"I am not naturally superstitious; but, shaken and clouded as my mind

had been by the use of opium, I could not wholly divest it of fear when

these phantoms beset me. Yet, on all other occasions, save that of

their immediate presence, I found no difficulty in assigning their

existence to a diseased state of the bodily organs, and a corresponding

sympathy of the mind, rendering it capable of receiving and reflecting

the false, fantastic, and unnatural images presented to it.

(One of our most celebrated medical writers considers spectral

illusion a disease, in which false perceptions take place in some

of the senses; thus, when the excitement of motion is produced in a

particular organ, that organ does not vibrate with the impression

made upon it, but communicates it to another part on which a

similar impression was formerly made. Nicolai states that he made

his illusion a source of philosophical amusement. The spectres

which haunted him came in the day time as well as the night, and

frequently when he was surrounded by his friends; the ideal images

mingling with the real ones, and visible only to himself. Bernard

Barton, the celebrated Quaker poet, describes an illusion of this

nature in a manner peculiarly striking:--

"I only knew thee as thou wert,

A being not of earth!

"I marvelled much they could not see

Thou comest from above

And often to myself I said,

'How can they thus approach the dead?'

"But though all these, with fondness warm,

Said welcome o'er and o'er,

Still that expressive shade or form

Was silent, as before!

And yet its stillness never brought

To them one hesitating thought."

"I recollected that the mode of exorcism which was successfully adopted

by Nicolai of Berlin, when haunted by similar fantasies, was a resort to

the simple process of blood-letting. I accordingly made trial of it,

but without the desired effect. Fearful, from the representations of my

physicians, and from some of my own sensations, that the almost daily

recurrence of my visions might ultimately lead to insanity, I came to

the resolution of reducing my daily allowance of opium; and, confining

myself, with the most rigid pertinacity, to a quantity not exceeding one

third of what I had formerly taken, I became speedily sensible of a most

essential change in my condition. A state of comparative health, mental

and physical with calmer sleep and a more natural exercise of the organs

of vision, succeeded. I have made many attempts at a further reduction,

but have been uniformly unsuccessful, owing to the extreme and almost

unendurable agony occasioned thereby.

"The peculiar creative faculty of the eye, the fearful gift of a

diseased vision, still remains, but materially weakened and divested of

its former terrors. My mind has recovered in some degree its shaken and

suspended faculties. But happiness, the buoyant and elastic happiness

of earlier days, has departed forever. Although, apparently, a

practical disciple of Behmen, I am no believer in his visionary creed.

Quiet is not happiness; nor can the absence of all strong and painful

emotion compensate for the weary heaviness of inert existence,

passionless, dreamless, changeless. The mind requires the excitement of

active and changeful thought; the intellectual fountain, like the pool

of Bethesda, has a more healthful influence when its deep waters are

troubled. There may, indeed, be happiness in those occasional 'sabbaths

of the soul,' when calmness, like a canopy, overshadows it, and the

mind, for a brief season, eddies quietly round and round, instead of

sweeping onward; but none can exist in the long and weary stagnation of

feeling, the silent, the monotonous, neverending calm, broken by neither

hope nor fear."

THE PROSELYTES. (1833)

THE student sat at his books. All the day he had been poring over an

old and time-worn volume; and the evening found him still absorbed in

its contents. It was one of that interminable series of controversial

volumes, containing the theological speculations of the ancient fathers

of the Church. With the patient perseverance so characteristic of his

countrymen, he was endeavoring to detect truth amidst the numberless

inconsistencies of heated controversy; to reconcile jarring

propositions; to search out the thread of scholastic argument amidst

the rant of prejudice and the sallies of passion, and the coarse

vituperations of a spirit of personal bitterness, but little in

accordance with the awful gravity of the question at issue.

Wearied and baffled in his researches, he at length closed the volume,

and rested his care-worn forehead upon his hand. "What avail," he said,

"these long and painful endeavors, these midnight vigils, these weary

studies, before which heart and flesh are failing? What have I gained?

I have pushed my researches wide and far; my life has been one long and

weary lesson; I have shut out from me the busy and beautiful world; I

have chastened every youthful impulse; and at an age when the heart

should be lightest and the pulse the freest, I am grave and silent and

sorrowful,' and the frost of a premature age is gathering around my

heart. Amidst these ponderous tomes, surrounded by the venerable

receptacles of old wisdom, breathing, instead of the free air of heaven,

the sepulchral dust of antiquity, I have become assimilated to the

objects around me; my very nature has undergone a metamorphosis of which

Pythagoras never dreamed. I am no longer a reasoning creature, looking

at everything within the circle of human investigation with a clear and

self-sustained vision, but the cheated follower of metaphysical

absurdities, a mere echo of scholastic subtilty. God knows that my aim

has been a lofty and pure one, that I have buried myself in this living

tomb, and counted the health of this His feeble and outward image as

nothing in comparison with that of the immortal and inward

representation and shadow of His own Infinite Mind; that I have toiled

through what the world calls wisdom, the lore of the old fathers and

time-honored philosophy, not for the dream of power and gratified

ambition, not for the alchemist's gold or life-giving elixir, but with

an eye single to that which I conceived to be the most fitting object of

a godlike spirit, the discovery of Truth,--truth perfect and unclouded,

truth in its severe and perfect beauty, truth as it sits in awe and

holiness in the presence of its Original and Source!

"Was my aim too lofty? It cannot be; for my Creator has given me a

spirit which would spurn a meaner one. I have studied to act in

accordance with His will; yet have I felt all along like one walking in

blindness. I have listened to the living champions of the Church; I

have pored over the remains of the dead; but doubt and heavy darkness

still rest upon my pathway. I find contradiction where I had looked for

harmony; ambiguity where I had expected clearness; zeal taking the place

of reason; anger, intolerance, personal feuds and sectarian bitterness,

interminable discussions and weary controversies; while infinite Truth,

for which I have been seeking, lies still beyond, or seen, if at all,

only by transient and unsatisfying glimpses, obscured and darkened by

miserable subtilties and cabalistic mysteries."

He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant with a letter. The

student broke its well-known seal, and read, in a delicate chirography,

the following words:--

"DEAR ERNEST,--A stranger from the English Kingdom, of gentle birth and

education, hath visited me at the request of the good Princess Elizabeth

of the Palatine. He is a preacher of the new faith, a zealous and

earnest believer in the gifts of the Spirit, but not like John de

Labadie or the lady Schurmans.

(J. de Labadie, Anna Maria Schurmans, and others, dissenters from

the French Protestants, established themselves in Holland, 1670.)

"He speaks like one sent on a message from heaven, a message of wisdom

and salvation. Come, Ernest, and see him; for he hath but a brief hour

to tarry with us. Who knoweth but that this stranger may be

commissioned to lead us to that which we have so long and anxiously

sought for,--the truth as it is in God.

"LEONORA."

"Now may Heaven bless the sweet enthusiast for this interruption of my

bitter reflections!" said the student, in the earnest tenderness of

impassioned feeling. "She knows how gladly I shall obey her summons;

she knows how readily I shall forsake the dogmas of our wisest

schoolmen, to obey the slightest wishes of a heart pure and generous as

hers."

He passed hastily through one of the principal streets of the city to

the dwelling of the lady, Eleonora.

In a large and gorgeous apartment sat the Englishman, his plain and

simple garb contrasting strongly with the richness and luxury around

him. He was apparently quite young, and of a tall and commanding

figure. His countenance was calm and benevolent; it bore no traces of

passion; care had not marked it; there was a holy serenity in its

expression, which seemed a token of that inward "peace which passeth all

understanding."

"And this is thy friend, Eleonora?" said the stranger, as he offered his

hand to Ernest. "I hear," he said, addressing the latter, "thou hast

been a hard student and a lover of philosophy."

"I am but a humble inquirer after Truth," replied Ernest.

"From whence hast thou sought it?"

"From the sacred volume, from the lore of the old fathers, from the

fountains of philosophy, and from my own brief experience of human

life."

"And hast thou attained thy object?"

"Alas, no!" replied the student; "I have thus far toiled in vain."

"Ah! thus must the children of this world ever toil, wearily, wearily,

but in vain. We grasp at shadows, we grapple with the fashionless air,

we walk in the blindness of our own vain imaginations, we compass heaven

and earth for our objects, and marvel that we find them not. The truth

which is of God, the crown of wisdom, the pearl of exceeding price,

demands not this vain-glorious research; easily to be entreated, it

lieth within the reach of all. The eye of the humblest spirit may

discern it. For He who respecteth not the persons of His children hath

not set it afar off, unapproachable save to the proud and lofty; but

hath made its refreshing fountains to murmur, as it were, at the very

door of our hearts. But in the encumbering hurry of the world we

perceive it not; in the noise of our daily vanities we hear not the

waters of Siloah which go softly. We look widely abroad; we lose

ourselves in vain speculation; we wander in the crooked paths of those

who have gone before us; yea, in the language of one of the old fathers,

we ask the earth and it replieth not, we question the sea and its

inhabitants, we turn to the sun, and the moon, and the stars of heaven,

and they may not satisfy us; we ask our eyes, and they cannot see, and

our ears, and they cannot hear; we turn to books, and they delude us; we

seek philosophy, and no response cometh from its dead and silent

learning.

(August. Soliloq. Cap. XXXI. "Interrogavi Terram," etc.)

"It is not in the sky above, nor in the air around, nor in the earth

beneath; it is in our own spirits, it lives within us; and if we would

find it, like the lost silver of the woman of the parable, we must look

at home, to the inward temple, which the inward eye discovereth, and

wherein the spirit of all truth is manifested. The voice of that spirit

is still and small, and the light about it shineth in darkness. But

truth is there; and if we seek it in low humility, in a patient waiting

upon its author, with a giving up of our natural pride of knowledge, a

seducing of self, a quiet from all outward endeavor, it will assuredly

be revealed and fully made known. For as the angel rose of old from the

altar of Manoah even so shall truth arise from the humbling sacrifice of

self-knowledge and human vanity, in all its eternal and ineffable

beauty.

"Seekest thou, like Pilate, after truth? Look thou within. The holy

principle is there; that in whose light the pure hearts of all time have

rejoiced. It is 'the great light of ages' of which Pythagoras speaks,

the 'good spirit' of Socrates; the 'divine mind' of Anaxagoras; the

'perfect principle' of Plato; the 'infallible and immortal law, and

divine power of reason' of Philo. It is the 'unbegotten principle and

source of all light,' whereof Timmus testifieth; the 'interior guide of

the soul and everlasting foundation of virtue,' spoken of by Plutarch.

Yea, it was the hope and guide of those virtuous Gentiles, who, doing by

nature the things contained in the law, became a law unto themselves.

"Look to thyself. Turn thine eye inward. Heed not the opinion of the

world. Lean not upon the broken reed of thy philosophy, thy verbal

orthodoxy, thy skill in tongues, thy knowledge of the Fathers. Remember

that truth was seen by the humble fishermen of Galilee, and overlooked

by the High Priest of the Temple, by the Rabbi and the Pharisee. Thou

canst not hope to reach it by the metaphysics of Fathers, Councils,

Schoolmen, and Universities. It lies not in the high places of human

learning; it is in the silent sanctuary of thy own heart; for He, who

gave thee an immortal soul, hath filled it with a portion of that truth

which is the image of His own unapproachable light. The voice of that

truth is within thee; heed thou its whisper. A light is kindled in thy

soul, which, if thou carefully heedest it, shall shine more and more

even unto the perfect day."

The stranger paused, and the student melted into tears. "Stranger!" he

said, "thou hast taken a weary weight from my heart, and a heavy veil

from my eyes. I feel that thou hast revealed a wisdom which is not of

this world."

"Nay, I am but a humble instrument in the hand of Him who is the

fountain of all truth, and the beginning and the end of all wisdom. May

the message which I have borne thee be sanctified to thy well-being."

"Oh, heed him, Ernest!" said the lady. "It is the holy truth which has

been spoken. Let us rejoice in this truth, and, forgetting the world,

live only for it."

"Oh, may He who watcheth over all His children keep thee in faith of thy

resolution!" said the Preacher, fervently. "Humble yourselves to

receive instruction, and it shall be given you. Turn away now in your

youth from the corrupting pleasures of the world, heed not its hollow

vanities, and that peace which is not such as the world giveth, the

peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall be yours. Yet, let

not yours be the world's righteousness, the world's peace, which shuts

itself up in solitude. Encloister not the body, but rather shut up the

soul from sin. Live in the world, but overcome it: lead a life of

purity in the face of its allurements: learn, from the holy principle of

truth within you, to do justly in the sight of its Author, to meet

reproach without anger, to live without offence, to love those that

offend you, to visit the widow and the fatherless, and keep yourselves

unspotted from the world."

"Eleonora!" said the humbled student, "truth is plain before us; can we

follow its teachings? Alas! canst thou, the daughter of a noble house,

forget the glory of thy birth, and, in the beauty of thy years, tread in

that lowly path, which the wisdom of the world accounteth foolishness?"

"Yes, Ernest, rejoicingly can I do it!" said the lady; and the bright

glow of a lofty purpose gave a spiritual expression to her majestic

beauty. "Glory to God in the highest, that He hath visited us in

mercy!"

"Lady!" said the Preacher, "the day-star of truth has arisen in thy

heart; follow thou its light even unto salvation. Live an harmonious

life to the curious make and frame of thy creation; and let the beauty

of thy person teach thee to beautify thy mind with holiness, the

ornament of the beloved of God. Remember that the King of Zion's

daughter is all-glorious within; and if thy soul excel, thy body will

only set off the lustre of thy mind. Let not the spirit of this world,

its cares and its many vanities, its fashions and discourse, prevail

over the civility of thy nature. Remember that sin brought the first

coat, and thou wilt have little reason to be proud of dress or the

adorning of thy body. Seek rather the enduring ornament of a meek and

quiet spirit, the beauty and the purity of the altar of God's temple,

rather than the decoration of its outward walls. For, as the Spartan

monarch said of old to his daughter, when he restrained her from wearing

the rich dresses of Sicily, 'Thou wilt seem more lovely to me without

them,' so shalt thou seem, in thy lowliness and humility, more lovely in

the sight of Heaven and in the eyes of the pure of earth. Oh, preserve

in their freshness thy present feelings, wait in humble resignation and

in patience, even if it be all thy days, for the manifestations of Him

who as a father careth for all His children."

"I will endeavor, I will endeavor!" said the lady, humbled in spirit,

and in tears.

The stranger took the hand of each. "Farewell!" he said, "I must needs

depart, for I have much work before me. God's peace be with you; and

that love be around you, which has been to me as the green pasture and

the still water, the shadow in a weary land."

And the stranger went his way; but the lady and her lover, in all their

after life, and amidst the trials and persecutions which they were

called to suffer in the cause of truth, remembered with joy and

gratitude the instructions of the pure-hearted and eloquent William

Penn.

DAVID MATSON.

Published originally in Our Young Folks, 1865.

WHO of my young friends have read the sorrowful story of "Enoch Arden,"

so sweetly and simply told by the great English poet? It is the story

of a man who went to sea, leaving behind a sweet young wife and little

daughter. He was cast away on a desert island, where he remained

several years, when he was discovered and taken off by a passing vessel.

Coming back to his native town, he found his wife married to an old

playmate, a good man, rich and honored, and with whom she was living

happily. The poor man, unwilling to cause her pain and perplexity,

resolved not to make himself known to her, and lived and died alone.

The poem has reminded me of a very similar story of my own New England

neighborhood, which I have often heard, and which I will try to tell,

not in poetry, like Alfred Tennyson's, but in my own poor prose. I can

assure my readers that in its main particulars it is a true tale.

One bright summer morning, not more than fourscore years ago, David

Matson, with his young wife and his two healthy, barefooted boys, stood

on the bank of the river near their dwelling. They were waiting for

Pelatiah Curtis to come round the point with his wherry, and take the

husband and father to the port, a few miles below. The Lively Turtle

was about to sail on a voyage to Spain, and David was to go in her as

mate. They stood there in the level morning sunshine talking

cheerfully; but had you been near enough, you could have seen tears in

Anna Matson's blue eyes, for she loved her husband and knew there was

always danger on the sea. And David's bluff, cheery voice trembled a

little now and then, for the honest sailor loved his snug home on the

Merrimac, with the dear wife and her pretty boys. But presently the

wherry came alongside, and David was just stepping into it, when he

turned back to kiss his wife and children once more.

"In with you, man," said Pelatiah Curtis. "There is no time for kissing

and such fooleries when the tide serves."

And so they parted. Anna and the boys went back to their home, and

David to the Port, whence he sailed off in the Lively Turtle. And

months passed, autumn followed summer, and winter the autumn, and then

spring came, and anon it was summer on the river-side, and he did not

come back. And another year passed, and then the old sailors and

fishermen shook their heads solemnly, and, said that the Lively Turtle

was a lost ship, and would never come back to port. And poor Anna had

her bombazine gown dyed black, and her straw bonnet trimmed in mourning

ribbons, and thenceforth she was known only as the Widow Matson.

And how was it all this time with David himself?

Now you must know that the Mohammedan people of Algiers and Tripoli, and

Mogadore and Sallee, on the Barbary coast, had been for a long time in

the habit of fitting out galleys and armed boats to seize upon the

merchant vessels of Christian nations, and make slaves of their crews

and passengers, just as men calling themselves Christians in America

were sending vessels to Africa to catch black slaves for their

plantations. The Lively Turtle fell into the hands of one of these sea-

robbers, and the crew were taken to Algiers, and sold in the market

place as slaves, poor David Matson among the rest.

When a boy he had learned the trade of ship-carpenter with his father on

the Merrimac; and now he was set to work in the dock-yards. His master,

who was naturally a kind man, did not overwork him. He had daily his

three loaves of bread, and when his clothing was worn out, its place was

supplied by the coarse cloth of wool and camel's hair woven by the

Berber women. Three hours before sunset he was released from work, and

Friday, which is the Mohammedan Sabhath, was a day of entire rest. Once

a year, at the season called Ramadan, he was left at leisure for a whole

week. So time went on,--days, weeks, months, and years. His dark hair

became gray. He still dreamed of his old home on the Merrimac, and of

his good Anna and the boys. He wondered whether they yet lived, what

they thought of him, and what they were doing. The hope of ever seeing

them again grew fainter and fainter, and at last nearly died out; and he

resigned himself to his fate as a slave for life.

But one day a handsome middle-aged gentleman, in the dress of one of his

own countrymen, attended by a great officer of the Dey, entered the

ship-yard, and called up before him the American captives. The stranger

was none other than Joel Barlow, Commissioner of the United States to

procure the liberation of slaves belonging to that government. He took

the men by the hand as they came up, and told them that they were free.

As you might expect, the poor fellows were very grateful; some laughed,

some wept for joy, some shouted and sang, and threw up their caps, while

others, with David Matson among them, knelt down on the chips, and

thanked God for the great deliverance.

"This is a very affecting scene," said the commissioner, wiping his

eyes. "I must keep the impression of it for my 'Columbiad';" and

drawing out his tablet, he proceeded to write on the spot an apostrophe

to Freedom, which afterwards found a place in his great epic.

David Matson had saved a little money during his captivity by odd jobs

and work on holidays. He got a passage to Malaga, where he bought a

nice shawl for his wife and a watch for each of his boys. He then went

to the quay, where an American ship was lying just ready to sail for

Boston.

Almost the first man he saw on board was Pelatiah Curtis, who had rowed

him down to the port seven years before. He found that his old neighbor

did not know him, so changed was he with his long beard and Moorish

dress, whereupon, without telling his name, he began to put questions

about his old home, and finally asked him if he knew a Mrs. Matson.

"I rather think I do," said Pelatiah; "she's my wife."

"Your wife!" cried the other. "She is mine before God and man. I am

David Matson, and she is the mother of my children."

"And mine too!" said Pelatiah. "I left her with a baby in her arms.

If you are David Matson, your right to her is outlawed; at any rate she

is mine, and I am not the man to give her up."

"God is great!" said poor David Matson, unconsciously repeating the

familiar words of Moslem submission. "His will be done. I loved her,

but I shall never see her again. Give these, with my blessing, to the

good woman and the boys," and he handed over, with a sigh, the little

bundle containing the gifts for his wife and children.

He shook hands with his rival. "Pelatiah," he said, looking back as he

left the ship, "be kind to Anna and my boys."

"Ay, ay, sir!" responded the sailor in a careless tone. He watched the

poor man passing slowly up the narrow street until out of sight. "It's

a hard case for old David," he said, helping himself to a fresh quid of

tobacco, "but I 'm glad I 've seen the last of him."

When Pelatiah Curtis reached home he told Anna the story of her husband

and laid his gifts in her lap. She did not shriek nor faint, for she

was a healthy woman with strong nerves; but she stole away by herself

and wept bitterly. She lived many years after, but could never be

persuaded to wear the pretty shawl which the husband of her youth had

sent as his farewell gift. There is, however, a tradition that, in

accordance with her dying wish, it was wrapped about her poor old

shoulders in the coffin, and buried with her.

The little old bull's-eye watch, which is still in the possession of one

of her grandchildren, is now all that remains to tell of David Matson,--

the lost man.

THE FISH I DID N'T CATCH.

Published originally in The Little Pilgrim, Philadelphia, 1843.

OUR old homestead (the house was very old for a new country, having been

built about the time that the Prince of, Orange drove out James the

Second) nestled under a long range of hills which stretched off to the

west. It was surrounded by woods in all directions save to the

southeast, where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green

meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes of upland.

Through these, a small brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled, and

laughed down its rocky falls by our gardenside, wound, silently and

scarcely visible, to a still larger stream, known as the Country Brook.

This brook in its turn, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist

mills, the clack of which we could hear in still days across the

intervening woodlands, found its way to the great river, and the river

took it up and bore it down to the great sea.

I have not much reason for speaking well of these meadows, or rather

bogs, for they were wet most of the year; but in the early days they

were highly prized by the settlers, as they furnished natural mowing

before the uplands could be cleared of wood and stones and laid down to

grass. There is a tradition that the hay-harvesters of two adjoining

towns quarrelled about a boundary question, and fought a hard battle one

summer morning in that old time, not altogether bloodless, but by no

means as fatal as the fight between the rival Highland clans, described

by Scott in "The Fair Maid of Perth." I used to wonder at their folly,

when I was stumbling over the rough hassocks, and sinking knee-deep in

the black mire, raking the sharp sickle-edged grass which we used to

feed out to the young cattle in midwinter when the bitter cold gave them

appetite for even such fodder. I had an almost Irish hatred of snakes,

and these meadows were full of them,--striped, green, dingy water-

snakes, and now and then an ugly spotted adder by no means pleasant to

touch with bare feet. There were great black snakes, too, in the ledges

of the neighboring knolls; and on one occasion in early spring I found

myself in the midst of a score at least of them,--holding their wicked

meeting of a Sabbath morning on the margin of a deep spring in the

meadows. One glimpse at their fierce shining beads in the sunshine, as

they roused themselves at my approach, was sufficient to send me at full

speed towards the nearest upland. The snakes, equally scared, fled in

the same direction; and, looking back, I saw the dark monsters following

close at my heels, terrible as the Black Horse rebel regiment at Bull

Run. I had, happily, sense enough left to step aside and let the ugly

troop glide into the bushes.

Nevertheless, the meadows had their redeeming points. In spring

mornings the blackbirds and bobolinks made them musical with songs; and

in the evenings great bullfrogs croaked and clamored; and on summer

nights we loved to watch the white wreaths of fog rising and drifting in

the moonlight like troops of ghosts, with the fireflies throwing up ever

and anon signals of their coming. But the Brook was far more

attractive, for it had sheltered bathing-places, clear and white sanded,

and weedy stretches, where the shy pickerel loved to linger, and deep

pools, where the stupid sucker stirred the black mud with his fins. I

had followed it all the way from its birthplace among the pleasant New

Hampshire hills, through the sunshine of broad, open meadows, and under

the shadow of thick woods. It was, for the most part, a sober, quiet

little river; but at intervals it broke into a low, rippling laugh over

rocks and trunks of fallen trees. There had, so tradition said, once

been a witch-meeting on its banks, of six little old women in short,

sky-blue cloaks; and if a drunken teamster could be credited, a ghost

was once seen bobbing for eels under Country Bridge. It ground our corn

and rye for us, at its two grist-mills; and we drove our sheep to it for

their spring washing, an anniversary which was looked forward to with

intense delight, for it was always rare fun for the youngsters.

Macaulay has sung,--

"That year young lads in Umbro

Shall plunge the struggling sheep;"

and his picture of the Roman sheep-washing recalled, when we read it,

similar scenes in the Country Brook. On its banks we could always find

the earliest and the latest wild flowers, from the pale blue, three-

lobed hepatica, and small, delicate wood-anemone, to the yellow bloom of

the witch-hazel burning in the leafless October woods.

Yet, after all, I think the chief attraction of the Brook to my brother

and myself was the fine fishing it afforded us. Our bachelor uncle who

lived with us (there has always been one of that unfortunate class in

every generation of our family) was a quiet, genial man, much given to

hunting and fishing; and it was one of the great pleasures of our young

life to accompany him on his expeditions to Great Hill, Brandy-brow

Woods, the Pond, and, best of all, to the Country Brook. We were quite

willing to work hard in the cornfield or the haying-lot to finish the

necessary day's labor in season for an afternoon stroll through the

woods and along the brookside. I remember my first fishing excursion as

if it were but yesterday. I have been happy many times in my life, but

never more intensely so than when I received that first fishing-pole

from my uncle's hand, and trudged off with him through the woods and

meadows. It was a still sweet day of early summer; the long afternoon

shadows of the trees lay cool across our path; the leaves seemed

greener, the flowers brighter, the birds merrier, than ever before.

My uncle, who knew by long experience where were the best haunts of

pickerel, considerately placed me at the most favorable point. I threw

out my line as I had so often seen others, and waited anxiously for a

bite, moving the bait in rapid jerks on the surface of the water in

imitation of the leap of a frog. Nothing came of it. "Try again," said

my uncle. Suddenly the bait sank out of sight. "Now for it," thought

I; "here is a fish at last." I made a strong pull, and brought up a

tangle of weeds. Again and again I cast out my line with aching arms,

and drew it back empty. I looked to my uncle appealingly. "Try once

more," he said. "We fishermen must have patience."

Suddenly something tugged at my line and swept off with it into deep

water. Jerking it up, I saw a fine pickerel wriggling in the sun.

"Uncle!" I cried, looking back in uncontrollable excitement, "I've got a

fish!" "Not yet," said my uncle. As he spoke there was a plash in the

water; I caught the arrowy gleam of a scared fish shooting into the

middle of the stream; my hook hung empty from the line. I had lost my

prize.

We are apt to speak of the sorrows of childhood as trifles in comparison

with those of grown-up people; but we may depend upon it the young folks

don't agree with us. Our griefs, modified and restrained by reason,

experience, and self-respect, keep the proprieties, and, if possible,

avoid a scene; but the sorrow of childhood, unreasoning and all-

absorbing, is a complete abandonment to the passion. The doll's nose is

broken, and the world breaks up with it; the marble rolls out of sight,

and the solid globe rolls off with the marble.

So, overcome by my great and bitter disappointment, I sat down on the

nearest hassock, and for a time refused to be comforted, even by my

uncle's assurance that there were more fish in the brook. He refitted

my bait, and, putting the pole again in my hands, told me to try my luck

once more.

"But remember, boy," he said, with his shrewd smile, "never brag of

catching a fish until he is on dry ground. I've seen older folks doing

that in more ways than one, and so making fools of themselves. It 's no

use to boast of anything until it 's done, nor then either, for it

speaks for itself."

How often since I have been reminded of the fish that I did not catch!

When I hear people boasting of a work as yet undone, and trying to

anticipate the credit which belongs only to actual achievement, I call

to mind that scene by the brookside, and the wise caution of my uncle in

that particular instance takes the form of a proverb of universal

application: "Never brag of your fish before you catch him."

YANKEE GYPSIES.

"Here's to budgets, packs, and wallets; Here's to all the wandering

train."

BURNS.

I CONFESS it, I am keenly sensitive to "skyey influences." I profess no

indifference to the movements of that capricious old gentleman known as

the clerk of the weather. I cannot conceal my interest in the behavior

of that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude gyrates on the church

spire. Winter proper is well enough. Let the thermometer go to zero if

it will; so much the better, if thereby the very winds are frozen and

unable to flap their stiff wings. Sounds of bells in the keen air,

clear, musical, heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasined feet

on glittering ice pavements; bright eyes glancing above the uplifted

muff like a sultana's behind the folds of her _yashmac_; schoolboys

coasting down street like mad Greenlanders; the cold brilliance of

oblique sunbeams flashing back from wide surfaces of glittering snow or

blazing upon ice jewelry of tree and roof. There is nothing in all this

to complain of. A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,--its

slow, upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in the western horizon like

new-created volcanoes, veined with fire, shattered by exploding

thunders. Even the wild gales of the equinox have their varieties,

--sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and

casement, hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this dull,

dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very clouds seem too

spiritless and languid to storm outright or take themselves out of the

way of fair weather; wet beneath and above; reminding one of that

rayless atmosphere of Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal

Priessnitz administers his hydropathic torment,--

"A heavy, cursed, and relentless drench,--

The land it soaks is putrid;"

or rather, as everything animate and inanimate is seething in warm mist,

suggesting the idea that Nature, grown old and rheumatic, is trying the

efficacy of a Thompsonian steam-box on a grand scale; no sounds save the

heavy plash of muddy feet on the pavements; the monotonous melancholy

drip from trees and roofs; the distressful gurgling of waterducts,

swallowing the dirty amalgam of the gutters; a dim, leaden-colored

horizon of only a few yards in diameter, shutting down about one, beyond

which nothing is visible save in faint line or dark projection; the

ghost of a church spire or the eidolon of a chimney-pot. He who can

extract pleasurable emotions from the alembic of such a day has a trick

of alchemy with which I am wholly unacquainted.

Hark! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody just now. One gains nothing by

attempting to shut out the sprites of the weather. They come in at the

keyhole; they peer through the dripping panes; they insinuate themselves

through the crevices of the casement, or plump down chimney astride of

the rain-drops.

I rise and throw open the door. A tall, shambling, loose-jointed

figure; a pinched, shrewd face, sun-browned and wind-dried; small,

quick-winking black eyes. There he stands, the water dripping from his

pulpy hat and ragged elbows.

I speak to him, but he returns no answer. With a dumb show of misery,

quite touching, he hands me a soiled piece of parchment, whereon I read

what purports to be a melancholy account of shipwreck and disaster, to

the particular detriment, loss, and damnification of one Pietro Frugoni,

who is, in consequence, sorely in want of the alms of all charitable

Christian persons, and who is, in short, the bearer of this veracious

document, duly certified and indorsed by an Italian consul in one of our

Atlantic cities, of a high-sounding, but to Yankee organs

unpronounceable name.

Here commences a struggle. Every man, the Mohammedans tell us, has two

attendant angels,--the good one on his right shoulder, the bad on his

left. "Give," says Benevolence, as with some difficulty I fish up a

small coin from the depths of my pocket. "Not a cent," says selfish

Prudence; and I drop it from my fingers. "Think," says the good angel,

"of the poor stranger in a strange land, just escaped from the terrors

of the sea-storm, in which his little property has perished, thrown

half-naked and helpless on our shores, ignorant of our language, and

unable to find employment suited to his capacity." "A vile impostor!"

replies the lefthand sentinel. "His paper, purchased from one of those

ready-writers in New York who manufacture beggar-credentials at the low

price of one dollar per copy, with earthquakes, fires, or shipwrecks, to

suit customers."

Amidst this confusion of tongues I take another survey of my visitant.

Ha! a light dawns upon me. That shrewd old face, with its sharp,

winking eyes, is no stranger to me. Pietro Frugoni, I have seen thee

before. Si, signor, that face of thine has looked at me over a dirty

white neckcloth, with the corners of that cunning mouth drawn downwards,

and those small eyes turned up in sanctimonious gravity, while thou wast

offering to a crowd of halfgrown boys an extemporaneous exhortation in

the capacity of a travelling preacher. Have I not seen it peering out

from under a blanket, as that of a poor Penobscot Indian, who had lost

the use of his hands while trapping on the Madawaska? Is it not the

face of the forlorn father of six small children, whom the "marcury

doctors" had "pisened" and crippled? Did it not belong to that down-

East unfortunate who had been out to the "Genesee country" and got the

"fevern-nager," and whose hand shook so pitifully when held out to

receive my poor gift? The same, under all disguises,--Stephen Leathers,

of Barrington,--him, and none other! Let me conjure him into his own

likeness:--

"Well, Stephen, what news from old Barrington?"

"Oh, well, I thought I knew ye," he answers, not the least disconcerted.

"How do you do? and how's your folks? All well, I hope. I took this

'ere paper, you see, to help a poor furriner, who couldn't make himself

understood any more than a wild goose. I thought I 'd just start him

for'ard a little. It seemed a marcy to do it."

Well and shiftily answered, thou ragged Proteus. One cannot be angry

with such a fellow. I will just inquire into the present state of his

Gospel mission and about the condition of his tribe on the Penobscot;

and it may be not amiss to congratulate him on the success of the steam-

doctors in sweating the "pisen" of the regular faculty out of him. But

he evidently has no'wish to enter into idle conversation. Intent upon

his benevolent errand, he is already clattering down stairs.

Involuntarily I glance out of the window just in season to catch a

single glimpse of him ere he is swallowed up in the mist.

He has gone; and, knave as he is, I can hardly help exclaiming, "Luck go

with him!" He has broken in upon the sombre train of my thoughts and

called up before me pleasant and grateful recollections. The old farm-

house nestling in its valley; hills stretching off to the south and

green meadows to the east; the small stream which came noisily down its

ravine, washing the old garden-wall and softly lapping on fallen stones

and mossy roots of beeches and hemlocks; the tall sentinel poplars at

the gateway; the oak-forest, sweeping unbroken to the northern horizon;

the grass-grown carriage-path, with its rude and crazy bridge,--the dear

old landscape of my boyhood lies outstretched before me like a

daguerreotype from that picture within which I have borne with me in all

my wanderings. I am a boy again, once more conscious of the feeling,

half terror, half exultation, with which I used to announce the approach

of this very vagabond and his "kindred after the flesh."

The advent of wandering beggars, or "old stragglers," as we were wont

to call them, was an event of no ordinary interest in the generally

monotonous quietude of our farm-life. Many of them were well known;

they had their periodical revolutions and transits; we could calculate

them like eclipses or new moons. Some were sturdy knaves, fat and

saucy; and, whenever they ascertained that the "men folks" were absent,

would order provisions and cider like men who expected to pay for them,

seating themselves at the hearth or table with the air of Falstaff,--

"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Others, poor, pale, patient,

like Sterne's monk, came creeping up to the door, hat in hand, standing

there in their gray wretchedness with a look of heartbreak and

forlornness which was never without its effect on our juvenile

sensibilities. At times, however, we experienced a slight revulsion of

feeling when even these humblest children of sorrow somewhat petulantly

rejected our proffered bread and cheese, and demanded instead a glass of

cider. Whatever the temperance society might in such cases have done,

it was not in our hearts to refuse the poor creatures a draught of their

favorite beverage; and was n't it a satisfaction to see their sad,

melancholy faces light up as we handed them the full pitcher, and, on

receiving it back empty from their brown, wrinkled hands, to hear them,

half breathless from their long, delicious draught, thanking us for the

favor, as "dear, good children!" Not unfrequently these wandering tests

of our benevolence made their appearance in interesting groups of man,

woman, and child, picturesque in their squalidness, and manifesting a

maudlin affection which would have done honor to the revellers at

Poosie-Nansie's, immortal in the cantata of Burns. I remember some who

were evidently the victims of monomania,--haunted and hunted by some

dark thought,--possessed by a fixed idea. One, a black-eyed, wild-

haired woman, with a whole tragedy of sin, shame, and suffering written

in her countenance, used often to visit us, warm herself by our winter

fire, and supply herself with a stock of cakes and cold meat; but was

never known to answer a question or to ask one. She never smiled; the

cold, stony look of her eye never changed; a silent, impassive face,

frozen rigid by some great wrong or sin. We used to look with awe upon

the "still woman," and think of the demoniac of Scripture who had a

"dumb spirit."

One--I think I see him now, grim, gaunt, and ghastly, working his slow

way up to our door--used to gather herbs by the wayside and call himself

doctor. He was bearded like a he goat and used to counterfeit lameness,

yet, when he supposed himself alone, would travel on lustily as if

walking for a wager. At length, as if in punishment of his deceit, he

met with an accident in his rambles and became lame in earnest, hobbling

ever after with difficulty on his gnarled crutches. Another used to go

stooping, like Bunyan's pilgrim, under a pack made of an old bed-

sacking, stuffed out into most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair

of small, meagre legs, and peering out with his wild, hairy face from

under his burden like a big-bodied spider. That "man with the pack"

always inspired me with awe and reverence. Huge, almost sublime, in its

tense rotundity, the father of all packs, never laid aside and never

opened, what might there not be within it? With what flesh-creeping

curiosity I used to walk round about it at a safe distance, half

expecting to see its striped covering stirred by the motions of a

mysterious life, or that some evil monster would leap out of it, like

robbers from Ali Baba's jars or armed men from the Trojan horse!

There was another class of peripatetic philosophers--half pedler, half

mendicant--who were in the habit of visiting us. One we recollect, a

lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed, unwholesome fellow, with his basket of

old newspapers and pamphlets, and his tattered blue umbrella, serving

rather as a walking staff than as a protection from the rain. He told

us on one occasion, in answer to our inquiring into the cause of his

lameness, that when a young man he was employed on the farm of the chief

magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill-luck would have it,

the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He was caught

one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the irascible

old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the window, laming him

for life, on the brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of

Lemnos. As for the lady, he assured us "she took on dreadfully about

it." "Did she die?" we inquired anxiously. There was a cun-ing

twinkle in the old rogue's eye as he responded, "Well, no, she did n't.

She got married."

Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, we were honored with a

call from Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, pedler and poet, physician

and parson,--a Yankee troubadour,--first and last minstrel of the valley

of the Merrimac, encircled, to my wondering young eyes, with the very

nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins, needles, tape, and

cotton-thread for my mother; jack-knives, razors, and soap for my

father; and verses of his own composing, coarsely printed and

illustrated with rude wood-cuts, for the delectation of the younger

branches of the family. No lovesick youth could drown himself, no

deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount the gallows, without

fitting memorial in Plummer's verses. Earthquakes, fires, fevers, and

shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors from Providence, furnishing

the raw material of song and ballad. Welcome to us in our country

seclusion as Autolycus to the clown in Winter's Tale, we listened with

infinite satisfaction to his readings of his own verses, or to his ready

improvisation upon some domestic incident or topic suggested by his

auditors. When once fairly over the difficulties at the outset of a new

subject, his rhymes flowed freely, "as if he had eaten ballads and all

men's ears grew to his tunes." His productions answered, as nearly as I

can remember, to Shakespeare's description of a proper ballad,--"doleful

matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant theme sung lamentably." He

was scrupulously conscientious, devout, inclined to theological

disquisitions, and withal mighty in Scripture. He was thoroughly

independent; flattered nobody, cared for nobody, trusted nobody. When

invited to sit down at our dinner-table, he invariably took the

precaution to place his basket of valuables between his legs for safe

keeping. "Never mind thy basket, Jonathan," said my father; "we

sha'n't steal thy verses."--"I'm not sure of that," returned the

suspicious guest. "It is written, 'Trust ye not in any brother.'"

Thou too, O Parson B------, with thy pale student's brow and rubicund

nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat overswept by white flowing

locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scrupulously preserved when

even a shirt to thy back was problematical,--art by no means to be

overlooked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing the entree

of our farm-house. Well do we remember with what grave and dignified

courtesy he used to step over its threshold, saluting its inmates with

the same air of gracious condescension and patronage with which in

better days he had delighted the hearts of his parishioners. Poor old

man! He had once been the admired and almost worshipped minister of the

largest church in the town where he afterwards found support in the

winter season as a pauper. He had early fallen into intemperate habits;

and at the age of threescore and ten, when I remember him, he was only

sober when he lacked the means of being otherwise. Drunk or sober,

however, he never altogether forgot the proprieties of his profession;

he was always grave, decorous, and gentlemanly; he held fast the form of

sound words, and the weakness of the flesh abated nothing of the rigor

of his stringent theology. He had been a favorite pupil of the learned

and astute Emmons, and was to the last a sturdy defender of the peculiar

dogmas of his school. The last time we saw him he was holding a meeting

in our district school-house, with a vagabond pedler for deacon and

travelling companion. The tie which united the ill-assorted couple was

doubtless the same which endeared Tam O'Shanter to the souter:--

"They had been fou for weeks thegither."

He took for his text the first seven verses of the concluding chapter of

Ecclesiastes, furnishing in himself its fitting illustration. The evil

days had come; the keepers of the house trembled; the windows of life

were darkened. A few months later the silver cord was loosened, the

golden bowl was broken, and between the poor old man and the temptations

which beset him fell the thick curtains of the grave.

One day we had a call from a "pawky auld carle" of a wandering

Scotchman. To him I owe my first introduction to the songs of Burns.

After eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug of cider he gave

us Bonny Doon, Highland Mary, and Auld Lang Syne. He had a rich, full

voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics. I have since

listened to the same melodies from the lips of Dempster, than whom the

Scottish bard has had no sweeter or truer interpreter; but the skilful

performance of the artist lacked the novel charm of the gaberlunzie's

singing in the old farmhouse kitchen. Another wanderer made us

acquainted with the humorous old ballad of "Our gude man cam hame at

e'en." He applied for supper and lodging, and the next morning was set

at work splitting stones in the pasture. While thus engaged the village

doctor came riding along the highway on his fine, spirited horse, and

stopped to talk with my father. The fellow eyed the animal attentively,

as if familiar with all his good points, and hummed over a stanza of the

old poem:--

"Our gude man cam hame at e'en,

And hame cam be;

And there he saw a saddle horse

Where nae horse should be.

'How cam this horse here?

How can it be?

How cam this horse here

Without the leave of me?'

'A horse?' quo she.

'Ay, a horse,' quo he.

'Ye auld fool, ye blind fool,--

And blinder might ye be,--

'T is naething but a milking cow

My mamma sent to me.'

A milch cow?' quo he.

'Ay, a milch cow,' quo she.

'Weel, far hae I ridden,

And muckle hae I seen;

But milking cows wi' saddles on

Saw I never nane.'"

That very night the rascal decamped, taking with him the doctor's horse,

and was never after heard of.

Often, in the gray of the morning, we used to see one or more

"gaberlunzie men," pack on shoulder and staff in hand, emerging from the

barn or other outbuildings where they had passed the night. I was once

sent to the barn to fodder the cattle late in the evening, and, climbing

into the mow to pitch down hay for that purpose, I was startled by the

sudden apparition of a man rising up before me, just discernible in the

dim moonlight streaming through the seams of the boards. I made a rapid

retreat down the ladder; and was only reassured by hearing the object of

my terror calling after me, and recognizing his voice as that of a

harmless old pilgrim whom I had known before. Our farm-house was

situated in a lonely valley, half surrounded with woods, with no

neighbors in sight. One dark, cloudy night, when our parents chanced to

be absent, we were sitting with our aged grandmother in the fading light

of the kitchen-fire, working ourselves into a very satisfactory state of

excitement and terror by recounting to each other all the dismal stories

we could remember of ghosts, witches, haunted houses and robbers, when

we were suddenly startled by a loud rap at the door. A stripling of

fourteen, I was very naturally regarded as the head of the household;

so,--with many misgivings, I advanced to the door, which I slowly

opened, holding the candle tremulously above my head and peering out

into the darkness. The feeble glimmer played upon the apparition of a

gigantic horseman, mounted on a steed of a size worthy of such a rider--

colossal, motionless, like images cut out of the solid night. The

strange visitant gruffly saluted me; and, after making several

ineffectual efforts to urge his horse in at the door, dismounted and

followed me into the room, evidently enjoying the terror which his huge

presence excited. Announcing himself as the great Indian doctor, he

drew himself up before the fire, stretched his arms, clenched his fists,

struck his broad chest, and invited our attention to what he called his

"mortal frame." He demanded in succession all kinds of intoxicating

liquors; and, on being assured that we had none to give him, he grew

angry, threatened to swallow my younger brother alive, and, seizing me

by the hair of my head as the angel did the prophet at Babylon, led me

about from room to room. After an ineffectual search, in the course of

which he mistook a jug of oil for one of brandy, and, contrary to my

explanations and remonstrances, insisted upon swallowing a portion of

its contents, he released me, fell to crying and sobbing, and confessed

that he was so drunk already that his horse was ashamed of him. After

bemoaning and pitying himself to his satisfaction he wiped his eyes, and

sat down by the side of my grandmother, giving her to understand that he

was very much pleased with her appearance; adding, that if agreeable to

her, he should like the privilege of paying his addresses to her. While

vainly endeavoring to make the excellent old lady comprehend his very

flattering proposition, he was interrupted by the return of my father,

who, at once understanding the matter, turned him out of doors without

ceremony.

On one occasion, a few years ago, on my return from the field at

evening, I was told that a foreigner had asked for lodgings during the

night, but that, influenced by his dark, repulsive appearance, my mother

had very reluctantly refused his request. I found her by no means

satisfied with her decision. "What if a son of mine was in a strange

land?" she inquired, self-reproachfully. Greatly to her relief, I

volunteered to go in pursuit of the wanderer, and, taking a cross-path

over the fields, soon overtook him. He had just been rejected at the

house of our nearest neighbor, and was standing in a state of dubious

perplexity in the street. His looks quite justified my mother's

suspicions. He was an olive-complexioned, black-bearded Italian, with

an eye like a live coal, such a face as perchance looks out on the

traveller in the passes of the Abruzzi,--one of those bandit visages

which Salvator has painted. With some difficulty I gave him to

understand my errand, when he overwhelmed me with thanks, and joyfully

followed me back. He took his seat with us at the supper-table; and,

when we were all gathered around the hearth that cold autumnal evening,

he told us, partly by words and, partly by gestures, the story of his

life and misfortunes, amused us with descriptions of the grape-

gatherings and festivals of his sunny clime, edified my mother with a

recipe for making bread of chestnuts; and in the morning, when, after

breakfast, his dark, sullen face lighted up and his fierce eye moistened

with grateful emotion as in his own silvery Tuscan accent he poured out

his thanks, we marvelled at the fears which had so nearly closed our

door against him; and, as he departed, we all felt that he had left with

us the blessing of the poor.

It was not often that, as in the above instance, my mother's prudence

got the better of her charity. The regular "old stragglers" regarded

her as an unfailing friend; and the sight of her plain cap was to them

an assurance of forthcoming creature-comforts. There was indeed a tribe

of lazy strollers, having their place of rendezvous in the town of

Barrington, New Hampshire, whose low vices had placed them beyond even

the pale of her benevolence. They were not unconscious of their evil

reputation; and experience had taught them the necessity of concealing,

under well-contrived disguises, their true character. They came to us

in all shapes and with all appearances save the true one, with most

miserable stories of mishap and sickness and all "the ills which flesh

is heir to." It was particularly vexatious to discover, when too late,

that our sympathies and charities had been expended upon such graceless

vagabonds as the "Barrington beggars." An old withered hag, known by

the appellation of Hopping Pat,--the wise woman of her tribe,--was in

the habit of visiting us, with her hopeful grandson, who had "a gift for

preaching" as well as for many other things not exactly compatible with

holy orders. He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a shrewd,

knavish-looking bird, who, when in the humor for it, could talk like

Barnaby Rudge's raven. He used to say he could "do nothin' at exhortin'

without a white handkercher on his neck and money in his pocket,"--a

fact going far to confirm the opinions of the Bishop of Exeter and the

Puseyites generally, that there can be no priest without tithes and

surplice.

These people have for several generations lived distinct from the great

mass of the community, like the gypsies of Europe, whom in many respects

they closely resemble. They have the same settled aversion to labor and

the same disposition to avail themselves of the fruits of the industry

of others. They love a wild, out-of-door life, sing songs, tell

fortunes, and have an instinctive hatred of "missionaries and cold

water." It has been said--I know not upon what grounds--that their

ancestors were indeed a veritable importation of English gypsyhood; but

if so, they have undoubtedly lost a good deal of the picturesque charm

of its unhoused and free condition. I very much fear that my friend

Mary Russell Mitford,--sweetest of England's rural painters,--who has a

poet's eye for the fine points in gypsy character, would scarcely allow

their claims to fraternity with her own vagrant friends, whose camp-

fires welcomed her to her new home at Swallowfield.

"The proper study of mankind is man," and, according to my view, no

phase of our common humanity is altogether unworthy of investigation.

Acting upon this belief two or three summers ago, when making, in

company with my sister, a little excursion into the hill-country of New

Hampshire, I turned my horse's head towards Barrington for the purpose

of seeing these semi-civilized strollers in their own home, and

returning, once for all, their numerous visits. Taking leave of our

hospitable cousins in old Lee with about as much solemnity as we may

suppose Major Laing parted with his friends when he set out in search of

desert-girdled Timbuctoo, we drove several miles over a rough road,

passed the Devil's Den unmolested, crossed a fretful little streamlet

noisily working its way into a valley, where it turned a lonely, half-

ruinous mill, and climbing a steep hill beyond, saw before us a wide

sandy level, skirted on the west and north by low, scraggy hills, and

dotted here and there with dwarf pitch-pines. In the centre of this

desolate region were some twenty or thirty small dwellings, grouped

together as irregularly as a Hottentot kraal. Unfenced, unguarded, open

to all comers and goers, stood that city of the beggars,--no wall or

paling between the ragged cabins to remind one of the jealous

distinctions of property. The great idea of its founders seemed visible

in its unappropriated freedom. Was not the whole round world their own?

and should they haggle about boundaries and title-deeds? For them, on

distant plains, ripened golden harvests; for them, in far-off workshops,

busy hands were toiling; for them, if they had but the grace to note it,

the broad earth put on her garniture of beauty, and over them hung the

silent mystery of heaven and its stars. That comfortable philosophy

which modern transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth--that poetic

agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all--is the real life

of this city of unwork. To each of its dingy dwellers might be not

unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for

quoting her beautiful poem in this connection:--

"Other hands may grasp the field or forest,

Proud proprietors in pomp may shine;

Thou art wealthier,--all the world is thine."

But look! the clouds are breaking. "Fair weather cometh out of the

north." The wind has blown away the mists; on the gilded spire of John

Street glimmers a beam of sunshine; and there is the sky again, hard,

blue, and cold in its eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the

storm. In the beautiful present the past is no longer needed.

Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again

the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit, may I not lack a

good angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of

a Barrington beggar.

THE TRAINING.

"Send for the milingtary."

NOAH CLAYPOLE in Oliver Twist.

WHAT'S now in the wind? Sounds of distant music float in at my window

on this still October air. Hurrying drum-beat, shrill fife-tones,

wailing bugle-notes, and, by way of accompaniment, hurrahs from the

urchins on the crowded sidewalks. Here come the citizen-soldiers, each

martial foot beating up the mud of yesterday's storm with the slow,

regular, up-and-down movement of an old-fashioned churn-dasher. Keeping

time with the feet below, some threescore of plumed heads bob solemnly

beneath me. Slant sunshine glitters on polished gun-barrels and

tinselled uniform. Gravely and soberly they pass on, as if duly

impressed with a sense of the deep responsibility of their position as

self-constituted defenders of the world's last hope,--the United States

of America, and possibly Texas. They look out with honest, citizen

faces under their leathern visors (their ferocity being mostly the work

of the tailor and tinker), and, I doubt not, are at this moment as

innocent of bloodthirstiness as yonder worthy tiller of the Tewksbury

Hills, who sits quietly in his wagon dispensing apples and turnips

without so much as giving a glance at the procession. Probably there is

not one of them who would hesitate to divide his last tobacco-quid with

his worst enemy. Social, kind-hearted, psalm-singing, sermon-hearing,

Sabhath-keeping Christians; and yet, if we look at the fact of the

matter, these very men have been out the whole afternoon of this

beautiful day, under God's holy sunshine, as busily at work as Satan

himself could wish in learning how to butcher their fellow-creatures and

acquire the true scientific method of impaling a forlorn Mexican on a

bayonet, or of sinking a leaden missile in the brain of some unfortunate

Briton, urged within its range by the double incentive of sixpence per

day in his pocket and the cat-o'-nine-tails on his back!

Without intending any disparagement of my peaceable ancestry for many

generations, I have still strong suspicions that somewhat of the old

Norman blood, something of the grins Berserker spirit, has been

bequeathed to me. How else can I account for the intense childish

eagerness with which I listened to the stories of old campaigners who

sometimes fought their battles over again in my hearing? Why did I,

in my young fancy, go up with Jonathan, the son of Saul, to smite the

garrisoned Philistines of Michmash, or with the fierce son of Nun

against the cities of Canaan? Why was Mr. Greatheart, in Pilgrim's

Progress, my favorite character? What gave such fascination to the

narrative of the grand Homeric encounter between Christian and Apollyon

in the valley? Why did I follow Ossian over Morven's battle-fields,

exulting in the vulture-screams of the blind scald over his fallen

enemies? Still later, why did the newspapers furnish me with subjects

for hero-worship in the half-demented Sir Gregor McGregor, and Ypsilanti

at the head of his knavish Greeks? I can account for it only in the

supposition that the mischief was inhered,--an heirloom from the old

sea-kings of the ninth century.

Education and reflection have, indeed, since wrought a change in my

feelings. The trumpet of the Cid, or Ziska's drum even, could not now

waken that old martial spirit. The bull-dog ferocity of a half-

intoxicated Anglo-Saxon, pushing his blind way against the converging

cannon-fire from the shattered walls of Ciudad Rodrigo, commends itself

neither to my reason nor my fancy. I now regard the accounts of the

bloody passage of the Bridge of Lodi, and of French cuirassiers madly

transfixing themselves upon the bayonets of Wellington's squares, with

very much the same feeling of horror and loathing which is excited by a

detail of the exploits of an Indian Thug, or those of a mad Malay

running a-muck, creese in hand, through the streets of Pulo Penang.

Your Waterloo, and battles of the Nile and Baltic,--what are they, in

sober fact, but gladiatorial murder-games on a great scale,--human

imitations of bull-fights, at which Satan sits as grand alguazil and

master of ceremonies? It is only when a great thought incarnates itself

in action, desperately striving to find utterance even in sabre-clash

and gun-fire, or when Truth and Freedom, in their mistaken zeal and

distrustful of their own powers, put on battle-harness, that I can feel

any sympathy with merely physical daring. The brawny butcher-work of

men whose wits, like those of Ajax, lie in their sinews, and who are

"yoked like draught-oxen and made to plough up the wars," is no

realization of my ideal of true courage.

Yet I am not conscious of having lost in any degree my early admiration

of heroic achievement. The feeling remains; but it has found new and

better objects. I have learned to appreciate what Milton calls the

martyr's "unresistible might of meekness,"--the calm, uncomplaining

endurance of those who can bear up against persecution uncheered by

sympathy or applause, and, with a full and keen appreciation of the

value of all which they are called to sacrifice, confront danger and

death in unselfish devotion to duty. Fox, preaching through his prison-

gates or rebuking Oliver Cromwell in the midst of his soldier-court

Henry Vane beneath the axe of the headsman; Mary Dyer on the scaffold at

Boston; Luther closing his speech at Worms with the sublime emphasis of

his "Here stand I; I cannot otherwise; God help me;" William Penn

defending the rights of Englishmen from the baledock of the Fleet

prison; Clarkson climbing the decks of Liverpool slaveships; Howard

penetrating to infected dungeons; meek Sisters of Charity breathing

contagion in thronged hospitals,--all these, and such as these, now help

me to form the loftier ideal of Christian heroism.

Blind Milton approaches nearly to my conception of a true hero. What a

picture have we of that sublime old man, as sick, poor, blind, and

abandoned of friends, he still held fast his heroic integrity, rebuking

with his unbending republicanism the treachery, cowardice, and servility

of his old associates! He had outlived the hopes and beatific visions

of his youth; he had seen the loudmouthed advocates of liberty throwing

down a nation's freedom at the feet of the shameless, debauched, and

perjured Charles II., crouching to the harlot-thronged court of the

tyrant, and forswearing at once their religion and their republicanism.

The executioner's axe had been busy among his friends. Vane and Hampden

slept in their bloody graves. Cromwell's ashes had been dragged from

their resting-place; for even in death the effeminate monarch hated and

feared the conquerer of Naseby and Marston Moor. He was left alone, in

age, and penury, and blindness, oppressed with the knowledge that all

which his free soul abhorred had returned upon his beloved country. Yet

the spirit of the stern old republican remained to the last unbroken,

realizing the truth of the language of his own Samson Agonistes:--

"But patience is more oft the exercise

Of saints, the trial of their fortitude,

Making them each his own deliverer

And victor over all

That tyranny or fortune can inflict."

The curse of religious and political apostasy lay heavy on the land.

Harlotry and atheism sat in the high places; and the "caresses of

wantons and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government

which had just ability enough to deceive, just religion enough to

persecute." But, while Milton mourned over this disastrous change,

no self-reproach mingled with his sorrow. To the last he had striven

against the oppressor; and when confined to his narrow alley, a prisoner

in his own mean dwelling, like another Prometheus on his rock, he still

turned upon him an eye of unsubdued defiance. Who, that has read his

powerful appeal to his countrymen when they were on the eve of welcoming

back the tyranny and misrule which, at the expense of so much blood and

treasure had been thrown off, can ever forget it? How nobly does

Liberty speak through him! "If," said he, "ye welcome back a monarchy,

it will be the triumph of all tyrants hereafter over any people who

shall resist oppression; and their song shall then be to others, 'How

sped the rebellious English?' but to our posterity, 'How sped the

rebels, your fathers?'" How solemn and awful is his closing paragraph!

"What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss

'the good old cause.' If it seem strange to any, it will not, I hope,

seem more strange than convincing to backsliders. This much I should

have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and

stones, and had none to cry to but with the prophet, 'O earth, earth,

earth!' to tell the very soil itself what its perverse inhabitants are

deaf to; nay, though what I have spoken should prove (which Thou suffer

not, who didst make mankind free; nor Thou next, who didst redeem us

from being servants of sin) to be the last words of our expiring

liberties."

THE CITY OF A DAY.

The writer, when residing in Lowell, in 1843 contributed this and the

companion pieces to 'The Stranger' in Lowell.

This, then, is Lowell,--a city springing up, like the enchanted palaces

of the Arabian tales, as it were in a single night, stretching far and

wide its chaos of brick masonry and painted shingles, filling the angle

of the confluence of the Concord and the Merrimac with the sights and

sounds of trade and industry. Marvellously here have art and labor

wrought their modern miracles. I can scarcely realize the fact that a

few years ago these rivers, now tamed and subdued to the purposes of man

and charmed into slavish subjection to the wizard of mechanism, rolled

unchecked towards the ocean the waters of the Winnipesaukee and the

rock-rimmed springs of the White Mountains, and rippled down their falls

in the wild freedom of Nature. A stranger, in view of all this

wonderful change, feels himself, as it were, thrust forward into a new

century; he seems treading on the outer circle of the millennium of

steam engines and cotton mills. Work is here the patron saint.

Everything bears his image and superscription. Here is no place for

that respectable class of citizens called gentlemen, and their much

vilified brethren, familiarly known as loafers. Over the gateways of

this new world Manchester glares the inscription, "Work, or die".

Here

"Every worm beneath the moon

Draws different threads, and late or soon

Spins, toiling out his own cocoon."

The founders of this city probably never dreamed of the theory of

Charles Lamb in respect to the origin of labor:--

"Who first invented work, and thereby bound

The holiday rejoicing spirit down

To the never-ceasing importunity

Of business in the green fields and the town?

"Sabbathless Satan,--he who his unglad

Task ever plies midst rotatory burnings

For wrath divine has made him like a wheel

In that red realm from whence are no returnings."

Rather, of course, would they adopt Carlyle's apostrophe of "Divine

labor, noble, ever fruitful,--the grand, sole miracle of man;" for this

is indeed a city consecrated to thrift,--dedicated, every square rod of

it, to the divinity of work; the gospel of industry preached daily and

hourly from some thirty temples, each huger than the Milan Cathedral or

the Temple of Jeddo, the Mosque of St. Sophia or the Chinese pagoda of a

hundred bells; its mighty sermons uttered by steam and water-power; its

music the everlasting jar of mechanism and the organ-swell of many

waters; scattering the cotton and woollen leaves of its evangel from the

wings of steamboats and rail-cars throughout the land; its thousand

priests and its thousands of priestesses ministering around their

spinning-jenny and powerloom altars, or thronging the long, unshaded

streets in the level light of sunset. After all, it may well be

questioned whether this gospel, according to Poor Richard's Almanac, is

precisely calculated for the redemption of humanity. Labor, graduated

to man's simple wants, necessities, and unperverted tastes, is doubtless

well; but all beyond this is weariness to flesh and spirit. Every web

which falls from these restless looms has a history more or less

connected with sin and suffering, beginning with slavery and ending

with overwork and premature death.

A few years ago, while travelling in Pennsylvania, I encountered a

small, dusky-browed German of the name of Etzler. He was possessed by a

belief that the world was to be restored to its paradisiacal state by

the sole agency of mechanics, and that he had himself discovered the

means of bringing about this very desirable consummation. His whole

mental atmosphere was thronged with spectral enginery; wheel within

wheel; plans of hugest mechanism; Brobdignagian steam-engines; Niagaras

of water-power; wind-mills with "sail-broad vans," like those of Satan

in chaos, by the proper application of which every valley was to be

exalted and every hill laid low; old forests seized by their shaggy tops

and uprooted; old morasses drained; the tropics made cool; the eternal

ices melted around the poles; the ocean itself covered with artificial

islands, blossoming gardens of the blessed, rocking gently on the bosom

of the deep. Give him "three hundred thousand dollars and ten years'

time," and he would undertake to do the work.

Wrong, pain, and sin, being in his view but the results of our physical

necessities, ill-gratified desires, and natural yearnings for a better

state, were to vanish before the millennium of mechanism. "It would

be," said he, "as ridiculous then to dispute and quarrel about the means

of life as it would be now about water to drink by the side of mighty

rivers, or about permission to breathe the common air." To his mind the

great forces of Nature took the shape of mighty and benignant spirits,

sent hitherward to be the servants of man in restoring to him his lost

paradise; waiting only for his word of command to apply their giant

energies to the task, but as yet struggling blindly and aimlessly,

giving ever and anon gentle hints, in the way of earthquake, fire, and

flood, that they are weary of idleness, and would fain be set at work.

Looking down, as I now do, upon these huge brick workshops, I have

thought of poor Etzler, and wondered whether he would admit, were he

with me, that his mechanical forces have here found their proper

employment of millennium making. Grinding on, each in his iron harness,

invisible, yet shaking, by his regulated and repressed power, his huge

prison-house from basement to capstone, is it true that the genii of

mechanism are really at work here, raising us, by wheel and pulley,

steam and waterpower, slowly up that inclined plane from whose top

stretches the broad table-land of promise?

Many of the streets of Lowell present a lively and neat aspect, and are

adorned with handsome public and private buildings; but they lack one

pleasant feature of older towns,--broad, spreading shade-trees. One

feels disposed to quarrel with the characteristic utilitarianism of the

first settlers, which swept so entirely away the green beauty of Nature.

For the last few days it has been as hot here as Nebuchadnezzar's

furnace or Monsieur Chabert's oven, the sun glaring down from a copper

sky upon these naked, treeless streets, in traversing which one is

tempted to adopt the language of a warm-weather poet:

"The lean, like walking skeletons, go stalking pale and gloomy;

The fat, like red-hot warming-pans, send hotter fancies through me;

I wake from dreams of polar ice, on which I've been a slider,

Like fishes dreaming of the sea and waking in the spider."

How unlike the elm-lined avenues of New Haven, upon whose cool and

graceful panorama the stranger looks down upon the Judge's Cave, or the

vine-hung pinnacles of West Rock, its tall spires rising white and clear

above the level greenness! or the breezy leafiness of Portland, with its

wooded islands in the distance, and itself overhung with verdant beauty,

rippling and waving in the same cool breeze which stirs the waters of

the beautiful Bay of Casco! But time will remedy all this; and, when

Lowell shall have numbered half the years of her sister cities, her

newly planted elms and maples, which now only cause us to contrast their

shadeless stems with the leafy glory of their parents of the forest,

will stretch out to the future visitor arms of welcome and repose.

There is one beautiful grove in Lowell,--that on Chapel Hill,--where a

cluster of fine old oaks lift their sturdy stems and green branches, in

close proximity to the crowded city, blending the cool rustle of their

leaves with the din of machinery. As I look at them in this gray

twilight they seem lonely and isolated, as if wondering what has become

of their old forest companions, and vainly endeavoring to recognize in

the thronged and dusty streets before them those old, graceful

colonnades of maple and thick-shaded oaken vistas, stretching from river

to river, carpeted with the flowers and grasses of spring, or ankle deep

with leaves of autumn, through whose leafy canopy the sunlight melted in

upon wild birds, shy deer, and red Indians. Long may these oaks remain

to remind us that, if there be utility in the new, there was beauty in

the old, leafy Puseyites of Nature, calling us back to the past, but,

like their Oxford brethren, calling in vain; for neither in polemics nor

in art can we go backward in an age whose motto is ever "Onward."

The population of Lowell is constituted mainly of New Englanders; but

there are representatives here of almost every part of the civilized

world. The good-humored face of the Milesian meets one at almost every

turn; the shrewdly solemn Scotchman, the transatlantic Yankee, blending

the crafty thrift of Bryce Snailsfoot with the stern religious heroism

of Cameron; the blue-eyed, fair-haired German from the towered hills

which overlook the Rhine,--slow, heavy, and unpromising in his exterior,

yet of the same mould and mettle of the men who rallied for "fatherland"

at the Tyrtean call of Korner and beat back the chivalry of France from

the banks of the Katzback,--the countrymen of Richter, and Goethe, and

our own Follen. Here, too, are pedlers from Hamburg, and Bavaria, and

Poland, with their sharp Jewish faces, and black, keen eyes. At this

moment, beneath my window are two sturdy, sunbrowned Swiss maidens

grinding music for a livelihood, rehearsing in a strange Yankee land the

simple songs of their old mountain home, reminding me, by their foreign

garb and language, of

"Lauterbrunnen's peasant girl."

Poor wanderers, I cannot say that I love their music; but now, as the

notes die away, and, to use the words of Dr. Holmes, "silence comes like

a poultice to heal the wounded ear," I feel grateful for their

visitation. Away from crowded thoroughfares, from brick walls and dusty

avenues, at the sight of these poor peasants I have gone in thought to

the vale of Chamouny, and seen, with Coleridge, the morning star pausing

on the "bald, awful head of sovereign Blanc," and the sun rise and set

upon snowy-crested mountains, down in whose valleys the night still

lingers; and, following in the track of Byron and Rousseau, have watched

the lengthening shadows of the hills on the beautiful waters of the

Genevan lake. Blessings, then, upon these young wayfarers, for they

have "blessed me unawares." In an hour of sickness and lassitude they

have wrought for me the miracle of Loretto's Chapel, and, borne me away

from the scenes around me and the sense of personal suffering to that

wonderful land where Nature seems still uttering, from lake and valley,

and from mountains whose eternal snows lean on the hard, blue heaven,

the echoes of that mighty hymn of a new-created world, when "the morning

stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."

But of all classes of foreigners the Irish are by far the most numerous.

Light-hearted, wrongheaded, impulsive, uncalculating, with an Oriental

love of hyperbole, and too often a common dislike of cold water and of

that gem which the fable tells us rests at the bottom of the well, the

Celtic elements of their character do not readily accommodate themselves

to those of the hard, cool, self-relying Anglo-Saxon. I am free to

confess to a very thorough dislike of their religious intolerance and

bigotry, but am content to wait for the change that time and the

attrition of new circumstances and ideas must necessarily make in this

respect. Meanwhile I would strive to reverence man as man, irrespective

of his birthplace. A stranger in a strange land is always to me an

object of sympathy and interest. Amidst all his apparent gayety of

heart and national drollery and wit, the poor Irish emigrant has sad

thoughts of the "ould mother of him," sitting lonely in her solitary

cabin by the bog-side; recollections of a father's blessing and a

sister's farewell are haunting him; a grave mound in a distant

churchyard far beyond the "wide wathers" has an eternal greenness in his

memory; for there, perhaps, lies a "darlint child" or a "swate crather"

who once loved him. The new world is forgotten for the moment; blue

Killarney and the Liffey sparkle before him, and Glendalough stretches

beneath him its dark, still mirror; he sees the same evening sunshine

rest upon and hallow alike with Nature's blessing the ruins of the Seven

Churches of Ireland's apostolic age, the broken mound of the Druids, and

the round towers of the Phoenician sun-worshippers; pleasant and

mournful recollections of his home waken within him; and the rough and

seemingly careless and light-hearted laborer melts into tears. It is no

light thing to abandon one's own country and household gods. Touching

and beautiful was the injunction of the prophet of the Hebrews:

"Ye shall not oppress the stranger; for ye know the heart of the

stranger, seeing that ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."

PATUCKET FALLS.

MANY years ago I read, in some old chronicle of the early history of New

England, a paragraph which has ever since haunted my memory, calling up

romantic associations of wild Nature and wilder man:--

"The Sachem Wonolanset, who lived by the Groat Falls of Patucket, on the

Merrimac."

It was with this passage in my mind that I visited for the first time

the Rapids of the Merrimac, above Lowell.

Passing up the street by the Hospital, a large and elegant mansion

surrounded by trees and shrubbery and climbing vines, I found myself,

after walking a few rods farther, in full view of the Merrimac. A deep

and rocky channel stretched between me and the Dracut shore, along which

rushed the shallow water,--a feeble, broken, and tortuous current,

winding its way among splintered rocks, rising sharp and jagged in all

directions. Drained above the falls by the canal, it resembled some

mountain streamlet of old Spain, or some Arabian wady, exhausted by a

year's drought. Higher up, the arches of the bridge spanned the quick,

troubled water; and, higher still, the dam, so irregular in its outline

as to seem less a work of Art than of Nature, crossed the bed of the

river, a lakelike placidity above contrasting with the foam and murmur

of the falls below. And this was all which modern improvements had left

of "the great Patucket Falls" of the olden time. The wild river had

been tamed; the spirit of the falls, whose hoarse voice the Indian once

heard in the dashing of the great water down the rocks, had become the

slave of the arch conjurer, Art; and, like a shorn and blinded giant,

was grinding in the prison-house of his taskmaster.

One would like to know how this spot must have seemed to the "twenty

goodlie persons from Concord and Woburn" who first visited it in 1652,

as, worn with fatigue, and wet from the passage of the sluggish Concord,

"where ford there was none," they wound their slow way through the

forest, following the growing murmur of the falls, until at length the

broad, swift river stretched before them, its white spray flashing in

the sun. What cared these sturdy old Puritans for the wild beauty of

the landscape thus revealed before them? I think I see them standing

there in the golden light of a closing October day, with their sombre

brown doublets and slouched hats, and their heavy matchlocks,--such men

as Ireton fronted death with on the battle-field of Naseby, or those who

stalked with Cromwell over the broken wall of Drogheda, smiting, "in the

name of the Lord," old and young, "both maid, and little children."

Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river valley, the western

hills stretching to the horizon, overhung with trees gorgeous and

glowing with the tints of autumn,--a mighty flower-garden, blossoming

under the spell of the enchanter, Frost; the rushing river, with its

graceful water-curves and white foam; and a steady murmur, low, deep

voices of water, the softest, sweetest sound of Nature, blends with the

sigh of the south wind in the pine-tops. But these hard-featured saints

of the New Canaan "care for none of these things." The stout hearts

which beat under their leathern doublets are proof against the sweet

influences of Nature. They see only "a great and howling wilderness,

where be many Indians, but where fish may be taken, and where be meadows

for ye subsistence of cattle," and which, on the whole, "is a

comfortable place to accommodate a company of God's people upon, who

may, with God's blessing, do good in that place for both church and

state." (Vide petition to the General Court, 1653.)

In reading the journals and narratives of the early settlers of New

England nothing is more remarkable than the entire silence of the worthy

writers in respect to the natural beauty or grandeur of the scenery amid

which their lot was cast. They designated the grand and glorious

forest, broken by lakes and crossed by great rivers, intersected by a

thousand streams more beautiful than those which the Old World has given

to song and romance, as "a desert and frightful wilderness." The wildly

picturesque Indian, darting his birch canoe down the Falls of the

Amoskeag or gliding in the deer-track of the forest, was, in their view,

nothing but a "dirty tawnie," a "salvage heathen," and "devil's imp."

Many of them were well educated,--men of varied and profound erudition,

and familiar with the best specimens of Greek and Roman literature; yet

they seem to have been utterly devoid of that poetic feeling or fancy

whose subtle alchemy detects the beautiful in the familiar. Their very

hymns and spiritual songs seem to have been expressly calculated, like

"the music-grinders" of Holmes,--

"To pluck the eyes of sentiment,

And dock the tail of rhyme,

To crack the voice of melody,

And break the legs of time."

They were sworn enemies of the Muses; haters of stage-play literature,

profane songs, and wanton sonnets; of everything, in brief, which

reminded them of the days of the roistering cavaliers and bedizened

beauties of the court of "the man Charles," whose head had fallen

beneath the sword of Puritan justice. Hard, harsh, unlovely, yet with

many virtues and noble points of character, they were fitted, doubtless,

for their work of pioneers in the wilderness. Sternly faithful to duty,

in peril, and suffering, and self-denial, they wrought out the noblest

of historical epics on the rough soil of New England. They lived a

truer poetry than Homer or Virgil wrote.

The Patuckets, once a powerful native tribe, had their principal

settlements around the falls at the time of the visit of the white men

of Concord and Woburn in 1652. Gookin, the Indian historian, states

that this tribe was almost wholly destroyed by the great pestilence of

1612. In 1674 they had but two hundred and fifty males in the whole

tribe. Their chief sachem lived opposite the falls; and it was in his

wigwam that the historian, in company with John Eliot, the Indian

missionary, held a "meeting for worshippe on ye 5th of May, 1676," where

Mr. Eliot preached from "ye twenty-second of Matthew."

The white visitants from Concord and Woburn, pleased with the appearance

of the place and the prospect it afforded for planting and fishing,

petitioned the General Court for a grant of the entire tract of land now

embraced in the limits of Lowell and Chelmsford. They made no account

whatever of the rights of the poor Patuckets; but, considering it

"a comfortable place to accommodate God's people upon," were doubtless

prepared to deal with the heathen inhabitants as Joshua the son of Nun

did with the Jebusites and Perizzites, the Hivites and the Hittites, of

old. The Indians, however, found a friend in the apostle Eliot, who

presented a petition in their behalf that the lands lying around the

Patucket and Wamesit Falls should be appropriated exclusively for their

benefit and use. The Court granted the petition of the whites, with the

exception of the tract in the angle of the two rivers on which the

Patuckets were settled. The Indian title to this tract was not finally

extinguished until 1726, when the beautiful name of Wamesit was lost in

that of Chelmsford, and the last of the Patuckets turned his back upon

the graves of his fathers and sought a new home among the strange

Indians of the North.

But what has all this to do with the falls? When the rail-cars came

thundering through his lake country, Wordsworth attempted to exorcise

them by a sonnet; and, were I not a very decided Yankee, I might

possibly follow his example, and utter in this connection my protest

against the desecration of Patucket Falls, and battle with objurgatory

stanzas these dams and mills, as Balmawapple shot off his horse-pistol

at Stirling Castle. Rocks and trees, rapids, cascades, and other water-

works are doubtless all very well; but on the whole, considering our

seven months of frost, are not cotton shirts and woollen coats still

better? As for the spirits of the river, the Merrimac Naiads, or

whatever may be their name in Indian vocabulary, they have no good

reason for complaint; inasmuch as Nature, in marking and scooping out

the channel of their stream, seems to have had an eye to the useful

rather than the picturesque. After a few preliminary antics and

youthful vagaries up among the White Hills, the Merrimac comes down to

the seaboard, a clear, cheerful, hard-working Yankee river. Its

numerous falls and rapids are such as seem to invite the engineer's

level rather than the pencil of the tourist; and the mason who piles up

the huge brick fabrics at their feet is seldom, I suspect, troubled with

sentimental remorse or poetical misgivings. Staid and matter of fact as

the Merrimac is, it has, nevertheless, certain capricious and eccentric

tributaries; the Powow, for instance, with its eighty feet fall in a few

rods, and that wild, Indian-haunted Spicket, taking its wellnigh

perpendicular leap of thirty feet, within sight of the village meeting-

house, kicking up its Pagan heels, Sundays and all, in sheer contempt of

Puritan tithing-men. This latter waterfall is now somewhat modified by

the hand of Art, but is still, as Professor Hitchcock's "Scenographical

Geology" says of it, "an object of no little interest." My friend T.,

favorably known as the translator of "Undine" and as a writer of fine

and delicate imagination, visited Spicket Falls before the sound of a

hammer or the click of a trowel had been heard beside them. His journal

of "A Day on the Merrimac" gives a pleasing and vivid description of

their original appearance as viewed through the telescope of a poetic

fancy. The readers of "Undine" will thank me for a passage or two from

this sketch:--

"The sound of the waters swells more deeply. Something supernatural in

their confused murmur; it makes me better understand and sympathize with

the writer of the Apocalypse when he speaks of the voice of many waters,

heaping image upon image, to impart the vigor of his conception.

"Through yonder elm-branches I catch a few snowy glimpses of foam in the

air. See that spray and vapor rolling up the evergreen on my left The

two side precipices, one hundred feet apart and excluding objects of

inferior moment, darken and concentrate the view. The waters between

pour over the right-hand and left-hand summit, rushing down and uniting

among the craggiest and abruptest of rocks. Oh for a whole mountain-

side of that living foam! The sun impresses a faint prismatic hue.

These falls, compared with those of the Missouri, are nothing,--nothing

but the merest miniature; and yet they assist me in forming some

conception of that glorious expanse.

"A fragment of an oak, struck off by lightning, struggles with the

current midway down; while the shattered trunk frowns above the

desolation, majestic in ruin. This is near the southern cliff. Farther

north a crag rises out of the stream, its upper surface covered with

green clover of the most vivid freshness. Not only all night, but all

day, has the dew lain upon its purity. With my eye attaining the

uppermost margin, where the waters shoot over, I look away into the

western sky, and discern there (what you least expect) a cow chewing her

cud with admirable composure, and higher up several sheep and lambs

browsing celestial buds. They stand on the eminence that forms the

background of my present view. The illusion is extremely picturesque,--

such as Allston himself would despair of producing. 'Who can paint like

Nature'?"

To a population like that of Lowell, the weekly respite from monotonous

in-door toil afforded by the first day of the week is particularly

grateful. Sabbath comes to the weary and overworked operative

emphatically as a day of rest. It opens upon him somewhat as it did

upon George Herbert, as he describes it in his exquisite little poem:--

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

The bridal of the earth and sky!"

Apart from its soothing religious associations, it brings with it the

assurance of physical comfort and freedom. It is something to be able

to doze out the morning from daybreak to breakfast in that luxurious

state between sleeping and waking in which the mind eddies slowly and

peacefully round and round instead of rushing onward,--the future a

blank, the past annihilated, the present but a dim consciousness of

pleasurable existence. Then, too, the satisfaction is by no means

inconsiderable of throwing aside the worn and soiled habiliments of

labor and appearing in neat and comfortable attire. The moral influence

of dress has not been overrated even by Carlyle's Professor in his

Sartor Resartus. William Penn says that cleanliness is akin to

godliness. A well-dressed man, all other things being equal, is not

half as likely to compromise his character as one who approximates to

shabbiness. Lawrence Sterne used to say that when he felt himself

giving way to low spirits and a sense of depression and worthlessness,--

a sort of predisposition for all sorts of little meannesses,--he

forthwith shaved himself, brushed his wig, donned his best dress and his

gold rings, and thus put to flight the azure demons of his unfortunate

temperament. There is somehow a close affinity between moral purity and

clean linen; and the sprites of our daily temptation, who seem to find

easy access to us through a broken hat or a rent in the elbow, are

manifestly baffled by the "complete mail" of a clean and decent dress.

I recollect on one occasion hearing my mother tell our family physician

that a woman in the neighborhood, not remarkable for her tidiness, had

become a church-member. "Humph!" said the doctor, in his quick,

sarcastic way, "What of that? Don't you know that no unclean thing can

enter the kingdom of heaven?"

"If you would see" Lowell "aright," as Walter Scott says of Melrose

Abbey, one must be here of a pleasant First day at the close of what is

called the "afternoon service." The streets are then blossoming like a

peripatetic flower-garden; as if the tulips and lilies and roses of my

friend W.'s nursery, in the vale of Nonantum, should take it into their

heads to promenade for exercise. Thousands swarm forth who during week-

days are confined to the mills. Gay colors alternate with snowy

whiteness; extremest fashion elbows the plain demureness of old-

fashioned Methodism.

Fair pale faces catch a warmer tint from the free sunshine and fresh

air. The languid step becomes elastic with that "springy motion of the

gait" which Charles Lamb admired. Yet the general appearance of the

city is that of quietude; the youthful multitude passes on calmly, its

voices subdued to a lower and softened tone, as if fearful of breaking

the repose of the day of rest. A stranger fresh from the gayly spent

Sabbaths of the continent of Europe would be undoubtedly amazed at the

decorum and sobriety of these crowded streets.

I am not over-precise in outward observances; but I nevertheless welcome

with joy unfeigned this first day of the week,--sweetest pause in our

hard life-march, greenest resting-place in the hot desert we are

treading. The errors of those who mistake its benignant rest for the

iron rule of the Jewish Sabbath, and who consequently hedge it about

with penalties and bow down before it in slavish terror, should not

render us less grateful for the real blessing it brings us. As a day

wrested in some degree from the god of this world, as an opportunity

afforded for thoughtful self-communing, let us receive it as a good gift

of our heavenly Parent in love rather than fear.