Low in the heather blooms
Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be;
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling place:
Oh to abide in the desert with thee!
--_James Hogg._
THE MYSTERY OF THE TADPOLE.
A blade of grass is a mystery, if men would but distill it out. When my
learned friend Dr. Syntax, glancing round my workroom, observed a vase
full of tadpoles, he asked me in a tone of sniffling superiority: "Do
you really mean to say you find any interest in those little beasts?"
[Illustration: George Henry Lewes.]
"As much as you find in books," I answered, with some energy.
"H'm," grunted Syntax.
Very absurd isn't it? But we all have our hobbies. I can pass a
bookstall on which I perceive that the ignorance of the bookseller
permits him to exhibit now and then rare editions of valuable books at
almost no price at all. The sight gives me no thrill--it does not even
cause me to slacken my pace.
But I can't so easily pass a pond in which I see a shoal of tadpoles
swimming about, as ignorant of their own value as the bookseller is of
his books. I may walk on, but the sight has sent a slight electric
shock through me.
"Why, sir," I said to my learned friend, "there is more to me in the
_tail_ of one of those tadpoles than in all the musty old volumes you
so much delight to pick up. But I won't thrash your dog unless you
thrash mine."
"Why, what on earth can you do with the tail?"
[Illustration: Tadpoles in different Stages of Development.]
"Do with it? Study it, experiment on it, put it under the microscope,
and day by day watch the growth of its various parts. At first it is
little more than a mass of cells. Then I notice that these cells begin
to take a definite shape, and blood vessels appear in them. Then the
muscles begin to appear."
"Very interesting, I dare say."
"You don't seem to think so, by your tone. But look in this vase: here
are several tadpoles with the most apologetic of tails--mere stumps,
in fact. I cut them off nine days ago."
"Will they grow again?"
"Perfectly; for, although the frog dispenses with a tail almost as
soon as he reaches the frog form, the tadpole needs his tail to swim
with; and when by any accident he loses it, Nature kindly supplies him
with another."
"Yes, yes," added Syntax, glad to feel himself once more among things
of which he knew something; "just like the lobster or the crab, you
know. They tear off their legs and arms in a most reckless way, and
yet they always grow new ones again."
"Would you like to know what has become of the tails which I cut off
from these fellows?"
"Aren't they dead?"
"Not at all. Alive and kicking."
"Alive after nine days? Oh! oh!"
"Here they are, in this glass. It is exactly nine days since they were
cut off, and I have been watching them daily under the microscope. I
assure you that I have seen them _grow_, not _larger_, indeed, but
develop more and more, muscle fibers appearing each day where before
there were none at all."
"Come, now, you are trying to see what a fool you can make of me."
"I am perfectly serious. The discovery is none of mine. It was made by
M. Vulpian in Paris. He says that the tails live many days--as many as
eighteen in one instance; but I have never kept mine alive more than
eleven. He says, moreover, that they not only grow, as I have said,
but that they seem to possess feeling, for they twist about with a
rapid swimming movement when irritated."
"Well, but I say, how _could_ they live when separated from the body?
Our arms or legs don't live; the lobster's legs don't live."
"Quite true. But in those cases we have limbs of a complex
organization, which require a complex apparatus in order to sustain
their life. They must have blood, the blood must circulate."
"Stop, stop! I don't want to understand why our arms can't live apart
from our bodies. They don't. The fact is enough for me. I want to know
why the tail of a tadpole can live apart from the body."
"It _can_. Is not the fact enough for you in that case also? Well, I
was going to tell you the reason. The tail will live apart from the
body only so long as it retains its early immature form. If you cut it
off from a tadpole which is old enough to have lost its external gills
a week or more, the tail will _not_ live more than three or four days.
And every tail will die as soon as it reaches the point in its
development which requires the circulation of the blood as a necessary
condition."
"But where does it get food?"
"That is more than I can say. I don't know that it wants food. You
know that reptiles can live without food a wonderful length of time."
"Really, I begin to think there is more in these little beasts than I
ever dreamed of. But it must take a great deal of study to get at
these facts."
"Not more than to get at any of the other open secrets of Nature. But,
since you are interested, look at these tails as the tadpoles come
bobbing against the side of the glass. Do you see how they are covered
with little white spots?"
"No."
"Look closer. All over the tail there are tiny, cotton-like spots.
Take a lens, if your eye isn't sharp enough. There, now you see them."
"Yes; I see a sort of _fluff_ scattered about."
"That fluff is an immense colony of parasites. Let us place the
tadpole under the microscope, and you will see each spot turn out to
be a multitude of elegant and active animals, having bodies not unlike
a crystal goblet supported on an extremely long and flexible stem, and
having round their rim or mouth a range of long, delicate hairs, the
motion of which gives a wheel-like aspect, and makes an eddy in the
water which brings food to the animal."
"This is really interesting! How active they are! How they shrink up,
and then, unwinding their twisted stems, expand again! What's the name
of this thing?"
"_Vorticella_. It may be found growing on water fleas, plants, decayed
wood, or these tadpoles. People who study the animalcules are very
fond of this Vorticella."
"Well, I never could have believed such a patch of fluff could turn
out a sight like this: I could watch it for an hour. But what are
those small yellowish things sticking on the side of these parasites?"
"Those, my dear Syntax, are also parasites."
"What, parasites living on parasites?"
"Why not? Nature is economical. Don't you live on beef, and mutton,
and fish? Don't these beeves, muttons, and fishes live on vegetables
and animals? Don't the vegetables and animals live on other organic
matters? Eat and be eaten, is one law: live and let live, is another."
[Illustration: The Tadpole's last Stage.]
The learned Doctor remained thoughtful; then he screwed up one side of
his face into the most frightful wrinkles, while with the eye of the
other he resumed his examination of the Vorticella.
--_George Henry Lewes._
[Illustration:
From the Painting by Rosa Bonheur. Engraved by Horace Baker.
The Lions.
]
THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS.
King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,
And one day, as his lions fought, sat looking on the court;
The nobles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride,
And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he
sighed:
And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show,--
Valor and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.
[Illustration: Leigh Hunt.]
Ramped and roared the lions, with horrid laughing jaws;
They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their
paws;
With wallowing might and stifled roar, they rolled on one another,
Till all the pit, with sand and mane, was in a thunderous smother;
The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air:
Said Francis, then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than
there."
De Lorge's love o'erheard the king, a beauteous, lively dame,
With smiling lips and sharp bright eyes, which always seemed the
same;
She thought, "The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be,
He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me;
King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine;
I'll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine."
She dropped her glove, to prove his love; then looked at him, and
smiled;
He bowed, and in a moment leaped among the lions wild:
The leap was quick, return was quick, he soon regained the place,
Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face.
"In faith," cried Francis, "rightly done!" and he rose from where he
sat;
"No love," quoth he, "but vanity sets love a task like that."
--_Leigh Hunt._
TRUE GROWTH.
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing like an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere;
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night--
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.
--_Ben Jonson._
THE SHIPWRECK.
I.
Having made up my mind to go down to Yarmouth, I went round to the
coach office and took the box seat on the mail. In the evening I
started, by that conveyance, down the road.
"Don't you think that a very remarkable sky?" I asked the coachman, in
the first stage out of London. "I don't remember to have seen one like
it."
"Nor I--not equal to it," he replied. "That's wind, sir; there'll be
mischief done at sea, I expect before long."
[Illustration: Charles Dickens.]
It was a murky confusion--here and there blotted with a color like the
color of the smoke from damp fuel--of flying clouds tossed up into
most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than
there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in
the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as
if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way
and were frightened. There had been wind all day; and it was rising
then, with an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much
increased, and the sky was more overcast, and it blew harder.
But as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely
overspreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow harder
and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face
the wind. Many times in the dark part of the night (it was then late
in September, when the nights were not short) the leaders turned
about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often in apprehension that
the coach would be blown over.
When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been in Yarmouth
when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never known the
like of this, or anything approaching to it. We came to Ipswich--very
late, having had to fight every inch of ground since we were ten miles
out of London; and found a cluster of people in the market place, who
had risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling chimneys.
Some of these, congregating about the innyard while we changed horses,
told us of great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church
tower and flung into a by-street, which they then blocked up. Others
had to tell of country people, coming in from neighboring villages,
who had seen great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole ricks
scattered about the roads and fields. Still there was no abatement in
the storm, but it blew harder.
As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which the
mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more
terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and
showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of
the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle
lashed its banks, and had its stress of little breakers setting
heavily towards us. When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on
the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like
glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings. When at last we
got into the town, the people came out to their doors, all aslant, and
with streaming hair, making a wonder of the mail that had come through
such a night.
I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea, staggering
along the street, which was strewn with sand and seaweed, and with
flying blotches of sea foam; afraid of falling slates and tiles; and
holding by people I met at angry corners. Coming near the beach, I
saw, not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking
behind buildings; some now and then braving the fury of the storm to
look away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get
zigzag back.
Joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were away
in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to think
might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for safety.
Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their heads as
they looked from water to sky, and muttering to one another;
shipowners excited and uneasy; children huddling together, and peering
into older faces; even stout mariners disturbed and anxious, leveling
their glasses at the sea from behind places of shelter, as if they
were surveying an enemy.
The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look
at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and
sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls
came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked
as if the least would engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back
with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out caves in the beach, as if
its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed
billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they
reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by
the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition
of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys,
undulating valleys (with a storm bird sometimes skimming through them)
were lifted up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach
with a booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as
made, to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place
away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings,
rose and fell; the clouds flew fast and thick; I seemed to see a
rending and upheaving of all nature.
Not finding my old friend, Ham, among the people whom this memorable
wind--for it is still remembered down there as the greatest ever known
to blow upon that coast--had brought together, I made my way to his
house. It was shut; and as no one answered to my knocking, I went by
back ways and by-lanes to the yard where he worked. I learned there
that he had gone to Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of ship
repairing in which his skill was required; but that he would be back
to-morrow morning in good time.
I went back to the inn; and when I had washed and dressed, and tried
to sleep, but in vain, it was five o'clock in the afternoon. I had not
sat five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the waiter, coming to
stir it as an excuse for talking, told me that two colliers had gone
down, with all hands, a few miles away; and that some other ships had
been seen laboring hard in the Roads, and trying in great distress to
keep off shore. "Mercy on them, and on all poor sailors," said he, "if
we had another night like the last!"
I was very much depressed in spirits, very solitary, and felt an
uneasiness in Ham's not being there, disproportionate to the occasion.
I was seriously affected, without knowing how much, by late events,
and my exposure to the fierce wind had confused me. There was that
jumble in my thoughts and recollections that I had lost the clear
arrangement of time and distance. Thus, if I had gone out into the
town, I should not have been surprised, I think, to encounter some one
who I knew must be then in London. So to speak, there was in these
respects a curious inattention in my mind. Yet it was busy, too, with
all the remembrances the place naturally awakened, and they were
particularly distinct and vivid.
In this state, the waiter's dismal intelligence about the ships
immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition, with my
uneasiness about Ham. I was persuaded that possibly he would attempt to
return from Lowestoft by sea, and be lost. This grew so strong with me,
that I resolved to go back to the yard before I took my dinner, and ask
the boat builder if he thought his attempting to return by sea at all
likely. If he gave me the least reason to think so, I would go over to
Lowestoft and prevent it by bringing him with me.
I hastily ordered my dinner, and went back to the yard. I was none too
soon; for the boat builder, with a lantern in his hand, was locking
the yard gate. He quite laughed when I asked him the question, and
said there was no fear; no man in his senses, or out of them, would
put off in such a gale of wind, least of all Ham Peggotty, who had
been born to seafaring.
I went back to the inn. The howl and roar, the rattling of the doors
and windows, the rumbling in the chimneys, the apparent rocking of the
very house that sheltered me, and the prodigious tumult of the sea,
were more fearful than in the morning. But there was now a great
darkness besides; and that invested the storm with new terrors, real
and fanciful.
I could not eat, I could not sit still, I could not continue steadfast
in anything. Something within me, faintly answering to the storm
without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a tumult in them.
Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running with thundering
sea, the storm and my uneasiness regarding Ham were always in the
foreground.
My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself
with a glass or two of wine. In vain. I fell into a dull slumber
before the fire, without losing my consciousness either of the uproar
out of doors or of the place in which I was. Both became overshadowed
by a new undefinable horror; and when I awoke--or rather when I shook
off the lethargy that bound me in my chair--my whole frame thrilled
with objectless and unintelligible fear.
I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to the
awful noises; looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire. At
length the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall
tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed.
It was reassuring, on such a night, to be told that some of the inn
servants had agreed together to sit up until morning. I went to bed,
exceedingly weary and heavy; but on my lying down all such sensations
vanished, as if by magic, and I was broad awake, with every sense
refined.
For hours I lay there, listening to the wind and water; imagining now
that I heard shrieks out at sea, now that I distinctly heard the
firing of signal guns, and now the fall of houses in the town. I got
up several times and looked out, but could see nothing except the
reflection in the window panes of the faint candle I had left burning,
and of my own haggard face looking in at me from the black void.
At length my restlessness attained to such a pitch, that I hurried on
my clothes, and went downstairs. In the large kitchen, where I dimly
saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams, the watchers
were clustered together, in various attitudes, about a table,
purposely moved away from the great chimney, and brought near the
door. A pretty girl who had her ears stopped with her apron, and her
eyes upon the door, screamed when I appeared, supposing me to be a
spirit; but the others had more presence of mind, and were glad of an
addition to their company. One man, referring to the topic they had
been discussing, asked me whether I thought the souls of the collier
crews who had gone down were out in the storm?
I remained there, I dare say two hours. There was a dark gloom in my
solitary chamber when I at length returned to it; but I was tired now,
and, getting into bed again, fell off a tower and down a precipice
into the depths of sleep. I have an impression that for a long time,
though I dreamed of being elsewhere and in a variety of scenes, it was
always blowing in my dream. At length I lost that feeble hold upon
reality, and was engaged with two dear friends, but who they were I
don't know, at the siege of some town in a roar of cannonading.
II.
The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant, that I could not
hear something I much desired to hear, until I made a great exertion,
and awoke. It was broad day--eight or nine o'clock; the storm raging,
in lieu of the batteries; and some one knocking and calling at my door.
"What is the matter?" I cried.
"A wreck! close by!"
I sprang out of bed, and asked what wreck?
[Illustration:
From the Painting by A. Marlon. Carbon by Braun, Clement & Co.
Engraved by Walter Aikman.
The Shipwreck.
]
"A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. Make
haste, sir, if you want to see her! Its thought she'll go to pieces
every moment."
The excited voice went clamoring along the staircase; and I wrapped
myself in my clothes as quickly as I could, and ran into the street.
Numbers of people were there before us, all running in one direction,
to the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good many, and soon
came facing the wild sea.
The wind might by this time have lulled a little, though not more
sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of had been diminished
by the silencing of half a dozen guns out of hundreds. But the sea,
having upon it the additional agitation of the whole night, was
infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last. Every
appearance it had then presented bore the expression of being
_swelled_; and the height to which the breakers rose, and, looking
over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in, in
interminable hosts, was most appalling.
In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in the
crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless attempts
to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I looked out to
sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the great
waves. A half-dressed boatman standing next me pointed with his bare
arm (a tattooed arrow on it, pointing in the same direction) to the
left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it, close in upon us!
One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and
lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all
that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat,--which she did without a
moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable,--beat the
side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being
made to cut this portion of the wreck away; for as the ship, which was
broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her
people at work with axes, especially one active figure, with long
curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great cry, which was
audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this
moment: the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach,
and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys,
into the boiling surge.
The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and a
wild confusion of broken cordage, flapping to and fro. The ship had
struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then lifted
in and struck again. I understood him to add that she was parting
amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for the rolling and beating
were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long. As he spoke,
there was another great cry of pity from the beach: four men arose
with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the
remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with the curling hair.
There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, like a
desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of her
deck, as she turned on her beam ends towards the shore, now nothing but
her keel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea, the
bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy men, was borne
towards us on the wind. Again we lost her, and again she rose. Two men
were gone. The agony on shore increased. Men groaned and clasped their
hands; women shrieked, and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly up
and down along the beach, crying for help where no help could be. I
found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom
I knew, not to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes.