CHAPTER III.

Doctor Dastick's bone-party was certainly an entertainment of unique

description. A kind old gentleman was its originator, who thought to

turn the enthusiasm for lectures, which the Lyceum had developed in

Foxden, into a private and pleasant channel. Possessed with this

praiseworthy design, the Doctor, who had given up practice by reason of

years and competence, remembered a certain cabinet containing fossils,

crystals, fragments of Indian implements, small pieces of the skeletons

of their proprietors, vertebrae of extinct animals, besides a great

amount of miscellaneous rubbish that refused to come to terms and be

classified. Thus it seemed good to the proprietor of this medical

rag-bag to invite the citizens of Foxden to a series of explanatory

lectures upon its varied contents. This would have done well enough,

if the Doctor could only have persuaded himself to select his most

interesting specimens, and read up upon them, so as to retail a little

fluent information after the manner of the lyceum-philosophers. But,

unfortunately, the professional pride of the lecturer induced him to

speak without preparation or discrimination upon any osteological

article which happened to come to hand: which fact, perhaps, accounted

for the prevalent somnolence of the auditory, concerning which I had

been forewarned.

It is barely possible that these midsummer-night diversions of Doctor

Dastick were suggested by the fame of evenings which, during the

previous winter, several city physicians (men of eminent scientific

attainments) had devoted to the instruction of their friends. And rumor

could scarcely have overestimated the privilege of listening to the

discursive fireside talk of such accurate observers. Having vividly

realized all that was to be known of their subjects of special

investigation, these distinguished gentlemen would steam steadily

athwart the light winds of conversation and bring their company to

a pleasant haven. The Foxden ex-practitioner, however, lacking the

metropolitan attrition which keeps the intellectual engine in

effective polish, drifted vaguely in a sea of fragmentary information;

--occasionally, to be sure, bumping against some encyclopedic argosy,

but, for the most part, making very leisurely progress, with much

apparent waste in the machinery. A brief extract from my note-book may

furnish an idea of these scientific discourses.

"Now, my friends," pursues the Doctor, "let us examine another

curiosity,"--here he would take down something that looked like a

mottled paving-stone in a very crumbling condition,--"let us examine it

carefully through the glass,"--here a pause, during which he performed

the operation in question. "What is it? Is it a fossil turtle? No,"

--with great deliberation,--"I should say it was _not_ a fossil turtle.

Is it a mass of twigs taken from the stomach of a mastodon? No, on the

whole, it can't be a mass of twigs taken from the stomach of a mastodon.

Is it a specimen of the top of Mount Sinai? No, it is not a specimen

of the top of Mount Sinai. What is it, then? _I--don't--know--

what--it--is!_"

Having arrived at this satisfactory conclusion, the Doctor would pass

on to the next specimen, which, having provoked a similar series of

interrogations and negations, would be dismissed with no very different

result.

There is sometimes an advantage in not being a notable person; at all

events, I thought so, when I saw the Prowleys and their guests of chief

consideration, to wit, the clergyman, deacon, and Miss Hurribattle,

accommodated on the first row of chairs, with their faces under grand

illumination by two camphene-lamps upon the Doctor's table. There

they sat, together with Mrs. Hunesley from New York, two or three

distinguished visitors from the hotel, and the elders of Foxden, looking

wistfully at the bones, as if in envy of their fleshless condition that

sultry August evening.

It was with real satisfaction that I perceived I was considered worthy

of no more worshipful company than that of the standing stragglers at

the dark end of the parlor. And as the evening breeze came freshly

through the window at the back of the room, I rejoiced heartily in my

lack of title to the consideration of being snugly penned in a more

honorable position. As I found it might be done without attracting

attention, I obeyed a strong impulse that seized me to pass through the

open window to the piazza. Thence I presently descended, and strolled

about the precise gravel-walks, puzzling myself to conjecture how much

of the rich light was owing to the red glow which lingered in the west,

and how much to the full moon just breaking through the trees. My

investigations were suddenly interrupted by the advent of a carryall,

which drove-with great rapidity to the Doctor's gate. It was the very

railway-omnibus that a few hours before had brought Miss Hurribattle and

myself from the station.

"Hello, Cap'n," called out the driver, complimenting me with that

military title, "can you give a hand to this trunk? I've got to go right

slap back after two more fares."

I was near the gate, and of course cheerfully acceded to this request. A

heavy trunk was lifted out, and placed just behind the lilac-bushes at

the edge of the lawn. The driver jumped into his omnibus and hurried

away with all speed, lest his two fares should pay themselves to a rival

conveyance. Behind him, however, he had left the proprietress of the

trunk,--a lady of about five-and-twenty, in whose countenance I detected

that strange sort of familiarity that entire strangers sometimes carry

about them.

"This is Doctor Dastick's, is it not? Do you know whether Mrs. Hunesley

expected me?" she asked, with a grace of manner that was quite

irresistible.

I informed her that I was a stranger in the place, and was only at the

Doctor's for a single evening; but that I could not think that Mrs.

Hunesley expected anybody, as I had just seen that lady firmly fixed in

the front row of chairs before the Doctor's table,--whence, owing to the

crowd of sitters behind, she would have some difficulty in extricating

herself.

"Oh, I would not have her called for the world!" gayly exclaimed my

companion. "She has told me all about the dear old Doctor's lectures;

and I would not disturb his learned explanations on any account."

"I do not think that the company in general would regret an interlude of

modern life and interest," said I.

"Perhaps not; but nothing seems to me so rude and disagreeable as to

interrupt people, or disturb their attention, when assembled for a

definite object."

We walked up the gravel-path, and softly entered the hall, where

a shawl and bonnet were deposited. The Doctor's discourse was very

audible, and the unexpected visitor seemed disposed to establish herself

upon one of the hall-chairs, and wait till it was over. There was a

graceful confidence in her movement, which is to me more captivating

than a pretty face; and when I had opportunity to observe more closely,

I was greatly attracted by the sensibility and refinement expressed

through a countenance which otherwise would have been plain. As I seemed

to be whimsically cast in the part of host, and as I perceived the lady

was too well-bred to make my position at all awkward, I proposed the

piazza as a pleasanter place of waiting than that she had chosen.

And here let me make one of those weighty observations, derived from a

profound experience, which I trust will have a redeeming savor to

the judicious, should this tale of mine fail to command that general

popularity to which I have begun to suspect its title. I have found

that all the fine passages that lighten and enlighten this life of ours

seldom run into the traps we set for them, but seem to take a perverse

satisfaction in descending upon us when we are least prepared for

their reception. I have never been asked out to dine with a gentleman,

devoted, we will say, to the same speciality in which I have a humble

interest, without being sadly disappointed in the talk that my host had

kindly promised me. And when I am going to another country, and a dear

friend gives me a letter to some one whom he tells me I shall be glad to

meet, and from whom I shall gain great instruction, I accept the letter,

knowing very well that the man I shall really be glad to meet, and from

whom I shall truly gain instruction, will present himself on the top

of a diligence, or take a seat at my table at some cheap _café_ or

chop-house. Thus it is, that, when there is every reason why people

should break through the commonplace rubbish on the surface, and

disclose a pure vein of thought and feeling, they rarely contrive to do

it, but reserve their best things for the chances that touch them, when

self-consciousness is asleep, and the unconstrained humanity within

expands to absorb its like. Is it not in every one's experience that

there are persons with whom chance has thrown us for a few hours, whom

we know better, and who know us better, than the friends with whom we

have babbled of green fields, thermometers, and dirty pavements for a

score of years? As I confidently expect an affirmative reply to this

question, I fear no censure in saying that the evening passed on

Doctor Dastick's piazza made me feel there was a possibility of social

intercourse resembling the extravagant spirituality of the mystics, when

the soul bounds to the height of joyful knowledge, and without process

or medium knows complete satisfaction.

How we came to talk of many things, I cannot remember; but we somehow

found ourselves speaking of matters of near and deep experience without

consciousness of singularity. We admitted those puzzling life-questions

that present themselves, on a still summer evening, when we long to

escape from the conditions of finite being, and yet contemplate

the necessity of working at our tasks shackled by a thousand iron

circumstances.

"My plan of life, so far as I have any, seems to point to education,"

said my companion. "I am thrown in great measure upon my own activity

for support, and have an aunt who is very zealous in the work, and who

has often asked me to become her fellow-laborer. Until now I could never

well leave home; but she has written to me again since"--she stopped, as

if distressed, and with a woman's tact glanced at her mourning-dress to

tell me the story;--"she has written to me earnestly of late upon the

subject. I feel how noble an object it is to live for, and I want an

object, Heaven knows; but there are reasons--perhaps I should say

feelings, not reasons--why I hesitate. I am asked to bind myself for ten

years to the work in a Western college. There are many advantages in a

permanent position, both for the teacher and the institution, but"--

Her voice faltered; and I felt that Nature had at times made other

suggestions to that fresh young spirit, other possibilities had dawned

through the future; perhaps they were certainties,--and the thought

passed me with a shudder.

"Teaching is a terrible drudgery," I said; "the labor and devotion of

the true teacher are yet unrecognized by the world."

"I am not afraid of the vexations," she replied: "I am very fond of

being with young people; yet I have been taught to think it was happier,

if our affections could be somewhat more concentrated than--In short,

I had better finish an awkward sentence, by saying that I do not feel

quite ready to pledge myself to give up all possibilities connected with

my New-England home."

It was spoken with such sweet ingenuousness that I was only charmed. The

simple sincerity of the confession seemed to me much better than the

flippant jest and pert talk with which I had heard such subjects treated

while making my observations upon what my city-acquaintances had assured

me was good society. Is it not Sterling who exclaims that a luxurious

and polished life without a true sense of the beautiful and the great is

more barren and sad to see than that of the ignorant and the brutalized?

And if this be true, how shall we imagine a greater satisfaction than to

find the fresh truth of Nature set in a polished and graceful form? For

since it is through form that we take cognizance of all we love and all

we believe, it is well that the sign and idea should merge, and come

complete and whole to govern us aright.

I should have no objection to meditating after this manner for a page or

two, as well as further hinting what important nothings sparkled upon

Doctor Dastick's piazza that pleasant summer night. But as I must

curtail this biographical fragment in some part or other, it seems best

to do it about that portion where I may trust that the experience of

every reader will supply the deficiency.

How harshly sounded the creaking of the furniture, and how strangely

commercial and matter-of-fact the voices of the people that announced

the conclusion of the lecture! Mrs. Hunesley managed to get out among

the first, and was heartily glad to see my newly acquired friend,

calling her, "My dear Kate,"--which I thought was a very pretty

name,--and saying that she had not expected her quite so soon.

I looked into the parlor and saw the Prowley party tumbling over chairs,

and scaling settees, in their haste to meet the cooling breezes of the

piazza. But when they finally accomplished their purpose, and I was

advancing with inquiries and congratulations, I started at seeing the

surprise depicted in the countenance of Miss Hurribattle, as she gazed

in the direction where I stood.

"Why, Aunt Patience!" exclaimed a voice at my side.

"Why, Kate Hurribattle!" was the response.

"How in the name of wonder did you get to Foxden?"

"How under the sun did _you_ get to Foxden?"

"Why _I_ am here naturally enough as the guest of my friend Colonel

Prowley."

"And _I_ am here naturally enough as the guest of my friend Mrs.

Hunesley."

Now if I had dramatized the little event I have been trying to relate, I

should have reached the precise point where the auditor would button up

his coat, put on his hat, let his patent spring-seat go up with a click,

and begin to leave the theatre with all expedition. What would it matter

to him that I had prepared a circumstantial account of how all petty

objections were got over, or that I had elaborated a peculiarly

felicitous _tag_ which Colonel Prowley would speak at a few backs as

they disappeared into the lobby? The auditor referred to has got an

inkling of how things are to end, and can guess out the particulars as

he hurries off to his business. And here will be observed our decided

advantage in having made sure of the Moral by a vigorous assertion of

the same at the commencement of this narrative; for, thus relieved of

the necessity of a final flutter into the empyrean of ethics, we may

part company in a few easy sentences.

Although the circumstances I have set down, from being awkwardly packed

in a small compass, may not appear to fit into each other with all the

exactness of a dissecting-map, I am sure, that, as they really occurred

spread over a necessary time, they seemed natural and simple enough.

Mrs. Hunesley, Doctor Dastick's favorite niece, was the schoolmate of

Miss Kate Hurribattle, and what more likely than that she should invite

her friend to pass a few weeks with her at her summer-home in the

country? And could there be a greater necessity than that, meeting daily

as we did through those lovely August weeks, she should become--in

short, that I should marry Miss Hurribattle?

And when this foolish little romance, which had taken nebulous outline

in the fancy of Colonel Prowley, suddenly fell at his feet a serious

indubitability, the dear, delighted old gentleman was the first to

declare, that, as our engagement had existed for the last seventy years,

it certainly did not seem worth while to wait much longer. At all

events, we did not wait longer than the following Thanksgiving; since

which period my experience leads me to declare, that, if the Miss

Hurribattle of my great-great-uncle's day was at all comparable to the

member of her family I met at Foxden, my respected relative made a great

mistake in living a bachelor.

RESIGNATION.

You know how a little child of three or four years old kicks and howls,

if it do not get its own way. You know how quietly a grown-up man takes

it, when ordinary things fall out otherwise than he wished. A letter,

a newspaper, a magazine, does not arrive by the post on the morning

on which it had been particularly wished for, and counted on with

certainty. The day proves rainy, when a fine day was specially

desirable. The grown-up man is disappointed; but he soon gets reconciled

to the existing state of facts. He did not much expect that things would

turn out as he wished them. Yes: there is nothing like the habit of

being disappointed, to make a man resigned when disappointment comes,

and to enable him to take it quietly. And a habit of practical

resignation grows upon most men, as they advance through life.

You have often seen a poor beggar, most probably an old man, with some

lingering remains of respectability in his faded appearance, half ask

an alms of a passer-by; and you have seen him, at a word of repulse, or

even on finding no notice taken of his request, meekly turn away: too

beaten and sick at heart for energy; drilled into a dreary resignation

by the long custom of finding everything go against him in this world.

You may have known a poor cripple, who sits all day by the side of the

pavement of a certain street, with a little bundle of tracts in his

hand, watching those who pass by, in the hope that they may give him

something. I wonder, indeed, how the police suffer him to be there: for,

though ostensibly selling the tracts, he is really begging. Hundreds of

times in the long day, he must see people approaching, and hope that

they may spare him a halfpenny, and find ninety-nine out of each hundred

pass without noticing him. It must be a hard school of Resignation.

Disappointments without number have subdued that poor creature into

bearing one disappointment more with scarce an appreciable stir of

heart. But, on the other hand, kings, great nobles, and the like, have

been known, even to the close of life, to violently curse and swear, if

things went against them; going the length of stamping and blaspheming

even at rain and wind, and branches of trees and plashes of mud, which

were of course guiltless of any design of giving offence to these

eminent individuals. There was a great monarch, who, when any little

cross-accident befell him, was wont to fling himself upon the floor, and

there to kick and scream and tear his hair. And around him, meanwhile,

stood his awe-stricken attendants: all doubtless ready to assure

him that there was something noble and graceful in his kicking and

screaming, and that no human being had ever before with such dignity

and magnanimity torn his hair. My friend Mr. Smith tells me that in his

early youth he had a (very slight) acquaintance with a great prince, of

elevated rank and of vast estates. That great prince came very early to

his greatness; and no one had ever ventured, since he could remember,

to tell him he had ever said or done wrong. Accordingly, the prince had

never learned to control himself, nor grown accustomed to bear quietly

what he did not like. And when any one, in conversation, related to him

something which he disapproved, he used to start from his chair, and

rush up and down the apartment, furiously flapping his hands together,

till he had thus blown off the steam produced by the irritation of his

nervous system. That prince was a good man: and so aware was he of

his infirmity, that, when in these fits of passion, he never suffered

himself to say a single word: being aware that he might say what he

would afterwards regret. And though he could not wholly restrain

himself, the entire wrath he felt passed off in flapping. And after

flapping for a few minutes, he sat down again, a reasonable man once

more. All honor to him! For my friend Smith tells me that that prince

was surrounded by toadies, who were ready to praise everything he might

do, even to his flapping. And in particular, there was one humble

retainer, who, whenever his master flapped, was wont to hold up his

hands in an ecstasy of admiration, exclaiming, "It is the flapping of a

god, and not of a man!"

Now all this lack of Resignation on the part of princes and kings comes

of the fact, that they are so far like children that they have not

become accustomed to be resisted, and to be obliged to forego what they

would like. Resignation comes by the habit of being disappointed, and

of finding things go against you. It is, in the case of ordinary human

beings, just what they expect. Of course, you remember the adage,

"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed."

I have a good deal to say about that adage. Reasonableness of

expectation is a great and good thing: despondency is a thing to be

discouraged and put down as far as may be. But meanwhile let me say,

that the corollary drawn from that dismal beatitude seems to me

unfounded in fact. I should say just the contrary. I should say,

"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he will very likely be

disappointed." You know, my reader, whether things do not generally

happen the opposite way from that which you expected. Did you ever try

to keep off an evil you dreaded by interposing this buffer? Did you ever

think you might perhaps prevent a trouble from coming by constantly

anticipating it,--keeping, meanwhile, an under-thought that things

rarely happen as you anticipate them, and thus that your anticipation of

the thing might possibly keep it away? Of course you have; for you are

a human being. And in all common cases, a watch might as well think to

keep a skilful watchmaker in ignorance of the way in which its movements

are produced, as a human being think to prevent another human being from

knowing exactly how he will think and feel in given circumstances. We

have watched the working of our own watches far too closely and long,

my friends, to have the least difficulty in understanding the great

principles upon which the watches of other men go. I cannot look inside

your breast, my reader, and see the machinery that is working there: I

mean the machinery of thought and feeling. But I know exactly how it

works, nevertheless; for I have long watched a machinery precisely like

it.

There are a great many people in this world who feel that things are all

wrong, that they have missed stays in life, that they are beaten,--and

yet who don't much mind. They are indurated by long use. They do not try

to disguise from themselves the facts. There are some men who diligently

try to disguise the facts, and who in some measure succeed in doing so.

I have known a self-sufficient and disagreeable clergyman who had a

church in a large city. Five-sixths of the seats in the church were

quite empty; yet the clergyman often talked of what a good congregation

he had, with a confidence which would have deceived any one who had not

seen it. I have known a church where it was agony to any one with an ear

to listen to the noise produced when the people were singing; yet the

clergyman often talked of what splendid music he had. I have known an

entirely briefless barrister, whose friends gave out that the sole

reason why he had no briefs was that he did not want any. I have known

students who did not get the prizes for which they competed, but who

declared that the reason of their failure was, that, though they

competed for the prizes, they did not wish to get them. I have known a

fast young woman, after many engagements made and broken, marry as the

last resort a brainless and penniless blackguard; yet all her family

talk in big terms of what a delightful connection she was making. Now,

where all that self-deception is genuine, let us be glad to see it; and

let us not, like Mr. Snarling, take a spiteful pleasure in undeceiving

those who are so happy to be deceived. In most cases, indeed, such

trickery deceives nobody. But where it truly deceives those who

practise it, even if it deceive nobody else, you see there is no true

Resignation. A man who has made a mess of life has no need to be

resigned, if he fancies he has succeeded splendidly. But I look with

great interest, and often with deep respect, at the man or woman who

feels that life has been a failure,--a failure, that is, as regards

_this_ world,--and yet who is quite resigned. Yes: whether it be the

un-soured old maid, sweet-tempered, sympathetic in others' joys, God's

kind angel in the house of sorrow,--or the unappreciated genius, quiet,

subdued, pleased to meet even one who understands him amid a community

which does not,--or the kind-hearted clever man to whom eminent success

has come too late, when those were gone whom it would have made happy:

I reverence and love, more than I can express, the beautiful natures I

have known thus subdued and resigned.

Yes: human beings get indurated. When you come to know well the history

of a great many people, you will find that it is wonderful what they

have passed through. Most people have suffered a very great deal,

since they came into this world. Yet in their appearance there is no

particular trace of it all. You would not guess, from looking at them,

how hard and how various their lot has been. I once knew a woman, rather

more than middle-aged. I knew her well, and saw her almost every day,

for several years, before I learned that the homely Scotchwoman had seen

distant lands, and had passed through very strange ups and downs, before

she settled into the quiet, orderly life in which I knew her. Yet when

spoken to kindly, by one who expressed surprise that all these trials

had left so little trace, the inward feeling, commonly suppressed, burst

bitterly out, and she exclaimed, "It's a wonder that I'm living at all!"

And it is a wonder that a great many people are living, and looking so

cheerful and so well as they do, when you think what fiery passion, what

crushing sorrow, what terrible losses, what bitter disappointments, what

hard and protracted work they have gone through. Doubtless, great good

comes of it. All wisdom, all experience, comes of suffering. I should

not care much for the counsel of the man whose life had been one long

sunshiny holiday. There is greater depth in the philosophy of Mr.

Dickens than a great portion of his readers discern. You are ready to

smile at the singular way in which Captain Cuttle commended his friend

Jack Bunsby as a man of extraordinary wisdom, whose advice on any point

was of inestimable value. "Here's a man," said Captain Cuttle, "who has

been more beaten about the head than any other living man!" I hail the

words as the recognition of a great principle. To Mr. Bunsby it befell

in a literal sense; but we have all been (in a moral sense) a good deal

beaten about both the head and the heart before we grew good for much.

Out of the travail of his nature, out of the sorrowful history of his

past life, the poet or the moralist draws the deep thought and feeling

which find so straight a way to the hearts of other men. Do you think

Mr. Tennyson would ever have been the great poet he is, if he had not

passed through that season of great grief which has left its noble

record in "In Memoriam"? And a youthful preacher, of vivid imagination

and keen feeling, little fettered by anything in the nature of good

taste, may by strong statements and a fiery manner draw a mob of

unthinking hearers: but thoughtful men and women will not find anything

in all _that_, that awakens the response of their inner nature in its

truest depths; they must have religious instruction into which real

experience has been transfused; and the worth of the instruction will be

in direct proportion to the amount of real experience which is embodied

in it. And after all, it is better to be wise and good than to be gay

and happy, if we must choose between the two things; and it is worth

while to be severely beaten about the head, if _that_ is the condition

on which alone we can gain true wisdom. True wisdom is cheap at almost

any price. But it does not follow at all that you will be happy (in

the vulgar sense) in direct proportion as you are wise. I suppose

most middle-aged people, when they receive the ordinary kind wish at

New-Year's time of a Happy New-Year, feel that _happy_ is not quite the

word; and feel that, too, though well aware that they have abundant

reason for gratitude to a kind Providence. It is not _here_ that we

shall ever be happy,--that is, completely and perfectly happy. Something

will always be coming to worry and distress. And a hundred sad

possibilities hang over us: some of them only too certainly and quickly

drawing near. Yet people are content, in a kind of way. They have learnt

the great lesson of Resignation.

* * * * *

There are many worthy people who would be quite fevered and flurried

by good fortune, if it were to come to any very great degree. It would

injure their heart. As for bad fortune, they can stand it nicely, they

have been accustomed to it so long. I have known a very hard-wrought

man, who had passed, rather early in life, through very heavy and

protracted trials. I have heard him say, that, if any malicious enemy

wished to kill him, the course would be to make sure that tidings of

some signal piece of prosperity should arrive by post on each of six or

seven successive days. It would quite unhinge and unsettle him, he said.

His heart would go: his nervous system would break down. People to whom

pieces of good-luck come rare and small have a great curiosity to know

how a man feels when he is suddenly told that he has drawn one of the

greatest prizes in the lottery of life. The kind of feeling, of course,

will depend entirely on the kind of man. Yet very great prizes, in the

way of dignity and duty, do for the most part fall to men who in some

measure deserve them, or who at least are not conspicuously undeserving

of them and unfit for them. So that it is almost impossible that the

great news should elicit merely some unworthy explosion of gratified

self-conceit. The feeling would in almost every case be deeper and

worthier. One would like to be sitting at breakfast with a truly good

man, when the letter from the Prime-Minister comes in, offering him the

Archbishopric of Canterbury. One would like to see how he would take

it. Quietly, I have no doubt. Long preparation has fitted the man

who reaches that position for taking it quietly. A recent Chancellor

publicly stated how _he_ felt, when offered the Great Seal. His first

feeling, that good man said, was of gratification that he had fairly

reached the highest reward of the profession to which he had given

his life; but the feeling which speedily supplanted _that_ was an

overwhelming sense of his responsibility and a grave doubt as to his

qualifications. I have always believed, and sometimes said, that good

fortune--not so great or so sudden as to injure one's nerves or

heart, but kindly and equable--has a most wholesome effect upon human

character. I believe that the happier a man is, the better and kinder

he will be. The greater part of unamiability, ill-temper, impatience,

bitterness, and uncharitableness comes out of unhappiness. It is because

a man is so miserable that he is such a sour, suspicious, fractious,

petted creature. I was amused, this morning, to read in the newspaper an

account of a very small incident which befell the new Primate of England

on his journey back to London, after being enthroned at Canterbury.

The reporter of that small incident takes occasion to record that

the Archbishop had quite charmed his travelling-companions in the

railway-carriage by the geniality and kindliness of his manner. I have

no doubt he did. I am sure he is a truly good Christian man. But think

of what a splendid training for producing geniality and kindliness he

has been going through for a great number of years! Think of the moral

influences which have been bearing on him for the last few weeks! We

should all be kindly and genial, if we had the same chance of being so.

But if Dr. Longley had a living of a hundred pounds a year, a fretful,

ailing wife, a number of half-fed and half-educated little children, a

dirty, miserable house, a bleak country round, and a set of wrong-headed

and insolent parishioners to keep straight, I venture to say he would

have looked, and been, a very different man in that railway-carriage

running up to London. Instead of the genial smiles that delighted his

fellow-travellers, (according to the newspaper-story,) his face would

have been sour, and his speech would have been snappish; he would have

leaned back in the corner of a second-class carriage, sadly calculating

the cost of his journey, and how part of it might be saved by going

without any dinner. Oh, if I found a four-leaved shamrock, I would

undertake to make a mighty deal of certain people I know! I would put an

end to their weary schemings to make the ends meet. I would cut off all

those wretched cares which jar miserably on the shaken nerves. I know

the burst of thankfulness and joy that would come, if some dismal load,

never to be cast off, were taken away. And I would take it off. I would

clear up the horrible muddle. I would make them happy: and in doing

_that_, I know that I should make them good.

* * * * *

But I have sought the four-leaved shamrock for a long time, and never

have found it; and so I am growing subdued to the conviction that I

never shall. Let us go back to the matter of Resignation, and think a

little longer about _that_.

Resignation, in any human being, means that things are not as you would

wish, and yet that you are content.

Who has all he wishes? There are many houses in this world in which

Resignation is the best thing that can be felt any more. The bitter blow

has fallen; the break has been made; the empty chair is left (perhaps a

very little chair); and never more, while Time goes on, can things be

as they were fondly wished and hoped. Resignation would need to be

cultivated by human beings; for all round us there is a multitude of

things very different from what we would wish. Not in your house, not

in your family, not in your street, not in your parish, not in your

country, and least of all in yourself, can you have things as you would

wish. And you have your choice of two alternatives. You must either

fret yourself into a nervous fever, or you must cultivate the habit of

Resignation. And very often Resignation does not mean that you are at

all reconciled to a thing, but just that you feel you can do nothing

to mend it. Some friend, to whom you are really attached, and whom

you often see, vexes and worries you by some silly and disagreeable

habit,--some habit which it is impossible you should ever like, or ever

even overlook; yet you try to make up your mind to it, because it cannot

be helped, and you would rather submit to it than lose your friend. You

hate the east-wind: it withers and pinches you, in body and soul:

yet you cannot live in a certain beautiful city without feeling the

east-wind many days in the year. And that city's advantages and

attractions are so many and great that no sane man with sound lungs

would abandon the city merely to escape the east-wind. Yet, though

resigned to the east-wind, you are anything but reconciled to it.

Resignation is not always a good thing. Sometimes it is a very bad

thing. You should never be resigned to things continuing wrong, when you

may rise and set them right. I dare say, in the Romish Church, there

were good men before Luther who were keenly alive to the errors and

evils that had crept into it, but who, in despair of making things

better, tried sadly to fix their thoughts upon other subjects: who

took to illuminating missals, or constructing systems of logic, or

cultivating vegetables in the garden of the monastery, or improving the

music in the chapel: quietly resigned to evils they judged irremediable.

Great reformers have not been resigned men. Luther was not resigned;

Howard was not resigned; Fowell Buxton was not resigned; George

Stephenson was not resigned. And there is hardly a nobler sight than

that of a man who determines that he will NOT make up his mind to the

continuance of some great evil: who determines that he will give his

life to battling with that evil to the last: who determines that either

that evil shall extinguish him, or he shall extinguish it. I reverence

the strong, sanguine mind, that resolves to work a revolution to better

things, and that is not afraid to hope it _can_ work a revolution. And

perhaps, my reader, we should both reverence it all the more that we

find in ourselves very little like it. It is a curious thing, and a sad

thing, to remark in how many people there is too much resignation. It

kills out energy. It is a weak, fretful, unhappy thing. People are

reconciled, in a sad sort of way, to the fashion in which things go on.

You have seen a poor, slatternly mother, in a way-side cottage, who has

observed her little children playing in the road before it, in the way

of passing carriages, angrily ordering the little things to come away

from their dangerous and dirty play; yet, when the children disobey

her, and remain where they were, just saying no more, making no farther

effort. You have known a master tell his man-servant to do something

about stable or garden, yet, when the servant does not do it, taking no

notice: seeing that he has been disobeyed, yet wearily resigned, feeling

that there is no use in always fighting. And I do not speak of the not

unfrequent cases in which the master, after giving his orders, comes to

discover that it is best they should not be carried out, and is very

glad to see them disregarded: I mean when he is dissatisfied that what

he has directed is not done, and wishes that it were done, and feels

worried by the whole affair, yet is so devoid of energy as to rest in a

fretful resignation. Sometimes there is a sort of sense as if one had

discharged his conscience by making a weak effort in the direction of

doing a thing, an effort which had not the slightest chance of being

successful. When I was a little boy, many years since, I used to

think this; and I was led to thinking it by remarking a singular

characteristic in the conduct of a school-companion. In those days, if

you were chasing some other boy who had injured or offended you, with

the design of retaliation, if you found you could not catch him, by

reason of his superior speed, you would have recourse to the following

expedient. If your companion was within a little space of you, though a

space you felt you could not make less, you would suddenly stick out one

of your feet, which would hook round his, and he, stumbling over it,

would fall. I trust I am not suggesting a mischievous and dangerous

trick to any boy of the present generation. Indeed, I have the firmest

belief that existing boys know all we used to know, and possibly more.

All this is by way of rendering intelligible what I have to say of my

old companion. He was not a good runner. And when another boy gave him

a sudden flick with a knotted handkerchief, or the like, he had little

chance of catching that other boy. Yet I have often seen him, when

chasing another, before finally abandoning the pursuit, stick out his

foot in the regular way, though the boy he was chasing was yards beyond

his reach. Often did the present writer meditate on that phenomenon, in

the days of his boyhood. It appeared curious that it should afford

some comfort to the evaded pursuer, to make an offer at upsetting the

escaping youth,--an offer which could not possibly be successful. But

very often, in after-life, have I beheld in the conduct of grown-up men

and women the moral likeness of that futile sticking-out of the foot.

I have beheld human beings who lived in houses always untidy and

disorderly, or whose affairs were in a horrible confusion and

entanglement, who now and then seemed roused to a a feeling that this

would not do, who querulously bemoaned their miserable lot, and made

some faint and futile attempt to set things right, attempts which never

had a chance to succeed, and which ended in nothing. Yet it seemed

somehow to pacify the querulous heart. I have known a clergyman, in a

parish with a bad population, seem suddenly to waken up to a conviction

that he must do something to mend matters, and set agoing some weak

little machinery, which could produce no appreciable result, and

which came to a stop in a few weeks. Yet that faint offer appeared to

discharge the claims of conscience, and after it the clergyman remained

long time in a comatose state of unhealthy Resignation. But it is a

miserable and a wrong kind of Resignation which dwells in that man who

sinks down, beaten and hopeless, in the presence of a recognized evil.

Such a man may be in a sense resigned, but, he cannot possibly be

content.

If you should ever, when you have reached middle age, turn over the

diary or the letters you wrote in the hopeful though foolish days when

you were eighteen or twenty, you will be aware how quietly and gradually

the lesson of Resignation has been taught you. You would have got into

a terrible state of excitement, if any one had told you then that you

would have to forego your most cherished hopes and wishes of that time;

and it would have tried you even more severely to be assured that in

not many years you would not care a single straw for the things and the

persons who were then uppermost in your mind and heart. What an entirely

new set of friends and interests is that which now surrounds you!

and how completely the old ones are gone: gone, like the sunsets you

remember in the summers of your childhood; gone, like the primroses that

grew in the woods where you wandered as a boy! Said my friend Smith to

me, a few days ago: "You remember Miss Jones, and all about that? I

met her yesterday, after ten years. She is a fat, middle-aged,

ordinary-looking woman. What a terrific fool I was!" Smith spoke to me

in the confidence of friendship; yet I think he was a little mortified

at the heartiness with which I agreed with him on the subject of his

former folly. He had got over it completely; and in seeing that he was

(at a certain period) a fool, he had come to discern that of which his

friends had always been aware. Of course, early interests do not always

die out. You remember Dr. Chalmers, and the ridiculous exhibition about

the wretched little likeness of an early sweetheart, not seen for forty

years, and long since in her grave. You remember the singular way in

which he signified his remembrance of her, in his famous and honored

age. I don't mean the crying, nor the walking up and down the

garden-walk calling her by fine names. I mean the taking out his card:

not his _carte_; you could understand _that_: but his visiting-card

bearing his name, and sticking it behind the portrait with two wafers.

Probably it pleased him to do so; and assuredly it did harm to no one

else. And we have all heard of the like things. Early affections are

sometimes, doubtless, cherished in the memory of the old. But still,

more material interests come in, and the old affection is crowded out

of its old place in the heart. And so those comparatively fanciful

disappointments sit lightly. The romance is gone. The mid-day sun

beats down, and _there_ lies the dusty way. When the cantankerous and

unamiable mother of Christopher North stopped his marriage with a person

at least as respectable as herself, on the ground that the person was

not good enough, we are told that the future professor nearly went

mad, and that he never quite got over it. But really, judging from

his writings and his biography, he bore up under it, after a little,

wonderfully well.

But looking back to the days which the old yellow letters bring back,

you will think to yourself, Where are the hopes and anticipations of

that time? You expected to be a great man, no doubt. Well, you know you

are not. You are a small man, and never will be anything else; yet

you are quite resigned. If there be an argument which stirs me to

indignation at its futility, and to wonder that any mortal ever regarded

it as of the slightest force, it is that which is set out in the famous

soliloquy in "Cato," as to the Immortality of the Soul. Will any sane

man say, that, if in this world you wish for a thing very much, and

anticipate it very clearly and confidently, you are therefore sure to

get it? If that were so, many a little schoolboy would end by driving

his carriage and four, who ends by driving no carriage at all. I have

heard of a man whose private papers were found after his death all

written over with his signature as he expected it would be when he

became Lord Chancellor. Let us say his peerage was to be as Lord Smith.

There it was, SMITH, C., SMITH, C., written in every conceivable

fashion, so that the signature, when needed, might be easy and imposing.

That man had very vividly anticipated the woolsack, the gold robe, and

all the rest. It need hardly be said, he attained none of these. The

famous argument, you know of course, is, that man has a great longing to

be immortal, and that therefore he is sure to be immortal. Rubbish! It

is not true that any longing after immortality exists in the heart of

a hundredth portion of the race. And if it were true, it would prove

immortality no more than the manifold signatures of SMITH, C., proved

that Smith was indeed to be Chancellor. No: we cling to the doctrine

of a Future Life; we could not live without it; but we believe it, not

because of undefined longings within ourselves, not because of reviving

plants and flowers, not because of the chrysalis and the butterfly,--but

because "our Saviour, Jesus Christ, hath abolished death, and brought

life and immortality to light through the gospel."

There is something very curious, and very touching, in thinking

how clear and distinct, and how often recurring, were our early

anticipations of things that were never to be. In this world, the fact

is for the most part the opposite of what it should be to give force to

Plato's (or Cato's) argument: the thing you vividly anticipate is the

thing that is least likely to come. The thing you don't much care for,

the thing you don't expect, is the likeliest. And even if the event

prove what you anticipated, the circumstances, and the feeling of it,

will be quite different from what you anticipated. A certain little girl

three years old was told that in a little while she was to go with her

parents to a certain city, a hundred miles off,--a city which may be

called Altenburg as well as anything else. It was a great delight to her

to anticipate that journey, and to anticipate it very circumstantially.

It was a delight to her to sit down at evening on her father's knee,

and to tell him all about how it would be in going to Altenburg. It was

always the same thing. Always, first, how sandwiches would be made,--how

they would all get into the carriage, (which would come round to the

door,) and drive away to a certain railway-station,--how they would get

their tickets, and the train would come up, and they would all get into

a carriage together, and lean back in corners, and eat the sandwiches,

and look out of the windows, and so on. But when the journey was

actually made, every single circumstance in the little girl's

anticipations proved wrong. Of course, they were not intentionally made

wrong. Her parents would have carried out to the letter, if they could,

what the little thing had so clearly pictured and so often repeated. But

it proved to be needful to go by an entirely different way and in an

entirely different fashion. All those little details, dwelt on so much,

and with so much interest, were things never to be. It is even so with

the anticipations of larger and older children. How distinctly, how

fully, my friend, we have pictured out to our minds a mode of life, a

home and the country round it, and the multitude of little things which

make up the habitude of being, which we long since resigned ourselves to

knowing could never prove realities! No doubt, it is all right and well.

Even Saint Paul, with all his gift of prophecy, was not allowed to

foresee what was to happen to himself. You know how he wrote that he

would do a certain thing, "so soon as I shall see how it will go with

me."

But our times are in the Best Hand. And the one thing about our lot, my

reader, that we may think of with perfect contentment, is that they

are so. I know nothing more admirable in spirit, and few things more

charmingly expressed, than that little poem by Mrs. Waring which sets

out that comfortable thought. You know it, of course. You should have

it in your memory; and let it be one of the first things your children

learn by heart. It may well come next after, "O God of Bethel": it

breathes the self-same tone. And let me close these thoughts with one of

its verses:--

"There are briers besetting every path,

Which call for patient care:

There is a cross in every lot,

And an earnest need for prayer:

But a lowly heart that leans on Thee

Is happy anywhere!"

THE FLAG.

There's a flag hangs over my threshold, whose folds are more dear to me

Than the blood that thrills in my bosom its earnest of liberty;

And dear are the stars it harbors in its sunny field of blue

As the hope of a further heaven that lights all our dim lives through.

But now should my guests be merry, the house is in holiday guise,

Looking out through its burnished windows like a score of welcoming eyes.

Come hither, my brothers who wander in saintliness and in sin!

Come hither, ye pilgrims of Nature! my heart doth invite you in.

My wine is not of the choicest, yet bears it an honest brand;

And the bread that I bid you lighten I break with no sparing hand;

But pause, ere you pass to taste it, one act must accomplished be:

Salute the flag in its virtue, before ye sit down with me.

The flag of our stately battles, not struggles of wrath and greed:

Its stripes were a holy lesson, its spangles a deathless creed;

'T was red with the blood of freemen, and white with the fear of the foe,

And the stars that fight in their courses 'gainst tyrants its symbols

know.

Come hither, thou son of my mother! we were reared in the self-same

arms;

Thou hast many a pleasant gesture, thy mind hath its gifts and charms;

But my heart is as stern to question as mine eyes are of sorrows full:

Salute the flag in its virtue, or pass on where others rule.

Thou lord of a thousand acres, with heaps of uncounted gold,

The steeds of thy stall are haughty, thy lackeys cunning and bold:

I envy no jot of thy splendor, I rail at thy follies none:

Salute the flag in its virtue, or leave my poor house alone.

Fair lady with silken trappings, high waving thy stainless plume,

We welcome thee to our numbers, a flower of costliest bloom:

Let a hundred maids live widowed to furnish thy bridal bed;

But pause where the flag doth question, and bend thy triumphant head.

Take down now your flaunting banner, for a scout comes breathless and

pale,

With the terror of death upon him; of failure is all his tale:

"They have fled while the flag waved o'er them! they've turned to the

foe their back!

They are scattered, pursued, and slaughtered! the fields are all rout

and wrack!"

Pass hence, then, the friends I gathered, a goodly company!

All ye that have manhood in you, go, perish for Liberty!

But I and the babes God gave me will wait with uplifted hearts,

With the firm smile ready to kindle, and the will to perform our parts.

When the last true heart lies bloodless, when the fierce and the false

have won,

I'll press in turn to my bosom each daughter and either son;

Bid them loose the flag from its bearings, and we'll lay us down to rest

With the glory of home about us, and its freedom locked in our breast.

WET-WEATHER WORK.

BY A FARMER.

I.

It is raining; and being in-doors, I look out from my library-window,

across a quiet country-road, so near that I could toss my pen into the

middle of it.

A thatched stile is opposite, flanked by a straggling hedge of

Osage-orange; and from the stile the ground falls away in green and

gradual slope to a great plateau of measured and fenced fields,

checkered, a month since, with bluish lines of Swedes, with the ragged

purple of mangels, and the feathery emerald-green of carrots. There are

umber-colored patches of fresh-turned furrows; here and there the mossy,

luxurious verdure of new-springing rye; gray stubble; the ragged brown

of discolored, frost-bitten rag-weed; next, a line of tree-tops,

thickening as they drop to the near bed of a river, and beyond the

river-basin showing again, with tufts of hemlock among naked oaks and

maples; then roofs, cupolas; ambitious lookouts of suburban houses,

spires, belfries, turrets: all these commingling in a long line of

white, brown, and gray, which in sunny weather is backed by purple

hills, and flanked one way by a shining streak of water, and the other

by a stretch of low, wooded mountains that turn from purple to blue, and

so blend with the northern sky.

Is the picture clear? A road; a farm-flat of party-colored checkers; a

near wood, that conceals the sunken meadow of a river; a farther wood,

that skirts a town,--that seems to overgrow the town, so that only a

confused line of roofs, belfries, spires, towers, rise above the wood;

and these tallest spires and turrets lying in relief against a purple

hill-side, that is as far beyond the town as the town is beyond my

window; and the purple hill-side trending southward to a lake-like gleam

of water, where a light-house shines upon a point; and northward, as I

said, these same purple hills bearing away to paler purple, and then to

blue, and then to haze.

Thus much is seen, when I look directly eastward; but by an oblique

glance southward (always from my library-window) the checkered farm-land

is repeated in long perspective: here and there is a farm-house with

its clustered out-buildings; here and there a blotch of wood, or of

orcharding; here and there a bright sheen of winter-grain; and the level

ends only where a slight fringe of tree-tops, and the iron cordon of a

railway that leaps over a marshy creek upon trestle-work, separate it

from Long Island Sound.

To the north, under such oblique glance as can be caught, the farm-lands

in smaller inclosures stretch half a mile to the skirts of a quiet

village. A few tall chimneys smoke there lazily, and below them you see

as many quick and repeated puffs of white steam. Two white spires and

a tower are in bold relief against the precipitous basaltic cliff, at

whose foot the village seems to nestle. Yet the mountain is not wholly

precipitous; for the columnar masses been fretted away by a thousand

frosts, making a sloping _débris_ below, and leaving above the

iron-yellow scars of fresh cleavage, the older blotches of gray, and the

still older stain of lichens. Nor is the summit bald, but tufted with

dwarf cedars and oaks, which, as they file away on either flank, mingle

with a heavier growth of hickories and chest-nuts. A few stunted kalmias

and hemlock-spruces have found foothold in the clefts upon the face of

the rock, showing a tawny green, that blends prettily with the scars,

lichens, and weather-stains of the cliff; all which show under a sunset

light richly and changefully as the breast of a dove.

But just now there is no glow of sunset; raining still. Indeed, I do not

know why I should have described at such length a mere landscape, (than

which I know few fairer,) unless because of a rainy day it is always

in my eye, and that now, having invited a few outsiders to such

entertainment as may belong to my wet farm-days, I should present to

them at once my oldest acquaintance,--the view from my library-window.

But as yet it is only coarsely outlined. We may some day return to it

with a fond particularity; for let me warn the reader that I have that

love of such scenes, nay, for the very verdure of the lawn, that I could

put an ink-mark for every blade of the fresh-springing grass, and yet

feel that the tale of its beauty, and of its emerald wealth, were not

half told.

This day we spend in-doors, and busy ourselves with the whims,

doctrines, and economics of a few

OLD-TIME FARMERS.

The shelves where they rest in vellum and in dust are only an

arm's-length from the window; so that I can relieve the stiff classicism

of Flaxman's rendering of the "Works and Days," or the tedious iteration

of Columella and Crescenzio, by a glance outside into the rain-cloud,

under which lies always the checkered illustration of the farming of

to-day, and beyond which the spires stand in sentinel.

Hesiod is currently reckoned one of the oldest farm-writers; but there

is not enough in his homely poem ("Works and Days") out of which to

conjure a farm-system. He gives good advice, indeed, about the weather,

about ploughing when the ground is not too wet, about the proper timber

to put to a plough-beam, about building a house, and taking a bride.

But, on the other hand, he gives very bad advice, where, as in Book II.,

(line 244,) he recommends to stint the oxen in winter, and (line 285) to

put three parts of water to the Biblian wine.

Mr. Gladstone notes the fact that Homer talks only in a grandiose way of

rural life and employments, as if there were no small landholders in his

day; but Hesiod, who must have lived within a century of Homer, with

his modest homeliness, does not confirm this view. He tells us a farmer

should keep two ploughs, and be cautious how he lends either of them.

His household stipulations, too, are most moderate, whether on the score

of the bride, the maid, or the "forty-year-old" ploughman; and for

guardianship of the premises the proprietor is recommended to keep "a

sharp-toothed cur."

This reminds us how Ulysses, on his return from voyaging, found seated

round his good bailiff Eumaeus four savage watch-dogs, who straightway

(and here Homer must have nodded) attack their old master, and are

driven off only by a good pelting of stones.

This Eumaeus, by the way, may be regarded as the Homeric representative

farmer, as well as bailiff and swineherd,--the great original of Gurth,

who might have prepared a supper for Cedric the Saxon very much as

Eumaeus extemporized one upon his Greek farm for Ulysses. Pope

shall tell of this bit of cookery in rhyme that has a ring of the

Rappahannock:--

"His vest succinct then girding round his waist,

Forth rushed the swain with hospitable haste,

Straight to the lodgements of his herd he run,

Where the fat porkers slept beneath the sun;

Of two his cutlass launched the spouting blood;

These quartered, singed, and fixed on forks of wood,

All hasty on the hissing coals he threw;

And, smoking, back the tasteful viands drew,

Broachers, and all."

This is roast pig: nothing more elegant or digestible. For the credit of

Greek farmers, I am sorry that Eumaeus has nothing better to offer his

landlord,--the most abominable dish, Charles Lamb and his pleasant

fable to the contrary notwithstanding, that was ever set before a

Christian.

To return to Hesiod, we suspect that he was only a small farmer--if

he had ever farmed at all--in the foggy latitude of Boeotia, and knew

nothing of the sunny wealth in the south of the peninsula, or of such

princely estates as Eumaeus managed in the Ionian seas. Flaxman has

certainly not given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines:

his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost

two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented

as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic

scantiness,--being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and a tight fit at

that.

[Footnote A: Flaxman's _Illustrations of "Works and Days,"_ Plate I.]

But we dismiss Hesiod, the first of the heathen farm-writers, with a

loving thought of his pretty Pandora, whom the goddesses so bedecked,

whom Jove looks on (in Flaxman's picture) with such sharp approval, and

whose attributes the poet has compacted into one resonant line, daintily

rendered by Cooke,--

"Thus the sex began

A lovely mischief to the soul of man."

I next beg to pull from his place on the shelf, and to present to the

reader, my friend General Xenophon, a most graceful writer, a capital

huntsman, an able strategist, an experienced farmer, and, if we may

believe Laertius, "handsome beyond expression."

It is refreshing to find such qualities united in one man at any time,

and doubly refreshing to find them in a person so far removed from the

charities of today that the malcontents cannot pull his character in

pieces. To be sure, he was guilty of a few acts of pillage in the course

of his Persian campaign; but he tells the story of it in his "Anabasis"

with a brave front: his purse was low, and needed replenishment; there

is no cover put up, of disorderly sutlers or camp-followers.

The farming reputation of the General rests upon his "Economics" and

his horse-treatise ([Greek: Hippikae]).

Economy has come to have a contorted meaning in our day, as if it

were only--saving. Its true gist is better expressed by the word

_management_; and in that old-fashioned sense it forms a significant

title for Xenophon's book: management of the household, management of

flocks, of servants, of land, of property in general.

At the very outset we find this bit of practical wisdom, which is put

into the mouth of Socrates, who is replying to Critobulus:--"Those

things should be called goods that are beneficial to the master. Neither

can those lands be called goods which by a man's unskilful management

put him to more expense than he receives profit by them; nor may those

lands be called goods which do not bring a good farmer such a profit as

may give him a good living."

Thereafter (sec. vii.) he introduces the good Ischomachus, who, it

appears, has a thrifty wife at home, and from that source flow in a

great many capital hints upon domestic management. The apartments, the

exposure, the cleanliness, the order, are all considered in such an

admirably practical, common-sense way as would make the old Greek a good

lecturer to the sewing-circles of our time. And when the wife of

the wise Ischomachus, in an unfortunate moment, puts on _rouge_

and cosmetics, the grave husband meets her with this complimentary

rebuke:--"Can there be anything in Nature more complete than yourself?"

"The science of husbandry," he says, and it might be said of the science

in most times, "is extremely profitable to those who understand it;

but it brings the greatest trouble and misery upon those farmers who

undertake it without knowledge." (sec. xv.)

Where Xenophon comes to speak of the details of farm-labor, of

ploughings and fallowings, there is all that precision and particularity

of mention, added to a shrewd sagacity, which one might look for in the

columns of the "Country Gentleman." He even describes how a field should

be thrown into narrow lands, in order to promote a more effectual

surface-drainage. In the midst of it, however, we come upon a stereorary

maxim, which is, to say the least, of doubtful worth:--"Nor is there any

sort of earth which will not make very rich manure, by being laid a due

time in standing water, till it is fully impregnated with the virtue of

the water." His British translator, Professor Bradley, does, indeed,

give a little note of corroborative testimony. But I would not advise

any active farmer, on the authority either of General Xenophon or of

Professor Bradley, to transport his surface-soil very largely to the

nearest frog-pond, in the hope of finding it transmuted into manure. The

absorptive and retentive capacity of soils is, to be sure, the bone just

now of very particular contention; but whatever that capacity may be,

it certainly needs something more palpable than the virtue of standing

water for its profitable development.

Here, again, is very neat evidence of how much simple good sense has

to do with husbandry: Socrates, who is supposed to have no particular

knowledge of the craft, says to his interlocutor,--"You have satisfied

me that I am not ignorant in husbandry; and yet I never had any master

to instruct me in it."

"It is not," says Xenophon, "difference in knowledge or opportunities of

knowledge that makes some farmers rich and others poor; but that which

makes some poor and some rich is that the former are negligent and lazy,

the latter industrious and thrifty."

Next, we have this masculine _ergo_:--"Therefore we may know that those

who will not learn such sciences as they might get their living by, or

do not fall into husbandry, are either downright fools, or else propose

to get their living by robbery or by begging." (sec. xx.)

This is a good clean cut at politicians, office-holders, and other

such beggar craft, through more than a score of centuries,--clean as

classicism can make it: the Attic euphony in it, and all the aroma of

age.

Once more, and it is the last of the "Oeconomica," we give this charming

bit of New-Englandism:--"I remember my father had an excellent rule,"

(_Ischomachus loquitur_,) "which he advised me to follow: that, if ever

I bought any land, I should by no means purchase that which had been

already well-improved, but should choose such as had never been tilled,

either through neglect of the owner, or for want of capacity to do it;

for he observed, that, if I were to purchase improved grounds, I must

pay a high price for them, and then I could not propose to advance their

value, and must also lose the pleasure of improving them myself, or of

seeing them thrive better by my endeavors."

When Xenophon wrote his rural treatises, (including the [Greek:

Kunaegetikos],) he was living in that delightful region of country which

lies westward of the mountains of Arcadia, looking toward the Ionian

Sea. Here, too, he wrote the story of his retreat, and his wanderings

among the mountains of Armenia; here he talked with his friends, and

made other such _symposia_ as he has given us a taste of at the house of

Callias the Athenian; here he ranged over the whole country-side with

his horses and dogs: a stalwart and lithe old gentleman, without a

doubt; able to mount a horse or to manage one, with the supplest of the

grooms; and with a keen eye, as his book shows, for the good points in

horse-flesh. A man might make a worse mistake than to buy a horse after

Xenophon's instructions, to-day. A spavin or a wind-gall did not escape

the old gentleman's eye, and he never bought a horse without proving his

wind and handling him well about the mouth and ears. His grooms were

taught their duties with nice speciality: the mane and tail to be

thoroughly washed; the food and bed to be properly and regularly

prepared; and treatment to be always gentle and kind.

Exception may perhaps be taken to his doctrine in regard to

stall-floors. Moist ones, he says, injure the hoof: "Better to have

stones inserted in the ground close to one another, equal in size to

their hoofs; for such stalls consolidate the hoofs of those standing on

them, beside strengthening the hollow of the foot."

After certain directions for rough riding and leaping, he advises

hunting through thickets, if wild animals are to be found. Otherwise,

the following pleasant diversion is named, which I beg to suggest to

sub-lieutenants in training for dragoon-service:--"It is a useful

exercise for two horsemen to agree between themselves, that one shall

retire through all sorts of rough places, and as he flees, is to turn

about from time to time and present his spear; and the other shall

pursue, having javelins blunted with balls, and a spear of the same

description, and whenever he comes within javelin-throw, he is to hurl

the blunted weapon at the party retreating, and whenever he comes within

spear-reach, he is to strike him with it."

Putting aside his horsemanship, in which he must have been nearly

perfect, there was very much that was grand about the old Greek,--very

much that makes us strangely love the man, who, when his soldiers lay

benumbed under the snows on the heights of Armenia, threw off his

general's coat, or blanket, or what not, and set himself resolutely to

wood-chopping and to cheering them. The farmer knew how.

Such men win battles. He has his joke, too, with Cheirisophus, the

Lacedaemonian, about the thieving propensity of his townspeople, and

invites him, in virtue of it, to _steal_ a difficult march upon the

enemy. And Cheirisophus grimly retorts upon Xenophon, that Athenians are

said to be great experts in stealing the public money, especially the

high officers. This sounds home-like! When I come upon such things, I

forget the parasangs and the Taochians and the dead Cyrus, and seem to

be reading out of American newspapers.

It is quite out of the question to claim Theocritus as a farm-writer;

and yet in all old literature there is not to be found such a lively

bevy of heifers, and wanton kids, and "butting rams," and stalwart

herdsmen, who milk the cows "upon the sly," as in the "Idyls" of the

musical Sicilian.

There is no doubt but Theocritus knew the country to a charm: he knew

all its roughnesses, and the thorns that scratched the bare legs of the

goatherds; he knew the lank heifers, that fed, "like grasshoppers," only

on dew; he knew what clatter the brooks made, tumbling headlong adown

the rocks,--

[Greek: apo tus petras kataleibetai ypsothen ydor]

he knew, moreover, all the charms and coyness of the country-nymphs,

giving even a rural twist to his praises of the courtly Helen:--

"In shape, in height, in stately presence

fair,

Straight as a furrow gliding from the

share."[B]

[Footnote B: Elton's translation, I think. I do not vouch for its

correctness.]

A man must have had an eye for good ploughing and a lithe figure, as

well as a keen scent for the odor of fresh-turned earth, to make such a

comparison as that!

Theocritus was no French sentimentalist; he would have protested against

the tame elegancies of the Roman Bucolics; and the _sospiri ardenti_ and

_miserelli aman_ of Guarini would have driven him mad. He is as brisk as

the wind upon a breezy down. His cow-tenders are swart and bare-legged,

and love with a vengeance. There is no miserable tooting upon flutes,

but an uproarious song that shakes the woods; and if it comes to a

matter of kissing, there are no "reluctant lips," but a smack that makes

the vales resound.

It is no Boucher we have here, nor Watteau: cosmetics and rosettes are

far away; tunics are short, and cheeks are nut-brown. It is Teniers,

rather:--boors, indeed; but they are live boors, and not manikin

shepherds.

I shall call out another Sicilian here, named Moschus, were it only

for his picture of a fine, sturdy bullock: it occurs in his "Rape of

Europa":--

"With yellow hue his sleekened body beams;

His forehead with a snowy circle gleams;

Horns, equal-bending, from his brow emerge,

And to a moonlight crescent orbing verge."

Nothing can be finer than the way in which this "milky steer," with

Europa on his back, goes sailing over the brine, his "feet all oars."

Meantime, she, the pretty truant,

"Grasps with one hand his curved projecting horn,

And with the other closely drawn compressed

The fluttering foldings of her purple vest,

Whene'er its fringed hem was dashed with dew

Of the salt sea-foam that in circles flew:

Wide o'er Europa's shoulders to the gale

The ruffled robe heaved swelling, like a sail."

Moschus is as rich as the Veronese at Venice; and his picture is truer

to the premium standard. The painting shows a pampered animal, with

over-red blotches on his white hide, and is by half too fat to breast

such "salt sea-foam" as flashes on the Idyl of Moschus.

Another poet, Aratus of Cilicia, whose very name has a smack of tillage,

has left us a book about the weather [Greek: Dosaemeia] which is

quite as good to mark down a hay-day by as the later meteorologies of

Professor Espy or Judge Butler.

Besides which, our friend Aratus holds the abiding honor of having been

quoted by St. Paul, in his speech to the Athenians on Mars Hill:--

"For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of

your own poets have said: 'For we are also His offspring.'"

And Aratus, (after Elton,)--

"On thee our being hangs; in thee we move;

All are thy offspring, and the seed of Jove."

Scattered through the lesser Greek poets, and up and down the Anthology,

are charming bits of rurality, redolent of the fields and of field-life,

with which it would be easy to fill up the measure of this rainy day,

and beat off the Grecian couplets to the tinkle of the eave-drops. Up

and down, the cicada chirps; the locust, "encourager of sleep," sings

his drowsy song; boozy Anacreon flings grapes; the purple violets and

the daffodils crown the perfumed head of Heliodora; and the reverent

Simonides likens our life to the grass.

Nor will I part company with these, or close up the Greek ranks

of farmers, (in which I must not forget the great schoolmaster,

Theophrastus,) until I cull a sample of the Anthology, and plant it

for a guidon at the head of the column,--a little bannerol of music,

touching upon our topic, as daintily as the bees touch the flowering

tips of the wild thyme.

It is by Zonas the Sardian:--

[Greek: Ai o agete nxouthai oimblaeides akra melissai,

_K.T.L.,]

and the rendering by Mr. Hay:--

"Ye nimble honey-making bees, the flowers are in their prime;

Come now and taste the little buds of sweetly breathing thyme,

Of tender poppies all so fair, or bits of raisin sweet,

Or down that decks the apple tribe, or fragrant violet;

Come, nibble on,--your vessels store with honey while you can,

In order that the hive-protecting, bee-preserving Pan

May have a tasting for himself, and that the hand so rude,

That cuts away the comb, may leave yourselves some little food."

Leaving now this murmur of the bees upon the banks of the Pactolus,

will slip over-seas to Tusculum, where Cato was born, who was the oldest

of the Roman writers upon agriculture; and thence into the Sabine

territory, where, upon an estate of his father's, in the midst of the

beautiful country lying northward of the Monte Gennaro, (the Lucretilis

of Horace,) he learned the art of good farming.

In what this art consisted in his day, he tells us in short, crackling

speech;--"_Primum_, bene arare; _secundum_, arare; _tertium_,

stercorare." For the rest, he says, choose good seed, sow thickly, and

pull all the weeds. Nothing more would be needed to grow as good a crop

upon the checkered plateau under my window as ever fattened among the

Sabine Hills.

Has the art come to a stand-still, then; and shall we take to reading

Cato on fair days, as well as rainy?

There has been advance, without doubt; but all the advance in the world

would not take away the edge from truths, stated as Cato knew how to

state them. There is very much of what is called Agricultural Science,

nowadays, which is--rubbish. Science is sound, and agriculture always an

honest art; but the mixture, not uncommonly, is bad,--no fair marriage,

but a monstrous concubinage, with a monstrous progeny of muddy treatises

and disquisitions which confuse more than they instruct. In contrast

with such, it is no wonder that the observations of such a man as Cato,

whose energies had been kept alive by service in the field, and whose

tongue had been educated in the Roman Senate, should carry weight with

them. The grand truths on which successful agriculture rests, and which

simple experience long ago demonstrated, cannot be kept out of view, nor

can they be dwarfed by any imposition of learning. Science may explain

them, or illustrate or extend; but it cannot shake their preponderating

influence upon the crop of the year. As respects many other arts,

the initial truths may be lost sight of, and overlaid by the mass

of succeeding developments,--not falsified, but so belittled as

practically to be counted for nothing. In this respect, agriculture is

exceptional. The old story is always the safe story: you must plough and

plough again; and manure; and sow good seed, and enough; and pull the

weeds; and as sure as the rain falls, the crop will come.

Many nice additions to this method of treatment, which my fine-farming

friends will suggest, are anticipated by the old Roman, if we look far

enough into his book. Thus, he knew the uses of a harrow; he knew the

wisdom of ploughing in a green crop; he had steeps for his seed; he knew

how to drain off the surface-water,--nay, there is very much in his

account of the proper preparation of ground for olive-trees, or

vine-setting, which looks like a mastery of the principles that govern

the modern system of drainage.[C]

[Footnote C: XLIII. "Sulcos, si locus aquosus erit, alveatos esse

oportet," etc.]

Of what particular service recent investigations in science have been to

the practical farmer, and what positive and available aid, beyond what

could be derived from a careful study of the Roman masters, they put

into the hands of an intelligent worker, who is tilling ground simply

for pecuniary advantage, I shall hope to inquire and discourse upon,

some other day: when that day comes, we will fling out the banner of the

nineteenth century, and give a gun to Liebig, and Johnson, and the rest.

Meantime, as a farmer who endeavors to keep posted in all the devices

for pushing lands which have an awkward habit of yielding poor crops

into the better habit of yielding large ones, I will not attempt to

conceal the chagrin with which I find this curmudgeon of a Roman

Senator, living two centuries before Christ, and northward of Monte

Gennaro, who never heard of "Hovey's Root-Cutter," or of the law of

primaries, laying down rules[D] of culture so clear, so apt, so full,

that I, who have the advantages of two thousand years, find nothing in

them to laugh at, unless it be a few oblations to the gods;[E] and this,

considering that I am just now burning a little incense (Havana) to the

nymph Volutia, is uncalled for.

[Footnote D: This mention, of course, excludes the Senator's _formulae_

for unguents, aperients, cattle-nostrums, and pickled pork.]

[Footnote E: CXXXIV. Cato, _De Re Rusticâ_.]

And if Senator Cato were to wake up to-morrow, in the white house that

stares through the rain yonder, and were to open his little musty vellum

of slipshod maxims, and, in faith of it, start a rival farm in the bean

line, or in vine-growing,--keeping clear of the newspapers,--I make no

doubt but he would prove as thrifty a neighbor as my good friend the

Deacon.

We nineteenth-century men, at work among our cabbages, clipping off the

purslane and the twitch-grass, are disposed to assume a very complacent

attitude, as we lean upon our hoe-handles,--as if we were doing tall

things in the way of illustrating physiology and the cognate sciences.

But the truth is, old Laertes, near three thousand years ago, in his

slouch cap and greasy beard, was hoeing up in the same way his purslane

and twitch-grass, in his bean-patch on the hills of Ithaca. The

difference between us, so far as the crop and the tools go, is, after

all, ignominiously small. _He_ dreaded the weevil in his beans, and _we_

the club-foot in our cabbages; _we_ have the "Herald," and _he_ had

none; _we_ have "Plantation-Bitters," and _he_ had his jug of the

Biblian wine.

M. Varro, another Roman farmer, lies between the same covers "De Re

Rusticâ" with Cato, and seems to have had more literary tact, though

less of blunt sagacity. Yet he challenges at once our confidence by

telling us so frankly the occasion of his writing upon such a subject.

Life, he says, is a bubble,--and the life of an old man a bubble about

to break. He is eighty, and must pack his luggage to go out of this

world. ("_Annus octogesimus admonet me, ut sarcinas colligam antequam

proficiscar e vitâ_.") Therefore he, writes down for his wife, Fundania,

the rules by which she may manage the farm.

And a very respectably old lady she must have been, to deal with the

_villici_ and the _coloni_, if her age bore suitable relation to that

of her husband. The ripe maturity of many of the rural writers I have

introduced cannot fail to strike one. Thus, Xenophon gained a strength

in his Elian fields that carried him into the nineties; Cato lived to be

over eighty; and now we have Varro, writing his book out by Tusculum at

eighty, and surviving to counsel with Fundania ten years more. Pliny,

too, (the elder,) who, if not a farmer, had his country-seats, and left

very much to establish our acquaintance with the Roman rural life, was

a hale, much-enduring man, of such soldierly habits and large

abstemiousness as to warrant a good fourscore,--if he had not fallen

under that murderous cloud of ashes from Mount Vesuvius, in the year 79.

The poets, doubtless, burnt out earlier, as they usually do. Virgil,

whom I shall come to speak of presently, certainly did: he died at

fifty-one. Tibullus, whose opening Idyl is as pretty a bit of gasconade

about living in a cottage in the country, upon love and a few

vegetables, as a maiden could wish for, did not reach the fifties; and

Martial, whose "Faustine Villa," if nothing else, entitles him to rural

oblation, fell short of the sixties.

Varro indulges in some sharp sneers at those who had written on the same

subject before him. This was natural enough in a man of his pursuits: he

had written four hundred books!

Of Columella we know scarcely more than that he lived somewhere about

the time of Tiberius, that he was a man of wealth, that he travelled

extensively through Gaul, Italy, and Greece, observing intelligently

different methods of culture, and that he has given the fullest existing

compend of ancient agriculture. In his chapter upon Gardening he warms

into hexameters; but the rest is stately and euphonious prose. In his

opening chapter, he does not forego such praises of the farmer's life

as sound like a lawyer's address before a county-society on a fair-day.

Cincinnatus and his plough come in for it; and Fabricius and Curius

Dentatus; with which names, luckily, our orators cannot whet their

periods, since Columella's mention of them is about all we know of their

farming.

He falls into the way, moreover, of lamenting, as people obstinately

continue to do, the "good old times," when men were better than "now,"

and when the reasonable delights of the garden and the fields engrossed

them to the neglect of the circus and the theatres. But when he opens

upon his subject proper, it is in grandiose, Spanish style, (he was

a native of Cadiz,) with a maxim broad enough to cover all possible

conditions:--"_Qui studium agricolationi dederit, sciat haec sibi

advocanda: prudentiam rei, facultatem impendendi voluntatem agendi_."

Or, as Tremellius says,--"That man will master the business, _qui et

colere sciet, et poterit, et volet_."

This is comprehensive, if not encouraging. That "_facultatem

impendendi_" is a tremendous bolster to farming as to anything else; it

is only another shape of the "_poterit_," and the "_poterit"_ only

a scholarly rendering of pounds and pence. As if Tremellius had

said,--That man will make his way at farming who understands the

business, who has the money to apply to it, and who is willing to bleed

freely.

With a kindred sagacity this shrewd Roman advises a man to slip upon his

farm often, in order that his steward may keep sharply at his work; he

even suggests that the landlord make a feint of coming, when he has no

intention thereto, that he may gain a day's alertness from the bailiff.

The book is of course a measure of the advances made in farming during

the two hundred years elapsed since Cato's time; but those advances were

not great. There was advance in power to systematize facts, advance in

literary aptitude, but no very noticeable gain in methods of culture.

Columella gives the results of wider observation, and of more persistent

study; but, for aught I can see, a man could get a crop of lentils

as well with Cato as with Columbia; a man would house his flocks and

servants as well out of the one as the other; in short, a man would grow

into the "_facultatem impendendi_" as swiftly under the teachings of the

Senator as of the later writer of the reign of Tiberius.

It is but dull work to follow those teachings; here and there I warm

into a little sympathy, as I catch sight, in his Latin dress, of our

old friend _Curculio;_ here and there I sniff a fruit that seems

familiar,--as the _fraga_, or a _morum;_ and here and there comes

blushing into the crabbed text the sweet name of some home-flower,--a

lily, a narcissus, or a rose. The chief value of the work of Columella,

however, lies in its clear showing-forth of the relative importance

given to different crops, under Roman culture, and to the raising of

cattle, poultry, fish, etc.; as compared with crops. Knowing this, we

know very much that will help us toward an estimate of the domestic life

of the Romans. We learn, with surprise, how little they regarded their

oxen, save as working-animals,--whether the milk-white steers of

Clitumnus, or the dun Campanian cattle, whose descendants show their

long-horned stateliness to this day in the Roman forum. The sheep, too,

whether of Tarentum or of Canusium, were regarded as of value chiefly

for their wool and milk; and it is surely amazing, that men who could

appreciate the iambics of Horace and the eloquence of Cicero should

have shown so little fancy for a fat saddle of mutton or for a mottled

sirloin of beef.

I change from Columella to Virgil, and from Virgil back to some pleasant

Idyl of Tibullus, and from Tibullus to the pretty prate of Horace about

the Sabine Hills; I stroll through Pliny's villa, eying the clipped

box-trees; I hear the rattle in the tennis-court; I watch the tall Roman

girls--

"Grandes virgines proborum colonorum"--

marching along with their wicker-baskets filled with curds and

fresh-plucked thrushes, until there comes over me a confusion of times

and places.

--The sound of the battle of to-day dies; the fresh blood-stains

fade; and I seem to wake upon the heights of Tusculum, in the days of

Tiberius. The farm-flat below is a miniature Campagna, along which I

see stretching straight to the city the shining pavement of the Via

Tusculana. The spires yonder melt into mist, and in place of them I see

the marble house-walls of which Augustus boasted. As yet the grander

monuments of the Empire are not built; but there is a blotch of cliff

which may be the Tarpeian Rock, and beside it a huge hulk of building on

the Capitoline Hill, where sat the Roman Senate. A little hitherward are

the gay turrets of the villa of Maecenas, and of the princely houses on

the Palatine Hill, and in the foreground the stately tomb of Cecilia

Metella. I see the barriers of a hippodrome, (where now howling

jockeys make the twilight hideous); a _gestatio_, with its lines

of cherry-trees, is before me, and the velvety lavender-green of

olive-orchards covers the hills behind. Vines grow upon the slope

eastward,--

"Neve tibi ad solem vergant vineta cadentem,"--

twining around, and flinging off a great wealth of tendrils from their

supporting-poles (_pedamenta_). The figs begin to show the purple bloom

of fruitage, and the _villicus_, who has just now come in from the

_atriolum_, reports a good crop, and asks if it would not be well to

apply a few loads of marl (_tofacea_) to the summer fallow, which Cato

is just now breaking up with the Campanian steers, for barley.

Scipio, a stanch Numidian, has gone to market with three asses loaded

with cabbages and asparagus. Villicus tells me that the poultry in the

fattening-coops (as close-shut as the Strasburg geese)[F] are doing

well, and he has added a _soupçon_ of sweetening to their barley-gruel.

The young doves have their legs faithfully broken, ("_obteras crura_")

and are placidly fattening on their stumps. The thrush-house is properly

darkened, only enough light entering to show the food to some three or

four thousand birds, which are in course of cramming for the market. The

_cochlearium_ has a good stock of snails and mussels; and the little

dormice are growing into fine condition for an approaching Imperial

banquet.

[Footnote F: "Locus ad hanc rem desideratur maxime calidus, et minimi

luminis, in quo singulae caveis angustioribus vel sportis inclusae

pendeant aves, sed ita coarctatae, _ne versari posslnt_."--Columella,

Lib. VIII. cap. vii.]

Villicus reports the clip of the Tarentine sheep unusually fine, and

free from burrs. The new must is all a-foam in the _vinaria;_ and around

the inner cellar (_gaudendem est!_) there is a tier of urns, as large as

school-boys, brimming with ripe Falernian.

If it were not stormy, I might order out the farm-chariot, or

_curriculum_, which is, after all, but a low, dumpy kind of horse-cart,

and take a drive over the lava pavement of the Via Tusculana, to learn

what news is astir, and what the citizens talk of in the forum. Is all

quiet upon the Rhine? How is it possibly with Germanicus? And what of

that story of the arrest of Seneca? It could hardly have happened, they

say, in the good old days of the Republic.

And with this mention, as with the sound of a gun, the Roman pastoral

dream is broken. The Campagna, the olive-orchards, the _columbarium_,

fall back to their old places in the blurred type of Columella. The

Campanian steers are unyoked, and stabled in the text of Varro. The

turrets of the villa of Maecenas, and of the palaces of Sylla and the

Caesars, give place to the spires of a New-England town,--southward of

which I see through the mist a solitary flag flying over a soldiers'

hospital. It reminds of nearer and deadlier perils than ever environed

the Roman Republic,--perils out of which if the wisdom and courage of

the people do not find a way, some new Caesar will point it with the

sword.

Looking northward, I see there is a bight of blue in the sky; and a lee

set of dark-gray and purple clouds is folding down over the eastern

horizon,--against which the spires and the flag show clearer than ever.

It means that the rain has stopped; and the rain having stopped, my

in-door work is done.

* * * * *

GOLDEN WEDDING.

The reader whose eye is arrested by my title will doubtless anticipate a

romance on that ever-old, ever-new theme of a certain god with a torch

leading two souls bound together by iron concealed in flower-wreaths,

until, alas! life seems ordinary enough to be symbolized by _tin_,--of

the tin-wedding entering into the refiner's fire, and, by sure

transmutation, rising from the baser metal to the paler, but purer

silver,--of the subtile alchemy of years, which, in human life's great

crucible,

"Transmute, so potent are the spells they know

Into pure gold the silver of to-day."

Perhaps, reader, you are not altogether to be disappointed; and yet, for

the present, it is only a glass of sparkling wine I wish you to take

with me. You will please read on that delicate strip of paper around the

bottle's neck the name in gilt,--"Golden Wedding." At once you

grow transcendental, and suppose that some German vine-dresser in

Catawba-land--by the way, Gerritt Smith's gardener is a nephew of

Schiller!--was dreaming of the marriage of the Sun with the Vine, his

darling plant, in whose juice linger and sparkle the light and joy of

many faded days. But no, it was named from a real Golden Wedding.

Let me take you--as the clairvoyants say--to a large, sooty, toiling

city in the West. From street to street you shall go, and see but little

to excite your admiration, unless you are a constant believer that _work

is worship_. But here, in the centre of the city, is a noble old mansion

with its beautiful park around it, which a traveller who saw it once

compared to a pearl on the breast of a blacksmith. Here it was that the

Golden Wedding took place.