CHAPTER XXIX.

Bullion, at last, in spite of his armor of selfishness and stoicism, was

touched in a vital part. His dreams of wealth had vanished into air. The

confederate in New York in whom he had trusted had only made him a dupe.

Blindly following out his agreement, he found himself saddled with a

load of railroad-shares, useless for any present purpose, and all his

convertible property gone. The consciousness that he--the man of all

others who prided himself upon his sagacity--had been so easily

overreached was quite as humiliating as the idea of ruin itself. He

remembered Kerbstone's appeals, also, and now cursed his own stupidity

in refusing to aid him. There he had overreached himself; it was his own

stocks which he had thrown down to the "bears." And now, heaviest stroke

of all, Fletcher, his intrepid and chivalrous agent, who had stepped

into the breach for him, had paid for his indiscretion with his life.

The thought gave him a pang he had never felt, not even when he followed

his wife to the grave. Homeward he went, but slowly and almost without

volition. He recognized no acquaintances that he met, but walked on

abstractedly, fixing his eyes on vacancy with a look as mournful as his

iron features could wear. In his ears still rang those thrilling cries.

His hand, that had groped over that motionless heart, still felt a

creeping chill; it would not warm. And constantly an accusing voice

asked, "Why didn't you come down?"--and conscience repeated the question

in tones like those of a judge arraigning a criminal. He reached his

house and gave orders that no one should be admitted. In his room he

passed the day alone, drifting on an ocean of remorse, full of vague

purposes of repentance and restitution. Dinner passed unheeded, and

still he paced the silent chamber. With the approach of evening his

terrors increased; he rang for a servant and had the gas-burners

lighted. Still, in all the blaze, shapes would haunt him; they crouched

at the foot of his bed; they lurked behind his wardrobe-door. He dared

not look over his shoulder, but forced himself to stand up and face

what he so dreaded to see. He rang again and bade the servant bring

a screw-driver and take down the coat-hooks from the wardrobe; the

garments hanging there seemed to be men struggling in the agonies of

asphyxia. The slender thread of sound from the gas-burners seemed to be

changed to low, mournful cries, as of a woman over the dead. He turned

the gas down a little; then the shadows of the cannel-coal fire danced

like spectres on the ceiling. He jumped up and raised the lights again;

again the low, dismal monotone sang in his ears. He stopped them with

his fingers; again the persistent voice asked, "Why didn't you come

down?" Flakes fell off the coal in the grate in shapes like coffins;

the flames seemed to dart at him with their fiery tongues. He rang once

more, and when the servant came he bade him drink enough strong tea and

then take his chair by the fire.

"Touch me, if I groan," said he to the astonished John. "Keep awake

yourself, and hold your tongue. If you go to sleep or leave me, I'll

murder you."

Then wrapping himself in his dressing-gown, he settled down in his

easy-chair for the night.

The night passed, as all nights will, and in the morning Mr. Bullion

was calmer. The first intelligence he received after breakfast was in a

message from Tonsor, delivered by a servant.

"Plaze, Sur, Mr. Tonsor's compliments, and he says the banks is

suspinded and money's to be asier."

"Send after Mr. Tonsor; overtake him, and ask him to come back. I want

to see him."

Tonsor returned, and they had a long conference. It now seemed probable

that stocks would be more buoyant and the "bulls" would have their turn.

Any considerable rise in shares would place Bullion on his feet and

enable him to resume payment. Most of his time-contracts had been met,

and the change would be of the greatest service to him. He placed his

shares, therefore, in Tonsor's hands with instructions to sell when

prices advanced. He then looked over the amount of his liabilities, and

saw, with some of his old exultation, that, if he could effect sales

at the rates he expected, he should have at least two hundred thousand

dollars after paying all his debts. Ambition again whispered to him,

that he might now take his old place in the business world, and perhaps

might more than retrieve his losses. But he thought of the last night,

and shrank from encountering a new brood of horrors. Firm in his new

purpose, he dismissed the broker and sent for his counsellor.

"My son," he meditated, "is a lawyer in good practice. He needs no

fortune. Twenty thousand will be enough for him; more than I had, which

wasn't a penny. My daughter is married rich. Didn't mean to have any

pauper son-in-law to be plaguing me. The same for her. The rest will

square those old accounts,--and the new one, too, on the book up yonder!

Best to fix it now, while I can muster the courage. If I once get the

money, I'm afraid I shouldn't do it. So my will shall set all these

matters right; and it shall be drawn and signed to-day."

That night Mr. Bullion needed no servant to watch with him. The ghosts

were laid.

[To be concluded in the next number.]

* * * * *

INSCRIPTION

FOR AN ALMS-CHEST MADE OF CAMPHOR-WOOD.

This fragrant box that breathes of India's balms

Hath one more fragrance, for it asketh alms;

But, though 'tis sweet and blessed to receive,

You know who said, "It is more blest to give":

Give, then, receive His blessing,--and for me

Thy silent boon sufficient blessing be!

If Ceylon's isle, that bears the bleeding trees,

With any perfume load the Orient breeze,--

If Heber's Muse, by Ceylon as he sailed,

A pleasant odor from the shore inhaled,--

More lives in me; for underneath my lid

A sweetness as of sacrifice is hid.

Thou gentle almoner, in passing by,

Smell of my wood, and scan me with thine eye;--

I, too, from Ceylon bear a spicy breath

That might put warmness in the lungs of death;

A simple chest of scented wood I seem,

But, oh! within me lurks a golden beam,--

A beam celestial, and a silver din,

As though imprisoned angels played within;

Hushed in my heart my fragrant secret dwells;

If thou wouldst learn it, Paul of Tarsus tells;--

No jangled brass nor tinkling cymbal sound,

For in my bosom Charity is found.

* * * * *

A TRIP TO CUBA.

THE DEPARTURE.

Why one leaves home at all is a question that travellers are sure,

sooner or later, to ask themselves,--I mean, pleasure-travellers. Home,

where one has the "Transcript" every night, and the "Autocrat"

every month, opera, theatre, circus, and good society, in constant

rotation,--home, where everybody knows us, and the little good there is

to know about us,--finally, home, as seen regretfully for the last time,

with the gushing of long frozen friendships, the priceless kisses of

children, and the last sad look at dear baby's pale face through the

window-pane,--well, all this is left behind, and we review it as a

dream, while the railroad-train hurries us along to the spot where we

are to leave, not only this, but Winter, rude tyrant, with all our

precious hostages in his grasp. Soon the swift motion lulls our brains

into the accustomed muddle; we seem to be dragged along like a miserable

thread pulled through the eye of an ever-lasting needle,--through and

through, and never through,--while here and there, like painful knots,

the _dépôts_ stop us, the poor thread is arrested for a minute, and then

the pulling begins again. Or, in another dream, we are like fugitives

threading the gauntlet of the grim forests, while the ice-bound trees

essay a charge of bayonets on either side; but, under the guidance of

our fiery Mercury, we pass them as safely as ancient Priam passed the

outposts of the Greeks,--and New York, as hospitable as Achilles,

receives us in its mighty tent. Here we await the "Karnak," the British

Mail Company's new screw-steamer, bound for Havana, _viâ_ Nassau. At

length comes the welcome order to "be on board." We betake ourselves

thither,--the anchor is weighed, the gun fired, and we take leave of our

native land with a patriotic pang, which soon gives place to severer

spasms.

I do not know why all celebrated people who write books of travels begin

by describing their days of sea-sickness. Dickens, George Combe, Fanny

Kemble, Mrs. Stowe, Miss Bremer, and many others, have opened in like

manner their valuable remarks on foreign countries. While intending to

avail myself of their privilege and example, I would, nevertheless,

suggest, for those who may come after me, that the subject of

sea-sickness should be embalmed in science, and enshrined in the crypt

of some modern encyclopaedia, so that future writers should refer to it

only as the Pang Unspeakable, for which _vide_ Ripley and Dana,

vol. ---, page ---. But, as I have already said, I shall speak of

sea-sickness in a hurried and picturesque manner, as follows:--

Who are these that sit by the long dinner-table in the forward cabin,

with a most unusual lack of interest in the bill of fare? Their eyes are

closed, mostly, their cheeks are pale, their lips are quite bloodless,

and to every offer of good cheer, their "No, thank you," is as faintly

uttered as are marriage-vows by maiden lips. Can they be the same that,

an hour ago, were so composed, so jovial, so full of dangerous defiance

to the old man of the sea? The officer who carves the roast-beef offers

at the same time a slice of fat;--this is too much; a panic runs through

the ranks, and the rout is instantaneous and complete. The ghost of what

each man was disappears through the trap-door of his state-room, and the

hell which the theatre faintly pictures behind the scenes begins in good

earnest.

For to what but to Dante's "Inferno" can we liken this steamboat-cabin,

with its double row of pits, and its dismal captives? What are these

sighs, groans, and despairing noises, but the _alti guai_ rehearsed by

the poet? Its fiends are the stewards who rouse us from our perpetual

torpor with offers of food and praises of shadowy banquets,--"Nice

mutton-chop, Sir? roast-turkey? plate of soup?" Cries of "No, no!"

resound, and the wretched turn again, and groan. The philanthropist has

lost the movement of the age,--keeled up in an upper berth, convulsively

embracing a blanket, what conservative more immovable than he? The great

man of the party refrains from his large theories, which, like the

circles made by the stone thrown into the water, begin somewhere and end

nowhere. As we have said, he expounds himself no more, the significant

fore-finger is down, the eye no longer imprisons yours. But if you ask

him how he does, he shakes himself, as if, like Farinata,--

"avesse l' inferno in gran dispetto,"--

"he had a very contemptible opinion of hell." Let me not forget to add,

that it rains every day, that it blows every night, and that it rolls

through the twenty-four hours till the whole world seems as if turned

bottom upwards, clinging with its nails to chaos, and fearing to launch

away. The captain comes and says,--"It is true, you have a nasty, short,

chopping sea hereabouts; but you see, she is spinning away down South

jolly!" And this is the Gulf-Stream!

But all things have an end, and most things have two. After the third

day, a new development manifests itself. Various shapeless masses are

carried upstairs and suffered to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and

to lie there in shivering heaps. From these larvae gradually emerge

features and voices,--the luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the

thrill of returning life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange

pensive smiles of recognition,--the steward comes, no fiend this time,

but a ministering angel, and, lo! the strong man eats broth, and the

weak woman clamors for pickled oysters. And so ends my description of

our sea-sickness.

For, as for betraying the confidences of those sad days, as for telling

how wofully untrue Professors of Temperance were to their principles,

how the Apostle of Total Abstinence developed a brandy-flask, not

altogether new, what unsuccessful tipplings were attempted in the

desperation of nausea, and for what lady that stunning brandy-smasher

was mixed,--as for such tales out of school, I would have you know that

I am not the man to tell them.

Yet a portrait or so lingers in my mental repository;--let me throw them

in, to close off the lot.

No. 1. A sober Bostonian in the next state-room, whose assiduity with

his sea-sick wife reminds one of Cock-Robin, when he sent Jenny Wren

sops and wine. This person was last seen in a dressing-gown, square-cut

night-cap, and odd slippers, dancing up and down the state-room floor

with a cup of gruel, making wild passes with a spoon at an individual in

a berth, who never got any of the contents. Item, the gruel, in a moment

of excitement, finally ran in a stream upon the floor, and was wiped up

by the steward. Result not known, but disappointment is presumable.

No. 2. A stout lady, imprisoned by a board on a sofa nine inches wide,

called by a facetious friend "The Coffin." She complains that her sides

are tolerably battered in;--we hold our tongues, and think that the

board, too, has had a hard time of it. Yet she is a jolly soul, laughing

at her misfortunes, and chirruping to her baby. Her spirits keep up,

even when her dinner won't keep down. Her favorite expressions are "Good

George!" and "Oh, jolly!" She does not intend, she says, to lay in any

dry goods in Cuba, but means to eat up all the good victuals she comes

across. Though seen at present under unfavorable circumstances, she

inspires confidence as to her final accomplishment of this result.

No. 3. A woman, said to be of a literary turn of mind, in the

miserablest condition imaginable. Her clothes, flung at her by the

stewardess, seem to have hit in some places, and missed in others.

Her listless hands occasionally make an attempt to keep her draperies

together, and to pull her hat on her head; but though the intention is

evident, she accomplishes little by her motion. She is perpetually being

lugged about by a stout steward, who knocks her head against both sides

of the vessel, folds her up in the gangway, spreads her out on the deck,

and takes her up-stairs, down-stairs, and in my lady's chamber, where,

report says, he feeds her with a spoon, and comforts her with such

philosophy as he is master of. N.B. This woman, upon the first change of

weather, rose like a cork, dressed like a Christian, and toddled about

the deck in the easiest manner, sipping her grog, and cutting sly jokes

upon her late companions in misery,--is supposed by some to have been an

impostor, and, when ill-treated, announced intentions of writing a book.

No. 4, my last, is only a sketch;--circumstances allowed no more. Can

Grande, the great dog, has been got up out of the pit, where he worried

the stewardess and snapped at the friend who tried to pat him on the

head. Everybody asks where he is. Don't you see that heap of shawls

yonder, lying in the sun, and heated up to about 212 degrees Fahrenheit?

That slouched hat on top marks the spot where his head should lie,--by

treading cautiously in the opposite direction you may discover his

feet. All between is perfectly passive and harmless. His chief food is

pickles,--his only desire is rest. After all these years of controversy,

after all these battles, bravely fought and nobly won, you might write

with truth upon this moveless mound of woollens the pathetic words from

Père la Chaise:--_Implora Pace_.

But no more at present, for land is in sight, and in my next you shall

hear how we found it, and what we saw at Nassau.

NASSAU.

Nassau looked very green and pleasant to us after our voyage;--the eyes

enjoy a little fresh provision after so long a course of salt food. The

first view of land is little more than "the feeling of the thing,"--it

is matter of faith, rather than of sight. You are shown a dark and

distant line, near the horizon, without color or features. They say it

is land, and you believe it. But you come nearer and nearer,--you see

first the green of vegetation, then the form of the trees,--the harbor

at last opens its welcome arms,--the anchor is dropped,--the gun

fired,--the steam snuffed out. Led by a thread of sunshine, you have

walked the labyrinth of the waters, and all their gigantic dangers lie

behind you.

We made Nassau at twelve o'clock, on the sixth day from our departure,

counting the first as one. The first feature discernible was a group

of tall cocoa-nut trees, with which the island is bounteously

feathered;--the second was a group of negroes in a small boat, steering

towards us with open-mouthed and white-toothed wonder. Nothing makes its

simple impression upon the mind sophisticated by education. The negroes,

as they came nearer, suggested only Christy's Minstrels, of whom

they were a tolerably faithful imitation,--while the cocoa-nut-trees

transported us to the Boston in Ravel-time, and we strained our eyes to

see the wonderful ape, Jocko, whose pathetic death, nightly repeated,

used to cheat the credulous Bostonians of time, tears, and treasure.

Despite the clumsiest management, the boat soon effected a junction with

our gangway, allowing some nameless official to come on board, and to go

through I know not what mysterious and indispensable formality. Other

boats then came, like a shoal of little fishes around the carcass of

a giant whale. There were many negroes, together with whites of every

grade; and some of our number, leaning over the side, saw for the first

time the raw material out of which Northern Humanitarians have spun so

fine a skein of compassion and sympathy.

Now we who write, and they for whom we write, are all orthodox upon this

mighty question; we have all made our confession of faith in private and

in public; we all, on suitable occasions, walk up and apply the match to

the keg of gun-powder which is to blow up the Union, but which, somehow,

at the critical moment, fails to ignite. But you must allow us one

heretical whisper,--very small and low. The negro of the North is an

ideal negro; it is the negro refined by white culture, elevated by white

blood, instructed even by white iniquity;--the negro among negroes is a

coarse, grinning, flat-footed, thick-skulled creature, ugly as Caliban,

lazy as the laziest of brutes, chiefly ambitious to be of no use to any

in the world. View him as you will, his stock in trade is small;--he has

but the tangible instincts of all creatures,--love of life, of ease, and

of offspring. For all else, he must go to school to the white race, and

his discipline must be long and laborious. Nassau, and all that we saw

of it, suggested to us the unwelcome question, whether compulsory labor

be not better than none. But as a question I gladly leave it, and return

to the simple narration of what befell.

There was a sort of eddy at the gangway of our steamer, made by the

conflicting tides of those who wanted to come on board and of those who

wanted to go on shore. We were among the number of the latter, but were

stopped and held by the button by one of the former, while those more

impatient or less sympathizing made their way to the small boats which

waited below. The individual in question had come alongside in a

handsome barge, rowed by a dozen stout blacks, in the undress uniform

of the Zouaves. These men, well drilled and disciplined, seemed of a

different sort from the sprawling, screaming creatures in the other

boats, and their bright red caps and white tunics became them well.

But he who now claimed my attention was of British birth and military

profession. His face was ardent, his pantaloons were of white flannel,

his expression of countenance was that of habitual discontent, but with

a twinkle of geniality in the eye which redeemed the Grumbler from the

usual tedium of his tribe. He accosted us as follows:--

"Go ashore? What for? To see something, eh? There's nothing to see;

the island isn't bigger than a nut-shell, and doesn't contain a single

prospect.--Go ashore and get some dinner? There isn't anything to eat

there.--Fruit? None to speak of; sour oranges and green bananas.--I went

to market last Saturday, and bought one cabbage, one banana, and half

a pig's head;--there's a market for you!--Fish? Oh, yes, if you like

it.--Turtle? Yes, you can get the Gallipagos turtle; it makes tolerable

soup, but has not the green fat, which, in _my_ opinion, is the most

important feature in turtle-soup.--Shops? You can't buy a pair of

scissors on the island, nor a baby's bottle;--broke mine the other day,

and tried to replace it; couldn't.--Society? There are lots of people to

call upon you, and bore you to death with returning their visits."

At last the Major went below, and we broke away, and were duly conveyed

to _terra firma_. It was Sunday, and late in the afternoon. The first

glimpse certainly seemed to confirm the Major's disparaging statements.

The town is small; the houses dingy and out of repair; the legend, that

paint costs nothing, is not received here; and whatever may have been

the original colors of the buildings, the climate has had its own

way with them for many a day. The barracks are superior in finish

to anything else we see. Government-House is a melancholy-looking

_caserne_, surrounded by a piazza, the grounds being adorned with a most

chunky and inhuman statue of Columbus. All the houses are surrounded by

verandas, from which pale children and languid women in muslins look

out, and incline us to ask what epidemic has visited the island and

swept the rose from every cheek. They are a pallid race, the Nassauese,

and retain little of the vigor of their English ancestry. One English

trait they exhibit,--the hospitality which has passed into a proverb;

another, perhaps,--the stanch adherence to the forms and doctrines of

Episcopacy. We enter the principal church;--they are just lighting it

for evening service; it is hung with candles, each burning in a clear

glass shade. The walls and ceiling are whitewashed, and contrast

prettily with the dark timbering of the roof. We would gladly have

staid to give thanks for our safe and prosperous voyage, but a black

rain-cloud warns us homeward,--not, however, until we have received a

kind invitation from one of the hospitable islanders to return the next

morning for a drive and breakfast.

Returning soon after sunrise to fulfil this promise, we encounter the

barracks, and are tempted to look in and see the sons of darkness

performing their evolutions. The morning drill is about half over. We

peep in,--the Colonel, a lean Don Quixote on a leaner Rosinante, dashes

up to us with a weak attempt at a canter; he courteously invites us to

come in and see all that is to be seen, and, lo! our friend the Major,

quite gallant in his sword and scarlet jacket, is detailed for our

service. The soldiers are black, and very black,--none of your dubious

American shades, ranging from clear salmon to _café au lait_ or even

to _café noir_. These are your good, satisfactory, African sables,

warranted not to change in the washing. Their Zouave costume is very

becoming, with the Oriental turban, caftan, and loose trousers; and the

Philosopher of our party remarks, that the African requires costume,

implying that the New Englander can stand alone, as can his clothes, in

their black rigidity. The officers are white, and the Major very polite;

he shows us the men, the arms, the kits, the quarters, and, having done

all that he can do for us, relinquishes us with a gallant bow to our

host of the drive and breakfast.

The drive does something to retrieve the character of the island. The

road is hard and even, overhung with glossy branches of strange trees

bearing unknown fruits, and studded on each side with pleasant villas

and with negro huts. There are lovely flowers everywhere, among which

the Hibiscus, called South-Sea Rose, and the Oleander, are most

frequent, and most brilliant. We see many tall groves of cocoa-nut,

and cast longing glances towards the fruit, which little negroes, with

surprising activity, attain and shake down. A sudden turn in the road

discloses a lovely view of the bay, with its wonderful green waters,

clear and bright as emerald;--there is a little beach, and boats lie

about, and groups of negroes are laughing and chattering,--quoting

stocks from the last fish-market, very likely. We purchase for half a

dollar a bunch of bananas, for which Ford or Palmer would ask us ten

dollars at least, and go rejoicing to our breakfast.

Our host is a physician of the island, English by birth, and retaining

his robust form and color in spite of a twenty-years' residence in the

warm climate. He has a pleasant family of sons and daughters, all in

health, but without a shade of pink in lips or cheeks. The breakfast

consists of excellent fried fish, fine Southern hominy,--not the pebbly

broken corn which our dealers impose under that name,--various hot

cakes, tea and coffee, bananas, sapodillas, and if there be anything

else not included in the present statement, let haste and want of time

excuse the omission. The conversation runs a good deal on the hopes of

increasing prosperity which the new mail-steamer opens to the eyes

of the Nassauese. Invalids, they say, will do better there than in

Cuba,--it is quieter, much cheaper, and the climate is milder. There

will be a hotel, very soon, where no attention will be spared, etc.,

etc. The Government will afford every facility, etc., etc. It seemed,

indeed, a friendly little place, with delicious air and sky, and a good,

reasonable, decent, English tone about it. Expenses moderate, ye fathers

of encroaching families. Negroes abundant and natural, ye students

of ethnological possibilities. Officers in red jackets, you young

ladies,--young ones, some of them. Why wouldn't you all try it,

especially as the captain of the "Karnak" is an excellent sailor, and

the kindest and manliest of conductors?

FROM NASSAU TO CUBA.

The breakfast being over, we recall the captain's parting admonition to

be on board by ten o'clock, with the significant gesture and roll of the

eye which clearly express that England expects every passenger to do his

duty. Now we know very well that the "Karnak" is not likely to weigh

anchor before twelve, at the soonest, but we dare not, for our lives,

disobey the captain. So, passing by yards filled with the huge Bahama

sponges, piles of wreck-timber, fishing-boats with strange fishes, red,

yellow, blue, and white, and tubs of aldermanic turtle, we attain the

shore, and, presently, the steamer. Here we find a large deputation of

the towns-people taking passage with us for a pleasure excursion to

Havana. The greater number are ladies and children. They come fluttering

on board, poor things, like butterflies, in gauzy dresses, hats, and

feathers, according to the custom of their country; one gentleman takes

four little daughters with him for a holiday. We ask ourselves whether

they know what an ugly beast the Gulf-Stream is, that they affront him

in such light armor. "Good heavens! how sick they will be!" we exclaim;

while they eye us askance, in our winter trim, and pronounce us slow,

and old fogies. With all the rashness of youth, they attack the

luncheon-table. So boisterous a popping of corks was never heard in all

our boisterous passage;--there is a chorus, too, of merry tongues and

shrill laughter. But we get fairly out to sea, where the wind, an

adverse one, is waiting for us, and at that gay table there is silence,

followed by a rush and disappearance. The worst cases are hurried out of

sight, and, going above, we find the disabled lying in groups about the

deck, the feather-hats discarded, the muslins crumpled, and we, the old

fogies, going to cover the fallen with shawls and blankets, to speak

words of consolation, and to implore the sufferers not to cure

themselves with brandy, soda-water, claret, and wine-bitters, in quick

succession,--which they, nevertheless, do, and consequently are no

better that day, nor the next.

But I am forgetting to chronicle a touching parting interview with the

Major, the last thing remembered in Nassau, and of course the last to be

forgotten anywhere. Our concluding words might best be recorded in the

form of a catechism of short questions and answers, to wit:--

"How long did the Major expect to stay in Nassau?"

"About six months."

"How long would he stay, if he had his own way?"

"Not one!"

"What did he come for, then?"

"Oh, you buy into a nigger regiment for promotion."

These were the most important facts elicited by cross-examination. At

last we shook hands warmly, promising to meet again somewhere, and the

crimson-lined barge with the black Zouaves carried him away. In humbler

equipages depart the many black women who have visited the steamer, some

for amusement, some to sell the beautiful shell-work made on the island.

These may be termed, in general, as ugly a set of wenches as one could

wish not to see. They all wear palm-leaf hats stuck on their heads

without strings or ribbons, and their clothes are so ill-made that you

cannot help thinking that each has borrowed somebody else's dress, until

you see that the ill-fitting garments are the rule, not the exception.

But neither youth nor sea-sickness lasts forever. The forces of nature

rally on the second day, and the few who have taken no remedies recover

the use of their tongues and some of their faculties. From these I

gather what I shall here impart as

SERIOUS VIEWS OF THE BAHAMAS.

The principal exports of these favored islands are fruits, sponges,

molasses, and sugar. Their imports include most of the necessaries of

life, which come to them oftenest in the form of wrecks, by which they

obtain them at a small fraction of the original cost and value. For this

resource they are indebted to the famous Bahama Banks, which, to their

way of thinking, are institutions as important as the Bank of England

itself. These banks stand them in a handsome annual income, and

facilitate large discounts and transfers of property not contemplated by

the original possessors. One supposes that somebody must suffer by these

forced sales of large cargoes at prices ruinous to commerce,--but _who_

suffers is a point not easy to ascertain. There seems to be a good,

comfortable understanding all round. The owners say, "Go ahead, and

don't bother yourself,--she's insured." The captain has got his ship

aground in shoal water where she can't sink, and no harm done. The

friendly wreckers are close at hand to haul the cargo ashore. The

underwriter of the insurance company has shut his eyes and opened his

mouth to receive a plum, which, being a good large one, will not let him

speak. And so the matter providentially comes to pass, and "enterprises

of great pith and moment" oftenest get no farther than the Bahamas.

Nassau produces neither hay nor corn,--these, together with butter,

flour, and tea, being brought chiefly from the United States. Politics,

of course, it has none. As to laws, the colonial system certainly needs

propping up,--for under its action a man may lead so shameless a life

of immorality as to compel his wife to leave him, and yet not be held

responsible for her support and that of the children she has borne him.

The principal points of interest are, first, the garrison,--secondly,

Government-House, with an occasional ball there,--and, third, one's

next-door neighbor, and his or her doings. The principal event in the

memory of the citizens seems to be a certain most desirable wreck, in

consequence of which, a diamond card-case worth fifteen hundred dollars

was sold for an eighth part of that sum, and laces whose current price

ranges from thirty to forty dollars a yard were purchased at will for

seventy-five cents. That was a wreck worth having! say the Nassauese.

The price of milk ranges from eighteen to twenty-five cents a

quart;--think of that, ye New England housekeepers! That precious

article, the pudding, is nearly unknown in the Nassauese economy; nor

is pie-crust so short as it might be, owing to the enormous price of

butter, which has been known to attain the sum of one dollar per pound.

Eggs are quoted at prices not commendable for large families with

small means. On the other hand, fruits, vegetables, and sugar-cane are

abundant.

The Nassauese, on the whole, seem to be a kind-hearted and friendly set

of people, partly English, partly Southern in character, but with rather

a predominance of the latter ingredient in their composition. Their

women resemble the women of our own Southern States, but seem simpler

and more domestic in their habits,--while the men would make tolerable

Yankees, but would scarcely support President Buchanan, the Kansas

question, or the Filibustero movement. Physically, the race suffers and

degenerates under the influence of the warm climate. Cases of pulmonary

disease, asthma, and neuralgia are of frequent occurrence, and cold is

considered as curative to them as heat is to us. The diet, too, is not

that "giant ox-beef" which the Saxon race requires. Meat is rare, and

tough, unless brought from the States at high cost. We were forced to

the conclusion that no genuine English life can be supported upon a

_régime_ of fish and fruit,--or, in other words, no beef, no Bull, but

a very different sort of John, lantern-jawed, leather-skinned, and of

a thirsty complexion. It occurred to us, furthermore, that it is a

dolorous thing to live on a lonely little island, tied up like a wart on

the face of civilization,--no healthful stream of life coming and going

from the great body of the main land,--the same moral air to be breathed

over and over again, without renewal,--the same social elements turned

and returned in one tiresome kaleidoscope. Wherefore rejoice, ye

Continentals, and be thankful, and visit the Nassauese, bringing beef,

butter, and beauty,--bringing a few French muslins to replace the

coarse English fabrics, and buxom Irish girls to outwork the idle negro

women,--bringing new books, newspapers, and periodicals,--bringing the

Yankee lecturer, all expenses paid, and his drink found him. All these

good things, and more, the States have for the Nassauese, of whom we

must now take leave, for all hands have been piped on deck.

We have jolted for three weary days over the roughest of ocean-highways,

and Cuba, nay, Havana, is in sight. The worst cases are up, and begin to

talk about their sea-legs, now that the occasion for them is at an end.

Sobrina, the chief wit of our party, who would eat sour-sop, sapodilla,

orange, banana, cocoa-nut, and sugar-cane at Nassau, and who has lived

upon toddy of twenty-cocktail power ever since,--even she is seen,

clothed and in her right mind, sitting at the feet of the prophet she

loves, and going through the shawl-and-umbrella exercise. And here is

the Moro Castle, which guards the entrance of the harbor,--here go

the signals, answering to our own. Here comes the man with the

speaking-trumpet, who, understanding no English, yells out to our

captain, who understands no Spanish. The following is a free rendering

of their conversation:--

"Any Americans on board?"

"Yes, thank Heaven, plenty."

"How many are Filibusteros?"

"All of them."

"Bad luck to them, then!"

"The same to you!"

"_Caramba_" says the Spaniard.

"--------," says the Englishman.

And so the forms of diplomacy are fulfilled; and of Havana, more in my

next.

[To be continued.]

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

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

_The Professor finds a Fly in his Teacup_.

I have a long theological talk to relate, which must be dull reading to

some of my young and vivacious friends. I don't know, however, that any

of them have entered into a contract to read all that I write, or that I

have promised always to write to please them. What if I should sometimes

write to please myself?

Now you must know that there are a great many things which interest me,

to some of which this or that particular class of readers may be totally

indifferent. I love Nature, and human nature, its thoughts, affections,

dreams, aspirations, delusions,--Art in all its forms,--_virtu_ in all

its eccentricities,--old stories from black-letter volumes and yellow

manuscripts, and new projects out of hot brains not yet imbedded in the

snows of age. I love the generous impulses of the reformer; but not less

does my imagination feed itself upon the old litanies, so often warmed

by the human breath upon which they were wafted to heaven that they glow

through our frames like our own heart's blood. I hope I love good men

and women; I know that they never speak a word to me, even if it be of

question or blame, that I do not take pleasantly, if it is expressed

with a reasonable amount of human kindness.

I have before me at this time a beautiful and affecting letter, which

I have hesitated to answer, though the postmark upon it gave its

direction, and the name is one which is known to all, in some of its

representatives. It contains no reproach, only a delicately-hinted fear.

Speak gently, as this dear lady has spoken, and there is no heart so

insensible that it does not answer to the appeal, no intellect so virile

that it does not own a certain allegiance to the claims of age, of

childhood, of sensitive and timid natures, when they plead with it not

to look at those sacred things by the broad daylight which they see in

mystic shadow. How grateful would it be to make perpetual peace with

these pleading saints and their confessors, by the simple act

that silences all complainings! Sleep, sleep, sleep! says the

Arch-Enchantress of them all,--and pours her dark and potent anodyne,

distilled over the fires that consumed her foes,--its large, round drops

changing, as we look, into the beads of her convert's rosary! Silence!

the pride of reason! cries another, whose whole life is spent in

reasoning down reason.

I hope I love good people, not for their sake, but for my own. And most

assuredly, if any deed of wrong or word of bitterness led me into an act

of disrespect towards that enlightened and excellent class of men who

make it their calling to teach goodness and their duty to practise it,

I should feel that I had done myself an injury rather than them. Go and

talk with any professional man holding any of the mediaeval creeds,

choosing one who wears upon his features the mark of inward and outward

health, who looks cheerful, intelligent, and kindly, and see how all

your prejudices melt away in his presence! It is impossible to come into

intimate relations with a large, sweet nature, such as you may often

find in this class, without longing to be at one with it in all its

modes of being and believing. But does it not occur to you that one may

love truth as he sees it, and his race as he views it, better than even

the sympathy and approbation of many good men whom he honors,--better

than sleeping to the sound of the Miserere or listening to the

repetition of an effete Confession of Faith?

The three learned professions have but recently emerged from a state of

_quasi_ barbarism. None of them like too well to be told of it, but it

must be sounded in their ears whenever they put on airs. When a man has

taken an overdose of laudanum, the doctors tell us to place him between

two persons who shall make him walk up and down incessantly; and if he

still cannot be kept from going to sleep, they say that a lash or two

over his back is of great assistance.

So we must keep the doctors awake by telling them that they have not

yet shaken off astrology and the doctrine of signatures, as is shown by

their prescriptions, and their use of nitrate of silver, which turns

epileptics into Ethiopians. If that is not enough, they must be given

over to the scourgers, who like their task and get good fees for it. A

few score years ago, sick people were made to swallow burnt toads and

powdered earth-worms and the expressed juice of wood-lice. The physician

of Charles I. and II. prescribed abominations not to be named.

Barbarism, as bad as that of Congo or Ashantee. Traces of this barbarism

linger even in the greatly improved medical science of our century. So

while the solemn farce of over-drugging is going on, the world over,

the harlequin pseudo-science jumps on to the stage, whip in hand, with

half-a-dozen somersets, and begins laying about him.

In 1817, perhaps you remember, the law of wager by battle was

unrepealed, and the rascally murderous, and worse than murderous, clown,

Abraham Thornton, put on his gauntlet in open court and defied the

appellant to lift the other which he threw down. It was not until the

reign of George II. that the statutes against witchcraft were repealed.

As for the English Court of Chancery, we know that its antiquated abuses

form one of the staples of common proverbs and popular literature.

So the laws and the lawyers have to be watched perpetually by public

opinion as much as the doctors do.

I don't think the other profession is an exception. When the Reverend

Mr. Cauvin and his associates burned my distinguished scientific

brother,--he was burned with green fagots, which made it rather slow and

painful,--it appears to me they were in a state of religious barbarism.

The dogmas of such people about the Father of Mankind and his creatures

are of no more account in my opinion than those of a council of Aztecs.

If a man picks your pocket, do you not consider him thereby disqualified

to pronounce any authoritative opinion on matters of ethics? If a man

hangs my ancient female relatives for sorcery, as they did in this

neighborhood a little while ago, or burns my instructor for not

believing as he does, I care no more for his religious edicts than I

should for those of any other barbarian.

Of course, a barbarian may hold many true opinions; but when the ideas

of the healing art, of the administration of justice, of Christian love,

could not exclude systematic poisoning, judicial duelling, and murder

for opinion's sake, I do not see how we can trust the verdict of that

time relating to any subject which involves the primal instincts

violated in these abominations and absurdities.--What if we are even now

in a state of _semi_-barbarism?

Perhaps some think we ought not to talk at table about such things.--I

am not so sure of that. Religion and government appear to me the two

subjects which of all others should belong to the common talk of people

who enjoy the blessings of freedom. Think, one moment. The earth is a

great factory-wheel, which, at every revolution on its axis, receives

fifty thousand raw souls and turns off nearly the same number worked up

more or less completely. There must be somewhere a population of two

hundred thousand million, perhaps ten or a hundred times as many,

earth-born intelligences. _Life_, as we call it, is nothing but the edge

of the boundless ocean of existence where it comes on soundings. In

this view, I do not see anything so fit to talk about, or half so

interesting, as that which relates to the innumerable majority of our

fellow-creatures, the dead-living, who are hundreds of thousands to one

of the live-living, and with whom we all potentially belong, though we

have got tangled for the present in some parcels of fibrine, albumen,

and phosphates, that keep us on the minority side of the house. In point

of fact, it is one of the many results of _Spiritualism_ to make

the permanent destiny of the race a matter of common reflection and

discourse, and a vehicle for the prevailing disbelief of the Middle-Age

doctrines on the subject. I cannot help thinking, when I remember how

many conversations my friend and myself have reported, that it would be

very extraordinary, if there were no mention of that class of subjects

which involves all that we have and all that we hope, not merely for

ourselves, but for the dear people whom we love best,--noble men, pure

and lovely women, ingenuous children,--about the destiny of nine-tenths

of whom you know the opinions that would have been taught by those old

man-roasting, woman-strangling dogmatists.--However, I fought this

matter with one of our boarders the other day, and I am going to report

the conversation.

* * * * *

The divinity-student came down, one morning, looking rather more serious

than usual. He said little at breakfast-time, but lingered after the

others, so that I, who am apt to be long at the table, found myself

alone with him.

When the rest were all gone, he turned his chair round towards mine, and

began.

I am afraid,--he said,--you express yourself a little too freely on a

most important class of subjects. Is there not danger in introducing

discussions or allusions relating to matters of religion into common

discourse?

Danger to what?--I asked.

Danger to truth,--he replied, after a slight pause.

I didn't know Truth was such an invalid,--I said.--How long is it since

she could only take the air in a close carriage, with a gentleman in

a black coat on the box? Let me tell you a story, adapted to young

persons, but which won't hurt older ones.

----There was a very little boy who had one of those balloons you may

have seen, which are filled with light gas, and are held by a string to

keep them from running off in aeronautic voyages on their own

account. This little boy had a naughty brother, who said to him, one

day,--Brother, pull down your balloon, so that I can look at it and take

hold of it. Then the little boy pulled it down. Now the naughty brother

had a sharp pin in his hand, and he thrust it into the balloon, and all

the gas oozed out, so that there was nothing left but a shrivelled skin.

One evening, the little boy's father called him to the window to see the

moon, which pleased him very much; but presently he said,--Father, do

not pull the string and bring down the moon, for my naughty brother will

prick it, and then it will all shrivel up and we shall not see it any

more.

Then his father laughed, and told him how the moon had been shining a

good while, and would shine a good while longer, and that all we could

do was to keep our windows clean, never letting the dust get too thick

on them, and especially to keep our eyes open, but that we could not

pull the moon down with a string, nor prick it with a pin.--Mind you

this, too, the moon is no man's private property, but is seen from a

good many parlor-windows.

----Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay,

you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and

full at evening. Does not Mr. Bryant say, that Truth gets well if she is

run over by a locomotive, while Error dies of lockjaw if she scratches

her finger? I never heard that a mathematician was alarmed for the

safety of a demonstrated proposition. I think, generally, that fear

of open discussion implies feebleness of inward conviction, and great

sensitiveness to the expression of individual opinion is a mark of

weakness.

----I am not so much afraid for truth,--said the divinity-student,--as

for the conceptions of truth in the minds of persons not accustomed to

judge wisely the opinions uttered before them.

Would you, then, banish all allusions to matters of this nature from the

society of people who come together habitually?

I would be very careful in introducing them,--said the divinity-student.

Yes, but friends of yours leave pamphlets in people's entries, to be

picked up by nervous misses and hysteric housemaids, full of doctrines

these people do not approve. Some of your friends stop little children

in the street, and give them books, which their parents, who have had

them baptized into the Christian fold and give them what they consider

proper religious instruction, do not think fit for them. One would say

it was fair enough to talk about matters thus forced upon people's

attention.

The divinity-student could not deny that this was what might be called

opening the subject to the discussion of intelligent people.

But,--he said,--the greatest objection is this, that persons who have

not made a professional study of theology are not competent to speak on

such subjects. Suppose a minister were to undertake to express opinions

on medical subjects, for instance, would you not think he was going

beyond his province?

I laughed,--for I remembered John Wesley's "sulphur and supplication,"

and so many other cases where ministers had meddled with

medicine,--sometimes well and sometimes ill, but, as a general rule,

with a tremendous lurch to quackery, owing to their very loose way of

admitting evidence,--that I could not help being amused.

I beg your pardon,--I said,--I do not wish to be impolite, but I was

thinking of their certificates to patent medicines. Let us look at this

matter.

If a minister had attended lectures on the theory and practice of

medicine, delivered by those who had studied it most deeply, for thirty

or forty years, at the rate of from fifty to one hundred a year,--if he

had been constantly reading and hearing read the most approved textbooks

on the subject,--if he had seen medicine actually practised according to

different methods, daily, for the same length of time,--I should think,

that, if a person of average understanding, he _was_ entitled to express

an opinion on the subject of medicine, or else that his instructors were

a set of ignorant and incompetent charlatans.

If, before a medical practitioner would allow me to enjoy the full

privileges of the healing art, he expected me to affirm my belief in a

considerable number of medical doctrines, drugs, and formulae, I should

think that he thereby implied my right to discuss the same, and my

ability to do so, if I knew how to express myself in English.

Suppose, for instance, the Medical Society should refuse to give us an

opiate, or to set a broken limb, until we had signed our belief in

a certain number of propositions,--of which we will say this is the

first:--

I. All men's teeth are naturally in a state of total decay or caries,

and, therefore, no man can bite until every one of them is extracted and

a new set is inserted according to the principles of dentistry adopted

by this Society.

I, for one, should want to discuss that before signing my name to it,

and I should say this:--Why, no, that isn't true. There are a good many

bad teeth, we all know, but a great many more good ones. You mustn't

trust the _dentists_; they are all the time looking at the people who

have bad teeth, and such as are suffering from toothache. The idea that

you must pull out every one of every nice young man and young woman's

natural teeth! Poh, poh! Nobody believes that. This tooth must be

straightened, that must be filled with gold, and this other perhaps

extracted; but it must be a very rare case, if they are all so bad as to

require extraction; and if they are, don't blame the poor soul for it!

Don't tell us, as some old dentists used to, that everybody not only

always has every tooth in his head good for nothing, but that he ought

to have his head cut off as a punishment for that misfortune! No, I

can't sign Number One. Give us Number Two.

II. We hold that no man can be well who does not agree with our views

of the efficacy of calomel, and who does not take the doses of it

prescribed in our tables, as there directed.

To which I demur, questioning why it should be so, and get for answer

the two following:--

III. Every man who does not take our prepared calomel, as prescribed by

us in our Constitution and By-Laws, is and must be a mass of disease

from head to foot; it being self-evident that he is simultaneously

affected with Apoplexy, Arthritis, Ascites, Asphyxia, and Atrophy; with

Borborygmus, Bronchitis, and Bulimia; with Cachexia, Carcinoma, and

Cretinismus; and so on through the alphabet, to Xerophthalmia and Zona,

with all possible and incompatible diseases which are necessary to make

up a totally morbid state; and he will certainly die, if he does not

take freely of our prepared calomel, to be obtained only of one of our

authorized agents.

IV. No man shall be allowed to take our prepared calomel who does not

give in his solemn adhesion to each and all of the above-named and the

following propositions (from ten to a hundred) and show his mouth to

certain of our apothecaries, who have _not_ studied dentistry, to

examine whether all his teeth have been extracted and a new set inserted

according to our regulations.

Of course, the doctors have a right to say we shan't have any rhubarb,

if we don't sign their articles, and that, if, after signing them, we

express doubts (in public) about any of them, they will cut us off from

our jalap and squills,--but then to ask a fellow not to discuss the

propositions before he signs them is what I should call boiling it down

a little _too_ strong!

If we understand them, why can't we discuss them? If we can't understand

them, because we haven't taken a medical degree, what the Father of Lies

do they ask us to sign them for?

Just so with the graver profession. Every now and then some of its

members seem to lose common sense and common humanity. The laymen have

to keep setting the divines right constantly. Science, for instance,--in

other words, knowledge,--is not the enemy of religion; for, if so,

then religion would mean ignorance. But it is often the antagonist of

school-divinity.

Everybody knows the story of early astronomy and the school-divines.

Come down a little later. Archbishop Usher, a very learned Protestant

prelate, tells us that the world was created on Sunday, the twenty-third

of October, four thousand and four years before the birth of Christ.

Deluge, December 7th, two thousand three hundred and forty-eight years

B.C.--Yes, and the earth stands on an elephant, and the elephant on a

tortoise. One statement is as near the truth as the other.

Again, there is nothing so brutalizing to some natures as _moral

surgery_. I have often wondered that Hogarth did not add one more

picture to his four stages of Cruelty. Those wretched fools, reverend

divines and others, who were strangling men and women for imaginary

crimes a little more than a century ago among us, were set right by a

layman, and very angry it made them to have him meddle.

The good people of Northampton had a very remarkable man for their

clergyman,--a man with a brain as nicely adjusted for certain mechanical

processes as Babbage's calculating machine. The commentary of the laymen

on the preaching and practising of Jonathan Edwards was, that, after

twenty-three years of endurance, they turned him out by a vote of twenty

to one, and passed a resolve that he should never preach for them again.

A man's logical and analytical adjustments are of little consequence,

compared to his primary relations with Nature and truth; and people have

sense enough to find it out in the long run; they know what "logic" is

worth.

In that miserable delusion referred to above, the reverend Aztecs and

Fijians argued rightly enough from their premises, no doubt, for many

men can do this. But common sense and common humanity were unfortunately

left out from their premises, and a layman had to supply them. A hundred

more years and many of the barbarisms still lingering among us will, of

course, have disappeared like witch-hanging. But people are sensitive

now, as they were then. You will see by this extract that the Rev.

Cotton Mather did not like intermeddling with his business very well.

"Let the _Levites_ of the Lord keep close to their Instructions," he

says, "and _God will smile thro' the loins of those that rise up against

them._ I will report unto you a Thing which many Hundreds among us know

to be true. The _Godly Minister_ of a certain Town in Connecticut, when

he had occasion to be absent on a _Lord's Day_ from his Flock, employ'd

an honest _Neighbour_ of some small Talents for a _Mechanick_, to read a

_Sermon_ out of some _good Book_ unto 'em. This _Honest_, whom they ever

counted also a _Pious Man_, had so much conceit of his _Talents_, that

instead of _Reading a Sermon_ appointed, he to the _Surprize_ of the

People, fell to _preaching one of his own_. For his Text he took these

Words, _'Despise not Prophecyings'_; and in his Preachment he betook

himself to bewail the _Envy of the Clergy_ in the Land, in that they did

not wish _all the Lord's People to be Prophets_, and call forth _Private

Brethren_ publickly to _prophesie_. While he was thus in the midst

of his Exercise, God smote him with horrible _Madness_; he was taken

ravingly distracted; the People were forc'd with violent Hands to

carry him home.... I will not mention his Name: He was reputed a Pious

Man."--This is one of Cotton's "Remarkable Judgments of God, on Several

Sorts of Offenders,"--and the next cases referred to are the Judgments

on the "Abominable Sacrilege" of not paying the Ministers' Salaries.

This sort of thing doesn't do here and now, you see, my young friend! We

talk about our free institutions;--they are nothing but a coarse outside

machinery to secure the freedom of individual thought. The President

of the United States is only the engine-driver of our broad-gauge

mail-train; and every honest, independent thinker has a seat in the

first-class cars behind him.

----There is something in what you say,--replied the

divinity-student;--and yet it seems to me there are places and times

where disputed doctrines of religion should not be introduced. You would

not attack a church dogma--say, Total Depravity--in a lyceum-lecture,

for instance?

Certainly not; I should choose another place,--I answered.--But, mind

you, at this table I think it is very different. I shall express my

ideas on any subject I like. The laws of the lecture-room, to which my

friends and myself are always amenable, do not hold here. I shall not

often give arguments, but frequently opinions,--I trust with courtesy

and propriety, but, at any rate, with such natural forms of expression

as it has pleased the Almighty to bestow upon me.

A man's opinions, look you, are generally of much more value than his

arguments. These last are made by his brain, and perhaps he does not

believe the proposition they tend to prove,--as is often the case with

paid lawyers; but opinions are formed by our whole nature,--brain,

heart, instinct, brute life, everything all our experience has shaped

for us by contact with the whole circle of our being.

----There is one thing more,--said the divinity-student,--that I wished

to speak of; I mean that idea of yours, expressed some time since, of

_depolarizing_ the text of sacred books in order to judge them fairly.

May I ask why you do not try the experiment yourself?

Certainly,--I replied,--if it gives you any pleasure to ask foolish

questions. I think the ocean telegraph-wire ought to be laid and will be

laid, but I don't know that you have any right to ask me to go and

lay it. But, for that matter, I have heard a good deal of Scripture

depolarized in and out of the pulpit. I heard the Rev. Mr. F. once

depolarize the story of the Prodigal Son in Park-Street Church. Many

years afterwards, I heard him repeat the same or a similar depolarized

version in Rome, New York. I heard an admirable depolarization of the

story of the young man who "had great possessions" from the Rev. Mr. H.

in another pulpit, and felt that I had never half understood it before.

All paraphrases are more or less perfect depolarizations. But I tell you

this: the faith of our Christian community is not robust enough to

bear the turning of our most sacred language into its depolarized

equivalents. You have only to look back to Dr. Channing's famous

Baltimore discourse and remember the shrieks of blasphemy with which it

was greeted, to satisfy yourself on this point. Time, time only,

can gradually wean us from our _Epeolatry_, or word-worship, by

spiritualizing our ideas of the thing signified. Man is an idolater or

symbol-worshipper by nature, which, of course, is no fault of his; but

sooner or later all his local and temporary symbols must be ground to

powder, like the golden calf,--word-images as well as metal and wooden

ones. Rough work, iconoclasm,--but the only way to get at truth. It is,

indeed, as that quaint and rare old discourse, "A Summons for Sleepers,"

hath it, "no doubt a thankless office, and a verie unthriftie

occupation; _veritas odium parit_, truth never goeth without a scratcht

face; he that will be busie with _vae vobis_, let him looke shortly for

_coram nobis_."

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think

what we like and say what we think.

----Think what we like!--said the divinity-student;--think what we like!

What! against all human and divine authority?

Against all human versions of its own or any other authority. At our own

peril always, if we do not _like_ the right,--but not at the risk of

being hanged and quartered for political heresy, or broiled on green

fagots for ecclesiastical treason! Nay, we have got so far, that the

very word _heresy_ has fallen into comparative disuse among us.

And now, my young friend, let us shake hands and stop our discussion,

which we will not make a quarrel. I trust you know, or will learn, a

great many things in your profession which we common scholars do not

know; but mark this: when the common people of New England stop talking

politics and theology, it will be because they have got an Emperor to

teach them the one, and a Pope to teach them the other!

* * * * *

That was the end of my long conference with the divinity-student.

The next morning we got talking a little on the same subject, very

good-naturedly, as people return to a matter they have talked out.

You must look to yourself,--said the divinity-student,--if your

democratic notions get into print. You will be fired into from all

quarters.

If it were only a bullet, with the marksman's name on it!--I said.--I

can't stop to pick out the peep-shot of the anonymous scribblers.

Right, Sir! right!--said Little Boston.--The scamps! I know the fellows.

They can't give fifty cents to one of the Antipodes, but they must have

it jingled along through everybody's palms all the way, till it reaches

him,--and forty cents of it get spilt, like the water out of the

fire-buckets passed along a "lane" at a fire;--but, when it comes to

anonymous defamation, putting lies into people's mouths, and then

advertising those people through the country as the authors of

them,--oh, then it is that they let not their left hand know what their

right hand doeth!

I don't like Ehud's style of doing business, Sir. He comes along with a

very sanctimonious look, Sir, with his "secret errand unto thee," and

his "message from God unto thee," and then pulls out his hidden knife

with that unsuspected left hand of his,--(the little gentleman

lifted his clenched left hand with the blood-red jewel on the

ring-finger,)--and runs it, blade and haft, into a man's stomach! Don't

meddle with these fellows, Sir. They are read mostly by persons whom you

would not reach, if you were to write ever so much. Let 'em alone. A man

whose opinions are not attacked is beneath contempt.

I hope so,--I said.--I got three pamphlets and innumerable squibs flung

at my head for attacking one of the pseudo-sciences, in former years.

When, by the permission of Providence, I held up to the professional

public the damnable facts connected with the conveyance of poison from

one young mother's chamber to another's,--for doing which humble office

I desire to be thankful that I have lived, though nothing else good

should ever come of my life,--I had to bear the sneers of those whose

position I had assailed, and, as I believe, have at last demolished, so

that nothing but the ghosts of dead women stir among the ruins.--What

would you do, if the folks without names kept at you, trying to get a

San Benito on to your shoulders that would fit you?--Would you stand

still in fly-time, or would you give a kick now and then?

Let 'em bite!--said Little Boston;--let 'em bite! It makes 'em hungry to

shake 'em off, and they settle down again as thick as ever and twice as

savage. Do you know what meddling with the folks without names, as you

call 'em, is like?--It is like riding at the _quintain_. You run full

tilt at the board, but the board is on a pivot, with a bag of sand on an

arm that balances it. The board gives way as soon as you touch it; and

before you have got by, the bag of sand comes round whack on the back of

your neck. "Ananias," for instance, pitches into your lecture, we will

say, in some paper taken by the people in your kitchen. Your servants

get saucy and negligent. If their newspaper calls you names, they need

not be so particular about shutting doors softly or boiling potatoes.

So you lose your temper, and come out in an article which you think is

going to finish "Ananias," proving him a booby who doesn't know enough

to understand even a lyceum-lecture, or else a person that tells lies.

Now you think you've got him! Not so fast. "Ananias" keeps still and

winks to "Shimei," and "Shimei" comes out in the paper which they take

in your neighbor's kitchen, ten times worse than t'other fellow. If you

meddle with "Shimei," he steps out, and next week appears "Rab-shakeh,"

an unsavory wretch; and now, at any rate, you find out what good

sense there was in Hezekiah's "Answer him not."--No, no,--keep your

temper.--So saying, the little gentleman doubled his left fist and

looked at it, as if he should like to hit something or somebody a most

pernicious punch with it.

Good!--said I.--Now let me give you some axioms I have arrived at, after

seeing something of a great many kinds of good folks.

----Of a hundred people of each of the different leading religious

sects, about the same proportion will be safe and pleasant persons to

deal and to live with.

----There are, at least, three real saints among the women to one among

the men, in every denomination.

----The spiritual standard of different classes I would reckon thus:--

1. The comfortably rich.

2. The decently comfortable.

3. The very rich, who are apt to be irreligious.

4. The very poor, who are apt to be immoral.

----The cut nails of machine-divinity may be driven in, but they won't

clinch.

----The arguments which the greatest of our schoolmen could not refute

were two: the blood in men's veins, and the milk in women's breasts.

----Humility is the first of the virtues--for other people.

----Faith always implies the disbelief of a lesser fact in favor of

a greater. A little mind often sees the unbelief, without seeing the

belief, of a large one.

The Poor Relation had been fidgeting about and working her mouth while

all this was going on. She broke out in speech at this point.

I hate to hear folks talk so. I don't see that you are any better than a

heathen.

I wish I were half as good as many heathens have been,--I said.--Dying

for a principle seems to me a higher degree of virtue than scolding for

it; and, the history of heathen races is full of instances where men

have laid down their lives for the love of their kind, of their country,

of truth, nay, even for simple manhood's sake, or to show their

obedience or fidelity. What would not such beings have done for the

souls of men, for the Christian commonwealth, for the King of Kings,

if they had lived in days of larger light? Which seems to you nearest

heaven, Socrates drinking his hemlock, Regulus going back to the enemy's

camp, or that old New England divine sitting comfortably in his study

and chuckling over his conceit of certain poor women, who had been

burned to death in his own town, going "roaring out of one fire into

another"?

I don't believe he said any such thing,--replied the Poor Relation.

It is hard to believe,--said I,--but it is true for all that. In another

hundred years it will be as incredible that men talked as we sometimes

hear them now.

_Cor facit theologum._ The heart makes the theologian. Every race,

every civilization, either has a new revelation of its own or a new

interpretation of an old one. Democratic America has a different

humanity from feudal Europe, and so must have a new divinity. See, for

one moment, how intelligence reacts on our faiths. The Bible was a

divining-book to our ancestors, and is so still in the hands of some of

the vulgar. The Puritans went to the Old Testament for their laws; the

Mormons go to it for their patriarchal institution. Every generation

dissolves something new and precipitates something once held in solution

from that great storehouse of temporary and permanent truths.

You may observe this: that the conversation of intelligent men of the

stricter sects is strangely in advance of the formulae that belong to

their organizations. So true is this, that I have doubts whether a large

proportion of them would not have been rather pleased than offended,

if they could have overheard our talk. For, look you, I think there is

hardly a professional teacher who will not in private conversation allow

a large part of what we have said, though it may frighten him in print;

and I know well what an under-current of secret sympathy gives vitality

to those poor words of mine which sometimes get a hearing.

I don't mind the exclamation of any old stager who drinks Madeira

worth from two to six Bibles a bottle, and burns, according to his own

premises, a dozen souls a year in the cigars with which he muddles his

brains. But for the good and true and intelligent men whom we see all

around us, laborious, self-denying, hopeful, helpful,--men who know

that the active mind of the century is tending more and more to the two

poles, Rome and Reason, the sovereign church or the free soul, authority

or personality, God in us or God in our masters, and that, though a

man may by accident _stand_ half-way between these two points, he must

_look_ one way or the other,--I don't believe they would take offence at

anything I have reported of our late conversation.

But supposing any one _do_ take offence at first sight, let him look

over these notes again, and see whether he is quite sure he does not

agree with most of these things that were said amongst us. If he agrees

with most of them, let him be patient with an opinion he does not

accept, or an expression or illustration a little too vivacious. I don't

know that I shall report any more conversations on these topics; but

I do insist on the right to express a civil opinion on this class of

subjects without giving offence, just when and where I please,--unless,

as in the lecture-room, there is an implied contract to keep clear of

doubtful matters. You didn't think a man could sit at a breakfast-table

doing nothing but making puns every morning for a year or two, and never

give a thought to the two thousand of his fellow-creatures who are

passing into another state during every hour that he sits talking and

laughing! Of course, the _one_ matter that a real human being cares for

is what is going to become of them and of him. And the plain truth is,

that a good many people are saying one thing about it and believing

another.

----How do I know that? Why, I have known and loved to talk with good

people, all the way from Rome to Geneva in doctrine, as long as I can

remember. Besides, the real religion of the world comes from women much

more than from men,--from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our

souls in their bosoms. It is in their hearts that the "sentimental"

religion some people are so fond of sneering at has its source. The

sentiment of love, the sentiment of maternity, the sentiment of the

paramount obligation of the parent to the child as having called it into

existence, enhanced just in proportion to the power and knowledge of

the one and the weakness and ignorance of the other,--these are the

"sentiments" that have kept our soulless systems from driving men off to

die in holes like those that riddle the sides of the hill opposite

the Monastery of St. Saba, where the miserable victims of a

falsely-interpreted religion starved and withered in their delusion.

I have looked on the face of a saintly woman this very day, whose creed

many dread and hate, but whose life is lovely and noble beyond all

praise. When I remember the bitter words I have heard spoken against her

faith, by men who have an Inquisition which excommunicates those who ask

to leave their communion in peace, and an _Index Expurgatorius_ on which

this article may possibly have the honor of figuring,--and, far worse

than these, the reluctant, pharisaical confession, that it might perhaps

be _possible_ that one who so believed should be accepted of the

Creator,--and then recall the sweet peace and love that show through

all her looks, the price of untold sacrifices and labors,--and again

recollect how thousands of women, filled with the same spirit, die,

without a murmur, to earthly life, die to their own names even, that

they may know nothing but their holy duties,--while men are torturing

and denouncing their fellows, and while we can hear day and night the

clinking of the hammers that are trying, like the brute forces in the

"Prometheus," to rivet their adamantine wedges right through the breast

of human nature,--I have been ready to believe that we have even now a

new revelation, and the name of its Messiah is WOMAN!

* * * * *

----I should be sorry,--I remarked, a day or two afterwards, to the

divinity-student,--if anything I said tended in any way to foster any

jealousy between the professions, or to throw disrespect upon that one

on whose counsel and sympathies almost all of us lean in our moments

of trial. But we are false to our new conditions of life, if we do not

resolutely maintain our religious as well as our political freedom,

in the face of any and all supposed monopolies. Certain men will, of

course, say two things, if we do not take their views: first, that we

don't know anything about these matters; and, secondly, that we are not

so good as they are. They have a polarized phraseology for saying these

things, but it comes to precisely that. To which it may be answered, in

the first place, that we have good authority for saying that even babes

and sucklings know _something_; and, in the second, that, if there is a

mote or so to be removed from our premises, the courts and councils of

the last few years have found beams enough in some other quarters to

build a church that would hold all the good people in Boston and have

sticks enough left to make a bonfire for all the heretics.

As to that terrible depolarizing process of mine, of which we were

talking the other day, I will give you a specimen of one way of managing

it, if you like. I don't believe it will hurt you or anybody. Besides, I

had a great deal rather finish our talk with pleasant images and gentle

words than with sharp sayings, which will only afford a text, if anybody

repeats them, for endless relays of attacks from Messrs. Ananias,

Shimei, and Rab-sha-keh.

[I must leave such gentry, if any of them show themselves, in the hands

of my clerical friends, many of whom are ready to stand up for the

rights of the laity,--and to those blessed souls, the good women, to

whom this version of the story of a mother's hidden hopes and tender

anxieties is dedicated by their peaceful and loving servant.]

A MOTHER'S SECRET.

How sweet the sacred legend--if unblamed

In my slight verse such holy things are named--

Of Mary's secret hours of hidden joy,

Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy!

_Ave, Maria!_ Pardon, if I wrong

Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song!

The choral host had closed the angel's strain

Sung to the midnight watch on Bethlehem's plain;

And now the shepherds, hastening on their way,

Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay.

They passed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled o'er,--

They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor

Where Moab's daughter, homeless and forlorn,

Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn;

And some remembered how the holy scribe,

Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe,

Traced the warm blood of Jesse's royal son

To that fair alien, bravely wooed and won.

So fared they on to seek the promised sign

That marked the anointed heir of David's line.

At last, by forms of earthly semblance led,

They found the crowded inn, the oxen's shed.

No pomp was there, no glory shone around

On the coarse straw that strewed the reeking ground;

One dim retreat a flickering torch betrayed,--

In that poor cell the Lord of Life was laid!

The wondering shepherds told their breathless tale

Of the bright choir that woke the sleeping vale;

Told how the skies with sudden glory flamed;

Told how the shining multitude proclaimed,

"Joy, joy to earth! Behold the hallowed morn!

In David's city Christ the Lord is born!

'Glory to God!' let angels shout on high,--

'Good-will to men!' the listening Earth reply!"

They spoke with hurried words and accents wild;

Calm in his cradle slept the heavenly child.

No trembling word the mother's joy revealed,--

One sigh of rapture, and her lips were sealed;

Unmoved she saw the rustic train depart,

But kept their words to ponder in her heart.

Twelve years had passed; the boy was fair and tall,

Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all.

The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill

Their balanced urns beside the mountain-rill,--

The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun,

Spoke in soft words of Joseph's quiet son.

No voice had reached the Galilean vale

Of star-led kings or awe-struck shepherds' tale;

In the meek, studious child they only saw

The future Rabbi, learned in Israel's law.

So grew the boy; and now the feast was near,

When at the holy place the tribes appear.

Scarce had the home-bred child of Nazareth seen

Beyond the hills that girt the village-green,

Save when at midnight, o'er the star-lit sands,

Snatched from the steel of Herod's murdering bands,

A babe, close-folded to his mother's breast,

Through Edom's wilds he sought the sheltering West.

Then Joseph spake: "Thy boy hath largely grown;

Weave him fine raiment, fitting to be shown;

Fair robes beseem the pilgrim, as the priest:

Goes he not with us to the holy feast?"

And Mary culled the flaxen fibres white;

Till eve she spun; she spun till morning light;

The thread was twined; its parting meshes through

From hand to hand her restless shuttle flew,

Till the full web was wound upon the beam,--

Love's curious toil,--a vest without a seam!

They reach the holy place, fulfil the days

To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise.

At last they turn, and far Moriah's height

Melts in the southern sky and fades from sight.

All day the dusky caravan has flowed

In devious trails along the winding road

(For many a step their homeward path attends,--

And all the sons of Abraham are as friends).

Evening has come,--the hour of rest and joy;--

Hush! hush!--that whisper,--"Where is Mary's boy?"

O weary hour! O aching days that passed

Filled with strange fears, each wilder than the last:

The soldier's lance,--the fierce centurion's sword,--

The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord,--

The midnight crypt that sucks the captive's breath,--

The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death!

Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light,

Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night,

Crouched by some porphyry column's shining plinth,

Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth.

At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more

The Temple's porches, searched in vain before;

They found him seated with the ancient men,--

The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen,--

Their bald heads glistening as they clustered near,

Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear,

Lost in half-envious wonder and surprise

That lips so fresh should utter words so wise.

And Mary said,--as one who, tried too long,

Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong,--

"What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done?

Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son!"

Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone,--

Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown;

Then turned with them and left the holy hill,

To all their mild commands obedient still.

The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men,

And Nazareth's matrons told it oft again;

The maids re-told it at the fountain's side;

The youthful shepherds doubted or denied;

It passed around among the listening friends,

With all that fancy adds and fiction lends,

Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown

Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbis down.

But Mary, faithful to its lightest word,

Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard,

Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil,

And shuddering Earth confirmed the wondrous tale.

Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall:

A mother's secret hope outlives them all.

* * * * *

THE MINISTER'S WOOING.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER XII.

MISS PRISSY.

Will our little Mary really fall in love with the Doctor?--The question

reaches us in anxious tones from all the circle of our readers; and what

especially shocks us is, that grave doctors of divinity, and serious,

stocking-knitting matrons, seem to be the class who are particularly

set against the success of our excellent orthodox hero, and bent on

reminding us of the claims of that unregenerate James, whom we have sent

to sea on purpose that our heroine may recover herself of that foolish

partiality for him which all the Christian world seems bent on

perpetuating.

"Now, really," says the Rev. Mrs. Q., looking up from her bundle of

Sewing-Society work, "you are _not_ going to let Mary marry the

Doctor?"

My dear Madam, is not that just what you did, yourself, after having

turned off three or four fascinating young sinners as good as James any

day? Don't make us believe that you are sorry for it now!

"Is it possible," says Dr. Theophrastus, who is himself a stanch

Hopkinsian divine, and who is at present recovering from his last grand

effort on Natural and Moral Ability,--"is it possible that you are going

to let Mary forget that poor young man and marry Dr. H.? That will never

do in the world!"

Dear Doctor, consider what would have become of you, if some lady at a

certain time had not had the sense and discernment to fall in love with

the _man_ who came to her disguised as a theologian.

"But he's so old!" says Aunt Maria.

Not at all. Old? What do you mean? Forty is the very season of

ripeness,--the very meridian of manly lustre and splendor.

"But he wears a wig."

My dear Madam, so did Sir Charles Grandison, and Lovelace, and all the

other fine fellows of those days; the wig was the distinguishing mark of

a gentleman.

No,--spite of all you may say and declare, we do insist that our Doctor

is a very proper and probable subject for a young lady to fall in love

with.

If women have one weakness more marked than another, it is towards

veneration. They are born worshippers,--makers of silver shrines for

some divinity or other, which, of course, they always think fell

straight down from heaven.

The first step towards their falling in love with an ordinary mortal

is generally to dress him out with all manner of real or fancied

superiority; and having made him up, they worship him.

Now a truly great man, a man really grand and noble in heart and

intellect, has this advantage with women, that he is an idol ready-made

to hand; and so that very painstaking and ingenious sex have less labor

in getting him up, and can be ready to worship him on shorter notice.

In particular is this the case where a sacred profession and a moral

supremacy are added to the intellectual. Just think of the career of

celebrated preachers and divines in all ages. Have they not stood like

the image that "Nebuchadnezzar the king set up," and all womankind,

coquettes and flirts not excepted, been ready to fall down and worship,

even before the sound of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, and so forth? Is

not the faithful Paula, with her beautiful face, prostrate in reverence

before poor, old, lean, haggard, dying St. Jerome, in the most splendid

painting of the world, an emblem and sign of woman's eternal power of

self-sacrifice to what she deems noblest in man? Does not old Richard

Baxter tell us, with delightful single-heartedness, how his wife fell

in love with him first, spite of his long, pale face,--and how she

confessed, dear soul, after many years of married life, that she had

found him _less_ sour and bitter than she had expected?

The fact is, women are burdened with fealty, faith, reverence, more

than they know what to do with; they stand like a hedge of sweet-peas,

throwing out fluttering tendrils everywhere for something high and

strong to climb by,--and when they find it, be it ever so rough in the

bark, they catch upon it. And instances are not wanting of those who

have turned away from the flattery of admirers to prostrate themselves

at the feet of a genuine hero who never wooed them, except by heroic

deeds and the rhetoric of a noble life.

Never was there a distinguished man whose greatness could sustain the

test of minute domestic inspection better than our Doctor. Strong in a

single-hearted humility, a perfect unconsciousness of self, an honest

and sincere absorption in high and holy themes and objects, there was in

him what we so seldom see,--a perfect logic of life; his minutest deeds

were the true results of his sublimest principles. His whole nature,

moral, physical, and intellectual, was simple, pure, and cleanly. He was

temperate as an anchorite in all matters of living,--avoiding, from a

healthy instinct, all those intoxicating stimuli then common among the

clergy. In his early youth, indeed, he had formed an attachment to the

almost universal clerical pipe,--but, observing a delicate woman once

nauseated by coming into the atmosphere which he and his brethren had

polluted, he set himself gravely to reflect that that which could so

offend a woman must needs be uncomely and unworthy a Christian man;

wherefore he laid his pipe on the mantelpiece, and never afterwards

resumed the indulgence.

In all his relations with womanhood he was delicate and reverential,

forming his manners by that old precept, "The elder women entreat as

mothers, the younger as sisters,"--which rule, short and simple as

it is, is nevertheless the most perfect _résumé_, of all true

gentlemanliness. Then, as for person, the Doctor was not handsome, to be

sure; but he was what sometimes serves with woman better,--majestic

and manly, and, when animated by thought and feeling, having even a

commanding grandeur of mien. Add to all this, that our valiant hero is

now on the straight road to bring him into that situation most likely

to engage the warm partisanship of a true woman,--namely, that of a man

unjustly abused for right-doing,--and one may see that it is ten to one

our Mary may fall in love with him yet, before she knows it.

If it were not for this mysterious selfness-and-sameness which makes

this wild, wandering, uncanonical sailor, James Marvyn, so intimate

and internal,--if his thread were not knit up with the thread of her

life,--were it not for the old habit of feeling for him, thinking for

him, praying for him, hoping for him, fearing for him, which--woe is

us!--is the unfortunate habit of womankind,--if it were not for that

fatal something which neither judgment, nor wishes, nor reason, nor

common sense shows any great skill in unravelling,--we are quite sure

that Mary would be in love with the Doctor within the next six

months; as it is, we leave you all to infer from your own heart and

consciousness what his chances are.

A new sort of scene is about to open on our heroine, and we shall show

her to you, for an evening at least, in new associations, and with a

different background from that homely and rural one in which she has

fluttered as a white dove amid leafy and congenial surroundings.

As we have before intimated, Newport presented a _résumé_ of many

different phases of society, all brought upon a social level by the then

universally admitted principle of equality.

There were scattered about in the settlement lordly mansions, whose

owners rolled in emblazoned carriages, and whose wide halls were the

scenes of a showy and almost princely hospitality. By her husband's

side, Mrs. Katy Scudder was allied to one of these families of wealthy

planters, and often recognized the connection with a quiet undertone

of satisfaction, as a dignified and self-respecting woman should. She

liked, once in a while, quietly to let people know, that, although they

lived in the plain little cottage and made no pretensions, yet they had

good blood in their veins,--that Mr. Scudder's mother was a Wilcox, and

that the Wilcoxes were, she supposed, as high as anybody,--generally

ending the remark with the observation, that "all these things, to be

sure, were matters of small consequence, since at last it would be of

far more importance to have been a true Christian than to have been

connected with the highest families of the land."

Nevertheless, Mrs. Scudder was not a little pleased to have in her

possession a card of invitation to a splendid wedding-party that was

going to be given, on Friday, at the Wilcox Manor. She thought it a very

becoming mark of respect to the deceased Mr. Scudder that his widow and

daughter should be brought to mind,--so becoming and praiseworthy,

in fact, that, "though an old woman," as she said, with a complacent

straightening of her tall, lithe figure, she really thought she must

make an effort to go.

Accordingly, early one morning, after all domestic duties had been

fulfilled, and the clock, loudly ticking through the empty rooms, told

that all needful bustle had died down to silence, Mrs. Katy, Mary, and

Miss Prissy Diamond, the dressmaker, might have been observed sitting in

solemn senate around the camphor-wood trunk, before spoken of, and which

exhaled vague foreign and Indian perfumes of silk and sandal-wood.

You may have heard of dignitaries, my good reader,--but, I assure you,

you know very little of a situation of trust or importance compared to

that of _the_ dress-maker in a small New England town.

What important interests does she hold in her hands! How is she

besieged, courted, deferred to! Three months beforehand, all her days

and nights are spoken for; and the simple statement, that _only_ on that

day you can have Miss Clippers, is of itself an apology for any omission

of attention elsewhere,--it strikes home at once to the deepest

consciousness of every woman, married or single. How thoughtfully is

everything arranged, weeks beforehand, for the golden, important season

when Miss Clippers can come! On that day, there is to be no extra

sweeping, dusting, cleaning, cooking, no visiting, no receiving, no

reading or writing, but all with one heart and soul are to wait upon

her, intent to forward the great work which she graciously affords

a day's leisure to direct. Seated in her chair of state, with her

well-worn cushion bristling with pins and needles at her side, her ready

roll of patterns and her scissors, she hears, judges, and decides _ex

cathedrâ_ on the possible or not possible, in that important art on

which depends the right presentation of the floral part of Nature's

great horticultural show. She alone is competent to say whether there is

any available remedy for the stained breadth in Jane's dress,--whether

the fatal spot by any magical hocus-pocus can be cut out from the

fulness, or turned up and smothered from view in the gathers, or

concealed by some new fashion of trimming falling with generous

appropriateness exactly across the fatal weak point. She can tell you

whether that remnant of velvet will make you a basque,--whether Mamma's

old silk can reappear in juvenile grace for Miss Lucy. What marvels

follow her, wherever she goes! What wonderful results does she contrive

from the most unlikely materials, as everybody after her departure

wonders to see old things become so much better than new!

Among the most influential and happy of her class was Miss Prissy

Diamond,--a little, dapper, doll-like body, quick in her motions and

nimble in her tongue, whose delicate complexion, flaxen curls, merry

flow of spirits, and ready abundance of gayety, song, and story, apart

from her professional accomplishments, made her a welcome guest in every

family in the neighborhood. Miss Prissy laughingly boasted being past

forty, sure that the avowal would always draw down on her quite a storm

of compliments, on the freshness of her sweet-pea complexion and the

brightness of her merry blue eyes. She was well pleased to hear dawning

girls wondering why with so many advantages she had never married. At

such remarks, Miss Prissy always laughed loudly, and declared that she

had always had such a string of engagements with the women that she

never found half an hour to listen to what any _man_ living would say to

her, supposing she could stop to hear him. "Besides, if I were to get

married, nobody else could," she would say. "What would become of all

the wedding-clothes for everybody else?" But sometimes, when Miss Prissy

felt extremely gracious, she would draw out of her little chest just the

faintest tip-end of a sigh, and tell some young lady, in a confidential

undertone, that one of these days she would tell her something,--and

then there would come a wink of her blue eyes and a fluttering of the

pink ribbons in her cap quite stimulating to youthful inquisitiveness,

though we have never been able to learn by any of our antiquarian

researches that the expectations thus excited were ever gratified.

In her professional prowess she felt a pardonable pride. What feats

could she relate of wonderful dresses got out of impossibly small

patterns of silk! what marvels of silks turned that could not be told

from new! what reclaimings of waists that other dress-makers had

hopelessly spoiled! Had not Mrs. General Wilcox once been obliged to

call in her aid on a dress sent to her from Paris? and did not Miss

Prissy work three days and nights on that dress, and make every stitch

of that trimming over with her own hands, before it was fit to be seen?

And when Mrs. Governor Dexter's best silver-gray brocade was spoiled by

Miss Pimlico, and there wasn't another scrap to pattern it with, didn't

she make a new waist out of the cape and piece one of the sleeves

twenty-nine times, and yet nobody would ever have known that there was a

joining in it?

In fact, though Miss Prissy enjoyed the fair average plain-sailing of

her work, she might be said to _revel_ in difficulties. A full pattern

with trimming, all ample and ready, awoke a moderate enjoyment; but the

resurrection of anything half-worn or imperfectly made, the brilliant

success, when, after turning, twisting, piecing, contriving, and,

by unheard-of inventions of trimming, a dress faded and defaced was

restored to more than pristine splendor,--_that_ was a triumph worth

enjoying.

It was true, Miss Prissy, like most of her nomadic compeers, was a

little given to gossip; but, after all, it was innocent gossip,--not

a bit of malice in it; it was only all the particulars about Mrs.

Thus-and-So's wardrobe,--all the statistics of Mrs. That-and-T'other's

china-closet,--all the minute items of Miss Simpkins's wedding-clothes,

--and how her mother cried, the morning of the wedding, and said

that she didn't know anything how she could spare Louisa Jane, only

that Edward was such a good boy that she felt she could love him

like an own son,--and what a providence it seemed that the very ring

that was put into the bride-loaf was one that he gave her when he first

went to sea, when she wouldn't be engaged to him because she thought she

loved Thomas Strickland better, but that was only because she hadn't

found him out, you know,--and so forth, and so forth. Sometimes, too,

her narrations assumed a solemn cast, and brought to mind the hush of

funerals, and told of words spoken in faint whispers, when hands were

clasped for the last time,--and of utterances crushed out from hearts,

when the hammer of a great sorrow strikes out sparks of the divine, even

from common stone; and there would be real tears in the little blue

eyes, and the pink bows would flutter tremulously, like the last

three leaves on a bare scarlet maple in autumn. In fact, dear reader,

_gossip_, like romance, has its noble side to it. How can you love your

neighbor as yourself and not feel a little curiosity as to how he

fares, what he wears, where he goes, and how he takes the great life

tragi-comedy at which you and he are both more than spectators? Show me

a person who lives in a country-village absolutely without curiosity or

interest on these subjects, and I will show you a cold, fat oyster, to

whom the tide-mud of propriety is the whole of existence.

As one of our esteemed collaborators in the ATLANTIC remarks,--"A dull

town, where there is neither theatre nor circus nor opera, must have

some excitement, and the real tragedy and comedy of life _must_ come

in place of the second-hand. Hence the noted gossiping propensities

of country-places, which, so long as they are not poisoned by envy or

ill-will, have a respectable and picturesque side to them,--an undoubted

leave to be, as probably has almost everything, which obstinately and

always insists on being, except sin!"

As it is, it must be confessed that the arrival of Miss Prissy in a

family was much like the setting up of a domestic show-case, through

which you could look into all the families in the neighborhood, and see

the never-ending drama of life,--births, marriages, deaths,--joy

of new-made mothers, whose babes weighed just eight pounds and

three-quarters, and had hair that would part with a comb,--and tears of

Rachels who wept for their children, and would not be comforted because

they were not. Was there a tragedy, a mystery, in all Newport, whose

secret closet had not been unlocked by Miss Prissy? She thought not;

and you always wondered, with an uncertain curiosity, what those things

might be over which she gravely shook her head, declaring, with such a

look,--"Oh, if you only _could_ know!"--and ending with a general sigh

and lamentation, like the confidential chorus of a Greek tragedy.

We have been thus minute in sketching Miss Prissy's portrait, because

we rather like her. She has great power, we admit; and were she a

sour-faced, angular, energetic body, with a heart whose secretions had

all become acrid by disappointment and dyspepsia, she might be a fearful

gnome, against whose family-visitations one ought to watch and pray. As

it was, she came into the house rather like one of those breezy days

of spring, which burst all the blossoms, set all the doors and windows

open, make the hens cackle and the turtles peep,--filling a solemn

Puritan dwelling with as much bustle and chatter as if a box of martins

were setting up housekeeping in it.

Let us now introduce you to the sanctuary of Mrs. Scudder's own private

bedroom, where the committee of exigencies, with Miss Prissy at their

head, are seated in solemn session around the camphor-wood trunk.

"Dress, you know, is of _some_ importance, after all," said Mrs.

Scudder, in that apologetic way in which sensible people generally

acknowledge a secret leaning towards anything so very mundane. While

the good lady spoke, she was reverentially unpinning and shaking out

of their fragrant folds creamy crape shawls of rich Chinese

embroidery,--India muslin, scarfs, and aprons; and already her hands

were undoing the pins of a silvery damask linen in which was wrapped

her own wedding-dress. "I have always told Mary," she continued, "that,

though our hearts ought not to be set on these things, yet they had

their importance."

"Certainly, certainly, Ma'am," chimed in Miss Prissy. "I was saying

to Miss General Wilcox, the other day, _I_ didn't see how we could

'consider the lilies of the field,' without seeing the importance of

looking pretty. I've got a flower-de-luce in my garden now, from one of

the new roots that old Major Seaforth brought over from France, which is

just the most beautiful thing you ever did see; and I was thinking, as

I looked at it to-day, that, if women's dresses only grew on 'em as

handsome and well-fitting as that, why, there wouldn't be any need of

me; but as it is, why, we _must think_, if we want to look well. Now

peach-trees, I s'pose, might bear just as good peaches without the pink

blows, but then who would want 'em to? Miss Deacon Twitchel, when I was

up there the other day, kept kind o' sighin' 'cause Cerintha Ann is

getting a new pink silk made up, 'cause she said it was such a dying

world it didn't seem right to call off our attention: but I told her

it wasn't any pinker than the apple-blossoms; and what with robins and

blue-birds and one thing or another, the Lord is always calling off our

attention; and I think we ought to observe the Lord's works and take a

lesson from 'em."

"Yes, you are quite right," said Mrs. Scudder, rising and shaking out a

splendid white brocade, on which bunches of moss-roses were looped to

bunches of violets by graceful fillets of blue ribbons. "This was my

wedding-dress," she said.

Little Miss Prissy sprang up and clapped her hands in an ecstasy.

"Well, now, Miss Scudder, really!--did I ever see anything more

beautiful? It really goes beyond anything _I_ ever saw. I don't think,

in all the brocades I ever made up, I ever saw so pretty a pattern as

this."

"Mr. Scudder chose it for me, himself, at the silk-factory in Lyons,"

said Mrs. Scudder, with pardonable pride, "and I want it tried on to

Mary."

"Really, Miss Scudder, this ought to be kept for _her_ wedding-dress,"

said Miss Prissy, as she delightedly bustled about the congenial task.

"I was up to Miss Marvyn's, a-working, last week," she said, as she

threw the dress over Mary's head, "and she said that James expected to

make his fortune in that voyage, and come home and settle down."

Mary's fair head emerged from the rustling folds of the brocade, her

cheeks crimson as one of the moss-roses,--while her mother's face assumed

a severe gravity, as she remarked that she believed James had been much

pleased with Jane Spencer, and that, for her part, she should be very

glad, when he came home, if he could marry such a steady, sensible girl,

and settle down to a useful, Christian life.

"Ah, yes,--just so,--a very excellent idea, certainly," said Miss

Prissy. "It wants a little taken in here on the shoulders, and a

little under the arms. The biases are all right; the sleeves will want

altering, Miss Scudder. I hope you will have a hot iron ready for

pressing."

Mrs. Scudder rose immediately, to see the command obeyed; and as her

back was turned, Miss Prissy went on in a low tone,--

"Now, _I_, for my part, don't think there's a word of truth in that

story about James Marvyn and Jane Spencer; for I was down there at work

one day when he called, and I _know_ there couldn't have been anything

between them,--besides, Miss Spencer, her mother, told me there

wasn't.--There, Miss Scudder, you see that is a good fit. It's

astonishing how near it comes to fitting, just as it was. I didn't think

Mary was so near what you were, when you were a girl, Miss Scudder. The

other day, when I was up to General Wilcox's, the General he was in the

room when I was a-trying on Miss Wilcox's cherry velvet, and she was

asking couldn't I come this week for her, and I mentioned I was coming

to Miss Scudder, and the General says he,--'I used to know her when she

was a girl. I tell you, she was one of the handsomest girls in Newport,

by George!' says he. And says I,--'General, you ought to see her

daughter.' And the General,--you know his jolly way,--he laughed, and

says he,--'If she is as handsome as her mother was, I don't want to see

her,' says he. 'I tell you, wife,' says he, 'I but just missed falling

in love with Katy Stephens.'"

"I could have told her more than that," said Mrs. Scudder, with a

flash of her old coquette girlhood for a moment lighting her eyes and

straightening her lithe form. "I guess, if I should show a letter he

wrote me once----But what am I talking about?" she said, suddenly

stiffening back into a sensible woman. "Miss Prissy, do you think it

will be necessary to cut it off at the bottom? It seems a pity to cut

such rich silk."

"So it does, I declare. Well, I believe it will do to turn it up."

"I depend on you to put it a little into modern fashion, you know," said

Mrs. Scudder. "It is many a year, you know, since it was made."

"Oh, never you fear! You leave all that to me," said Miss Prissy. "Now,

there never was anything so lucky as, that, just before all these

wedding-dresses had to be fixed, I got a letter from my sister Martha,

that works for all the first families of Boston. And Martha she is

really unusually privileged, because she works for Miss Cranch, and Miss

Cranch gets letters from Miss Adams,--you know Mr. Adams is Ambassador

now at the Court of St. James, and Miss Adams writes home all the

particulars about the court-dresses; and Martha she heard one of the

letters read, and she told Miss Cranch that she would give the best

five-pound-note she had, if she could just copy that description to send

to Prissy. Well, Miss Cranch let her do it, and I've got a copy of the

letter here in my work-pocket. I read it up to Miss General Wilcox's,

and to Major Seaforth's, and I'll read it to you."

Mrs. Katy Scudder was a born subject of a crown, and, though now a

republican matron, had not outlived the reverence, from childhood

implanted, for the high and stately doings of courts, lords, ladies,

queens, and princesses, and therefore it was not without some awe that

she saw Miss Prissy produce from her little black work-bag the well-worn

epistle.

"Here it is," said Miss Prissy, at last. "I only copied out the parts

about being presented at Court. She says:--

"'One is obliged here to attend the circles of the Queen, which are held

once a fortnight; and what renders it very expensive is, that you cannot

go twice in the same dress, and a court-dress you cannot make use of

elsewhere. I directed my mantua-maker to let my dress be elegant, but

plain as I could possibly appear with decency. Accordingly, it is white

lutestring, covered and full-trimmed with white crape, festooned with

lilac ribbon and mock point-lace, over a hoop of enormous size. There

is only a narrow train, about three yards in length to the gown-waist,

which is put into a ribbon on the left side,--the Queen only having her

train borne. Ruffled cuffs for married ladies,--treble lace ruffles, a

very dress cap with long lace lappets, two white plumes, and a blonde

lace handkerchief. This is my rigging.'"

Miss Prissy here stopped to adjust her spectacles. Her audience

expressed a breathless interest.

"You see," she said, "I used to know her when she was Nabby Smith. She

was Parson Smith's daughter, at Weymouth, and as handsome a girl as

ever I wanted to see,--just as graceful as a sweet-brier bush. I don't

believe any of those English ladies looked one bit better than she did.

She was always a master-hand at writing. Everything she writes about,

she puts it right before you. You feel as if you'd been there. Now, here

she goes on to tell about her daughter's dress. She says:--

"'My head is dressed for St. James's, and in my opinion looks very

tasty. Whilst my daughter is undergoing the same operation, I set myself

down composedly to write you a few lines. Well, methinks I hear Betsey

and Lucy say, "What is cousin's dress?" _White_, my dear girls, like

your aunt's, only differently trimmed and ornamented,--her train being

wholly of white crape, and trimmed with white ribbon; the petticoat,

which is the most showy part of the dress, covered and drawn up in

what are called festoons, with light wreaths of beautiful flowers; the

sleeves, white crape drawn over the silk, with a row of lace round the

sleeve near the shoulder, another half-way down the arm, and a third

upon the top of the ruffle,--a little stuck between,--a kind of hat-cap

with three large feathers and a bunch of flowers,--a wreath of flowers

on the hair.'"

Miss Prissy concluded this relishing description with a little smack of

the lips, such as people sometimes give when reading things that are

particularly to their taste.

"Now, I was a-thinking," she added, "that it would be an excellent way

to trim Mary's sleeves,--three rows of lace, with a sprig to each row."

All this while, our Mary, with her white short-gown and blue

stuff-petticoat, her shining pale brown hair and serious large blue

eyes, sat innocently looking first at her mother, then at Miss Prissy,

and then at the finery.

We do not claim for her any superhuman exemption from girlish feelings.

She was innocently dazzled with the vision of courtly halls and princely

splendors, and thought Mrs. Adams's descriptions almost a perfect

realization of things she had read in "Sir Charles Grandison." If her

mother thought it right and proper she should be dressed and made fine,

she was glad of it; only there came a heavy, leaden feeling in her

little heart, which she did not understand, but we who know womankind

will translate for you: it was, that a certain pair of dark eyes would

not see her after she was dressed; and so, after all, what was the use

of looking pretty?