ON HIS TRACKS.
"Abel!" said the old Doctor, one morning, "after you've harnessed
Caustic, come into the study a few minutes, will you?"
Abel nodded. He was a man of few words, and he knew that the "will you"
did not require an answer, being the true New-England way of rounding
the corners of an employer's order,--a tribute to the personal
independence of an American citizen.
The hired man came into the study in the course of a few minutes. His
face was perfectly still, and he waited to be spoken to; but the
Doctor's eye detected a certain meaning in his expression, which looked
as if he had something to communicate.
"Well?" said the Doctor.
"He's up to mischief o' some kind, I guess," said Abel. "I jest happened
daown by the mansion-haouse last night, 'n' he come aout o' the gate on
that queer-lookin' creatur' o' his. I watched him, 'n' he rid, very
slow, all raoun' by the Institoot, 'n' acted as ef he was spyin' abaout.
He looks to me like a man that's calc'latin' to do some kind of ill-turn
to somebody. I shouldn't like to have him raoun' me, 'f there wa'n't a
pitchfork or an eel-spear or some sech weep'n within reach. He may be
all right; but I don't like his looks, 'n' I don't see what he's lurkin'
raoun' the Institoot for, after folks is abed."
"Have you watched him pretty close for the last few days?" said the
Doctor.
"W'll, yes,--I've had my eye on him consid'ble o' the time. I haf to be
pooty shy abaout it, or he'll find aout th't I'm on his tracks. I don'
want him to get a spite ag'inst me, 'f I c'n help it; he looks to me
like one o' them kind that kerries what they call slung-shot, 'n' hits
ye on the side o' th' head with 'em so suddin y' never know what
hurts ye."
"Why," said the Doctor, sharply,--"have you ever seen him with any
such weapon about him?"
"W'll, no,--I caan't say that I hev," Abel answered. "On'y he looks kin'
o' dangerous. May-be he's all jest 'z he ought to be,--I caan't say that
he a'n't,--but he's aout late nights, 'n' lurkin' raoun' jest 'z ef he
wuz spyin' somebody; 'n' somehaow I caan't help mistrustin' them
Portagee-lookin' fellahs. I caa'n't keep the run o' this chap all the
time; but I've a notion that old black woman daown't the mansion-haouse
knows 'z much abaout him 'z anybody."
The Doctor paused a moment, after hearing this report from his private
detective, and then got into his chaise, and turned Caustic's head in
the direction of the Dudley mansion. He had been suspicious of Dick from
the first. He did not like his mixed blood, not his looks, nor his ways.
He had formed a conjecture about his projects early. He had made a
shrewd guess as to the probable jealousy Dick would feel of the
schoolmaster, had found out something of his movements, and had
cautioned Mr. Bernard,--as we have seen. He felt an interest in the
young man,--a student of his own profession, an intelligent and
ingenuously unsuspecting young fellow, who had been thrown by accident
into the companionship or the neighborhood of two person, one of whom he
knew to be dangerous, and the other he believed instinctively might be
capable of crime.
The Doctor rode down to the Dudley mansion solely for the sake of
seeing Old Sophy. He was lucky enough to find her alone in her kitchen.
He began talking with her as a physician; he wanted to know how her
rheumatism had been. The shrewd old woman saw though all that with her
little beady black eyes. It was something quite different he had come
for, and Old Sophy answered very briefly for her aches and ails.
"Old folks' bones a'n't like young folks'," she said. "It's the Lord's
doin's, 'n' 't a'n't much matter. I sh'n't be long roun' this kitchen.
It's the young Missis, Doctor,--it's our Elsie,--it's the baby, as we
use' t' call her,--don' you remember, Doctor? Seventeen year ago, 'n'
her poor mother cryin' for her,--'Where is she? where is she? Let me see
her!'--'n' how I run up-stairs,--I could run then,--'n' got the coral
necklace 'n' put it round her little neck, 'n' then showed her to her
mother,--'n' how her mother looked at her, 'n' looked, 'n' then put out
her poor thin fingers 'n' lifted the necklace,--'n' fell right back on
her piller, as white as though she was laid out to bury?"
The Doctor answered her by silence and a look of grave assent. He had
never chosen to let Old Sophy dwell upon these matters, for obvious
reasons. The girl must not grow up haunted by perpetual fears and
prophecies, if it were possible to prevent it.
"Well, how has Elsie seemed of late?" he said, after this brief pause.
The old woman shook her head. Then she looked up at the Doctor so
steadily and searchingly that the diamond eyes of Elsie herself could
hardly have pierced more deeply.
The Doctor raised his head, by his habitual movement, and met the old
woman's look with his own calm and scrutinizing gaze, sharpened by the
glasses through which he now saw her.
Sophy spoke presently in an awed tone, as if telling a vision.
"We shall be havin' trouble before long. The' 's somethin' comin' from
the Lord. I've had dreams, Doctor. It's many a year I've been
a-dreamin', but now they're comin' over 'n' over the same thing. Three
times I've dreamed one thing, Doctor,--one thing!"
"And what was that?" the Doctor said, with that shade of curiosity in
his tone which a metaphysician would probably say is an index of a
certain tendency to belief in the superstition to which the
question refers.
"I ca'n' jestly tell y' what it was, Doctor," the old woman answered, as
if bewildered and trying to clear up her recollections; "but it was
somethin' fearful, with a great noise 'n' a great cryin' o'
people,--like the Las' Day, Doctor! The Lord have mercy on my poor
chil', 'n' take care of her, if anything happens! But I's feared she'll
never live to see the Las' Day, 'f 't don' come pooty quick." Poor
Sophy, only the third generation from cannibalism, was, not unnaturally,
somewhat confused in her theological notions. Some of the Second-Advent
preachers had been about, and circulated their predictions among the
kitchen-population of Rockland. This was the way in which it happened
that she mingled her fears in such a strange manner with their
doctrines.
The Doctor answered solemnly, that of the day and hour we knew not, but
it became us to be always ready.--"Is there anything going on in the
household different from common?"
Old Sophy's wrinkled face looked as full of life and intelligence, when
she turned it full upon the Doctor, as if she had slipped off her
infirmities and years like an outer garment. All those fine instincts of
observation which came straight to her from her savage grandfather
looked out of her little eyes. She had a kind of faith that the Doctor
was a mighty conjuror, who, if he would, could bewitch any of them. She
had relieved her feelings by her long talk with the minister, but the
Doctor was the immediate adviser of the family, and had watched them
through all their troubles. Perhaps he could tell them what to do. She
had but one real object of affection in the world,--this child that she
had tended from infancy to womanhood. Troubles were gathering thick
round her; how soon they would break upon her, and blight or destroy
her, no one could tell; but there was nothing in all the catalogue of
terrors that might not come upon the household at any moment. Her own
wits had sharpened themselves in keeping watch by day and night, and her
face had forgotten its age in the excitement which gave life to
its features.
"Doctor," Old Sophy said, "there's strange things goin' on here by night
and by day. I don' like that man,--that Dick,--I never liked him. He
giv' me some o' these things I' got on; I take 'em 'cos I know it make
him mad, if I no take 'em; I wear 'em, so that he needn' feel as if I
didn' like him; but, Doctor, I hate him,--jes' as much as a member o'
the church has the Lord's leave to hate anybody."
Her eyes sparkled with the old savage light, as if her ill-will to Mr.
Richard Venner might perhaps go a little farther than the Christian
limit she had assigned. But remember that her grandfather was in the
habit of inviting his friends to dine with him upon the last enemy he
had bagged, and that her grandmother's teeth were filed down to points,
so that they were as sharp as a shark's.
"What is it that you have seen about Mr. Richard Venner that gives you
such a spite against him, Sophy?" asked the Doctor.
"What I' seen 'bout Dick Venner?" she replied, fiercely. "I'll tell y'
what I' seen. Dick wan's to marry our Elsie,--that's what he wan's; 'n'
he don' love her, Doctor,--he hates her, Doctor, as bad as I hate him!
He wan's to marry our Elsie, 'n' live here in the big house, 'n' have
nothin' to do but jes' lay still 'n' watch Massa Venner 'n' see how long
't 'll take him to die, 'n' 'f he don' die fas' 'nuff, help him some way
t' die fasser!--Come close up t' me, Doctor! I wan' t' tell you
somethin' I tol' th' minister t'other day. Th' minister, he come down
'n' prayed 'n' talked good,--he's a good man, that Doctor Honeywood,
'n' I tol' him all 'bout our Elsie,--but he didn' tell nobody what to
do to stop all what I been dreamin' about happenin'. Come close up to
me, Doctor!"
The Doctor drew his chair close up to that of the old woman.
"Doctor, nobody mus'n' never marry our Elsie 's long 's she lives!
Nobody mus'n' never live with Elsie but Ol' Sophy; 'n' Ol' Sophy won't
never die 's long 's Elsie's alive to be took care of. But I 's feared,
Doctor, I 's greatly feared Elsie wan' to marry somebody. The' 's a
young gen'l'm'n up at that school where she go,--so some of 'em tells
me,--'n' she loves t' see him 'n' talk wi' him, 'n' she talks about him
when she's asleep sometimes. She mus'n' never marry nobody, Doctor! If
she do, he die, certain!"
"If she has a fancy for the young man up at the school there," the Doctor
said, "I shouldn't think there would be much danger from Dick."
"Doctor, nobody know nothin' 'bout Elsie but Ol' Sophy. She no like any
other creatur' th't ever drawed the bref o' life. If she ca'n' marry one
man cos she love him, she marry another man cos she hate him."
"Marry a man because she hates him, Sophy? No woman ever did such a
thing as that, or ever will do it."
"Who tol' you Elsie was a woman, Doctor?" said Old Sophy, with a flash
of strange intelligence in her eyes.
The Doctor's face showed that he was startled. The old woman could not
know much about Elsie that he did not know; but what strange
superstition had got into her head, he was puzzled to guess. He had
better follow Sophy's lead and find out what she meant.
"I should call Elsie a woman, and a very handsome one," he said. "You
don't mean that she has any ugly thing about her, except--you
know--under the necklace?"
The old woman resented the thought of any deformity about her darling.
"I didn' say she had nothin'--but jes' that--you know. My beauty have
anything ugly? She's the beautifullest-shaped lady that ever had a
shinin' silk gown drawed over her shoulders. On'y she a'n't like no
other woman in none of her ways. She don't cry 'n' laugh like other
women. An' she ha'n' got the same kind o' feelin's as other women.--Do
you know that young gen'l'm'n up at the school, Doctor?"
"Yes, Sophy, I've met him sometimes. He's a very nice sort of young man,
handsome, too, and I don't much wonder Elsie takes to him. Tell me,
Sophy, what do you think would happen, if he should chance to fall in
love with Elsie, and she with him, and he should marry her?"
"Put your ear close to my lips, Doctor, dear!" She whispered a little to
the Doctor, then added aloud, "He die,--that's all."
"But surely, Sophy, you a'n't afraid to have Dick marry her, if she
would have him for any reason, are you? He can take care of himself, if
anybody can."
"Doctor!" Sophy answered, "nobody can take care of hisself that live wi'
Elsie! Nobody never in all this worl' mus' live wi' Elsie but Ol' Sophy,
I tell you. You don' think I care for Dick? What do I care, if Dick
Venner die? He wan's to marry our Elsie so's to live in the big house
'n' get all the money 'n' all the silver things 'n' all the chists full
o' linen 'n' beautiful clothes! That's what Dick wan's. An' he hates
Elsie 'cos she don' like him. But if he marries Elsie, she'll make him
die some wrong way or other, 'n' they'll take her 'n' hang her, or he'll
get mad with her 'n' choke her.--Oh, I know his chokin' tricks!--he don'
leave his keys roun' for nothin'!"
"What's that you say, Sophy? Tell me what you mean by all that."
So poor Sophy had to explain certain facts not in all respects to her
credit. She had taken the opportunity of his absence to look about his
chamber, and, having found a key in one of his drawers, had applied it
to a trunk, and, finding that it opened the trunk, had made a kind of
inspection for contraband articles, and, seeing the end of a leather
thong, had followed it up until she saw that it finished with a noose,
which, from certain appearances, she inferred to have seen service of at
least doubtful nature. An unauthorized search; but Old Sophy considered
that a game of life and death was going on in the household, and that
she was bound to look out for her darling.
The Doctor paused a moment to think over this odd piece of information.
Without sharing Sophy's belief as to the kind of use this
mischievous-looking piece of property had been put to, it was certainly
very odd that Dick should have such a thing at the bottom of his trunk.
The Doctor remembered reading or hearing something about the _lasso_ and
the _lariat_ and the _bolas_, and had an indistinct idea that they had
been sometimes used as weapons of warfare or private revenge; but they
were essentially a huntsman's implements, after all, and it was not very
strange that this young man had brought one of them with him. Not
strange, perhaps, but worth noting.
"Do you really think Dick means mischief to anybody, that he has such
dangerous-looking things?" the Doctor said, presently.
"I tell you, Doctor. Dick means to have Elsie. If he ca'n' get her, he
never let nobody else have her. Oh, Dick's a dark man, Doctor! I know
him! I 'member him when he was little boy,--he always cunnin'. I think
he mean mischief to somebody. He come home late nights,--come in
softly,--oh, I hear him! I lay awake, 'n' got sharp ears,--I hear the
cats walkin' over the roofs,--'n' I hear Dick Venner, when he comes up
in his stockin'-feet as still as a cat. I think he mean mischief to
somebody. I no like his looks these las' days.--Is that a very pooty
gen'l'm'n up at the school-house, Doctor?"
"I told you he was good-looking. What if he is?"
"I should like to see him, Doctor,--I should like to see the pooty
gen'l'm'n that my poor Elsie loves. She mus'n' never marry nobody,--but,
oh, Doctor, I should like to see him, 'n' jes' think a little how it
would ha' been, if the Lord hadn' been so hard on Elsie."
She wept and wrung her hands. The kind Doctor was touched, and left her
a moment to her thoughts.
"And how does Mr. Dudley Venner take all this?" he said, by way of
changing the subject a little.
"Oh, Massa Venner, he good man, but he don' know nothin' 'bout Elsie, as
Ol' Sophy do. I keep close by her; I help her when she go to bed, 'n'
set by her sometime when she 'sleep; I come to her in th' mornin' 'n'
help her put on her things."--Then, in a whisper,--"Doctor, Elsie lets
Ol' Sophy take off that necklace for her. What you think she do, 'f
anybody else tech it?"
"I don't know, I'm sure, Sophy,--strike the person, perhaps."
"Oh, yes, strike 'em! but not with her hands, Doctor!"--The old woman's
significant pantomime must be guessed at.
"But you haven't told me, Sophy, what Mr. Dudley Venner thinks of his
nephew, nor whether he has any notion that Dick wants to marry Elsie."
"I tell you. Massa Venner, he good man, but he no see nothin' 'bout what
goes on here in the house. He sort o' broken-hearted, you know,--sort o'
giv' up,--don' know what to do wi' Elsie, 'xcep' say 'Yes, yes.' Dick
always look smilin' 'n' behave well before him. One time I thought Massa
Venner b'lieve Dick was goin' to take to Elsie; but now he don' seem to
take much notice;--he kin' o' stupid-like 'bout sech things. It's
trouble, Doctor; 'cos Massa Venner bright man naterally,--'n' he's got a
great heap o' books. I don' think Massa Venner never been jes' heself
sence Elsie's born. He done all he know how,--but, Doctor, that wa'n' a
great deal. You men-folks don' know nothin' 'bout these young gals; 'n'
'f you knowed all the young gals that ever lived, y' wouldn' know
nothin' 'bout our Elsie."
"No,--but, Sophy, what I want to know is, whether you think Mr. Venner
has any kind of suspicion about his nephew,--whether he has any notion
that he's a dangerous sort of fellow,--or whether he feels safe to have
him about, or has even taken a sort of fancy to him."
"Lor' bless you, Doctor, Massa Venner no more idee 'f any mischief 'bout
Dick than he has 'bout you or me. Y' see, he very fond o' the
Cap'n,--that Dick's father,--'n' he live so long alone here, 'long wi'
us, that he kin' o' like to see mos' anybody 't 's got any o' th' ol'
family-blood in 'em. He ha'n't got no more suspicions 'n a baby,--y'
never see sech a man 'n y'r life. I kin' o' think he don' care for
nothin' in this world 'xcep' jes' t' do what Elsie wan's him to. The
fus' year after young Madam die he do nothin' but jes' set at the window
'n' look out at her grave, 'n' then come up 'n' look at the baby's neck
'n' say, '_It's fadin', Sophy, a'n't it?_' 'n' then go down in the study
'n' walk 'n' walk, 'n' then kneel down 'n' pray. Doctor, there was two
places in the old carpet that was all threadbare, where his knees had
worn 'em. An sometimes,--you remember 'bout all that,--he'd go off up
into The Mountain 'n' be gone all day, 'n' kill all the Ugly Things he
could find up there.--Oh, Doctor, I don' like to think o' them
days!--An' by-'n'-by he grew kin' o' still, 'n' begun to read a little,
'n' 't las' he got's quiet 's a lamb, 'n' that's the way he is now. I
think he's got religion, Doctor; but he a'n't so bright about what's
goin' on, 'n' I don' believe he never suspec' nothin' till somethin'
happens;--for the' 's somethin' goin' to happen, Doctor, if the Las' Day
doesn' come to stop it; 'n' you mus' tell us what to do, 'n' save my
poor Elsie, my baby that the Lord hasn' took care of like all his
other childer."
The Doctor assured the old woman that he was thinking a great deal about
them all, and that there were other eyes on Dick besides her own. Let
her watch him closely about the house, and he would keep a look-out
elsewhere. If there was anything new, she must let him know at once.
Send up one of the men-servants, and he would come down at a
moment's warning.
There was really nothing definite against this young man; but the Doctor
was sure that he was meditating some evil design or other. He rode
straight up to the Institute. There he saw Mr. Bernard, and had a brief
conversation with him, principally on matters relating to his personal
interests.
That evening, for some unknown reason, Mr. Bernard changed the place of
his desk and drew down the shades of his windows. Late that night Mr.
Richard Venner drew the charge of a rifle, and put the gun back among
the fowling-pieces, swearing that a leather halter was worth a dozen
of it.
A PLEA FOR FREEDOM FROM SPEECH AND FIGURES
OF SPEECH-MAKERS.
I observe, Messieurs of the "Atlantic," that your articles are commonly
written in the imperial style; but I must beg allowance to use the first
person singular. I cannot, like old Weller, spell myself with a We. Ours
is, I believe, the only language that has shown so much sense of the
worth of the individual (to himself) as to erect the first personal
pronoun into a kind of votive column to the dignity of human nature.
Other tongues have, or pretend, a greater modesty.
I.
What a noble letter it is! In it every reader sees himself as in a
glass. As for me, without my I-s, I should be as poorly off as the great
mole of Hadrian, which, being the biggest, must be also, by parity of
reason, the blindest in the world. When I was in college, I confess I
always liked those passages best in the choruses of the Greek drama
which were well sprinkled with _ai ai_, they were so grandly simple.
The force of great men is generally to be found in their intense
individuality,--in other words, it is all in their I. The merit of this
essay will be similar.
What I was going to say is this.
My mind has been much exercised of late on the subject of two epidemics,
which, showing themselves formerly in a few sporadic cases, have begun
to set in with the violence of the cattle-disease: I mean Eloquence and
Statuary. They threaten to render the country unfit for human
habitation, except by the Deaf and Blind. We had hitherto got on very
well in Chesumpscot, having caught a trick of silence, perhaps from the
fish which we cured, _more medicorum_, by laying them out. But this
summer some misguided young men among us got up a lecture-association.
Of course it led to a general quarrel; for every pastor in the town
wished to have the censorship of the list of lecturers. A certain number
of the original projectors, however, took the matter wholly into their
own hands, raised a subscription to pay expenses, and resolved to call
their lectures "The Universal Brotherhood Course,"--for no other reason,
that I can divine, but that they had set the whole village by the ears.
They invited that distinguished young apostle of Reform, Mr. Philip
Vandal, to deliver the opening lecture. He has just done so, and, from
what I have heard about his discourse, it would have been fitter as the
introductory to a nunnery of Kilkenny cats than to anything like
universal brotherhood. He opened our lyceum as if it had been an oyster,
without any regard for the feelings of those inside. He pitched into the
world in general, and all his neighbors past and present in particular.
Even the babe unborn did not escape some unsavory epithets in the way of
vaticination. I sat down, meaning to write you an essay on "The Right of
Private Judgment as distinguished from the Right of Public
Vituperation"; but I forbear. It may be that I do not understand the
nature of philanthropy.
Why, here is Philip Vandal, for example. He loves his kind so much that
he has not a word softer than a brickbat for a single mother's son of
them. He goes about to save them by proving that not one of them is
worth damning. And he does it all from the point of view of an early (_a
knurly_) Christian. Let me illustrate. I was sauntering along Broadway
once, and was attracted by a bird-fancier's shop. I like dealers in
out-of-the-way things,--traders in bigotry and virtue are too
common,--and so I went in. The gem of the collection was a terrier,--a
perfect beauty, uglier than philanthropy itself, and hairier, as a
Cockney would say, than the 'ole British hairystocracy. "A'n't he a
stunner?" said my disrespectable friend, the master of the shop. "Ah,
you should see him worry a rat! He does it like a puffic Christian!"
Since then, the world has been divided for me into Christians and
perfect Christians; and I find so many of the latter species in
proportion to the former, that I begin to pity the rats. They (the rats)
have at least one virtue,--they are not eloquent.
It is, I think, a universally recognized truth of natural history, that
a young lady is sure to fall in love with a young man for whom she feels
at first an unconquerable aversion; and it must be on the same principle
that the first symptoms of love for our neighbor almost always manifest
themselves in a violent disgust at the world in general, on the part of
the apostles of that gospel. They give every token of hating their
neighbors consumedly; _argal_, they are going to be madly enamored of
them. Or, perhaps, this is the manner in which Universal Brotherhood
shows itself in people who wilfully subject themselves to infection as a
prophylactic. In the natural way we might find the disease inconvenient
and even expensive; but thus vaccinated with virus from the udders
(whatever they may be) that yield the (butter-)milk of human kindness,
the inconvenience is slight, and we are able still to go about our
ordinary business of detesting our brethren as usual. It only shows that
the milder type of the disease has penetrated the system, which will
thus be enabled to out-Jenneral its more dangerous congener. Before
long we shall have physicians of our ailing social system writing to the
"Weekly Brandreth's Pill" somewhat on this wise:--"I have a very marked
and hopeful case in Pequawgus Four Corners. Miss Hepzibah Tarbell,
daughter of that arch-enemy of his kind, Deacon Joash T., attended only
one of my lectures. In a day or two the symptoms of eruption were most
encouraging. She has already quarrelled with all her family,--accusing
her father of bigamy, her uncle Benoni of polytheism, her brother Zeno
C. of aneurism, and her sister Eudoxy Trithemia of the variation of the
magnetic needle. If ever hopes of seeing a perfect case of Primitive
Christian were well-founded, I think we may entertain them now."
What I chiefly object to in the general denunciation sort of reformers
is that they make no allowance for character and temperament. They wish
to repeal universal laws, and to patch our natural skins for us, as if
they always wanted mending. That while they talk so much of the godlike
nature of man, they should so forget the human natures of men! The
Flathead Indian squeezes the child's skull between two boards till it
shapes itself into a kind of gambrel-roof against the rain,--the
readiest way, perhaps, of uniforming a tribe that wear no clothes. But
does he alter the inside of the head? Not a hair's-breadth. You remember
the striking old gnomic poem that tells how Aaron, in a moment of
fanatical zeal against that member by which mankind are so readily led
into mischief, proposes a rhinotomic sacrifice to Moses? What is the
answer of the experienced lawgiver?
"Says Moses to Aaron,
''Tis the fashion to wear 'em!'"
Shall we advise the Tadpole to get his tail cut off, as a badge of the
reptile nature in him, and to achieve the higher sphere of the Croakers
at a single hop? Why, it is all he steers by; without it, he would be as
helpless as a compass under the flare of Northern Lights; and he no
doubt regards it as a mark of blood, the proof of his kinship with the
preadamite family of the Saurians. Shall we send missionaries to the
Bear to warn him against raw chestnuts, because they are sometimes so
discomforting to our human intestines, which are so like his own? One
sermon from the colic were worth the whole American Board.
Moreover, as an author, I protest in the name of universal Grub Street
against a unanimity in goodness. Not to mention that a Quaker world, all
faded out to an autumnal drab, would be a little tedious,--what should
we do for the villain of our tragedy or novel? No rascals, no
literature. You have your choice. Were we weak enough to consent to a
sudden homogeneousness in virtue, many industrious persons would be
thrown out of employment. The wife and mother, for example, with as
indeterminate a number of children as the Martyr Rogers, who visits me
monthly,--what claim would she have upon me, were not her husband
forever taking to drink, or the penitentiary, or Spiritualism? The
pusillanimous lapse of her lord into morality would not only take the
very ground of her invention from under her feet, but would rob her and
him of an income that sustains them both in blissful independence of the
curse of Adam. But do not let us be disheartened. Nature is strong; she
is persistent; she completes her syllogism after we have long been
feeding the roots of her grasses, and has her own way in spite of us.
Some ancestral Cromwellian trooper leaps to life again in Nathaniel
Greene, and makes a general of him, to confute five generations of
Broadbrims. The Puritans were good in their way, and we enjoy them
highly as a preterite phenomenon: but they were _not_ good at cakes and
ale, and that is one reason why they are a preterite phenomenon.
I suppose we are all willing to let a public censor like P.V. run amuck
whenever he likes,--so it be not down our street. I confess to a good
deal of tolerance in this respect, and, when I live in Number 21, have
plenty of stoicism to spare for the griefs of the dwellers in No. 23.
Indeed, I agreed with our young Cato heartily in what he said about
Statues. We must have an Act for the Suppression, either of Great Men,
or else of Sculptors. I have not quite made up my mind which are the
greater nuisances; but I am sure of this, that there are too many of
both. They used to be _rare_, (to use a Yankeeism omitted by Bartlett,)
but nowadays they are overdone. I am half-inclined to think that the
sculptors club together to write folks up during their lives in the
newspapers, quieting their consciences with the hope of some day making
them look so mean in bronze or marble as to make all square again. Or do
we really have so many? Can't they help growing twelve feet high in this
new soil, any more than our maize? I suspect that Posterity will not
thank us for the hereditary disease of Carrara we are entailing on him,
and will try some heroic remedy, perhaps lithotripsy.
Nor was I troubled by what Mr. Vandal said about the late Benjamin
Webster. I am not a Boston man, and have, therefore, the privilege of
thinking for myself. Nor do I object to his claiming for women the right
to make books and pictures and (shall I say it?) statues,--only this
last becomes a grave matter, if we are to have statues of all the great
women, too! To be sure, there will not be the trousers-difficulty,--at
least, not at present; what we may come to is none of my affair. I even
go beyond him in my opinions on what is called the Woman Question. In
the gift of speech, they have always had the advantage of us; and though
the jealousy of the other sex have deprived us of the orations of
Xantippe, yet even Demosthenes does not seem to have produced greater
effects, if we may take the word of Socrates for it,--as I, for one,
very gladly do.
No,--what I complain of is not the lecturer's opinions, but the
eloquence with which he expressed them. He does not like statues better
than I do; but is it possible that he fails to see that the one nuisance
leads directly to the other, and that we set up three images of Talkers
for one to any kind of man who was useful in his generation? Let him
beware, or he will himself be petrified after death. Boston seems to be
specially unfortunate. She has more statues and more speakers than any
other city on this continent. I have with my own eyes seen a book called
"The Hundred Boston Orators." This would seem to give her a fairer title
to be called the _tire_ than the _hub_ of creation. What with the
speeches of her great men while they are alive, and those of her
surviving great men about those aforesaid after they are dead, and those
we look forward to from her _ditto ditto_ yet to be upon her _ditto
ditto_ now in being, and those of her paulopost _ditto ditto_ upon her
_ditto ditto_ yet to be, and those--But I am getting into the house
that Jack built. And yet I remember once visiting the Massachusetts
State-House and being struck with the Pythagorean fish hung on high in
the Representatives' Chamber, the emblem of a silence too sacred, as
would seem, to be observed except on Sundays. Eloquent Philip Vandal, I
appeal to you as a man and a brother, let us two form (not an
Antediluvian, for there are plenty, but) an Antidiluvian Society against
the flood of milk-and-water that threatens the land. Let us adopt as our
creed these two propositions:--
I. _Tongues were given us to be held._
II. _Dumbness sets the brute below the man: Silence elevates the man
above the brute._
Every one of those hundred orators is to me a more fearful thought than
that of a hundred men gathering samphire. And when we take into account
how large a portion of them (if the present mania hold) are likely to be
commemorated in stone or some even more durable material, the conception
is positively stunning. Let us settle all scores by subscribing to a
colossal statue of the late Town-Crier in bell-metal, with the
inscription, "VOX ET PRAETEREA NIHIL," as a comprehensive tribute to
oratorical powers in general. _He_, at least, never betrayed his
clients. As it is, there is no end to it. We are to set up Horatius Vir
in effigy for inventing the Normal Schoolmaster, and by-and-by we shall
be called on to do the same ill-turn for Elihu Mulciber for getting
uselessly learned (as if any man had ideas enough for twenty languages!)
without any schoolmaster at all. We are the victims of a droll
antithesis. Daniel would not give in to Nebuchadnezzar's taste in
statuary, and we are called on to fall down and worship an image of
Daniel which the Assyrian monarch would have gone to grass again sooner
than have it in his back-parlor. I do not think lions are agreeable,
especially the shaved-poodle variety one is so apt to encounter;--I met
one once at an evening party. But I would be thrown into a den of them
rather than sleep in the same room with that statue. Posterity will
think we cut pretty figures indeed in the monumental line! Perhaps there
is a gleam of hope and a symptom of convalescence in the fact that the
Prince of Wales, during his late visit, got off without a single speech.
The cheerful hospitalities of Mount Auburn were offered to him, as to
all distinguished strangers, but nothing more melancholy. In his case I
doubt the expediency of the omission. Had we set a score or two of
orators on him and his suite, it would have given them a more
intimidating notion of the offensive powers of the country than West
Point and all the Navy-Yards put together.
In the name of our common humanity, consider, too, what shifts our
friends in the sculpin line (as we should call them in Chesumpscot) are
put to for originality of design, and what the country has to pay for
it. The Clark Mills (that turns out equestrian statues as the Stark
Mills do calico-patterns) has pocketed fifty thousand dollars for making
a very dead bronze horse stand on his hind-legs. For twenty-five cents I
have seen a man at the circus do something more wonderful,--make a very
living bay horse dance a redowa round the amphitheatre on his (it occurs
to me that _hind-legs_ is indelicate) posterior extremities to the
wayward music of an out-of-town (_Scotice_, out-o'-toon) band. Now, I
will make a handsome offer to the public. I propose for twenty-five
thousand dollars to suppress my design for an equestrian statue of a
distinguished general officer as he _would have_ appeared at the Battle
of Buena Vista. This monument is intended as a weathercock to crown the
new dome of the Capitol at Washington. By this happy contrivance, the
horse will be freed from the degrading necessity of touching the earth
at all,--thus distancing Mr. Mills by two feet in the race for
originality. The pivot is to be placed so far behind the middle of the
horse, that the statue, like its original, will always indicate which
way the wind blows by going along with it. The inferior animal I have
resolved to model from a spirited saw-horse in my own collection. In
this way I shall combine two striking advantages. The advocates of the
Ideal in Art cannot fail to be pleased with a charger which embodies, as
it were, merely the abstract notion or quality, Horse, and the attention
of the spectator will not be distracted from the principal figure. The
material to be pure brass. I have also in progress an allegorical group
commemorative of Governor Wise. This, like-Wise, represents only a
potentiality. I have chosen, as worthy of commemoration, the moment when
and the method by which the Governor meant to seize the Treasury at
Washington. His Excellency is modelled in the act of making one of his
speeches. Before him a despairing reporter kills himself by falling on
his own steel pen; a broken telegraph-wire hints at the weight of the
thoughts to which it has found itself inadequate; while the Army and
Navy of the United States are conjointly typified in a horse-marine who
flies headlong with his hands pressed convulsively over his ears. I
think I shall be able to have this ready for exhibition by the time Mr.
Wise is nominated for the Presidency,--certainly before he is elected.
The material to be plaster, made of the shells of those oysters with
which Virginia shall have paid her public debt. It may be objected, that
plaster is not durable enough for verisimilitude, since bronze itself
could hardly be expected to outlast one of the Governor's speeches. But
it must be remembered that his mere effigy cannot, like its prototype,
have the pleasure of hearing itself talk; so that to the mind of the
spectator the oratorical despotism is tempered with some reasonable hope
of silence. This design, also, is intended only _in terrorem_, and will
be suppressed for an adequate consideration.
I find one comfort, however, in the very hideousness of our statues. The
fear of what the sculptors will do for them after they are gone may
deter those who are careful of their memories from talking themselves
into greatness. It is plain that Mr. Caleb Cushing has begun to feel a
wholesome dread of this posthumous retribution. I cannot in any other
way account for that nightmare of the solitary horseman on the edge of
the horizon, in his Hartford Speech. His imagination is infected with
the terrible consciousness, that Mr. Mills, as the younger man, will, in
the course of Nature, survive him, and will be left loose to seek new
victims of his nefarious designs. Formerly the punishment of the wooden
horse was a degradation inflicted on private soldiers only; but Mr.
Mills (whose genius could make even Pegasus look wooden, in whatever
material) flies at higher game, and will be content with nothing short
of a general. Mr. Cushing advises extreme measures. He counsels us to
sell our real estate and stocks, and to leave a country where no man's
reputation with posterity is safe, being merely as clay in the hands of
the sculptor. To a mind undisturbed by the terror natural in one whose
military reputation insures his cutting and running, (I mean, of course,
in marble and bronze,) the question becomes an interesting one,--To
whom, in case of a general exodus, shall we sell? The statues will have
the land all to themselves,--until the Aztecs, perhaps, repeopling their
ancient heritage, shall pay divine honors to these images, whose
ugliness will revive the traditions of the classic period of Mexican
Art. For my own part, I never look at one of them now without thinking
of at least one human sacrifice.
I doubt the feasibility of Mr. Cushing's proposal, and yet something
ought to be done. We must put up with what we have already, I suppose,
and let Mr. Webster stand threatening to blow us all up with his pistol
pointed at the elongated keg of gunpowder on which his left hand
rests,--no bad type of the great man's state of mind after the
nomination of General Taylor, or of what a country member would call a
penal statue. But do we reflect that Vermont is half marble, and that
Lake Superior can send us bronze enough for regiments of statues? I go
back to my first plan of a prohibitory enactment. I had even gone so far
as to make a rough draught of an Act for the Better Observance of the
Second Commandment; but it occurred to me that convictions under it
would be doubtful, from the difficulty of satisfying a jury that our
graven images did really present a likeness to any of the objects
enumerated in the divine ordinance. Perhaps a double-barrelled statute
might be contrived that would meet both the oratorical and the
monumental difficulty. Let a law be passed that all speeches delivered
more for the benefit of the orator than that of the audience, and all
eulogistic ones of whatever description, be pronounced in the chapel of
the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, and all statues be set up within the grounds
of the Institution for the Blind. Let the penalty for infringement in
the one case be to read the last President's Message, and in the other
to look at the Webster statue one hour a day, for a term not so long as
to violate the spirit of the law forbidding cruel and unusual
punishments.
Perhaps it is too much to expect of our legislators that they should
pass so self-denying an ordinance. They might, perhaps, make all oratory
but their own penal, and then (who knows?) the reports of their debates
might be read by the few unhappy persons who were demoniacally possessed
by a passion for that kind of thing, as girls are sometimes said to be
by an appetite for slate-pencils. _Vita brevis, lingua longa_. I protest
that among law-givers I respect Numa, who declared, that, of all the
Camenae, Tacita was most worthy of reverence. The ancient Greeks also
(though they left too much oratory behind them) had some good notions,
especially if we consider that they had not, like modern Europe, the
advantage of communication with America. Now the Greeks had a Muse of
Beginning, and the wonder is, considering how easy it is to talk and how
hard to say anything, that they did not hit upon that other and more
excellent Muse of Leaving-off. The Spartans, I suspect, found her out
and kept her selfishly to themselves. She were indeed a goddess to be
worshipped, a true Sister of Charity among that loquacious sisterhood!
Endlessness is the order of the day. I ask you to compare Plutarch's
lives of demigods and heroes with our modern biographies of deminoughts
and zeroes. Those will appear but tailors and ninth-parts of men in
comparison with these, every one of whom would seem to have had nine
lives, like a cat, to justify such prolixity. Yet the evils of print are
as dust in the balance to those of speech.
We were doing very well in Chesumpscot, but the Lyceum has ruined all.
There are now two debating-clubs, seminaries of multiloquence. A few of
us old-fashioned fellows have got up an opposition club and called it
"The Jolly Oysters." No member is allowed to open his mouth except at
high-tide by the calendar. We have biennial festivals on the evening of
election-day, when the constituency avenges itself in some small measure
on its Representative elect by sending a baker's dozen of orators to
congratulate him.
But I am falling into the very vice I condemn,--like Carlyle, who has
talked a quarter of a century in praise of holding your tongue. And yet
something should be done about it. Even when we get one orator safely
under-ground, there are ten to pronounce his eulogy, and twenty to do it
over again when the meeting is held about the inevitable statue. I go to
listen: we all go: we are under a spell. 'Tis true, I find a casual
refuge in sleep; for Drummond of Hawthornden was wrong when he called
Sleep the child of Silence. Speech begets her as often. But there is no
sure refuge save in Death; and when my life is closed untimely, let
there be written on my headstone, with impartial application to these
Black Brunswickers mounted on the high horse of oratory and to our
equestrian statues,--
_Os sublime_ did it!
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
_Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera quaedam hactenus inedita_. Vol. I, Containing,
I. _Opus Tertium_,--II. _Opus Minus_,--III. _Compendium Philosophiae_.
Edited by J.S. BREWER, M.A., Professor of English Literature, King's
College, London, and Reader at the Rolls. Published by the Authority of
the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the Direction
of the Master of the Rolls. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and
Roberts. 1859. 8vo. pp. c., 573.
Sir John Romilly has shown good judgment in including the unpublished
works of Roger Bacon in the series of "Chronicles and Memorials of Great
Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages," now in course of
publication under his direction. They are in a true sense important
memorials of the period at which they were written, and, though but
incidentally illustrating the events of the time, they are of great
value in indicating the condition of thought and learning as well as the
modes of mental discipline and acquisition during the thirteenth century.
The memory of Roger Bacon has received but scant justice. Although long
since recognized as one of the chief lights of England during the Middle
Ages, the clinging mist of popular tradition has obscured his real
brightness and distorted its proportions, while even among scholars he
has been more known by reputation than by actual acquaintance with his
writings. His principal work, his "Opus Majus," was published for the
first time in London in 1733, in folio, and afterwards at Venice in
1750, in the same form. Down to the publication of the volume before us,
it was the only one of his writings of much importance which had been
printed complete, if indeed it is to be called complete,--the Seventh
Part having been omitted by the editor, Dr. Jebb, and never having since
been published.
The facts known concerning Roger Bacon's life are few, and are so
intermingled with tradition that it is difficult wholly to separate them
from it. Born of a good family at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, near the
beginning of the thirteenth century, he was placed in early youth at
Oxford, whence, after completing his studies in grammar and logic, "he
proceeded to Paris," says Anthony Wood, "according to the fashion
prevalent among English scholars of those times, especially among the
members of the University of Oxford." Here, under the famous masters of
the day, he devoted himself to study for some years, and made such
progress that he received the degree of Doctor in Divinity. Returning to
Oxford, he seems soon to have entered into the Franciscan Order, for the
sake of securing a freedom from worldly cares, that he might the more
exclusively give himself to his favorite pursuits. At various times he
lectured at the University. He spent some later years out of England,
probably again in Paris. His life was embittered by the suspicions felt
in regard to his studies by the brethren of his order, and by their
opposition, which proceeded to such lengths that it is said he was cast
into prison, where, according to one report, he died wretchedly. However
this may have been, his death took place before the beginning of the
fourteenth century. The scientific and experimental studies which had
brought him into ill-favor with his own order, and had excited the
suspicion against him of dealing in magic and forbidden arts, seem to
have sown the seed of the popular traditions which at once took root
around his name. Friar Bacon soon became, and indeed has remained almost
to the present day, a half-mythical character. To the imagination of the
common people, he was a great necromancer; he had had dealings with the
Evil One, who had revealed many of the secrets of Nature to him; he had
made a head of brass that could speak and foretell future events; and to
him were attributed other not less wonderful inventions, which seem to
have formed a common stock for popular legends of this sort during the
Middle Ages, and to have been ascribed indiscriminately to one
philosopher or another in various countries and in various times.[9] The
references in our early literature to Friar Bacon, as one who had had
familiarity with spirits and been a master in magic arts, are so
numerous as to show that the belief in these stories was wide-spread,
and that the real character of the learned Friar was quite given over to
oblivion. But time slowly brings about its revenges; and the man whom
his ignorant and stupid fellows thought fit to hamper and imprison, and
whom popular credulity looked upon with that half-horror and
half-admiration with which those were regarded who were supposed to have
put their souls in pawn for the sake of tasting the forbidden fruit, is
now recognized not only as one of the most profound and clearest
thinkers of his time, but as the very first among its experimental
philosophers, and as a prophet of truths which, then neglected and
despised, have since been adopted as axioms in the progress of science.
"The precursor of Galileo," says M. Hauréau, in his work on Scholastic
Philosophy, "he learned before him how rash it is to offend the
prejudices of the multitude, and to desire to give lessons to the
ignorant."
The range of Roger Bacon's studies was encyclopedic, comprehending all
the branches of learning then open to scholars. Brucker, in speaking of
him in his History of Philosophy, has no words strong enough to express
his admiration for his abilities and learning. "Seculi sui indolem
multum superavit," "vir summus, tantaque occultioris philosophiae
cognitione et experientia nobilis, ut merito Doctoris Mirabilis titulum
reportaverit."[10] The logical and metaphysical studies, in the
intricate subtilties of which most of the schoolmen of his time involved
themselves, presented less attraction to Bacon than the pursuits of
physical science and the investigation of Nature. His genius, displaying
the practical bent of his English mind, turning with weariness from the
endless verbal discussions of the Nominalists and Realists, and
recognizing the impossibility of solving the questions which divided the
schools of Europe into two hostile camps, led him to the study of
branches of knowledge that were held in little repute. He recognized the
place of mathematics as the basis of exact science, and proceeded to the
investigation of the facts and laws of optics, mechanics, chemistry, and
astronomy. But he did not limit himself to positive science; he was at
the same time a student of languages and of language, of grammar and of
music. He was versed not less in the arts of the _Trivium_ than in the
sciences of the Quadrivium.[11]
But in rejecting the method of study then in vogue, and in opposing the
study of facts to that of questions which by their abstruseness fatigued
the intellect, which were of more worth in sharpening the wit than in
extending the limits of knowledge, and which led rather to vain
contentions than to settled conclusions,--in thus turning from the
investigation of abstract metaphysics to the study of Nature, Roger
Bacon went so far before his age as to condemn himself to solitude, to
misappreciation, and to posthumous neglect. Unlike men of far narrower
minds, but more conformed to the spirit of the times, he founded no
school, and left no disciples to carry out the system which he had
advanced, and which was one day to have its triumph. At the end of the
thirteenth century the scholastic method was far from having run its
career. The minds of men were occupied with problems which it alone
seemed to be able to resolve, and they would not abandon it at the will
of the first innovator. The questions in dispute were embittered by
personal feeling and party animosities. Franciscans and Dominicans were
divided by points of logic not less than by the rules of their
orders.[12] Ignorance and passion alike gave ardor to discussion, and it
was vain to attempt to convince the heated partisans on one side or the
other, that the truths they sought were beyond the reach of human
faculties, and that their dialectics and metaphysics served to bewilder
more than to enlighten the intellect. The disciples of subtile
speculatists like Aquinas, or of fervent mystics like Bonaventura, were
not likely to recognize the worth and importance of the slow processes
of experimental philosophy.
The qualities of natural things, the limits of intellectual powers, the
relations of man to the universe, the conditions of matter and spirit,
the laws of thought, were too imperfectly understood for any man to
attain to a comprehensive and correct view of the sources and methods of
study and discovery of the truth. Bacon shared in what may he called,
without a sneer, the childishnesses of his time, childishnesses often
combined with mature powers and profound thought. No age is fully
conscious of its own intellectual disproportions; and what now seem mere
puerilities in the works of the thinkers of the Middle Ages were perhaps
frequently the result of as laborious effort and as patient study as
what we still prize in them for its manly vigor and permanent worth. In
a later age, the Centuries of the "Sylva Sylvarum" afford a curious
comment on the Aphorisms of the "Novum Organum."
The "Opus Majus" of Bacon was undertaken in answer to a demand of Pope
Clement IV. in 1266, and was intended to contain a review of the whole
range of science, as then understood, with the exception of logic.
Clement had apparently become personally acquainted with Bacon, at the
time when, as legate of the preceding Pope, he had been sent to England
on an ineffectual mission to compose the differences between Henry III.
and his barons, and he appears to have formed a just opinion of the
genius and learning of the philosopher.
The task to which Bacon had been set by the Papal mandate was rapidly
accomplished, in spite of difficulties which might have overcome a less
resolute spirit; but the work extended to such great length in his
hands, that he seems to have felt a not unnatural fear that Clement,
burdened with the innumerable cares of the Pontificate, would not find
leisure for its perusal, much less for the study which some part of it
demanded. With this fear, fearful also that portions of his work might
be deficient in clearness, and dreading lest it might be lost on its way
to Rome, he proceeded to compose a second treatise, called the "Opus
Minus," to serve as an abstract and specimen of his greater work, and to
embrace some additions to its matter. Unfortunately, but a fragment of
this second work has been preserved, and this fragment is for the first
time published in the volume just issued under the direction of the
Master of the Rolls. But the "Opus Minus" was scarcely completed before
he undertook a third work, to serve as an introduction and preamble to
both the preceding. This has been handed down to us complete, and this,
too, is for the first time printed in the volume before us. We take the
account of it given by Professor Brewer, the editor, in his
introduction.
"Inferior to its predecessors in the importance
of its scientific details and the illustration
it supplies of Bacon's philosophy, it is
more interesting than either, for the insight
it affords of his labors, and of the numerous
obstacles he had to contend with in the execution
of his work. The first twenty chapters
detail various anecdotes of Bacon's personal
history, his opinions on the state of
education, the impediments thrown in his
way by the ignorance, the prejudices, the
contempt, the carelessness, the indifference
of his contemporaries. From the twentieth
chapter to the close of the volume he pursues
the thread of the Opus Majus, supplying what
he had there omitted, correcting and explaining
what had been less clearly or correctly
expressed in that or in the Opus Minus. In