guitar they had

found with the ghostly things in the garret,--a quaint old

instrument, marked E.M. on the back, and supposed to have belonged to

a certain Elizabeth Mascarene, before mentioned in connection with a

work of art,--a fair, dowerless lady, who smiled and sung and faded

away, unwedded, a hundred years ago, as dowerless ladies, not a few,

are smiling and singing and fading now,--God grant each of them His

love,--and one human heart as its interpreter!

As for school, Elsie went or stayed away as she liked. Sometimes,

when they thought she was at her desk in the great school-room, she

would be on The Mountain,--alone always. Dick wanted to go with her,

but she would never let him. Once, when she had followed the zigzag

path a little way up, she looked back and caught a glimpse of him

following her. She turned and passed him without a word, but giving

him a look which seemed to make the scars on his wrist tingle, went

to her room, where she locked herself up, and did not come out again

till evening,--old Sophy having brought her food, and set it down,

not speaking, but looking into her eyes inquiringly, like a dumb

beast trying to feel out his master's will in his face. The evening

was clear and the moon shining. As Dick sat at his chamber-window,

looking at the mountain-side, he saw a gray-dressed figure flit

between the trees and steal along the narrow path that led upward.

Elsie's pillow was impressed that night, but she had not been missed

by the household,--for Dick knew enough to keep his own counsel. The

next morning she avoided him and went off early to school. It was the

same morning that the young master found the flower between the

leaves of his Virgil.

The girl got over her angry fit, and was pleasant enough with her

cousin for a few days after this; but she shunned rather than sought

him. She had taken a new interest in her books, and especially in

certain poetical readings which the master conducted with the elder

scholars. This gave Master Langdon a good chance to study her ways

when her eye was on her book, to notice the inflections of her voice,

to watch for any expression of her sentiments; for, to tell the

truth, he had a kind of fear that the girl had taken a fancy to him,

and, though she interested him, he did not wish to study her heart

from the inside.

The more he saw her, the more the sadness of her beauty wrought upon

him. She looked as if she might hate, but could not love. She hardly

smiled at anything, spoke rarely, but seemed to feel that her natural

power of expression lay all in her bright eyes, the force of which so

many had felt, but none perhaps had tried to explain to themselves. A

person accustomed to watch the faces of those who were ailing in body

or mind, and to search in every line and tint for some underlying

source of disorder, could hardly help analyzing the impression such a

face produced upon him. The light of those beautiful eyes was like

the lustre of ice; in all her features there was nothing of that

human warmth which shows that sympathy has reached the soul beneath

the mask of flesh it wears. The look was that of remoteness, of utter

isolation. There was in its stony apathy, it seemed to him, the

pathos which we find in the blind who show no film or speck over the

organs of sight; for Nature had meant her to be lovely, and left out

nothing but love. And yet the master could not help feeling that some

instinct was working in this girl which was in some way leading her

to seek his presence. She did not lift her glittering eyes upon him

as at first. It seemed strange that she did not, for they were surely

her natural weapons of conquest. Her color did not come and go like

that of young girls under excitement. She had a clear brunette

complexion, a little sun-touched, it may be,--for the master noticed

once, when her necklace was slightly displaced, that a faint ring or

band of a little lighter shade than the rest of the surface encircled

her neck. What was the slight peculiarity of her enunciation, when

she read? Not a lisp, certainly, but the least possible imperfection

in articulating some of the lingual sounds,--just enough to be

noticed at first, and quite forgotten after being a few times heard.

Not a word about the flower on either side. It was not uncommon for

the schoolgirls to leave a rose or pink or wild flower on the

teacher's desk. Finding it in the Virgil was nothing, after all; it

was a little delicate flower, that looked as if it were made to

press, and it was probably shut in by accident at the particular

place where he found it. He took it into his head to examine it in a

botanical point of view. He found it was not common,--that it grew

only in certain localities,--and that one of these was among the

rocks of the eastern spur of The Mountain.

It happened to come into his head how the Swiss youth climb the sides

of the Alps to find the flower called the _Edelweiss_ for the maidens

whom they wish to please. It is a pretty fancy, that of scaling some

dangerous height before the dawn, so as to gather the flower in its

freshness, that the favored maiden may wear it to church on Sunday

morning, a proof at once of her lover's devotion and his courage. Mr.

Bernard determined to explore the region where this flower was said

to grow, that he might see where the wild girl sought the blossoms of

which Nature was so jealous.

It was on a warm, fair Saturday afternoon that he undertook his

land-voyage of discovery. He had more curiosity, it may be, than he

would have owned; for he had heard of the girl's wandering habits, and

the guesses about her sylvan haunts, and was thinking what the chances

were that he should meet her in some strange place, or come upon

traces of her which would tell secrets she would not care to have

known.

The woods are all alive to one who walks through them with his mind

in an excited state, and his eyes and ears wide open. The trees are

always talking, not merely whispering with their leaves, (for every

tree talks to itself in that way, even when it stands alone in the

middle of a pasture,) but grating their boughs against each

other, as old horn-handed farmers press their dry, rustling palms

together,--dropping a nut or a leaf or a twig, clicking to the tap of a

woodpecker, or rustling as a squirrel flashes along a branch. It was

now the season of singing-birds, and the woods were haunted with

mysterious, tender music. The voices of the birds which love the

deeper shades of the forest are sadder than those of the open fields:

these are the nuns that have taken themselves away from the world and

tell their griefs to the infinite listening Silences of the

wilderness,--for the one deep inner silence that Nature breaks with

her fitful superficial sounds becomes multiplied as the image of a

star in ruffled waters. Strange! The woods at first convey the

impression of profound repose, and yet, if you watch their ways with

open ear, you find the life which is in them is restless and nervous

as that of a woman: the little twigs are crossing and twining and

separating like slender fingers that cannot be still; the stray leaf

is to be flattened into its place like a truant curl; the limbs sway

and twist, impatient of their constrained attitude; and the rounded

masses of foliage swell upward and subside from time to time with

long soft sighs, and, it may be, the falling of a few rain-drops

which had lain hidden among the deeper shadows. I pray you, notice,

in the sweet summer days which will soon see you among the mountains,

this inward tranquillity that belongs to the heart of the woodland,

with this nervousness, for I do not know what else to call it, of

outer movement. One would say, that Nature, like untrained persons,

could not sit still without nestling about or doing something with

her limbs or features, and that high breeding was only to be looked

for in trim gardens, where the soul of the trees is ill at ease

perhaps, but their manners are unexceptionable, and a rustling branch

or leaf falling out of season is an indecorum. The real forest is

hardly still except in the Indian summer; then there is death in the

house, and they are waiting for the sharp shrunken months to come

with white raiment for the summer's burial.

There were many hemlocks in this neighborhood, the grandest and most

solemn of all the forest-trees in the mountain regions. Up to a

certain period of growth they are eminently beautiful, their boughs

disposed in the most graceful pagoda-like series of close terraces,

thick and dark with green crystalline leaflets. In spring the tender

shoots come out of a paler green, finger-like, as if they were

pointing to the violets at their feet. But when the trees have grown

old, and their rough boles measure a yard through their diameter,

they are no longer beautiful, but they have a sad solemnity all their

own, too full of meaning to require the heart's comment to be framed

in words. Below, all their earthward-looking branches are sapless and

shattered, splintered by the weight of many winters' snows; above,

they are still green and full of life, but their summits overtop all

the deciduous trees around them, and in their companionship with

heaven they are alone. On these the lightning loves to fall. One such

Mr. Bernard saw,--or rather, what had been one such; for the bolt had

torn the tree like an explosion from within, and the ground was

strewed all around the broken stump with flakes of rough bark and

strips and chips of shivered wood, into which the old tree had been

rent by the bursting rocket from the thunder-cloud.

----The master had struck up The Mountain obliquely from the western

side of the Dudley mansion-house. In this way he ascended until he

reached a point many hundred feet above the level of the plain, and

commanding all the country beneath and around. Almost at his feet he

saw the mansion-house, the chimney standing out of the middle of the

roof, or rather, like a black square hole in it,--the trees almost

directly over their stems, the fences as lines, the whole nearly as

an architect would draw a ground-plan of the house and the inclosures

round it. It frightened him to see how the huge masses of rock and

old forest-growths hung over the home below. As he descended a little

and drew near the ledge of evil name, he was struck with the

appearance of a long narrow fissure that ran parallel with it and

above it for many rods, not seemingly of very old standing,--for

there were many fibres of roots which had evidently been snapped

asunder when the rent took place, and some of which were still

succulent in both separated portions.

Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, when he set forth, not to come back

before he had examined the dreaded ledge. He had half persuaded

himself that it was scientific curiosity. He wished to examine the

rocks, _to see what flowers grew there_, and perhaps to pick up an

adventure in the zoölogical line; for he had on a pair of high, stout

boots, and he carried a stick in his hand, which was forked at one

extremity, so as to be very convenient to hold down a _crotalus_

with, if he should happen to encounter one. He knew the aspect of the

ledge, from a distance; for its bald and leprous-looking declivities

stood out in their nakedness from the wooded sides of The Mountain,

when this was viewed from certain points of the village. But the

nearer aspect of the blasted region had something frightful in it.

The cliffs were water-worn, as if they had been gnawed for thousands

of years by hungry waves. In some places they overhung their base so

as to look like leaning towers that might topple over at any minute.

In other parts they were scooped into niches or caverns. Here and

there they were cracked in deep fissures, some of them of such width

that one might enter them, if he cared to run the risk of meeting the

regular tenants, who might treat him as an intruder.

Parts of the ledge were cloven perpendicularly, with nothing but

cracks or slightly projecting edges in which or on which a foot could

find hold. High up on one of these precipitous walls of rock he saw

some tufts of flowers, and knew them at once for the same that he had

found between the leaves of his Virgil. Not there, surely! No woman

would have clung against that steep, rough parapet to gather an idle

blossom. And yet the master looked round everywhere, and even up the

side of that rock, to see if there were no signs of a woman's

footstep. He peered about curiously, as if his eye might fall on some

of those fragments of dress which women leave after them, whenever

they run against each other or against anything else,--in crowded

ballrooms, in the brushwood after picnics, on the fences after

rambles, scattered round over every place that has witnessed an act

of violence, where rude hands have been laid upon them. Nothing.

Stop, though, one moment. That stone is smooth and polished, as if it

had been somewhat worn by the pressure of human feet. There is one

twig broken among the stems of that clump of shrubs. He put his foot

upon the stone and took hold of the close-clinging shrub. In this way

he turned a sharp angle of the rock and found himself on a natural

platform, which lay in front of one of the wider fissures,--whether

the mouth of a cavern or not he could not yet tell. A flat stone made

an easy seat, upon which he sat down, as he was very glad to do, and

looked mechanically about him. A small fragment splintered from the

rock was at his feet. He took it and threw it down the declivity a

little below where he sat. He looked about for a stem or a straw of

some kind to bite upon,--a country-instinct,--relic, no doubt, of the

old vegetable-feeding habits of Eden. Is that a stem or a straw? He

picked it up. It was a hairpin.

To say that Mr. Langdon had a strange sort of thrill shoot through

him at the sight of this harmless little implement would be a

statement not at variance with the fact of the case. That smooth

stone had been often trodden, and by what foot he could not doubt. He

rose up from his seat to look round for other signs of a woman's

visits. What if there is a cavern here, where she has a retreat,

fitted up, perhaps, as anchorites fitted their cells,--nay, it may

be, carpeted and mirrored, and with one of those tiger-skins for a

couch, such as they say the girl loves to lie on? Let us look, at any

rate.

Mr. Bernard walked to the mouth of the cavern or fissure and looked

into it. His look was met by the glitter of two diamond eyes, small,

sharp, cold, shining out of the darkness, but gliding with a smooth,

steady motion towards the light, and himself. He stood fixed, struck

dumb, staring back into them with dilating pupils and sudden numbness

of fear that cannot move, as in the terror of dreams. The two sparks

of light came forward until they grew to circles of flame, and all at

once lifted themselves up as if in angry surprise. Then for the first

time thrilled in Mr. Bernard's ears the dreadful sound that nothing

which breathes, be it man or brute, can hear unmoved,--the long,

loud, stinging whirr, as the huge, thick-bodied reptile shook his

many-jointed rattle and flung his jaw back for the fatal stroke. His

eyes were drawn as with magnets toward the circles of flame. His ears

rung as in the overture to the swooning dream of chloroform. Nature

was before man with her anesthetics: the cat's first shake stupefies

the mouse; the lion's first shake deadens the man's fear and feeling;

and the _crotalus_ paralyzes before he strikes. He waited as in a

trance,--waited as one that longs to have the blow fall, and all

over, as the man who shall be in two pieces in a second waits for the

axe to drop. But while he looked straight into the flaming eyes, it

seemed to him that they were losing their light and terror, that they

were growing tame and dull; the open jaws closed, the neck fell

backward and downward on the coil from which it rose, the charm was

dissolving, the numbness was passing away, he could move once more.

He heard a light breathing close to his ear, and, half turning, saw

the face of Elsie Venner, looking motionless into the reptile's eyes,

which had shrunk and faded under the stronger enchantment of her own.