been bravely manned an hour ago, and could do nothing; and that as no
man would be so desperate as to attempt to wade off with a rope, and
establish a communication with the shore, there was nothing left to try;
when I noticed that some new sensation moved the people on the beach,
and saw them part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.
I ran to him, as well as I know, to repeat my appeal for help. But
distracted though I was by a sight so new to me and terrible, the
determination in his face, and his look out to sea, awoke me to a
knowledge of his danger. I held him back with both arms, and implored
the men with whom I had been speaking not to listen to him, not to do
murder, not to let him stir from off that sand.
Another cry arose from the shore; and, looking towards the wreck, we saw
the cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men,
and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast.
Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the
calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the
people present, I might as hopefully have intreated the wind. "Mas'r
Davy," he said cheerily, grasping me by both hands, "if my time is
come, 'tis come. If't an't, I'll bide it. Lord above bless you, and
bless all! Mates, make me ready! I'm a going off!"
I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the people
around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived, that he was
bent on going, with help or without, and that I should endanger the
precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I
don't know what I answered, or what they rejoined, but I saw hurry on
the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there,
and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then I
saw him standing alone, in a seaman's frock and trowsers, a rope in
his hand or slung to his wrist, another round his body; and several of
the best men holding, at a little distance, to the latter, which he
laid out himself, slack upon the shore, at his feet.
The wreck, even to my unpracticed eye, was breaking up. I saw that she
was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary man upon
the mast hung by a thread. Still he clung to it.
Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended
breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great
retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the
rope, which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and
in a moment was buffeting with the water--rising with the hills,
falling with valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again to land.
They hauled in hastily.
He was hurt. I saw blood on his face from where I stood; but he took
no thought of that. He seemed hurriedly to give them some directions
for leaving him more free, or so I judged from the motion of his
arm--and was gone, as before.
And now he made for the wreck--rising with the hills, falling with the
valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in towards the shore,
borne on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The distance
was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the strife deadly.
At length he neared the wreck. He was so near that with one more of
his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it,--when a high, green,
vast hillside of water, moving on shoreward from beyond the ship, he
seemed to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!
Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been
broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in.
Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very
feet--insensible, dead. He was carried to the nearest house; and, no
one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy, while every means of
restoration was tried; but he had been beaten to death by the great
wave, and his generous heart was stilled for ever.
--_From "David Copperfield," by Charles Dickens._
THE HAPPY VALLEY.
The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for the
residence of the Abyssinian princes was a spacious valley in the
kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of which the
summits overhang the middle part. The only passage by which it could
be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it has been
long disputed whether it was the work of Nature or of human industry.
[Illustration: Dr. Samuel Johnson.]
The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth,
which opened into the valley, was closed with gates of iron forged by
the artificers of ancient days, so massy that no man could, without
the help of engines, open or shut them.
From the mountains, on every side, rivulets descended, that filled all
the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the
middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every
fowl which Nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake
discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark cleft
of the mountain on the northern side, and fell, with dreadful noise,
from precipice to precipice, till it was heard no more.
The sides of the mountains were covered with trees. The banks of the
brooks were diversified with flowers. Every blast shook spices from
the rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground. All animals
that bite the grass or browse the shrub, whether wild or tame,
wandered in this extensive circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the
mountains which confined them.
On one part were flocks and herds feeding in the pastures; on another,
all the beasts of chase frisking in the lawns; the sprightly kid was
bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and
the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the diversities of the
world were brought together; the blessings of nature were collected,
and its evils extracted and excluded.
The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with the
necessaries of life; and all delights and superfluities were added at
the annual visit which the Emperor paid his children, when the iron
gate was opened to the sound of music, and during eight days every one
that resided in the valley was required to propose whatever might
contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of
attention, and lessen the tediousness of the time.
Every desire was immediately granted. All the artificers of pleasure
were called to gladden the festivity; the musicians exerted the power
of harmony, and the dancers showed their activity before the princes,
in hope that they should pass their lives in this blissful captivity,
to which those only were admitted whose performance was thought
capable of adding novelty to luxury.
Such was the appearance of security and delight which this retirement
afforded, that they to whom it was new always desired that it might be
perpetual; and as those on whom the iron gate had once closed were
never suffered to return, the effect of long experience could not be
known. Thus every year produced new schemes of delight and new
competitors for imprisonment.
* * * * *
Dr. Samuel Johnson's "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," from which this
selection is taken, was first published in 1759. "The late Mr.
Strahan, the printer, told me," says Boswell, "that Johnson wrote it,
so that with the profits he might defray the expenses of his mother's
funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left. He told Sir
Joshua Reynolds that he composed it in the evenings of one week, sent
it to the press in portions as it was written, and had never since
read it over. None of his writings have been so extensively diffused
over Europe, for it has been translated into most, if not all, of the
modern languages. This tale, with all the charms of oriental imagery,
and all the force and beauty of which the English language is capable,
leads us through the most important scenes of human life, and shows us
that this stage of our being is full of 'vanity and vexation of spirit.'"
The peculiarities of style which distinguish all of Johnson's writings
are well illustrated in this story. Notice the stately flow of
high-sounding words; the dignified formality of many of the
descriptive passages; and the richness and perfection which
characterize the production as a whole.
THE PASS OF KILLIECRANKIE.
John Græme of Claverhouse, whose title of Viscount Dundee had been
given him in reward for his cruelties to the Western Covenanters, was
the instigator and leader of a revolt of the Highland clans against
the government of William III. in Scotland. General Mackay, with his
loyal Scotch regiments, was sent out to suppress the uprising. But as
they climbed the pass of Killiecrankie, on the 27th of July, 1689,
Dundee charged them at the head of three thousand clansmen, and swept
them in headlong rout down the glen. His death in the moment of
victory broke, however, the only bond which held the Highlanders
together, and in a few weeks the host which had spread terror through
the Lowlands melted helplessly away.
The Græmes, or Grahams, were among the most noted of Scottish
families, and included some of the most distinguished men of the
country. Among them were Sir John the Græme, the faithful aid of Sir
William Wallace, who fell in the battle of Falkirk, 1298, and the
celebrated Marquis of Montrose, who died in 1650, and whose exploits
are immortalized in Scott's "Legend of Montrose."
In the following stirring verses from "The Lays of the Scottish
Cavaliers," by W. E. Aytoun, the fight at Killiecrankie is described,
presumably, by one of the adherents of Dundee. The title of the poem
in its complete form is "The Burial March of Dundee." Our selection
includes only so much as relates to the conflict in the pass.
On the heights of Killiecrankie
Yester-morn our army lay:
Slowly rose the mist in columns
From the river's broken way;
Hoarsely roared the swollen torrent,
And the pass was wrapt in gloom,
When the clansmen rose together
From their lair amidst the broom.
Then we belted on our tartans,
And our bonnets down we drew,
And we felt our broadswords' edges,
And we proved them to be true;
And we prayed the prayer of soldiers,
And we cried the gathering cry,
And we clasped the hands of kinsmen,
And we swore to do or die!
Then our leader rode before us
On his war horse black as night--
Well the Cameronian rebels
Knew that charger in the fight!--
And a cry of exultation
From the bearded warriors rose;
For we loved the house of Claver'se,
And we thought of good Montrose,
But he raised his hand for silence--
"Soldiers! I have sworn a vow:
Ere the evening star shall glisten
On Schehallion's lofty brow,
Either we shall rest in triumph,
Or another of the Græmes
Shall have died in battle harness
For his country and King James!
Think upon the Royal Martyr--
Think of what his race endure--
Think of him whom butchers murdered
On the field of Magus Muir:--
By his sacred blood I charge ye,
By the ruined hearth and shrine--
By the blighted hopes of Scotland,
By your injuries and mine--
Strike this day as if the anvil
Lay beneath your blows the while,
Be they Covenanting traitors,
Or the brood of false Argyle!
Strike! and drive the trembling rebels
Backwards o'er the stormy Forth;
Let them tell their pale Convention
How they fared within the North.
Let them tell that Highland honor
Is not to be bought or sold,
That we scorn their prince's anger
As we loathe his foreign gold.
Strike! and when the fight is over,
If ye look in vain for me,
Where the dead are lying thickest,
Search for him that was Dundee!"
Loudly then the hills reëchoed
With our answer to his call,
But a deeper echo sounded
In the bosoms of us all.
For the lands of wide Breadalbane
Not a man who heard him speak
Would that day have left the battle.
Burning eye and flushing cheek
Told the clansmen's fierce emotion,
And they harder drew their breath;
For their souls were strong within them,
Stronger than the grasp of death.
Soon we heard a challenge trumpet
Sounding in the pass below,
And the distant tramp of horses,
And the voices of the foe:
Down we crouched amid the bracken,
Till the Lowland ranks drew near,
Panting like the hounds in summer,
When they scent the stately deer.
From the dark defile emerging,
Next we saw the squadrons come,
Leslie's foot and Leven's troopers
Marching to the tuck of drum;
Through the scattered wood of birches,
O'er the broken ground and heath,
Wound the long battalion slowly,
Till they gained the field beneath;
Then we bounded from our covert.--
Judge how looked the Saxons then,
When they saw the rugged mountain
Start to life with armèd men!
Like a tempest down the ridges
Swept the hurricane of steel,
Rose the slogan of Macdonald,--
Flashed the broadsword of Lochiell!
Vainly sped the withering volley
'Mongst the foremost of our band--
On we poured until we met them,
Foot to foot, and hand to hand.
Horse and man went down like driftwood
When the floods are black at Yule,
And their carcasses are whirling
In the Garry's deepest pool.
Horse and man went down before us--
Living foe there tarried none
On the field of Killiecrankie,
When that stubborn fight was done!
And the evening star was shining
On Schehallion's distant head,
When we wiped our bloody broadswords,
And returned to count the dead.
There we found him gashed and gory,
Stretched upon the cumbered plain,
As he told us where to seek him,
In the thickest of the slain.
And a smile was on his visage,
For within his dying ear
Pealed the joyful note of triumph,
And the clansmen's clamorous cheer:
So, amidst the battle's thunder,
Shot, and steel, and scorching flame,
In the glory of his manhood
Passed the spirit of the Græme!
SUMMER RAIN.
It is a long time since much rain fell. The ground is a little dry, the
road is a good deal dusty. The garden bakes. Transplanted trees are
thirsty. Wheels are shrinking and tires are looking dangerous. Men
speculate on the clouds; they begin to calculate how long it will be, if
no rain falls, before the potatoes will suffer; the oats, the grass, the
corn--everything! To be sure, nothing is yet suffering; but then--
[Illustration: Henry Ward Beecher.]
Rain, rain, rain! All day, all night, steady raining. Will it never
stop? The hay is out and spoiling. The rain washes the garden. All
things have drunk their fill. The springs revive, the meadows are wet;
the rivers run discolored with soil from every hill.
Smoking cattle reek under the sheds. Hens, and fowl in general,
shelter and plume. The sky is leaden. The clouds are full yet. The
long fleece covers the mountains. The hills are capped in white. The
air is full of moisture.
The wind roars down the chimney. The birds are silent. No insects
chirp. Closets smell moldy. The barometer is clogged. We thump it, but
it will not get up. It seems to have an understanding with the
weather. The trees drip, shoes are muddy, carriage and wagon are
splashed with dirt. Paths are soft.
So it is. When it is clear we want rain, and when it rains we wish it
would shine. But after all, how lucky for grumblers that they are not
allowed to meddle with the weather, and that it is put above their
reach. What a scrambling, selfish, mischief-making time we should
have, if men undertook to parcel out the seasons and the weather
according to their several humors or interests!
If one will but look for enjoyment, how much there is in every change
of weather. The formation of clouds--the various signs and signals,
the uncertain wheeling and marching of the fleecy cohorts, the shades
of light and gray in the broken heavens--all have their pleasure to an
observant eye. Then come the wind gust, the distant dark cloud, the
occasional fiery streak shot down through it, the run and hurry of men
whose work may suffer!
Indeed, sir, your humble servant, even, was stirred up on the day
after Fourth of July. The grass in the old orchard was not my best.
Indeed, we grumbled at it considerably while it was yet standing. But
being cut and the rain threatening it, one would have thought it gold
by the nimble way in which we tried to save it!
Blessed be horse rakes! Once, half a dozen men with half a dozen rakes
would have gone whisking up and down, thrusting out and pulling in the
long-handled rakes with slow and laborious progress. But no more of
that. See friend Turner, mounted on the wheeled horse rake, riding
about as if for pleasure. It is easy times when _men_ ride and
_horses_ rake.
Meanwhile, the clouds come bowling noiselessly through the air, and
spit here and there a drop preliminary. Well, if one thing suffers,
another gains! See how the leaves are washed; the grass drinks, even
drinks; the garden drinks; everything drinks.
It is our opinion that everything except man is laughing and
rejoicing. Trees shake their leaves with a softer sound. Rocks look
moist and soft, at least where the moss grows. Even the solitary old
pine tree chords his harp, and sings soft and low melodies with
plaintive undulations!
A good summer storm is a rain of riches. If gold and silver rattled
down from the clouds, they could hardly enrich the land so much as
soft, long rains. Every drop is silver going to the mint. The roots
are machinery, and, catching the willing drops, they array them,
refine them, roll them, stamp them, and turn them out coined berries,
apples, grains, and grasses!
When the heavens send clouds and they bank up the horizon, be sure
they have hidden gold in them. All the mountains of California are not
so rich as are the soft mines of heaven, that send down treasures upon
man without tasking him, and pour riches upon his field without spade
or pickax--without his search or notice.
Well, let it rain, then! No matter if the journey is delayed, the
picnic spoiled, the visit adjourned. Blessed be rain--and rain in
summer. And blessed be he who watereth the earth and enricheth it for
man and beast.
--_Henry Ward Beecher._
LIFE IN THE BACKWOODS.
[Illustration: William Dean Howells.]
It would not be easy to say where or when the first log cabin was built,
but it is safe to say that it was somewhere in the English colonies of
North America, and it is certain that it became the type of the
settler's house throughout the whole middle west. It may be called the
American house, the Western house, the Ohio house. Hardly any other
house was built for a hundred years by the men who were clearing the
land for the stately mansions of our day. As long as the primeval
forests stood, the log cabin remained the woodsman's home; and not fifty
years ago, I saw log cabins newly built in one of the richest and most
prosperous regions of Ohio. They were, to be sure, log cabins of a finer
pattern than the first settler reared. They were of logs handsomely
shaped with the broadax; the joints between the logs were plastered with
mortar; the chimney at the end was of stone; the roof was shingled, the
windows were of glass, and the door was solid and well hung. But
throughout that region there were many log cabins, mostly sunk to the
uses of stables and corn cribs, of the kind that the borderers built in
the times of the Indian War, from 1750 to 1800. They were framed of the
round logs untouched by the ax except for the notches at the ends where
they were fitted into one another; the chimney was of small sticks stuck
together with mud, and was as frail as a barn swallow's nest; the walls
were stuffed with moss, plastered with clay; the floor was of rough
boards called puncheons, riven from the block with a heavy knife; the
roof was of clapboards laid loosely on the rafters, and held in place
with logs fastened athwart them.
[Illustration: Log Cabin.]
There is a delightful account of such a log cabin by John S. Williams,
whose father settled in the woods of Belmont County in 1800. "Our
cabin," he says, "had been raised, covered, part of the cracks
chinked, and part of the floor laid, when we moved in on Christmas
day. There had not been a stick cut except in building the cabin,
which was so high from the ground that a bear, wolf, panther, or any
animal less in size than a cow could enter without even a squeeze....
The green ash puncheons had shrunk so as to leave cracks in the floor
and doors from one to two inches wide. At both the doors we had high,
unsteady, and sometimes icy steps, made by piling the logs cut out of
the walls, for the doors and the window, if it could be called a
window, when perhaps it was the largest spot in the top, bottom, or
sides of the cabin where the wind could _not_ enter. It was made by
sawing out a log, and placing sticks across and then by pasting an
old newspaper over the hole, and applying hog's lard, we had a kind of
glazing which shed a most beautiful and mellow light across the cabin
when the sun shone on it. All other light entered at the doors,
cracks, and chimneys. Our cabin was twenty-four by eighteen. The west
end was occupied by two beds, the center of each side by a door.... On
the opposite side of the window, made of clapboards, supported on pins
driven into the walls, were our shelves. On these shelves my sister
displayed in simple order, a host of pewter plates, and dishes and
spoons, scoured and bright.... Our chimney occupied most of the east
end; with pots and kettles opposite the window, under the shelves, a
gun on hooks over the north door, four split-bottomed chairs, three
three-legged stools, and a small eight by ten looking-glass sloped
from the wall over a large towel and comb case.... We got a roof laid
over head as soon as possible, but it was laid of loose clapboards
split from a red-oak, and a cat might have shaken every board in our
ceiling.... We made two kinds of furniture. One kind was of hickory
bark, with the outside shaved off. This we would take off all around
the tree, the size of which would determine the caliber of our box.
Into one end we would place a flat piece of bark or puncheon, cut
round to fit in the bark, which stood on end the same as when on the
tree.... A much finer article was made of slippery-elm bark, shaved
smooth, with the inside out, bent round and sewed together, where the
end of the hoop or main bark lapped over.... This was the finest
furniture in a lady's dressing room," and such a cabin and its
appointments were splendor and luxury beside those of the very
earliest pioneers, and many of the latest. The Williamses were
Quakers, and the mother was recently from England; they were of far
gentler breeding and finer tastes than most of their neighbors, who
had been backwoodsmen for generations.
When the first settlers broke the silence of the woods with the stroke
of their axes, and hewed out a space for their cabins and their
fields, they inclosed their homes with a high stockade of logs, for
defense against the Indians; or if they built their cabins outside the
wooden walls of their stronghold, they always expected to flee to it
at the first alarm, and to stand siege within it.
The Indians had no cannon, and the logs of the stockade were proof
against their rifles; if a breach was made, there was still the
blockhouse left, the citadel of every little fort. This was heavily
built, and pierced with loopholes for the riflemen within, whose wives
ran bullets for them at its mighty hearth, and who kept the savage foe
from its sides by firing down upon them through the projecting timbers
of its upper story. But in many a fearful siege the Indians set the
roof ablaze with arrows wrapped in burning tow, and then the fight
became desperate indeed. After the Indian war ended, the stockade was
no longer needed, and the settlers had only the wild beasts to contend
with, and those constant enemies of the poor in all ages and
conditions,--hunger and cold.
Winter after winter, the Williamses heard the wolves howling round
them in the woods, and this music was familiar to the ears of all the
Ohio pioneers, who trusted their rifles for both the safety and
support of their families. They deadened the trees around them by
girdling them with the ax, and planted the spaces between the leafless
trunks with corn and beans and pumpkins. These were their necessaries,
but they had an occasional luxury in the wild honey from the hollow of
a bee tree when the bears had not got at it.