CHAPTER X.

THE SIREN COMES TO THE SEA-SHORE.

Greenleaf worked assiduously upon his landscapes, and, notwithstanding

the pressure in the money-market, was fortunate enough to dispose of

them to gentlemen whose incomes were not affected by the vicissitudes

of business. For this he was principally indebted to Sandford, who took

pains to bring his works to the notice of connoisseurs. But, with all

his success, the object of his ambition was as far off as at first.

Imperceptibly he had acquired expensive habits. He was not prodigal,

not extravagant; but, having a keen sense of the beautiful, he

gradually became more fastidious in dress, and in all those nameless

elegancies which seem of right to belong to the accomplished man, as to

the gentleman in easy circumstances. This desire for ease and luxury

did not conflict with simplicity; he seemed born for all the enjoyment

which the most cultivated society could bestow. He had the power to

spend the income of a fortune worthily; unhappily, he did not have it

to spend. He had written constantly to his betrothed, and when he told

her of the prices he had received for his pictures, he was at a loss

how to make her comprehend the new relations into which he had

grown,--to explain that he was practically as poor as when he first

came to the city. How could he assure her of his desire to end the

engagement in marriage, if he spoke of postponement now that he had an

income beyond his first expectations? Imperceptibly to himself, his

letters became more like intellectual conversations, or essays,

rather,--pleasant enough in themselves, but far different from the

simple and fervent epistles he wrote while the memory of Alice was

fresher. _She_ felt this, although she had not reasoned upon it, and

her sensitive womanly heart was full of vague forebodings.

Would he confess to himself, that, as he looked at her cherished

picture, another face, with a more brilliant air and a more dazzling

beauty, came between him and the silent image before him? Dared he to

think, that, in his frequent visits to Miss Sandford, the ties which

bound him to his betrothed were daily weakening?--that he found a charm

in the very caprices and waywardness of the new love, which the

unvarying constancy and placid affection of the old had never created?

The one put her heart unreservedly into his keeping; she knew nothing

of concealment, and he read her as he would an unsophisticated child;

there was not a nook or cranny in her heart, he thought, that he had

not explored. The other was full of surprises; she had as many phases

as an April day; and from mere curiosity, if from no other motive,

Greenleaf was piqued to follow on to understand her real character. The

apprehensions he felt at first wore away; he became accustomed to her

measured sentences and her apparently artificial manner. What seemed

affectation now became a natural expression. The secret influence she

exerted increased, and, at length, possessed him wholly while in her

company. It drew him as the moon draws the tides, silently,

unconsciously, but with a power he could not resist. It was only when

he was away from her that he could reason himself into a belief in his

independence.

Greenleaf and Easelmann were at Nahant at the close of the season. A

few straggling visitors only remained; the fashionable world had

returned to the city. The friends wandered over the rocky peninsula,

walked the long beach that leads to the main land, sketched the sea

from the shore, and the shore from the sea, and watched and transferred

the changing phases of Nature in sunshine and in storm. They were

fortunate enough to see one magnificent tempest, by which the ocean was

lashed into fury, breaking in thunder over the rugged coast-line, and

dashing spray sheer over the huge back of Egg Rock.

Miss Sandford's threat was carried into execution; the family came to

the hotel, and, for a week, Greenleaf and his friend were most devoted

in their attentions. Marcia was charmed with their sketches, and, with

a tact as delicate as it is rare, gave them time for their cherished

pursuits, and planned excursions only for their unemployed hours. They

collected colored mosses, star-fish, and other marine curiosities; they

sailed, fished, scampered over the rocks, drove over the beach at

twilight, sang, danced, and bowled. And when weary of active amusement,

they reclined on the grass and listened to the melancholy rote of the

sea,--the steady pulsations of its mighty heart.

Easelmann, with his usual raillery, congratulated his friend on his

prospects, and declared that the pupil was surpassing the teacher in

the beau's arts.

"Finely, Greenleaf! You are just coming to the interesting part of the

process. You are a little flushed, however,--not quite cool enough. A

wily adversary she is; if you allow your feelings to run away with you,

it's all up. She will hold the reins as coolly as you held your

trotting pony yesterday. Keep the bits out of your mouth, my boy."

"Don't trouble yourself. I shall keep cool. I am not going to make a

fool of myself by proposing."

"Oh, you aren't? We shall see. But she'll refuse you, and then you'll

come to your senses."

"I'm deusedly afraid she would accept me."

"The vanity of mankind! Don't tell me that women are vain. Every man

thinks himself irresistible,--that he has only to call, to have the

women come round him like colts around a farmer with a measure of corn.

Shake the kernels in your dish, and cry, 'Kerjock!' Perhaps she _will_

come."

"I suppose you think, with Hosea Bigelow, that

"''Ta'n't a knowin' kind o' cattle

That is ketched with mouldy corn.'"

"I needn't tell you that Marcia Sandford is knowing,--too knowing to

let an enthusiastic lover relapse into a humdrum husband. You amuse her

now: for she likes to enjoy poetry and sentiment, dances, rides, and

rambles, in company with a man of fresh susceptibilities;--a good

phrase that, 'fresh susceptibilities.'--The instant you become serious

and ask her to marry you, the dream is over; she will hate you."

"Well, what is to become of a lady like this,--a creature you think too

bright, if not too good, for human nature's daily food?"

"An easy prophecy. The destiny of a pretty woman is to catch lovers."

"'The cat doth play, and after slay,'" said Greenleaf, laughing.

"Play while you can, my dear boy; if she _is_ a cat, you'll get the

final _coup_ soon enough. To finish the fortune-telling,--she will

continue her present delightful pursuits as long as youth and beauty

last; and the beauty will last a long time after the youth has gone.

She _may_ pick up some young man of fortune and marry him; but it is

not likely; the rich always marry the rich. Just this side of the

_blasé_ period, while still in the fulness of her charms, she will open

her battery of smiles upon some wealthy old widower and compel him to

place her at the head of his establishment. Then, with a secure

position and increased facilities, she will draw new throngs of

admirers, as long as she has power to fascinate, or until there are no

more fools left."

"A pleasing picture of domestic felicity for the husband!"

"Precisely what he deserves. When an old fool marries a young flirt, he

deserves to wear whatever honors she may bestow upon him."

"Do you remember how you artfully persuaded me into this intimacy? And

now you are making game of me for following your own suggestions."

"Me? I never suggest; I never persuade."

"You did, you crafty old fox! You advised me to fall in love with her."

"Did I? Well, I think now you have gone far enough. A sip from the cup

of enchantment is quite sufficient; you needn't swallow the whole of

it."

"But people can't always control themselves. Can you trust yourself to

stop this side of insensibility, when you take ether? or be sure you

won't get drunk, if you commence the evening with a party of dissipated

fellows?"

"That will do, my friend. I know there are people who are fond of

confessing their weakness; don't you do it. Where is the supremacy of

mind and will, and all that nonsense, if a man can't amuse himself with

a clever woman's artifices without tumbling into the snare he is

watching?"

"We'll see how you succeed with the charming widow,--whether the wise

man, when his own _jecur_ is pierced with the arrow, may not show it,

as well as other people. And by-the-by, you will have an excellent

opportunity for your experiment. Marcia and I are going to take a sail

this afternoon, and you can entertain Mrs. Sandford while we are gone."

Easelmann softly whistled.

[To be continued.]

* * * * *

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.

I intended to have signalized my first appearance by a certain large

statement, which I flatter myself is the nearest approach to a

universal formula of life yet promulgated at this breakfast-table. It

would have had a grand effect. For this purpose I fixed my eyes on a

certain divinity-student, with the intention of exchanging a few

phrases, and then forcing my picture-card, namely, _The great end of

being_.--I will thank you for the sugar,--I said.--Man is a dependent

creature.

It is a small favor to ask,--said the divinity-student,--and passed the

sugar to me.

--Life is a great bundle of little things,--I said.

The divinity-student smiled, as if that was the concluding epigram of

the sugar question.

You smile,--I said.--Perhaps life seems to you a little bundle of great

things?

The divinity-student started a laugh, but suddenly reined it back with

a pull, as one throws a horse on his haunches.--Life is a great bundle

of great things,--he said.

(_Now, then_!) The great end of being, after all, is----

Hold on!--said my neighbor, a young fellow whose name seems to be John,

and nothing else,--for that is what they all call him,--hold on! the

Sculpin is go'n' to say somethin'.

Now the Sculpin (_Cottus Virginianus_) is a little water-beast which

pretends to consider itself a fish, and, under that pretext, hangs

about the piles upon which West-Boston Bridge is built, swallowing the

bait and hook intended for flounders. On being drawn from the water, it

exposes an immense head, a diminutive bony carcass, and a surface so

full of spines, ridges, ruffles, and frills, that the naturalists have

not been able to count them without quarrelling about the number, and

that the colored youth, whose sport they spoil, do not like to touch

them, and especially to tread on them, unless they happen to have shoes

on, to cover the thick white soles of their broad black feet.

When, therefore, I heard the young fellow's exclamation, I looked round

the table with curiosity to see what it meant. At the further end of it

I saw a head, and a small portion of a little deformed body, mounted on

a high chair, which brought the occupant up to a fair level enough for

him to get at his food. His whole appearance was so grotesque, I felt

for a minute as if there was a showman behind him who would pull him

down presently and put up Judy, or the hangman, or the Devil, or some

other wooden personage of the famous spectacle. I contrived to lose the

first part of his sentence, but what I heard began so:--

----by the Frog-Pond, when there were frogs in it, and the folks used

to come down from the tents on 'Lection and Independence days with

their pails to get water to make egg-pop with. Born in Boston; went to

school in Boston as long as the boys would let me.--The little man

groaned, turned, as if to look round, and went on.--Ran away from

school one day to see Phillips hung for killing Denegri with a

loggerhead. That was in flip days, when there were always two or three

loggerheads in the fire. I'm a Boston boy, I tell you,--born at North

End, and mean to be buried on Copps' Hill, with the good old

underground people,--the Worthylakes, and the rest of 'em. Yes,

Sir,--up on the old hill, where they buried Captain Daniel Malcolm in a

stone grave, ten feet deep, to keep him safe from the red-coats, in

those old times when the world was frozen up tight and there wasn't but

one spot open, and that was right over Faneuil Hall,--and black enough

it looked, I tell you! There's where my bones shall lie, Sir, and

rattle away when the big guns go off at the Navy Yard opposite! You

can't make me ashamed of the old place! Full of crooked little

streets;--I was born and used to run round in one of 'em----

----I should think so,--said that young man whom I hear them call

"John,"--softly, not meaning to be heard, nor to be cruel, but thinking

in a half-whisper, evidently.--I should think so; and got kinked up,

turnin' so many corners.--The little man did not hear what was said,

but went on,--

----full of crooked little streets; but I tell you Boston has opened,

and kept open, more turnpikes that lead straight to free thought and

free speech and free deeds than any other city of live men or dead

men,--I don't care how broad their streets are, nor how high their

steeples!

----How high is Bosting meet'n'-house?--said a person with black

whiskers and imperial, a velvet waistcoat, a guard-chain rather _too_

massive, and a diamond pin so _very_ large that the most trusting

nature might confess an inward _suggestion_,--of course, nothing

amounting to a suspicion. For this is a gentleman from a great city,

and sits next to the landlady's daughter, who evidently believes in

him, and is the object of his especial attention.

How high?--said the little man.--As high as the first step of the

stairs that lead to the New Jerusalem. Isn't that high enough?

It is,--I said.--The great end of being is to harmonize man with the

order of things; and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be

so still. But who shall tune the pitch-pipe? _Quis cus_----(On the

whole, as this quotation was not entirely new, and, being in a foreign

language, might not be familiar to all the boarders, I thought I would

not finish it.)

----Go to the Bible!--said a sharp voice from a sharp-faced,

sharp-eyed, sharp-elbowed, strenuous-looking woman in a black dress,

appearing as if it began as a piece of mourning and perpetuated itself

as a bit of economy.

You speak well, Madam,--I said;--yet there is room for a gloss or

commentary on what you say. "He who would bring back the wealth of the

Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies." What you bring away

from the Bible depends to some extent on what you carry to it--Benjamin

Franklin! Be so good as to step up to my chamber and bring me down the

small uncovered pamphlet of twenty pages which you will find lying

under the "Cruden's Concordance." [The boy took a large bite, which

left a very perfect crescent in the slice of bread-and-butter he held,

and departed on his errand, with the portable fraction of his breakfast

to sustain him on the way.]

Here it is. "Go to the Bible. A Dissertation, etc., etc. By J.J.

Flournoy. Athens, Georgia. 1858."

Mr. Flournoy, Madam, has obeyed the precept which you have judiciously

delivered. You may be interested, Madam, to know what are the

conclusions at which Mr. J.J. Flournoy of Athens, Georgia, has arrived.

You shall hear, Madam. He has gone to the Bible, and he has come back

from the Bible, bringing a remedy for existing social evils, which, if

it is the real specific, as it professes to be, is of great interest to

humanity, and to the female part of humanity in particular. It is what

he calls _trigamy_, Madam, or the marrying of three wives, so that

"good old men" may be solaced at once by the companionship of the

wisdom of maturity, and of those less perfected but hardly less

engaging qualities which are found at an earlier period of life. He has

followed your precept, Madam; I hope you accept his conclusions.

The female boarder in black attire looked so puzzled, and, in fact,

"all abroad," after the delivery of this "counter" of mine, that I left

her to recover her wits, and went on with the conversation, which I was

beginning to get pretty well in hand.

But in the mean time I kept my eye on the female boarder to see what

effect I had produced. First, she was a little stunned at having her

argument knocked over. Secondly, she was a little shocked at the

tremendous character of the triple matrimonial suggestion. Thirdly.----

I don't like to say what I thought. Something seemed to have pleased

her fancy. Whether it was, that, if trigamy should come into fashion,

there would be three times as many chances to enjoy the luxury of

saying, "No!" is more than I can tell you. I may as well mention that

B.F. came to me after breakfast to borrow the pamphlet for "a

lady,"--one of the boarders, he said,--looking as if he had a secret he

wished to be relieved of.

----I continued.--If a human soul is necessarily to be trained up in

the faith of those from whom it inherits its body, why, there is the

end of all reason. If, sooner or later, every soul is to look for truth

with its own eyes, the first thing is to recognize that no presumption

in favor of any particular belief arises from the fact of our

inheriting it. Otherwise you would not give the Mahometan a fair chance

to become a convert to a better religion.

The second thing would be to depolarize every fixed religious idea in

the mind by changing the word which stands for it.----I don't know

what you mean by "depolarizing" an idea,--said the divinity-student.

I will tell you,--I said.--When a given symbol which represents a

thought has lain for a certain length of time in the mind, it undergoes

a change like that which rest in a certain position gives to iron. It

becomes magnetic in its relations,--it is traversed by strange forces

which did not belong to it. The word, and consequently the idea it

represents, is _polarized_.

The religious currency of mankind, in thought, in speech, and in print,

consists entirely of polarized words. Borrow one of these from another

language and religion, and you will find it leaves all its magnetism

behind it. Take that famous word, O'm, of the Hindoo mythology. Even a

priest cannot pronounce it without sin; and a holy Pundit would shut

his ears and run away from you in horror, if you should say it aloud.

What do you care for O'm? If you wanted to get the Pundit to look at

his religion fairly, you must first depolarize this and all similar

words for him. The argument for and against new translations of the

Bible really turns on this. Skepticism is afraid to trust its truths in

depolarized words, and so cries out against a new translation. I think,

myself, if every idea our Book contains could be shelled out of its old

symbol and put into a new, clean, unmagnetic word, we should have some

chance of reading it as philosophers, or wisdom-lovers, ought to read

it,--which we do not and cannot now, any more than a Hindoo can read

the "Gayatri" as a fair man and lover of truth should do. When society

has once fairly dissolved the New Testament, which it never has done

yet, it will perhaps crystallize it over again in new forms of

language.

----I didn't know you was a settled minister over this parish,--said

the young fellow near me.

A sermon by a lay-preacher may be worth listening to,--I replied,

calmly.--It gives the _parallax_ of thought and feeling as they appear

to the observers from two very different points of view. If you wish to

get the distance of a heavenly body, you know that you must take two

observations from distant points of the earth's orbit,--in midsummer

and midwinter, for instance. To get the parallax of heavenly truths,

you must take an observation from the position of the laity as well as

of the clergy. Teachers and students of theology get a certain look,

certain conventional tones of voice, a clerical gait, a professional

neckcloth, and habits of mind as professional as their externals. They

are scholarly men and read Bacon, and know well enough what the "idols

of the tribe" are. Of course they have their false gods, as all men

that follow one exclusive calling are prone to do.--The clergy have

played the part of the fly-wheel in our modern civilization. They have

never suffered it to stop. They have often carried on its movement,

when other moving powers failed, by the momentum stored in their vast

body. Sometimes, too, they have kept it back by their _vis inertae_,

when its wheels were like to grind the bones of some old canonized

error into fertilizers for the soil that yields the bread of life. But

the mainspring of the world's onward religious movement is not in them,

nor in any one body of men, let me tell you. It is the people that

makes the clergy, and not the clergy that makes the people. Of course,

the profession reacts on its source with variable energy.--But there

never was a guild of dealers or a company of craftsmen that did not

need sharp looking after.

Our old friend, Dr. Holyoke, whom we gave the dinner to some time

since, must have known many people that saw the great bonfire in

Harvard College yard.

----Bonfire?--shrieked the little man.--The bonfire when Robert

Calef's book was burned?

The same,--I said,--when Robert Calef the Boston merchant's book was

burned in the yard of Harvard College, by order of Increase Mather,

President of the College and Minister of the Gospel. You remember the

old witchcraft revival of '92, and how stout Master Robert Calef,

trader, of Boston, had the pluck to tell the ministers and judges what

a set of fools and worse than fools they were--

Remember it?--said the little man.--I don't think I shall forget it, as

long as I can stretch this forefinger to point with, and see what it

wears.--There was a ring on it.

May I look at it?--I said.

Where it is,--said the little man;--it will never come off, till it

falls off from the bone in the darkness and in the dust.

He pushed the high chair on which he sat slightly back from the table,

and dropped himself, standing, to the floor,--his head being only a

little above the level of the table, as he stood. With pain and labor,

lifting one foot over the other, as a drummer handles his sticks, he

took a few steps from his place,--his motions and the dead beat of the

misshapen boots announcing to my practised eye and ear the malformation

which is called in learned language _talipes varus_, or inverted

club-foot.

Stop! stop!--I said,--let me come to you.

The little man hobbled back, and lifted himself by the left arm, with

an ease approaching to grace which surprised me, into his high chair. I

walked to his side, and he stretched out the forefinger of his right

hand, with the ring upon it. The ring had been put on long ago, and

could not pass the misshapen joint. It was one of those funeral rings

which used to be given to relatives and friends after the decease of

persons of any note or importance. Beneath a round bit of glass was a

death's head. Engraved on one side of this, "L.B. AEt. 22,"--on the

other, "Ob. 1692."

My grandmother's grandmother,--said the little man.--Hanged for a

witch. It doesn't seem a great while ago. I knew my grandmother, and

loved her. Her mother was daughter to the witch that Chief Justice

Sewall hanged and Cotton Mather delivered over to the Devil.--That was

Salem, though, and not Boston. No, not Boston. Robert Calef, the Boston

merchant, it was that blew them all to----

Never mind where he blew them to,--I said;--for the little man was

getting red in the face, and I didn't know what might come next.

This episode broke me up, as the jockeys say, out of my square

conversational trot; but I settled down to it again.

----A man that knows men, in the street, at their work, human nature in

its shirt-sleeves,--who makes bargains with deacons, instead of talking

over texts with them,--a man who has found out that there are plenty of

praying rogues and swearing saints in the world,--above all, who has

found out, by living into the pith and core of life, that all of thy

Deity which can be folded up between the sheets of any human book is to

the Deity of the firmament, of the strata, of the hot aortic flood of

throbbing human life, of this infinite, instantaneous consciousness in

which the soul's being consists,--an incandescent point in the filament

connecting the negative pole of a past eternity with the positive pole

of an eternity that is to come,--that all of the Deity which any human

book can hold is to this larger Deity of the working battery of the

universe only as the films in a book of gold-leaf are to the broad

seams and curdled lumps of ore that lie in unsunned mines and virgin

placers,----Oh!--I was saying that a man who lives out-of-doors, among

live people, gets some things into his head he might not find in the

index of his "Body of Divinity."

I tell you what,--the idea of the professions' digging a moat round

their close corporations, like that Japanese one at Jeddo, which you

could put Park-Street Church on the bottom of and look over the vane

from its side, and try to stretch another such spire across it without

spanning the chasm,--that idea, I say, is pretty nearly worn out. Now

when a civilization or a civilized custom falls into senile _dementia_,

there is commonly a judgment ripe for it, and it comes as plagues come,

from a breath,--as fires come, from a spark.

Here, look at medicine. Big wigs, gold-headed canes, Latin

prescriptions, shops full of abominations, recipes a yard long,

"curing" patients by drugging as sailors bring a wind by whistling,

selling lies at a guinea apiece,--a routine, in short, of giving

unfortunate sick people a mess of things either too odious to swallow

or too acrid to hold, or, if that were possible, both at once.

----You don't know what I mean, indignant and not unintelligent

country-practitioner? Then you don't know the history of medicine,--and

that is not my fault. But don't expose yourself in any outbreak of

eloquence; for, by the mortar in which Anaxagoras was pounded! I did

not bring home Schenckius and Forestus and Hildanus, and all the old

folios in calf and vellum I will show you, to be bullied by the

proprietor of a "Wood and Bache," and a shelf of peppered sheepskin

reprints by Philadelphia Editors. Besides, many of the profession and I

know a little something of each other, and you don't think I am such a

simpleton as to lose their good opinion by saying what the better heads

among them would condemn as unfair and untrue? Now mark how the great

plague came on the generation of drugging doctors, and in what form it

fell.

A scheming drug-vendor, (inventive genius,) an utterly untrustworthy

and incompetent observer, (profound searcher of Nature,) a shallow

dabbler in erudition, (sagacious scholar,) started the monstrous

fiction (founded the immortal system) of Homeopathy. I am very fair,

you see,--you can help yourself to either of these sets of phrases.

All the reason in the world would not have had so rapid and general an

effect on the public mind to disabuse it of the idea that a drug is a

good thing in itself, instead of being, as it is, a bad thing, as was

produced by the trick (system) of this German charlatan (theorist). Not

that the wiser part of the profession needed him to teach them; but the

routinists and their employers, the "general practitioners," who lived

by selling pills and mixtures, and their drug-consuming customers had

to recognize that people could get well, unpoisoned. These dumb cattle

would not learn it of themselves, and so the murrain of Homeopathy fell

on them.

----You don't know what plague has fallen on the practitioners of

theology? I will tell you, then. It is SPIRITUALISM. While some are

crying out against it as a delusion of the Devil, and some are laughing

at it as an hysteric folly, and some are getting angry with it as a

mere trick of interested or mischievous persons, Spiritualism is

quietly undermining the traditional ideas of the future state which

have been and are still accepted,--not merely in those who believe in

it, but in the general sentiment of the community, to a larger extent

than most good people seem to be aware of. It needn't be true, to do

this, any more than Homeopathy need, to do its work. The Spiritualists

have some pretty strong instincts to pry over, which no doubt have been

roughly handled by theologians at different times. And the Nemesis of

the pulpit comes, in a shape it little thought of, beginning with the

snap of a toe-joint, and ending with such a crack of old beliefs that

the roar of it is heard in all the ministers' studies of Christendom!

Sir, you cannot have people of cultivation, of pure character, sensible

enough in common things, large-hearted women, grave judges, shrewd

business-men, men of science, professing to be in communication with

the spiritual world and keeping up constant intercourse with it,

without its gradually reacting on the whole conception of that other

life. It is the folly of the world, constantly, which confounds its

wisdom. Not only out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, but out of

the mouths of fools and cheats, we may often get our truest lessons.

For the fool's judgment is a dog-vane that turns with a breath, and the

cheat watches the clouds and sets his weathercock by them,--so that one

shall often see by their pointing which way the winds of heaven are

blowing, when the slow-wheeling arrows and feathers of what we call the

Temples of Wisdom are turning to all points of the compass.

----Amen!--said the young fellow called John.--Ten minutes by the

watch. Those that are unanimous will please to signify by holding up

their left foot!

I looked this young man steadily in the face for about thirty seconds.

His countenance was as calm as that of a reposing infant. I think it

was simplicity, rather than mischief, with perhaps a youthful

playfulness, that led him to this outbreak. I have often noticed that

even quiet horses, on a sharp November morning, when their coats are

just beginning to get the winter roughness, will give little sportive

demi-kicks, with slight sudden elevation of the subsequent region of

the body, and a sharp short whinny,--by no means intending to put their

heels through the dasher, or to address the driver rudely, but feeling,

to use a familiar word, frisky. This, I think, is the physiological

condition of the young person, John. I noticed, however, what I should

call a _palpebral spasm_, affecting the eyelid and muscles of one side,

which, if it were intended for the facial gesture called a wink, might

lead me to suspect a disposition to be satirical on his part.

----Resuming the conversation, I remarked,--I am, _ex officio_, as a

Professor, a conservative. For I don't know any fruit that clings to

its tree so faithfully, not even a "froze-'n'-thaw" winter-apple, as a

Professor to the bough of which his chair is made. You can't shake him

off, and it is as much as you can do to pull him off. Hence, by a chain

of induction I need not unwind, he tends to conservatism generally.

But then, you know, if you are sailing the Atlantic, and all at once

find yourself in a current and the sea covered with weeds, and drop

your Fahrenheit over the side and find it eight or ten degrees higher

than in the ocean generally, there is no use in flying in the face of

facts and swearing there is no such thing as a Gulf-Stream, when you

are in it.

You can't keep gas in a bladder, and you can't keep knowledge tight in

a profession. Hydrogen will leak out, and air will leak in, through

India-rubber; and special knowledge will leak out, and general

knowledge will leak in, though a profession were covered with twenty

thicknesses of sheepskin diplomas. By Jove, Sir, till common sense is

well mixed up with medicine, and common manhood with theology, and

common honesty with law, _We the people_, Sir, some of us with

nutcrackers, and some of us with trip-hammers, and some of us with

pile-drivers, and some of us coming with a whish! like air-stones out

of a lunar volcano, will crash down on the lumps of nonsense in all of

them till we have made powder of them like Aaron's calf!

If to be a conservative is to let all the drains of thought choke up

and keep all the soul's windows down,--to shut out the sun from the

east and the wind from the west,--to let the rats run free in the

cellar, and the moths feed their fill in the chambers, and the spiders

weave their lace before the mirrors, till the soul's typhus is bred out

of our neglect, and we begin to snore in its coma or rave in its

delirium,--I, Sir, am a _bonnet-rouge_, a red-cap of the barricades, my

friends, rather than a conservative.

----Were you born in Boston, Sir?--said the little man,--looking eager

and excited.

I was not,--I replied.

It's a pity,--it's a pity,--said the little man;--it's the place to be

born in. But if you can't fix it so as to be born here, you can come

and live here. Old Ben Franklin, the father of American science and the

American Union, wasn't ashamed to be born here. Jim Otis, the father of

American Independence, bothered about in the Cape Cod marshes awhile,

but he came to Boston as soon as he got big enough. Joe Warren, the

first bloody ruffled-shirt of the Revolution, was as good as born here.

Parson Charming strolled along this way from Newport, and staid here.

Pity old Sam Hopkins hadn't come, too;--we'd have made a man of

him.--poor, dear, good old Christian heathen! There he lies, as

peaceful as a young baby, in the old burying-ground! I've stood on the

slab many a time. Meant well,--meant well. Juggernaut. Parson Charming

put a little oil on one linchpin, and slipped it out so softly, the

first thing they knew about it was the wheel of that side was down.

T'other fellow's at work now; but he makes more noise about it. When

the linchpin comes out on his side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you!

Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that

there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,--hope

not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,--always cracking up

something.

Cracking up Boston folks,--said the gentleman with the _diamond_-pin,

whom, for convenience' sake, I shall hereafter call the _Koh-i-noor_.

The little man turned round mechanically towards him, as Maelzel's Turk

used to turn, carrying his head slowly and horizontally, as if it went

by cogwheels.--Cracking up all sorts of things,--native and foreign

vermin included,--said the little man.

This remark was thought by some of us to have a hidden personal

application, and to afford a fair opening for a lively rejoinder, if

the Koh-i-noor had been so disposed. The little man uttered it with the

distinct wooden calmness with which the ingenious Turk used to exclaim,

_E-chec_! so that it _must_ have been heard. The party supposed to be

interested in the remark was, however, carrying a large

knife-blade-full of something to his mouth just then, which, no doubt,

interfered with the reply he would have made.

----My friend who used to board here was accustomed sometimes, in a

pleasant way, to call himself the _Autocrat_ of the table,--meaning, I

suppose, that he had it all his own way among the boarders. I think our

small boarder here is like to prove a refractory subject, if I

undertake to use the sceptre my friend meant to bequeathe me, too

magisterially. I won't deny that sometimes, on rare occasions, when I

have been in company with gentlemen who _preferred_ listening, I have

been guilty of the same kind of usurpation which my friend openly

justified. But I maintain, that I, the Professor, am a good listener.

If a man can tell me a fact which subtends an appreciable angle in the

horizon of thought, I am as receptive as the contribution-box in a

congregation of colored brethren. If, when I am exposing my

intellectual dry-goods, a man will begin a good story, I will have them

all in, and my shutters up, before he has got to the fifth "says he,"

and listen like a three-years' child, as the author of the "Old Sailor"

says. I had rather hear one of those grand elemental laughs from either

of our two Georges, (fictitious names, Sir or Madam,) or listen to one

of those old playbills of our College days, in which "Tom and Jerry"

("Thomas and Jeremiah," as the old Greek Professor was said to call it)

was announced to be brought on the stage with the whole force of the

Faculty, read by our Frederick, (no such person, of course,) than say

the best things I might by any chance find myself capable of saying. Of

course, if I come across a real thinker, a suggestive, acute,

illuminating, informing talker, I enjoy the luxury of sitting still for

a while as much as another.

Nobody talks much that doesn't say unwise things,--things he did not

mean to say; as no person plays much without striking a false note

sometimes. Talk, to me, is only spading up the ground for crops of

thought. I can't answer for what will turn up. If I could, it wouldn't

be talking, but "speaking my piece." Better, I think, the hearty

abandonment of one's self to the suggestions of the moment, at the risk

of an occasional slip of the tongue, perceived the instant it escapes,

but, just one syllable too late, than the royal reputation of never

saying a foolish thing.

----What shall I do with this little man?--There is only one thing to

do,--and that is, to let him talk when he will. The day of the

"Autocrat's" monologues is over.

----My friend,--said I to the young fellow whom, as I have said, the

boarders call "John,"--My friend,--I said, one morning, after

breakfast,--can you give me any information respecting the deformed

person who sits at the other end of the table?

What! the Sculpin?--said the young fellow.

The diminutive person, with angular curvature of the spine,--I

said,--and double _talipes varus_,--I beg your pardon,--with two

club-feet.

Is that long word what you call it when a fellah walks so?--said the

young man, making his fists revolve round an imaginary axis, as you may

have seen youth of tender age and limited pugilistic knowledge, when

they show how they would punish an adversary, themselves protected by

this rotating guard,--the middle knuckle, meantime, thumb-supported,

fiercely prominent, death-threatening.

It is,--said I.--But would you have the kindness to tell me if you know

anything about this deformed person?

About the Sculpin?--said the young fellow.

My good friend,--said I,--I am sure, by your countenance, you would not

hurt the feelings of one who has been hardly enough treated by Nature

to be spared by his fellows. Even in speaking of him to others, I could

wish that you might not employ a term which implies contempt for what

should inspire only pity.

A fellah's no business to be so----crooked,--said the young man called

John.

Yes, yes,--I said, thoughtfully,--the strong hate the weak. It's all

right. The arrangement has reference to the race, and not to the

individual. Infirmity must be kicked out, or the stock run down.

Wholesale moral arrangements are so different from retail!--I

understand the instinct, my friend,--it is cosmic,--it is

planetary,--it is a conservative principle in creation.

The young fellow's face gradually lost its expression as I was

speaking, until it became as blank of vivid significance as the

countenance of a gingerbread rabbit with two currants in the place of

eyes. He had not taken my meaning.

Presently the intelligence came back with a snap that made him wink,

as he answered,--Jest so. All right. A 1. Put her through. That's the

way to talk. Did you speak to me, Sir?--Here the young man struck up

that well-known song which I think they used to sing at Masonic

festivals, beginning, "Aldiborontiphoscophornio, Where left you

Chrononholonthologos?"

I beg your pardon.--I said;--all I meant was, that men, as temporary

occupants of a permanent abode called human life, which is improved or

injured by occupancy, according to the style of tenant, have a natural

dislike to those who, if they live the life of the race as well as of

the individual, will leave lasting injurious effects upon the abode

spoken of, which is to be occupied by countless future generations.

This is the final cause of the underlying brute instinct which we have

in common with the herds.

----The gingerbread-rabbit expression was coming on so fast, that I

thought I must try again.--It's a pity that families are kept up, where

there are such hereditary infirmities. Still, let us treat this poor

man fairly, and not call him names. Do you know what his name is?

I know what the rest of 'em call him,--said the young fellow.--They

call him Little Boston. There's no harm in that, is there?

It is an honorable term,--I replied.--But why Little _Boston_, in a

place where most are Bostonians?

Because nobody else is quite so Boston all over as he is,--said the

young fellow.

"L.B. Ob. 1692."--Little Boston let him be, when we talk about him. The

ring he wears labels him well enough. There is stuff in the little man,

or he wouldn't stick so manfully by this crooked, crotchety old town.

Give him a chance.--You will drop the Sculpin, won't you?--I said to

the young fellow.

Drop him?--he answered,--I ha'n't took him up yet.

No, no,--the term,--I said,--the term. Don't call him so any more, if

you please. Call him Little Boston, if you like.

All right,--said the young fellow.--I wouldn't be hard on the poor

little----

The word he used was objectionable in point of significance and of

grammar. It was a frequent termination of certain adjectives among the

Romans,--as of those designating a person following the sea, or given

to rural pursuits. It is classed by custom among the profane words;

why, it is hard to say,--but it is largely used in the street by those

who speak of their fellows in pity or in wrath.

I never heard the young fellow apply the name of the odious pretended

fish to the little man from that day forward.

----Here we are, then, at our boarding-house. First, myself, the

Professor, a little way from the head of the table, on the right,

looking down, where the Autocrat used to sit. At the further end site

the Landlady. At the head of the table, just now, the Koh-i-noor, or

the gentleman with the _diamond_. Opposite me is a Venerable Gentleman

with a bland countenance, who as yet has spoken little. The

Divinity-Student is my neighbor on the right,--and further down, that

Young Fellow of whom I have repeatedly spoken. The Landlady's Daughter

sits near the Koh-i-noor, as I said. The Poor Relation near the

Landlady. At the right upper corner is a fresh-looking youth of whose

name and history I have as yet learned nothing. Next the further

left-hand corner, looking down the table, sits the deformed person. The

chair at his side, occupying that corner, is empty. I need not

specially mention the other boarders, with the exception of Benjamin

Franklin, the landlady's son, who sits near his mother. We are a

tolerably assorted set,--difference enough and likeness enough; but

still it seems to me there is something wanting. The Landlady's

Daughter is the _prima donna_ in the way of feminine attractions. I am

not quite satisfied with this young lady. She wears more "jewelry," as

certain young ladies call their trinkets, than I care to see on a

person in her position. Her voice is strident, her laugh too much like

a giggle, and she has that foolish way of dancing and bobbing like a

quill-float with a "minnum" biting the hook below it, which one sees

and weeps over sometimes in persons of more pretensions. I can't help

hoping we shall put something into that empty chair yet which will add

the missing string to our social harp. I hear talk of a rare Miss who

is expected. Something in the school-girl way, I believe. We shall see.

----My friend who calls himself _The Autocrat_ has given me a caution

which I am going to repeat, with my comment upon it, for the benefit of

all concerned.

Professor,--said he, one day,--don't you think your brain will run dry

before a year's out, if you don't get the pump to help the cow? Let me

tell you what happened to me once. I put a little money into a bank,

and bought a checkbook, so that I might draw it as I wanted, in sums to

suit. Things went on nicely for a time; scratching with a pen was as

easy as rubbing Aladdin's Lamp; and my blank check-book seemed to be a

dictionary of possibilities, in which I could find all the synonymes of

happiness, and realize any one of them on the spot. A check came back

to me at last with these two words on it,--_No funds_. My checkbook was

a volume of waste-paper.

Now, Professor,--said he,--I have drawn something out of your bank, you

know; and just so sure as you keep drawing out your soul's currency

without making new deposits, the next thing will be, _No funds_,--and

then where will you be, my boy? These little bits of paper mean your

gold and your silver and your copper, Professor; and you will certainly

break up and go to pieces, if you don't hold on to your metallic basis.

There is something in that,--said I.--Only I rather think life can coin

thought somewhat faster than I can count it off in words. What if one

shall go round and dry up with soft napkins all the dew that falls of a

June evening on the leaves of his garden? Shall there be no more dew on

those leaves thereafter? Marry, yea,--many drops, large and round and

full of moonlight as those thou shalt have absterged!

Here am I, the Professor,--a man who has lived long enough to have

plucked the flowers of life and come to the berries,--which are not

always sad-colored, but sometimes golden-hued as the crocus of April,

or rosy-cheeked as the damask of June; a man who staggered against

books as a baby, and will totter against them, if he lives to

decrepitude; with a brain as full of tingling thoughts, such as they

are, as a limb which we call "asleep," because it is so particularly

awake, is of pricking points; presenting a key-board of nerve-pulps,

not as yet tanned or ossified, to the finger-touch of all outward

agencies; knowing something of the filmy threads of this web of life in

which we insects buzz awhile, waiting for the gray old spider to come

along; contented enough with daily realities, but twirling on his

finger the key of a private Bedlam of ideals; in knowledge feeding with

the fox oftener than with the stork,--loving better the breadth of a

fertilizing inundation than the depth of a narrow artesian well;

finding nothing too small for his contemplation in the markings of the

_grammatophora subtilissima_, and nothing too large in the movement of

the solar system towards the star Lambda of the constellation

Hercules;--and the question is, whether there is anything left for me,

the Professor, to suck out of creation, after my lively friend has had

his straw in the bunghole of the Universe!

A man's mental reactions with the atmosphere of life must go on,

whether he will or no, as between his blood and the air he breathes. As

to catching the residuum of the process, or what we call

_thought_,--the gaseous ashes of burned-out _thinking_,--the excretion

of mental respiration,--that will depend on many things, as, on having

a favorable intellectual temperature about one, and a fitting

receptacle.--I sow more thought-seeds in twenty-four hours' travel over

the desert-sand, along which my lonely consciousness paces day and

night, than I shall throw into soil where it will germinate, in a year.

All sorts of bodily and mental perturbations come between us and the

due projection of our thought. The pulse-like "fits of easy and

difficult transmission" seem to reach even the transparent medium

through which our souls are seen. We know our humanity by its often

intercepted rays, as we tell a revolving light from a star or meteor by

its constantly recurring obscuration.

An illustrious scholar once told me, that, in the first lecture he ever

delivered, he spoke but half his allotted time, and felt as if he had

told all he knew. Braham came forward once to sing one of his most

famous and familiar songs, and for his life could not recall the first

line of it;--he told his mishap to the audience, and they screamed it

at him in a chorus of a thousand voices. Milton could not write to suit

himself, except from the autumnal to the vernal equinox. One in the

clothing-business, who, there is reason to suspect, may have inherited,

by descent, the great poet's impressible temperament, let a customer

slip through his fingers one day without fitting him with a new garment.

"Ah!" said he to a friend of mine, who was standing by, "if it hadn't

been for that confounded headache of mine this morning, I'd have had a

coat on that man, in spite of himself, before he left the store." A

passing throb, only,--but it deranged the nice mechanism required to

persuade the accidental human being, _x_, into a given piece of

broadcloth, _a_.

We must take care not to confound this frequent difficulty of

transmission of our ideas with want of ideas. I suppose that a man's

mind does in time form a neutral salt with the elements in the universe

for which it has special elective affinities. In fact, I look upon a

library as a kind of mental chemist's shop, filled with the crystals of

all forms and hues which have come from the union of individual thought

with local circumstances or universal principles.

When a man has worked out his special affinities in this way, there is

an end of his genius as a real solvent. No more effervescence and

hissing tumult as he pours his sharp thought on the world's biting

alkaline unbeliefs! No more corrosion of the old monumental tablets

covered with lies! No more taking up of dull earths, and turning them,

first into clear solutions, and then into lustrous prisms!

I, the Professor, am very much like other men. I shall not find out

when I have used up my affinities. What a blessed thing it is, that

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors,

contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left! Painful as

the task is, they never fail to warn the author, in the most impressive

manner, of the probabilities of failure in what he has undertaken. Sad

as the necessity is to their delicate sensibilities, they never

hesitate to advertise him of the decline of his powers, and to press

upon him the propriety of retiring before he sinks into imbecility.

Trusting to their kind offices, I shall endeavor to fulfil----

_Bridget enters and begins clearing the table._

The following poem is my (the Professor's) only contribution to the

great department of Ocean-Cable literature. As all the poets of this

country will be engaged for the next six weeks in writing for the

premium offered by the Crystal-Palace Company for the Barns Centenary,

(so called, according to our Benjamin Franklin, because there will be

nary a cent for any of us,) poetry will be very scarce and dear.

Consumers may, consequently, be glad to take the present article,

which, by the aid of a Latin tutor and a Professor of Chemistry, will

be found intelligible to the educated classes.

DE SAUTY.

AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ECLOGUE.

_Professor. Blue-Nose._

PROFESSOR.

Tell me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal!

Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you

Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder,

Holding talk with nations?

Is there a De Sauty ambulant on Tellus,

Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in nightcap,

Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature

Three times daily patent?

Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal?

Or is he a _mythus_,--ancient word for "humbug,"--

Such as Livy told about the wolf that wetnursed

Romulus and Remus?

Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty?

Or a living product of galvanic action,

Like the _acarus_ bred in Crosse's flint-solution?

Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal!

BLUE-NOSE.

Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger,

Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster!

Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me,

Thou shalt hear them answered.

When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable,

At the polar focus of the wire electric

Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us.

Called himself "DE SAUTY."

As the small opossum held in pouch maternal

Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term _mammalia_,

So the unknown stranger held the wire electric,

Sucking in the current.

When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger,--

Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy,--

And from time to time, in sharp articulation,

Said, "_All right!_ DE SAUTY."

From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading

Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples,

Till the land was filled with loud reverberations

Of "_All right_! DE SAUTY."

When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger,--

Faded, faded, faded, as the shocks grew weaker,--

Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odor

Of disintegration.

Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead,

Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence,

Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended,

There was no De Sauty.

Nothing but a cloud of elements organic,

C.O.H.N. Ferrum, Chor. Flu. Sil. Potassa,

Calc. Sod. Phosph. Mag. Sulphur, Mang.(?) Alumin.(?) Cuprum,(?)

Such as man is made of.

Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished!

There is no De Sauty now there is no current!

Give us a new cable, then again we'll hear him

Cry, "_All right!_ DE SAUTY."

* * * * *

THE MINISTER'S WOOING.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER IV.

THEOLOGICAL TEA.

At the call of her mother, Mary hurried into the "best room," with a

strange discomposure of spirit she had never felt before. From

childhood, her love for James had been so deep, equable, and intense,

that it had never disturbed her with thrills and yearnings; it had

grown up in sisterly calmness, and, quietly expanding, had taken

possession of her whole nature, without her once dreaming of its power.

But this last interview seemed to have struck some great nerve of her

being,--and calm as she usually was, from habit, principle, and good

health, she shivered and trembled, as she heard his retreating

footsteps, and saw the orchard-grass fly back from under his feet. It

was as if each step trod on a nerve,--as if the very sound of the

rustling grass was stirring something living and sensitive in her soul.

And, strangest of all, a vague impression of guilt hovered over her.

_Had_ she done anything wrong? She did not ask him there; she had not

spoken love to him; no, she had only talked to him of his soul, and how

she would give hers for his,--oh, so willingly!--and that was not love;

it was only what Dr. H. said Christians must always feel.

"Child, what _have_ you been doing?" said Aunt Katy, who sat in full

flowing chintz petticoat and spotless dimity shortgown, with her

company knitting-work in her hands; "your cheeks are as red as peonies.

Have you been crying? What's the matter?"

"There is the Deacon's wife, mother," said Mary, turning confusedly,

and darting to the entry-door.

Enter Mrs. Twitchel,--a soft, pillowy little elderly lady, whose whole

air and dress reminded one of a sack of feathers tied in the middle

with a string. A large, comfortable pocket, hung upon the side,

disclosed her knitting-work ready for operation; and she zealously

cleansed herself with a checked handkerchief from the dust which had

accumulated during her ride in the old "one-hoss shay," answering the

hospitable salutation of Katy Scudder in that plaintive, motherly voice

which belongs to certain nice old ladies, who appear to live in a state

of mild chronic compassion for the sins and sorrows of this mortal life

generally.

"Why, yes, Miss Scudder, I'm pretty tol'able. I keep goin', and goin'.

That's my way. I's a-tellin' the Deacon, this-mornin', I didn't see how

I _was_ to come here this afternoon; but then I _did_ want to see Miss

Scudder and talk a little about that precious sermon, Sunday. How is

the Doctor? blessed man! Well, his reward must be great in heaven, if

not on earth, as I was a-tellin' the Deacon; and he says to me, says

he, 'Polly, we mustn't be man-worshippers.' There, dear," (_to Mary_,)

"don't trouble yourself about my bonnet; it a'n't my Sunday one, but I

thought 'twould do. Says I to Cerinthy Ann, 'Miss Scudder won't mind,

'cause her heart's set on better things.' I always like to drop a word

in season to Cerinthy Ann, 'cause she's clean took up with vanity and

dress. Oh, dear! oh, dear me! so different from your blessed daughter,

Miss Scudder! Well, it's a great blessin' to be called in one's youth,

like Samuel and Timothy; but then we doesn't know the Lord's ways.

Sometimes I gets clean discouraged with my children,--but then ag'in I

don't know; none on us does. Cerinthy Ann is one of the most master

hands to turn off work; she takes hold and goes along like a woman, and

nobody never knows when that gal finds the time to do all she does do;

and I don't know nothin' what I _should_ do without her. Deacon was

saying, if ever she was called, she'd be a Martha, and not a Mary; but

then she's dreadful opposed to the doctrines. Oh, dear me! oh, dear me!

Somehow they seem to rile her all up; and she was a-tellin' me

yesterday, when she was a-hangin' out clothes, that she never should

get reconciled to Decrees and 'Lection, 'cause she can't see, if things

is certain, how folks is to help 'emselves. Says I, 'Cerinthy Ann,

folks a'n't to help 'emselves; they's to submit unconditional.' And she

jest slammed down the clothes-basket and went into the house."

When Mrs. Twitchel began to talk, it flowed a steady stream, as when

one turns a faucet, that never ceases running till some hand turns it

back again; and the occasion that cut the flood short at present was

the entrance of Mrs. Brown.

Mr. Simeon Brown was a thriving shipowner of Newport, who lived in a

large house, owned several negro-servants and a span of horses, and

affected some state and style in his worldly appearance. A passion for

metaphysical Orthodoxy had drawn Simeon to the congregation of Dr. H.,

and his wife of course stood by right in a high place there. She was a

tall, angular, somewhat hard-favored body, dressed in a style rather

above the simple habits of her neighbors, and her whole air spoke the

great woman, who in right of her thousands expected to have her say in

all that was going on in the world, whether she understood it or not.

On her entrance, mild little Mrs. Twitchel fled from the cushioned

rocking-chair, and stood with the quivering air of one who feels she

has no business to be anywhere in the world, until Mrs. Brown's bonnet

was taken and she was seated, when Mrs. Twitchel subsided into a corner

and rattled her knitting-needles to conceal her emotion.

New England has been called the land of equality; but what land upon

earth is wholly so? Even the mites in a bit of cheese, naturalists say,

have great tumblings and strivings about position and rank; he who has

ten pounds will always be a nobleman to him who has but one, let him

strive as manfully as he may; and therefore let us forgive meek little

Mrs. Twitchel for melting into nothing in her own eyes when Mrs. Brown

came in, and let us forgive Mrs. Brown that she sat down in the

rocking-chair with an easy grandeur, as one who thought it her duty to

be affable and meant to be. It was, however, rather difficult for Mrs.

Brown, with her money, house, negroes, and all, to patronize Mrs. Katy

Scudder, who was one of those women whose natures seem to sit on

thrones, and who dispense patronage and favor by an inborn right and

aptitude, whatever be their social advantages. It was one of Mrs.

Brown's trials of life, this secret, strange quality in her neighbor,

who stood apparently so far below her in worldly goods. Even the quiet,

positive style of Mrs. Katy's knitting made her nervous; it was an

implication of independence of her sway; and though on the present

occasion every customary courtesy was bestowed, she still felt, as she

always did when Mrs. Katy's guest, a secret uneasiness. She mentally

contrasted the neat little parlor, with its white sanded floor and

muslin curtains, with her own grand front-room, which boasted the then

uncommon luxuries of Turkey carpet and Persian rug, and wondered if

Mrs. Katy did really feel as cool and easy in receiving her as she

appeared.

You must not understand that this was what Mrs. Brown _supposed_

herself to be thinking about; oh, no! by no means! All the little, mean

work of our nature is generally done in a small dark closet just a

little back of the subject we are talking about, on which subject we

suppose ourselves of course to be thinking;--of course we are thinking

of it; how else could we talk about it?

The subject in discussion, and what Mrs. Brown supposed to be in her

own thoughts, was the last Sunday's sermon on the doctrine of entire

Disinterested Benevolence, in which good Doctor H. had proclaimed to

the citizens of Newport their duty of being so wholly absorbed in the

general good of the universe as even to acquiesce in their own final

and eternal destruction, if the greater good of the whole might thereby

be accomplished.

"Well, now, dear me!" said Mrs. Twitchel, while her knitting-needles

trotted contentedly to the mournful tone of her voice,--"I was tellin'

the Deacon, if we only could get there! Sometimes I think I get a

little way,--but then ag'in I don't know; but the Deacon he's quite

down,--he don't see no evidences in himself. Sometimes he says he don't

feel as if he ought to keep his place in the church,--but then ag'in he

don't know. He keeps a-turnin' and turnin' on't over in his mind, and

a-tryin' himself this way and that way; and he says he don't see

nothin' but what's selfish, no way.

"'Member one night last winter, after the Deacon got warm in bed, there

come a rap at the door; and who should it be but old Beulah Ward,

wantin' to see the Deacon?--'twas her boy she sent, and he said Beulah

was sick and hadn't no more wood nor candles. Now I know'd the Deacon

had carried that crittur half a cord of wood, if he had one stick,

since Thanksgivin', and I'd sent her two o' my best moulds of

candles,--nice ones that Cerinthy Ann run when we killed a crittur; but

nothin' would do but the Deacon must get right out his warm bed and

dress himself, and hitch up his team to carry over some wood to Beulah.

Says I, 'Father, you know you'll be down with the rheumatis for this;

besides, Beulah is real aggravatin'. I know she trades off what we send

her to the store for rum, and you never get no thanks. She 'xpects,

'cause we has done for her, we always must; and more we do, more we may

do.' And says he to me, says he, 'That's jest the way we sarves the

Lord, Polly; and what if He shouldn't hear us when we call on Him in

our troubles?' So I shet up; and the next day he was down with the

rheumatis. And Cerinthy Ann, says she, 'Well, father, _now_ I hope

you'll own you have got _some_ disinterested benevolence,' says she;

and the Deacon he thought it over a spell, and then he says, 'I'm

'fraid it's all selfish. I'm jest a-makin' a righteousness of it.' And

Cerinthy Ann she come out, declarin' that the best folks never had no

comfort in religion; and for her part she didn't mean to trouble her

head about it, but have jest as good a time as she could while she's

young, 'cause if she was 'lected to be saved she should be, and if she

wa'n't she couldn't help it, any how."

"Mr. Brown says he came onto Dr. H.'s ground years ago," said Mrs.

Brown, giving a nervous twitch to her yarn, and speaking in a sharp,

hard, didactic voice, which made little Mrs. Twitchel give a gentle

quiver, and look humble and apologetic. "Mr. Brown's a master thinker;

there's nothing pleases that man better than a hard doctrine; he says

you can't get 'em too hard for him. He don't find any difficulty in

bringing his mind up; he just reasons it out all plain; and he says,

people have no need to be in the dark; and that's _my_ opinion. 'If

folks know they ought to come up to anything, why _don't_ they?' he

says; and I say so too."

"Mr. Scudder used to say that it took great afflictions to bring his

mind to that place," said Mrs. Katy. "He used to say that an old

paper-maker told him once, that paper that was shaken only one way in

the making would tear across the other, and the best paper had to be

shaken every way; and so he said we couldn't tell, till we had been

turned and shaken and tried every way, where we should tear."

Mrs. Twitchel responded to this sentiment with a gentle series of

groans, such as were her general expression of approbation, swaying

herself backward and forward; while Mrs. Brown gave a sort of toss and

snort, and said that for her part she always thought people knew what

they did know,--but she guessed she was mistaken.

The conversation was here interrupted by the civilities attendant on

the reception of Mrs. Jones,--a broad, buxom, hearty soul, who had come

on horseback from a farm about three miles distant.

Smiling with rosy content, she presented Mrs. Katy a small pot of

golden butter,--the result of her forenoon's churning.

There are some people so evidently broadly and heartily of this world,

that their coming into a room always materializes the conversation. We

wish to be understood that we mean no disparaging reflection on such

persons;--they are as necessary to make up a world as cabbages to make

up a garden; the great healthy principles of cheerfulness and animal

life seem to exist in them in the gross; they are wedges and ingots of

solid, contented vitality. Certain kinds of virtues and Christian

graces thrive in such people as the first crop of corn does in the

bottom-lands of the Ohio. Mrs. Jones was a church-member, a regular

church-goer, and planted her comely person plump in front of Dr. H.

every Sunday, and listened to his searching and discriminating sermons

with broad, honest smiles of satisfaction. Those keen distinctions as

to motives, those awful warnings and urgent expostulations, which made

poor Deacon Twitchel weep, she listened to with great, round, satisfied

eyes, making to all, and after all, the same remark,--that it was good,

and she liked it, and the Doctor was a good man; and on the present

occasion, she announced her pot of butter as one fruit of her

reflections after the last discourse.

"You see," she said, "as I was a-settin' in the spring-house, this

mornin', a-workin' my butter, I says to Dinah,--'I'm goin' to carry a

pot of this down to Miss Scudder for the Doctor,--I got so much good

out of his Sunday's sermon. And Dinah she says to me, says she,--'Laws,

Miss Jones. I thought you was asleep, for sartin!' But I wasn't; only I

forgot to take any caraway-seed in the mornin', and so I kinder missed

it; you know it 'livens one up. But I never lost myself so but what I

kinder heerd him goin' on, on, sort o' like,--and it sounded _all_ sort

o' _good;_ and so I thought of the Doctor to-day."

"Well, I'm sure," said Aunt Katy, "this will be a treat; we all know

about your butter, Mrs. Jones. I sha'n't think of putting any of mine

on table to-night, I'm sure."

"Law, now don't!" said Mrs. Jones. "Why, you re'lly make me ashamed,

Miss Scudder. To be sure, folks does like our butter, and it always

fetches a pretty good price,--_he's_ very proud on't. I tell him he

oughtn't to be,--we oughtn't to be proud of anything."

And now Mrs. Katy, giving a look at the old clock, told Mary it was

time to set the tea-table; and forthwith there was a gentle movement of

expectancy. The little mahogany tea-table opened its brown wings, and

from a drawer came forth the snowy damask covering. It was etiquette,

on such occasions, to compliment every article of the establishment

successively, as it appeared; so the Deacon's wife began at the

table-cloth.

"Well, I do declare, Miss Scudder beats us all in her table-cloths,"

she said, taking up a corner of the damask, admiringly; and Mrs. Jones

forthwith jumped up and seized the other corner.

"Why, this 'ere must have come from the Old Country. It's 'most the

beautiflest thing I ever did see."

"It's my own spinning," replied Mrs. Katy, with conscious dignity.

"There was an Irish weaver came to Newport the year before I was

married, who wove beautifully,--just the Old-Country patterns,--and I'd

been spinning some uncommonly fine flax then. I remember Mr. Scudder

used to read to me while I was spinning,"--and Aunt Katy looked afar,

as one whose thoughts are in the past, and dropped out the last words

with a little sigh, unconsciously, as to herself.

"Well, now, I must say," said Mrs. Jones, "this goes quite beyond me. I

thought I could spin some; but I sha'n't never dare to show mine."

"I'm sure, Mrs. Jones, your towels that you had out bleaching, this

spring, were wonderful," said Aunt Katy. "But I don't pretend to do

much now," she continued, straightening her trim figure. "I'm getting

old, you know; we must let the young folks take up these things. Mary

spins better now than I ever did. Mary, hand out those napkins."

And so Mary's napkins passed from hand to hand.

"Well, well," said Mrs. Twitchel to Mary, "it's easy to see that _your_

linen-chest will be pretty full by the time _he_ comes along; won't it,

Miss Jones?"--and Mrs. Twitchel looked pleasantly facetious, as elderly

ladies generally do, when suggesting such possibilities to younger

ones.

Mary was vexed to feel the blood boil up in her cheeks in a most

unexpected and provoking way at the suggestion; whereat Mrs. Twitchel

nodded knowingly at Mrs. Jones, and whispered something in a mysterious

aside, to which plump Mrs. Jones answered,--"Why, do tell! now I

never!"

"It's strange," said Mrs. Twitchel, taking up her parable again, in

such a plaintive tone that all knew something pathetic was coming,

"what mistakes some folks will make, a-fetchin' up girls. Now there's

your Mary, Miss Scudder,--why, there a'n't nothin' she can't do; but

law, I was down to Miss Skinner's, last week, a-watchin' with her, and

re'lly it 'most broke my heart to see her. Her mother was a most

amazin' smart woman; but she brought Suky up, for all the world, as if

she'd been a wax doll, to be kept in the drawer,--and sure enough, she

was a pretty cretur,--and now she's married, what is she? She ha'n't no

more idee how to take hold than nothin'. The poor child means well

enough, and she works so hard she most kills herself; but then she is

in the suds from mornin' till night,--she's one the sort whose work's

never done,--and poor George Skinner's clean discouraged."

"There's everything in _knowing how_," said Mrs. Katy. "Nobody ought to

be always working; it's a bad sign. I tell Mary,--'Always do up your

work in the forenoon.'--Girls must learn that. I never work afternoons,

after my dinner-dishes are got away; I never did and never would."

"Nor I, neither," chimed in Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Twitchel,--both anxious

to show themselves clear on this leading point of New England

house-keeping.

"There's another thing I always tell Mary," said Mrs. Katy,

impressively. "'Never say there isn't time for a thing that ought to be

done. If a thing is _necessary_, why, life is long enough to find a

place for it. That's my doctrine. When anybody tells me they _can't

find_ time for this or that, I don't think much of 'em. I think they

don't know how to work,--that's all.'"

Here Mrs. Twitchel looked up from her knitting, with an apologetic

giggle, at Mrs. Brown.

"Law, now, there's Miss Brown, she don't know nothin' about it, 'cause

she's got her servants to every turn. I s'pose she thinks it queer to

hear us talkin' about our work. Miss Brown must have her time all to

herself. I was tellin' the Deacon the other day that she was a

privileged woman."

"I'm sure, those that have servants find work enough following 'em

'round," said Mrs. Brown,--who, like all other human beings, resented

the implication of not having as many trials in life as her neighbors.

"As to getting the work done up in the forenoon, that's a thing I never

can teach 'em; they'd rather not. Chloe likes to keep her work 'round,

and do it by snacks, any time, day or night, when the notion takes

her."

"And it was just for that reason I never would have one of those

creatures 'round," said Mrs. Katy. "Mr. Scudder was principled against

buying negroes,--but if he had _not_ been, I should not have wanted any

of _their_ work. I know what's to be done, and most help is no help to

me. I want people to stand out of my way and let me get done. I've

tried keeping a girl once or twice, and I never worked so hard in my

life. When Mary and I do all ourselves, we can calculate everything to

a minute; and we get our time to sew and read and spin and visit, and

live just as we want to."

Here, again, Mrs. Brown looked uneasy. To what use was it that she was

rich and owned servants, when this Mordecai in her gate utterly

despised her prosperity? In her secret heart she thought Mrs. Katy must

be envious, and rather comforted herself on this view of the

subject,--sweetly unconscious of any inconsistency in the feeling with

her views of utter self-abnegation just announced.

Meanwhile the tea-table had been silently gathering on its snowy

plateau the delicate china, the golden butter, the loaf of faultless

cake, a plate of crullers or wonders, as a sort of sweet fried cake was

commonly called,--tea-rusks, light as a puff, and shining on top with a

varnish of egg,--jellies of apple and quince quivering in amber

clearness,--whitest and purest honey in the comb,--in short, everything

that could go to the getting-up of a most faultless tea.

"I don't see," said Mrs. Jones, resuming the gentle paeans of the

occasion, "how Miss Scudder's loaf-cake always comes out jest so. It

don't rise neither to one side nor t'other, but jest even all 'round;

and it a'n't white one side and burnt the other, but jest a good brown

all over; and it don't have no heavy streak in it."

"Jest what Cerinthy Ann was sayin', the other day," said Mrs. Twitchel.

"She says she can't never be sure how hers is a-comin' out. Do what she

can, it will be either too much or too little; but Miss Scudder's is

always jest so. 'Law,' says I, 'Cerinthy Ann, it's _faculty_,--that's

it;--them that has it has it, and them that hasn't--why, they've got to

work hard, and not do half so well, neither.'"

Mrs. Katy took all these praises as matter of course. Since she was

thirteen years old, she had never put her hand to anything that she had

not been held to do better than other folks, and therefore she accepted

her praises with the quiet repose and serenity of assured reputation;

though, of course, she used the usual polite disclaimers of "Oh, it's

nothing, nothing at all; I'm sure I don't know how I do it, and was not

aware it was so good,"--and so on. All which things are proper for

gentlewomen to observe in like cases, in every walk of life.

"Do you think the Deacon will be along soon?" said Mrs. Katy, when

Mary, returning from the kitchen, announced the important fact, that

the tea-kettle was boiling.

"Why, yes," said Mrs. Twitchel. "I'm a-lookin' for him every minute. He

told me, that he and the men should be plantin' up to the eight-acre

lot, but he'd keep the colt up there to come down on; and so I laid him

out a clean shirt, and says, 'Now, Father, you be sure and be there by

five, so that Miss Scudder may know when to put her tea a-drawin'.'

--There he is, I believe," she added, as a horse's tramp was

heard without, and, after a few moments, the desired Deacon entered.

He was a gentle, soft-spoken man, low, sinewy, thin, with black hair

showing lines and patches of silver. His keen, thoughtful, dark eye

marked the nervous and melancholic temperament. A mild and pensive

humility of manner seemed to brood over him, like the shadow of a

cloud. Everything in his dress, air, and motions indicated punctilious

exactness and accuracy, at times rising to the point of nervous

anxiety.

Immediately after the bustle of his entrance had subsided, Mr. Simeon

Brown followed. He was a tall, lank individual, with high cheek-bones,

thin, sharp features, small, keen, hard eyes, and large hands and feet.

Simeon was, as we have before remarked, a keen theologian, and had the

scent of a hound for a metaphysical distinction. True, he was a man of

business, being a thriving trader to the coast of Africa, whence he

imported negroes for the American market; and no man was held to

understand that branch of traffic better,--he having, in his earlier

days, commanded ships in the business, and thus learned it from the

root. In his private life, Simeon was severe and dictatorial. He was

one of that class of people who, of a freezing day, will plant

themselves directly between you and the fire, and there stand and argue

to prove that selfishness is the root of all moral evil. Simeon said he

always had thought so; and his neighbors sometimes supposed that nobody

could enjoy better experimental advantages for understanding the

subject. He was one of those men who suppose themselves submissive to

the Divine will, to the uttermost extent demanded by the extreme

theology of that day, simply because they have no nerves to feel, no

imagination to conceive what endless happiness or suffering is, and who

deal therefore with the great question of the salvation or damnation of

myriads as a problem of theological algebra, to be worked out by their

inevitable _x, y, z_.

But we must not spend too much time with our analysis of character, for

matters at the tea-table are drawing to a crisis. Mrs. Jones has

announced that she does not think "_he_" can come this afternoon, by

which significant mode of expression she conveyed the dutiful idea that

there was for her but one male person in the world. And now Mrs. Katy

says, "Mary, dear, knock at the Doctor's door and tell him that tea is

ready."

The Doctor was sitting in his shady study, in the room on the other

side of the little entry. The windows were dark and fragrant with the

shade and perfume of blossoming lilacs, whose tremulous shadow, mingled

with spots of afternoon sunlight, danced on the scattered papers of a

great writing-table covered with pamphlets and heavily-bound volumes of

theology, where the Doctor was sitting.

A man of gigantic proportions, over six feet in height, and built every

way with an amplitude corresponding to his height, sitting bent over

his writing, so absorbed that he did not hear the gentle sound of

Mary's entrance.

"Doctor," said the maiden, gently, "tea is ready."

No motion, no sound, except the quick racing of the pen over the paper.

"Doctor! Doctor!"--a little louder, and with another step into the

apartment,--"tea is ready."

The Doctor stretched his head forward to a paper which lay before him,

and responded in a low, murmuring voice, as reading something.

"Firstly,--if underived virtue be peculiar to the Deity, can it be the

duty of a creature to have it?"

Here a little waxen hand came with a very gentle tap on his huge

shoulder, and "Doctor, tea is ready," penetrated drowsily to the nerve

of his ear, as a sound heard in sleep. He rose suddenly with a start,

opened a pair of great blue eyes, which shone abstractedly under the

dome of a capacious and lofty forehead, and fixed them on the maiden,

who by this time was looking up rather archly, and yet with an attitude

of the most profound respect, while her venerated friend was assembling

together his earthly faculties.

"Tea is ready, if you please. Mother wished me to call you."

"Oh!--ah!--yes!--indeed!" he said, looking confusedly about, and

starting for the door, in his study-gown.

"If you please, Sir," said Mary, standing in his way, "would you not

like to put on your coat and wig?"

The Doctor gave a hurried glance at his study-gown, put his hand to his

head, which, in place of the ample curls of his full-bottomed wig, was

decked only with a very ordinary cap, and seemed to come at once to a

full comprehension. He smiled a kind of conscious, benignant smile,

which adorned his high cheek-bones and hard features as sunshine adorns

the side of a rock, and said, kindly, "Ah, well, child, I understand

now; I'll be out in a moment."

And Mary, sure that he was now on the right track, went back to the

tearoom with the announcement that the Doctor was coming.

In a few moments he entered, majestic and proper, in all the dignity of

full-bottomed, powdered wig, full, flowing coat, with ample cuffs,

silver knee- and shoe-buckles, as became the gravity and majesty of the

minister of those days.

He saluted all the company with a benignity which had a touch of the

majestic, and also of the rustic in it; for at heart the Doctor was a

bashful man,--that is, he had somewhere in his mental camp that

treacherous fellow whom John Bunyan anathematizes under the name of

Shame. The company rose on his entrance; the men bowed and the women

curtsied, and all remained standing while he addressed to each with

punctilious decorum those inquiries in regard to health and well-being

which preface a social interview. Then, at a dignified sign from Mrs.

Katy, he advanced to the table, and, all following his example, stood,

while, with one hand uplifted, he went through a devotional exercise

which, for length, more resembled a prayer than a grace,--after which

the company were seated.

"Well, Doctor," said Mr. Brown, who, as a householder of substance,

felt a conscious right to be first to open conversation with the

minister, "people are beginning to make a noise about your views. I was

talking with Deacon Timmins the other day down on the wharf, and he

said Dr. Stiles said that it was entirely new doctrine,--entirely

so,--and for his part he wanted the good old ways."

"They say so, do they?" said the Doctor, kindling up from an

abstraction into which he seemed to be gradually subsiding. "Well, let

them. I had rather publish _new_ divinity than any other, and the more

of it the better,--_if it be but true_. I should think it hardly worth

while to write, if I had nothing _new_ to say."

"Well," said Deacon Twitchel,--his meek face flushing with awe of his

minister,--"Doctor, there's all sorts of things said about you. Now the

other day I was at the mill with a load of corn, and while I was

a-waitin', Amariah Wadsworth came along with his'n; and so while we

were waitin', he says to me, 'Why, they say your minister is gettin' to

be an Armenian'; and he went on a-tellin' how old Ma'am Badger told him

that you interpreted some parts of Paul's Epistles clear on the

Armenian side. You know Ma'am Badger's a master-hand at doctrines, and

she's 'most an uncommon Calvinist."

"That does not frighten me at all," said the sturdy Doctor. "Supposing

I do interpret some texts like the Arminians. Can't Arminians have

anything right about them? Who wouldn't rather go with the Arminians

when they are _right_, than with the Calvinists when they are wrong?"

"That's it,--you've hit it, Doctor," said Simeon Brown. "That's what I

always say. I say, 'Don't he _prove_ it? and how are you going to

answer him?' That gravels 'em."

"Well," said Deacon Twitchel, "Brother Seth, you know Brother Seth,--he

says you deny depravity. He's all for imputation of Adam's sin, you

know; and I have long talks with Seth about it every time he comes to

see me; and he says, that, if we did not sin in Adam, it's givin' up

the whole ground altogether; and then he insists you're clean wrong

about the unregenerate doings."

"Not at all,--not in the least," said the Doctor, promptly.

"I wish Seth could talk with you sometime, Doctor. Along in the spring,

he was down helpin' me to lay stone fence,--it was when we was fencin'

off the south pastur' lot,--and we talked pretty nigh all day; and it

re'lly did seem to me that the longer we talked, the sotter Seth grew.

He's a master-hand at readin'; and when he heard that your remarks on

Dr. Mayhew had come out, Seth tackled up o' purpose and come up to

Newport to get them, and spent all his time, last winter, studyin' on

it and makin' his remarks; and I tell you, Sir, he's a tight fellow to

argue with. Why, that day, what with layin' stone wall and what with

arguin' with Seth, I come home quite beat out,--Miss Twitchel will

remember."

"That he was!" said his helpmeet. "I 'member, when he came home, says

I, 'Father, you seem clean used up'; and I stirred 'round lively like,

to get him his tea. But he jest went into the bedroom and laid down

afore supper; and I says to Cerinthy Ann, 'That's a thing I ha'n't seen

your father do since he was took with the typhus.' And Cerinthy Ann,

she said she knew 'twa'n't anything but them old doctrines,--that it

was always so when Uncle Seth come down. And after tea Father was

kinder chirked up a little, and he and Seth set by the fire, and was

a-beginnin' it ag'in, and I jest spoke out and said,--'Now, Seth, these

'ere things doesn't hurt you; but the Deacon is weakly, and if he gets

his mind riled after supper, he don't sleep none all night. So,' says

I, 'you'd better jest let matters stop where they be; 'cause,' says I,

''twon't make no difference, for to-night, which on ye's got the right

on't;--reckon the Lord 'll go on his own way without you; and we shall

find out, by'm-by, what that is.'"

"Mr. Scudder used to think a great deal on these points," said Mrs.

Katy, "and the last time he was home he wrote out his views. I haven't

ever shown them to you, Doctor; but I should be pleased to know what

you think of them."

"Mr. Scudder was a good man, with a clear head," said the Doctor; "and

I should be much pleased to see anything that he wrote."

A flush of gratified feeling passed over Mrs. Katy's face;--for one

flower laid on the shrine which we keep in our hearts for the dead is

worth more than any gift to our living selves.

We will not now pursue our party further, lest you, Reader, get more

theological tea than you can drink. We will not recount the numerous

nice points raised by Mr. Simeon Brown and adjusted by the Doctor,--and

how Simeon invariably declared, that that was the way in which he

disposed of them himself, and how he had thought it out ten years ago.

We will not relate, either, too minutely, how Mary changed color and

grew pale and red in quick succession, when Mr. Simeon Brown

incidentally remarked, that the "Monsoon" was going to set sail that

very afternoon, for her three-years' voyage. Nobody noticed it in the

busy amenities,--the sudden welling and ebbing of that one poor little

heart-fountain.

So we go,--so little knowing what we touch and what touches us as we

talk! We drop out a common piece of news,--"Mr. So-and-so is

dead,--Miss Such-a-one is married,--such a ship has sailed,"--and lo,

on our right hand or our left, some heart has sunk under the news

silently,--gone down in the great ocean of Fate, without even a bubble

rising to tell its drowning pang. And this--God help us!--is what we

call living!

CHAPTER V.

THE LETTER.

Mary returned to the quietude of her room. The red of twilight had

faded, and the silver moon, round and fair, was rising behind the thick

boughs of the apple-trees. She sat down in the window, thoughtful and

sad, and listened to the crickets, whose ignorant jollity often sounds

as mournfully to us mortals as ours may to superior beings. There the

little hoarse, black wretches were scraping and creaking, as if life

and death were invented solely for their pleasure, and the world were

created only to give them a good time in it. Now and then a little wind

shivered among the boughs, and brought down a shower of white petals

which shimmered in the slant beams of the moonlight; and now a ray

touched some tall head of grass, and forthwith it blossomed into

silver, and stirred itself with a quiet joy, like a new-born saint just

awaking in paradise. And ever and anon came on the still air the soft

eternal pulsations of the distant sea, sound mournfulest, most

mysterious, of all the harpings of Nature. It was the sea,--the deep,

eternal sea,--the treacherous, soft, dreadful, inexplicable sea; and

_he_ was perhaps at this moment being borne away on it,--away,

away,--to what sorrows, to what temptations, to what dangers, she knew

not. She looked along the old, familiar, beaten path by which he came,

by which he went, and thought, "What if he never should come back?"

There was a little path through the orchard out to a small elevation in

the pasture-lot behind, whence the sea was distinctly visible, and Mary

had often used her low-silled window as a door when she wanted to pass

out thither; so now she stepped out, and, gathering her skirts back

from the dewy grass, walked thoughtfully along the path and gained the

hill. Newport harbor lay stretched out in the distance, with the rising

moon casting a long, wavering track of silver upon it; and vessels,

like silver-winged moths, were turning and shifting slowly to and fro

upon it, and one stately ship in full sail passing fairly out under her

white canvas, graceful as some grand, snowy bird. Mary's beating heart

told her that _there_ was passing away from her one who carried a

portion of her existence with him. She sat down under a lonely tree

that stood there, and, resting her elbow on her knee, followed the ship

with silent prayers, as it passed, like a graceful, cloudy dream, out

of her sight.

Then she thoughtfully retraced her way to her chamber; and as she was

entering, observed in the now clearer moonlight what she had not seen

before,--something white, like a letter, lying on the floor.

Immediately she struck a light, and there, sure enough, it was,--a

letter in James's handsome, dashing hand; and the little puss, before

she knew what she was about, actually kissed it, with a fervor which

would much have astonished the writer, could he at that moment have

been clairvoyant. But Mary felt as one who finds, in the emptiness

after a friend's death, an unexpected message or memento; and all alone

in the white, calm stillness of her little room her heart took sudden

possession of her. She opened the letter with trembling hands, and read

what of course we shall let you read. We got it out of a bundle of old,

smoky, yellow letters, years after all the parties concerned were gone

on the eternal journey beyond earth.

"MY DEAR MARY,--

"I cannot leave you so. I have about two hundred things to say to you,

and it's a shame I could not have had longer to see you; but blessed be

ink and paper! I am writing and seeing to fifty things besides; so you

mustn't wonder if my letter has rather a confused appearance.

"I have been thinking that perhaps I gave you a wrong impression of

myself, this afternoon. I am going to speak to you from my heart, as if

I were confessing on my death-bed. Well, then, I do not confess to

being what is commonly called a bad young man. I should be willing that

men of the world generally, even strict ones, should look my life

through and know all about it. It is only in your presence, Mary, that

I feel that I am bad and low and shallow and mean, because you

represent to me a sphere higher and holier than any in which I have

ever moved, and stir up a sort of sighing and longing in my heart to

come towards it. In all countries, in all temptations, Mary, your image

has stood between me and low, gross vice. When I have been with fellows

roaring drunken, beastly songs,--suddenly I have seemed to see you as

you used to sit beside me in the singing-school, and your voice has

been like an angel's in my ear, and I have got up and gone out sick and

disgusted. Your face has risen up calm and white and still, between the

faces of poor lost creatures who know no better way of life than to

tempt us to sin. And sometimes, Mary, when I have seen girls that, had

they been cared for by good pious mothers, might have been like you, I

have felt as if I could cry for them. Poor women are abused all the

world over; and it's no wonder they turn round and revenge themselves

on us.

"No, I have not been bad, Mary, as the world calls badness. I have been

kept by you. But do you remember you told me once, that, when the snow

first fell and lay so dazzling and pure and soft, all about, you always

felt as if the spreads and window-curtains that seemed white before

were dirty? Well, it's just like that with me. Your presence makes me

feel that I am not pure,--that I am low and unworthy,--not worthy to

touch the hem of your garment. Your good Dr. H. spent a whole half-day,

the other Sunday, trying to tell us about the beauty of holiness; and

he cut, and pared, and peeled, and sliced, and told us what it wasn't,

and what was _like_ it, and wasn't; and then he built up an exact

definition, and fortified and bricked it up all round; and I thought to

myself that he'd better tell 'em to look at Mary Scudder, and they'd

understand all about it. That was what I was thinking when you talked

to me for looking at you in church instead of looking towards the

pulpit. It really made me laugh in myself to see what a good little

ignorant, unconscious way you had of looking up at the Doctor, as if he

knew more about that than you did.

"And now as to your Doctor that you think so much of, I like him for

certain things, in certain ways. He is a great, grand, large pattern of

a man,--a man who isn't afraid to think, and to speak anything he does

think; but then I do believe, if he would take a voyage round the world

in the forecastle of a whaler, he would know more about what to say to

people than he does now; it would certainly give him several new points

to be considered. Much of his preaching about men is as like live men

as Chinese pictures of trees and rocks and gardens,--no nearer the

reality than that. All I can say is, 'It isn't so; and you'd know it,

Sir, if you knew men.' He has got what they call a _system_--just so

many bricks put together just so; but it is too narrow to take in all I

see in my wanderings round this world of ours. Nobody that has a soul,

and goes round the world as I do, can help feeling it at times, and

thinking, as he sees all the races of men and their ways, who made

them, and what they were made for. To doubt the existence of a God

seems to me like a want of common sense. There is a Maker and a Ruler,

doubtless; but then, Mary, all this invisible world of religion is

unreal to me. I can see we must be good, somehow,--that if we are not,

we shall not be happy here or hereafter. As to all the metaphysics of

your good Doctor, you can't tell how they tire me. I'm not the sort of

person that they can touch. I must have real things,--real people;

abstractions are nothing to me. Then I think that he systematically

contradicts on one Sunday what he preaches on another. One Sunday he

tells us that God is the immediate efficient Author of every act of

will; the next he tells us that we are entire free agents. I see no

sense in it, and can't take the trouble to put it together. But then he

and you have something in you that I call religion,--something that

makes you _good_. When I see a man working away on an entirely honest,

unworldly, disinterested pattern, as he does, and when I see you, Mary,

as I said before, I should like at least to _be_ as you are, whether I

could believe as you do or not.

"How could you so care for me, and waste on one so unworthy of you such

love? Oh, Mary, some better man must win you; I never shall and never

can;--but then you must not quite forget me; you must be my friend, my

saint. If, through your prayers, your Bible, your friendship, you can

bring me to your state, I am willing to be brought there,--nay,

desirous. God has put the key of my soul into your hands.

"So, dear Mary, good-bye! Pray still for your naughty, loving

"COUSIN JAMES."

Mary read this letter, and re-read it, with more pain than pleasure. To

feel the immortality of a beloved soul hanging upon us, to feel that

its only communications with Heaven must be through us, is the most

solemn and touching thought that can pervade a mind. It was without one

particle of gratified vanity, with even a throb of pain, that she read

such exalted praises of herself from one blind to the glories of a far

higher loveliness.

Yet was she at that moment, unknown to herself, one of the great

company scattered through earth who are priests unto God,--ministering

between the Divine One, who has unveiled himself unto them, and those

who as yet stand in the outer courts of the great sanctuary of truth

and holiness. Many a heart, wrung, pierced, bleeding with the sins and

sorrows of earth, longing to depart, stands in this mournful and

beautiful ministry, but stands unconscious of the glory of the work in

which it waits and suffers. God's kings and priests are crowned with

thorns, walking the earth with bleeding feet, and comprehending not the

work they are performing.

Mary took from a drawer a small pocket-book, from which dropped a lock

of black hair,--a glossy curl, which seemed to have a sort of wicked,

wilful life in every shining ring, just as she had often seen it shake

naughtily on the owner's head. She felt a strange tenderness towards

the little wilful thing, and, as she leaned over it, made in her heart

a thousand fond apologies for every fault and error.

She was standing thus when Mrs. Scudder entered the room to see if her

daughter had yet retired.

"What are you doing there, Mary?" she said, as her eye fell on the

letter. "What is it you are reading?"

Mary felt herself grow pale; it was the first time in her whole life

that her mother had asked her a question that she was not from the

heart ready to answer. Her loyalty to her only parent had gone on

even-handed with that she gave to her God; she felt, somehow, that the

revelations of that afternoon had opened a gulf between them, and the

consciousness overpowered her.

Mrs. Scudder was astonished at her evident embarrassment, her

trembling, and paleness. She was a woman of prompt, imperative

temperament, and the slightest hesitation in rendering to her a full,

outspoken confidence had never before occurred in their intercourse.

Her child was the core of her heart, the apple of her eye, and intense

love is always near neighbor to anger; there was, therefore, an

involuntary flash from her eye and a heightening of her color, as she

said,--"Mary, are you concealing anything from your mother?"

In that moment, Mary had grown calm again. The wonted serene, balanced

nature had found its habitual poise, and she looked up innocently,

though with tears in her large, blue eyes, and said,--"No, mother,--I

have nothing that I do not mean to tell you fully. This letter came

from James Marvyn; he came here to see me this afternoon."

"Here?--when? I did not see him."

"After dinner. I was sitting here in the window, and suddenly he came

up behind me through the orchard-path."

Mrs. Katy sat down with a flushed cheek and a discomposed air; but Mary

seemed actually to bear her down by the candid clearness of the large,

blue eye which she turned on her, as she stood perfectly collected,

with her deadly pale face and a brilliant spot burning on each cheek.

"James came to say good-bye. He complained that he had not had a chance

to see me alone since he came home."

"And what should he want to see you alone for?" said Mrs. Scudder, in a

dry, disturbed tone.

"Mother,--everybody has things at times which they would like to say to

some one person alone," said Mary.

"Well, tell me what he said."

"I will try. In the first place, he said that he always had been free,

all his life, to run in and out of our house, and to wait on me like a

brother."

"Hum!" said Mrs. Scudder; "but he isn't your brother, for all that."

"Well, then, he wanted to know why you were so cold to him, and why you

never let him walk with me from meetings or see me alone, as we often

used to. And I told him why,--that we were not children now, and that

you thought it was not best; and then I talked with him about religion,

and tried to persuade him to attend to the concerns of his soul; and I

never felt so much hope for him as I do now."

Aunt Katy looked skeptical, and remarked,--"If he really felt a

disposition for religious instruction, Dr. H. could guide him much

better than you could."

"Yes,--so I told him, and I tried to persuade him to talk with Dr. H.;

but he was very unwilling. He said, I could have more influence over

him than anybody else,--that nobody could do him any good but me."

"Yes, yes,--I understand all that," said Aunt Katy,--"I have heard

young men say _that_ before, and I know just what it amounts to."

"But, mother, I do think James was moved very much, this afternoon. I

never heard him speak so seriously; he seemed really in earnest, and he

asked me to give him my Bible."

"Couldn't he read any Bible but yours?"

"Why, naturally, you know, mother, he would like my Bible better,

because it would put him in mind of me. He promised faithfully to read

it all through."

"And then, it seems, he wrote you a letter."

"Yes, mother."

Mary shrank from showing this letter, from the natural sense of honor

which makes us feel it indelicate to expose to an unsympathizing eye

the confidential outpourings of another heart; and then she felt quite

sure that there was no such intercessor for James in her mother's heart

as in her own. But over all this reluctance rose the determined force

of duty; and she handed the letter in silence to her mother.

Mrs. Scudder took it, laid it deliberately in her lap, and then began

searching in the pocket of her chintz petticoat for her spectacles.

These being found, she wiped them, accurately adjusted them, opened the

letter and spread it on her lap, brushing out its folds and

straightening it, that she might read with the greater ease. After this

she read it carefully and deliberately; and all this while there was

such a stillness, that the sound of the tall varnished clock in the

best room could be heard through the half-opened door.

After reading it with the most tiresome, torturing slowness, she rose,

and laying it on the table under Mary's eye, and pressing down her

finger on two lines in the letter, said, "Mary, have you told James

that you loved him?"

"Yes, mother, always. I always loved him, and he always knew it."

"But, Mary, this that he speaks of is something different. What has

passed between"--

"Why, mother, he was saying that we who were Christians drew to

ourselves and did not care for the salvation of our friends; and then I

told him how I had always prayed for him, and how I should be willing

even to give up my hopes in heaven, if he might be saved."

"Child,--what do you mean?"