But before she could finish he was by her side: "Because I love

you--love you, all that the book says, and a thousand times more.

Because if you love me we will live our own romance, and I doubt if we

cannot make our old woods as romantic as the forest of Arden. Will you

not say," he asked tenderly, "that there will be at least one pair of

true lovers there?"

I could not hear Nellie's answer: her head was so near his--on his

shoulder, in fact--that she whispered it in his ear. But a moment

after, pushing him from her with the old mischief sparkling from her

eyes, she said, "'Til frown and be perverse, and say thee nay, so thou

wilt woo,'" and looked a saucy challenge in his face.

"Naughty sprite!" he exclaimed, catching her in his arms and shutting

her mouth with kisses.

It was not long after, perhaps a year, that a happy bride and groom

might have been seen walking up the hemlock avenue arm in arm.

"Do you remember," she asked, smiling thoughtfully--"do you remember

the time I begged you to come home with me and be my pet?"

The young husband leaned down and said something the narrator did

not catch, but from the expression of his face it must have been very

spoony: with a bride such as that charming Nellie, how could he help

it?

Yes, she had brought him home. Mr. Archer had given the house with its

broad acres as a dowry to his daughter, and Nellie had desired that

the honeymoon should be spent in her "forest of Arden."

ITA ANIOL PROKOP.

JACK, THE REGULAR.

In the Bergen winter night, when the hickory fire is roaring,

Flickering streams of ruddy light on the folk before it pouring--

When the apples pass around, and the cider follows after,

And the well-worn jest is crowned by the hearers' hearty laughter--

When the cat is purring there, and the dog beside her dozing,

And within his easy-chair sits the grandsire old, reposing,--

Then they tell the story true to the children, hushed and eager,

How the two Van Valens slew, on a time, the Tory leaguer,

Jack, the Regular.

Near a hundred years ago, when the maddest of the Georges

Sent his troops to scatter woe on our hills and in our gorges,

Less we hated, less we feared, those he sent here to invade us

Than the neighbors with us reared who opposed us or betrayed us;

And amid those loyal knaves who rejoiced in our disasters,

As became the willing slaves of the worst of royal masters,

Stood John Berry, and he said that a regular commission

Set him at his comrades' head; so we called him, in derision,

"Jack, the Regular."

When he heard it--"Let them fling! Let the traitors make them merry

With the fact my gracious king deigns to make me Captain Berry.

I will scourge them for the sneer, for the venom that they carry;

I will shake their hearts with fear as the land around I harry:

They shall find the midnight raid waking them from fitful slumbers;

They shall find the ball and blade daily thinning out their numbers:

Barn in ashes, cattle slain, hearth on which there glows no ember,

Neatless plough and horseless wain; thus the rebels shall remember

Jack, the Regular!"

Well he kept his promise then with a fierce, relentless daring,

Fire to rooftrees, death to men, through the Bergen valleys bearing:

In the midnight deep and dark came his vengeance darker, deeper--

At the watch-dog's sudden bark woke in terror every sleeper;

Till at length the farmers brown, wasting time no more on tillage,

Swore those ruffians of the Crown, fiends of murder, fire and pillage,

Should be chased by every path to the dens where they had banded,

And no prayers should soften wrath when they caught the bloody-handed

Jack, the Regular.

One by one they slew his men: still the chief their chase evaded.

He had vanished from their ken, by the Fiend or Fortune aided--

Either fled to Powles Hoek, where the Briton yet commanded,

Or his stamping-ground forsook, waiting till the hunt disbanded;

So they checked pursuit at length, and returned to toil securely:

It was useless wasting strength on a purpose baffled surely.

But the two Van Valens swore, in a patriotic rapture,

_They_ would never give it o'er till they'd either kill or capture

Jack, the Regular.

Long they hunted through the wood, long they slept upon the hillside;

In the forest sought their food, drank when thirsty at the rill-side;

No exposure counted hard--theirs was hunting border-fashion:

They grew bearded like the pard, and their chase became a passion:

Even friends esteemed them mad, said their minds were out of balance,

Mourned the cruel fate and sad fallen on the poor Van Valens;

But they answered to it all, "Only wait our loud view-holloa

When the prey shall to us fall, for to death we mean to follow

Jack, the Regular."

Hunted they from Tenavlieon to where the Hudson presses

To the base of traprocks high; through Moonachie's damp recesses;

Down as far as Bergen Hill; by the Ramapo and Drochy,

Overproek and Pellum Kill--meadows flat and hilltops rocky--

Till at last the brothers stood where the road from New Barbadoes,

At the English Neighborhood, slants toward the Palisadoes;

Still to find the prey they sought left no sign for hunter eager:

Followed steady, not yet caught, was the skulking, fox-like leaguer

Jack, the Regular.

Who are they that yonder creep by those bleak rocks in the distance,

Like the figures born in sleep, called by slumber to existence?--

Tories doubtless from below, from the Hoek, sent out for spying.

"No! the foremost is our foe--he so long before us flying!

Now he spies us! see him start! wave his kerchief like a banner!

Lay his left hand on his heart in a proud, insulting manner.

Well he knows that distant spot's past our ball, his low scorn flinging.

If you cannot feel the shot, you shall hear the firelock's ringing,

Jack, the Regular!"

Ha! he falls! An ambuscade? 'Twas impossible to strike him!

Are there Tories in the glade? Such a trick is very like him.

See! his comrade by him kneels, turning him in terror over,

Then takes nimbly to his heels. Have they really slain the rover?

It is worth some risk to know; so, with firelocks poised and ready,

Up the sloping hills they go, with a quick lookout and steady.

Dead! The random shot had struck, to the heart had pierced the Tory--

Vengeance seconded by luck! Lies there, cold and stiff and gory,

Jack, the Regular.

"Jack, the Regular, is dead! Honor to the man who slew him!"

So the Bergen farmers said as they crowded round to view him;

For the wretch that lay there slain had with wickedness unbending

To their roofs brought fiery rain, to their kinsfolk woeful ending.

Not a mother but had prest, in a sudden pang of fearing,

Sobbing darlings to her breast when his name had smote her hearing;

Not a wife that did not feel terror when the words were uttered;

Not a man but chilled to steel when the hated sounds he muttered--

Jack, the Regular.

Bloody in his work was he, in his purpose iron-hearted--

Gentle pity could not be when the pitiless had parted.

So, the corse in wagon thrown, with no decent cover o'er it--

Jeers its funeral rites alone--into Hackensack they bore it,

'Mid the clanging of the bells in the old Brick Church's steeple,

And the hooting and the yells of the gladdened, maddened people.

Some they rode and some they ran by the wagon where it rumbled,

Scoffing at the lifeless man, all elate that death had humbled

Jack, the Regular.

Thus within the winter night, when the hickory fire is roaring,

Flickering streams of ruddy light on the folk before it pouring--

When the apples pass around, and the cider follows after,

And the well-worn jest is crowned by the hearers' hearty laughter--

When the cat is purring there, and the dog beside her dozing,

And within his easy-chair sits the grandsire old, reposing,--

Then they tell the story true to the children, hushed and eager,

the two Van Valens slew, on a time, the Tory leaguer,

Jack, the Regular.

THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH.

OBSERVATIONS AND ADVENTURES IN SUBMARINE DIVING.

[Greek: --liphon

eponumon te reuma kai petraerephae

autoktit' antra.]--AESCHYLUS: _Prometheus Bound_.

Did you ever pause before a calm, bright little pool in the woods, and

look steadily at the picture it presents, without feeling as if you

had peeped into another world? Every outline is preserved, every tint

is freshened and purified, in the cool, glimmering reflection. There

is a grace and a softness in the prismatic lymph that give a new form

and color to the common and familiar objects it has printed in its

still, pellucid depths. Every little basin of clear water by the

roadside is a magic mirror, and transforms all that it encloses. There

is a vastness of depth, too, in that concave hemisphere, through

which the vision sinks like a falling star, that excites and fills the

imagination. What it shows is only a shadow, but all things seen are

mere shadows painted on the retina, and you have, at such times,

a realistic sense of the beautiful and bold imagery which calls a

favorite fountain of the East the Eye of the Desert.

The alluring softness of this mimic world increases to sublimity when,

instead of some rocky basin, dripping with mossy emeralds and coral

berries, you look upon the deep crystalline sea. Each mates to its

kind. This does not gather its imagery from gray, mossy rock or

pendent leaf or flower, but draws into its enfolding arms the wide

vault of the cerulean sky. The richness of the majestic azure is

deepened by that magnificent marriage. The pale blue is darkened to

violet. Far through the ever-varying surface of the curious gelatinous

liquid breaks the phosphorescence, sprinkled into innumerable lights

and cross-lights. As you look upon those endless pastures thought is

quickened with the conception of their innumerable phases of vitality.

The floating weed, whose meshes measure the spaces of continents and

archipelagoes, is everywhere instinct with animal and vegetable life.

The builder coral, glimmering in its softer parts with delicate hues

and tints, throws up its stony barrier through a thousand miles of

length and a third as much in breadth, fringing the continents with

bays and sounds and atoll islands like fairy rings of the sea.

Animate flowers--sea-nettles, sea anemones, plumularia, campanularia,

hydropores, confervae, oscillatoria, bryozoa--people the great waters.

Sea-urchins, star-fish, sea-eggs, combative gymnoti, polypes, struggle

and thrive with ever-renewing change of color; gelatinous worms

that shine like stars cling to every weed; glimmering animalcules,

phosphorescent medusae, the very deep itself is vivid with sparkle

and corruscation of electric fire. So through every scale, from the

zoophyte to the warm-blooded whale, the sea teems with life, out of

which fewer links have been dropped than from sub-aërial life. It is a

matter for curious speculation that the missing species belong not to

the lower subsidiary genera, as in terrene animals, but to the

highest types of marine life. In the quarries of Lyme Regis, among the

accumulations of a sea of the Liassic period, lay the huge skeleton of

the Ichthyosaurus, a warm-blooded marine existence, with huge saucer

eyes of singular telescopic power, that gleamed radiant "with the

eyelids of the morning," "by whose neesings alight doth shine"--the

true leviathan of Job. In the same extinct sea is found the skeleton

of the Plesiosaurus, a marine lizard of equal size, and warm-blooded,

whose swan-like neck and body graced the serene seas of the

pre-adamite world. Another was that of the Pterodactyl, the antique

aragon, a winged fish. The task of sustaining these existences was too

great for old Ocean, and the monsters dropped from the upper end of

the chain into the encrusting mud, the petrified symbols of failure.

So one day man may drop into the limbo of vanities, among the

abandoned tools in the Creator's workshop.

But, however high or low the degree in the scale, one distinguishing

feature marks the vital creation in vegetable or animal--an

intelligence capable of adjusting itself to the elements about it, and

electing its food. The sunflower, even, does not follow the sun by a

mechanical law, but, growing by a fair, bright sheet of water, looks

as constantly at that shining surface for the beloved light as

ever did the fabled Greek boy at his own image in the fountain.

The tendrils of the vine seek and choose their own support, and the

thirsty spongioles of the root find the nourishing veins of water.

Growth, says a naturalist, is the conscious motion of vegetable life.

But this theory of kinship, imperfect in the plant, becomes plain

and distinct in the animate creation. However far removed, the wild

dolphin at play and the painted bird in the air are cousins of man,

with a responsive chord of sympathy connecting them.

It is this feeling that sends an exhilarating thrill through the

submarine explorer when a school of porpoises frisk by with undulating

grace, the marine type of a group of frolicking children. It is the

instinctive perception that it is a pure enjoyment to the fish, the

healthy glow and laugh of submarine existence. But for that sense of

sympathetic nature the flying-fish, reeling porpoise and dolphin would

be no more to him than the skipping shuttle in a weaver's loom, the

dull impetus of senseless machinery. Self-generated motion is the

outward and visible sign of vitality--its wanton exercise the symbol

and expression of enjoyment. The poor philosopher who distinguished

humanity as singular in the exhibition of humor had surely never heard

a mocking-bird sing, watched a roguish crow or admired a school of

fish.

This keen appreciation of a kindred life in the sea has thrown its

charm over the poetry and religion of all races. Ocean us leaves the

o'erarching floods and rocky grottoes at the call of bound Prometheus;

Cyrene, with her nymphs, sits in the cool Peneus, where comes

Aristaeus mourning for his stolen bees; the Druid washed his

hedge-hyssop in the sacred water, and priestesses lived on coral reefs

visited by remote lovers in their sundown seas; Schiller's diver

goes into the purpling deep and sees the Sea-Horror reaching out its

hundred arms; the beautiful Undine is the vivid poetry of the sea.

Every fountain has its guardian saint or nymph, and to this day not

only the German peasant and benighted English boor thrill at the sight

of some nymph-guarded well, but the New Mexican Indian offers his rude

pottery in propitiation of the animate existence, the deity of the

purling spring.

* * * * *

"Der Taucher," for all the rhythm and music that clothes his luckless

plunge, was but a caitiff knight to some of our submarine adventurers.

A diver during the bay-fight in Mobile harbor had reason to apprehend

a more desperate encounter. A huge cuttle-fish, the marine monster of

Pliny and Victor Hugo, had been seen in the water. His tough,

sinuous, spidery arms, five fathoms long, wavered visibly in the blue

transparent gulf,

Und schaudernd dacht ich's--da kroch's heran,

Regte hundert Gelenke zugleich,

Will schnappen nach mir.

A harpoon was driven into the leathery, pulpy body of the monster, but

with no other effect than the sudden snapping of the inch line like

thread. It was subsequent to this that, as the diver stayed his steps

in the unsteady current, his staff was seized below. The water was

murky with the river-silt above the salt brine, and he could see

nothing, but after an effort the staff was rescued or released.

Curious to know what it was, he probed again, and the stick was

wrenched from his hand. With a thrill he recognized in such power the

monster of the sea, the devil-fish. He returned anxious, doubtful, but

resolute. Few like to be driven from a duty by brute force. He armed

himself, and descended to renew the hazardous encounter in the gloomy

solitude of the sea-bottom. I would I had the wit to describe that

tournament beneath the sea; the stab, thrust, curvet, plunge--the

conquest and capture of the unknown combatant. A special chance

preserves the mediaeval character of the contest, saving it from the

sulphurous associations of modern warfare that might be suggested by

the name of devil-fish. No: the antagonist wore a coat-of-mail and

arms of proof, as became a good knight of the sea, and was besides

succulent, digestible--a veritable prize for the conqueror. It was a

monstrous crab.

The constant encounter of strange and unforeseen perils enables the

professional diver to meet them with the same coolness with which

ordinary and familiar dangers are confronted on land. On one occasion

a party of such men were driven out into the Gulf by a fierce

"norther," were tossed about like chips for three days in the vexed

element, scant of food, their compass out of order, and the horizon

darkened with prevailing storm. At another time a party wandered out

in the shallows of one of the keys that fringe the Gulf coast. They

amused themselves with wading into the water, broken into dazzling

brilliance. A few sharks were seen occasionally, which gradually and

unobserved increased to, a squadron. The waders meanwhile continued

their sport until the evening waned away. Far over the dusk violet

Night spread her vaporous shadows:

The blinding mist came up and hid the land,

And round and round the land,

And o'er and o'er the land,

As far as eye could see.

At last they turned their steps homeward, crossing the little sandy

key, between which and the beach lay a channel shoulder-deep, its

translucent waves now glimmering with phosphorescence. But here

they were met by an unexpected obstacle. The fleet of sharks, with

a strategical cunning worthy of admiration, had flanked the little

island, and now in the deeper water formed in ranks and squadrons,

and, with their great goggle eyes like port-fires burning, lay ready

to dispute the passage. Armed with such weapons as they could clutch,

the men dashed into the water with paeans and shouts and the broken

pitchers of fallen Jericho. The violet phosphorescence lighted them on

their way, and tracked with luminous curve and star every move of the

enemy. The gashed water at every stroke of club or swish of tail or

fin bled in blue and red fire, as if the very sea was wounded. The

enemy's line of battle was broken and scattered, but not until more

than one of the assailants had looked point-blank into the angry eyes

of a shark and beaten it off with actual blows. It was the Thermopylae

of sharkdom, with numbers reversed--a Red Sea passage resonant with

psalms of victory.

There are novel difficulties as well as dangers to be encountered. The

native courage of the man must be tempered, ground and polished. On

land it is the massing of numbers that accomplishes the result--the

accumulation of vital forces and intelligence upon the objective

point. The innumerable threads of individual enterprise, like the

twist of a Manton barrel, give the toughest tensile power. Under the

sea, however, it is often the strength of the single thread, the

wit of the individual pitted against the solid impregnability of the

elements, the _vis inertiae_ of the sea. It looks as if uneducated

Nature built her rude fastnesses and rocky battlements with a special

view to resistance, making the fickle and unstable her strongest

barricade. An example of the skill and address necessary to conquer

obstacles of the latter kind was illustrated in Mobile Bay. There lay

about a sunken vessel an impenetrable mail of quicksand. It became

necessary to sink piles into this material. The obstacle does not

lie in its fickle, unstable character, but its elastic tension. It

swallows a nail or a beam by slow, serpent-like deglutition. It is

hungry, insatiable, impenetrable. Try to force it, to drive down

a pile by direct force: it resists. The mallet is struck back by

reverberating elasticity with an equal force, and the huge pointed

stake rebounds. Brute force beats and beats in vain. The fickle sand

will not be driven--no, not an inch.

Wit comes in where weight breaks down. A force-pump, a common

old-style fire-engine, was rigged up, the nozzle and hose bound to a

huge pile,

to equal which the tallest pine

Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast

Of some great ammiral, were but a wand.

The pump was set to work. The water tore through the nostril-pipe,

boring a hole with such rapidity that the tall beam dropped into the

socket with startling suddenness. Still breathing torrents, the pipe

was withdrawn: the clutching sand seized, grappled the stake. It is

cemented in.

You may break, you may shatter the _stake_, if you will,

but--you can never pull it out.

Perhaps the most singular and venturesome exploit ever performed in

submarine diving was that of searching the sunken monitor Milwaukee

during the bay-fight in Mobile harbor. This sea-going fortress was a

huge double-turreted monitor, with a ponderous, crushing projectile

force in her. Her battery of four fifteen-inch guns, and the tough,

insensible solidity of her huge wrought-iron turrets and heavy plated

hulk, burdened the sleepy waters of the bay. Upon a time she braced

her iron jacket about her, girded her huge sides with fifteen-inch

pistolry, and went rolling her clumsy volume down the bay to mash Fort

Taylor to rubbish and débacle. The sea staggered under her ponderous

gliding and groaned about her massive bulk as she wended her awkward

course toward the bay-shore over against the fort. She sighted her

blunderbusses, and, rolling, grunting, wheezing in her revolving

towers like a Falstaff ill at ease, spat her gobbets of flame and

death. The poor little water-spaniel fort ran down to the shore and

barked at her of course. _Cui bono_ or _malo?_ Why, like Job's mates,

fill its poor belly with the east wind, or try to draw out leviathan

with a hook, or his tongue with a cord thou lettest down? Yet who

treads of the fight between invulnerable Achilles and heroic Hector,

and admires Achilles? The admiral of the American fleet, sick of the

premature pother, signaled the lazy solidity to return. The loathly

monster, slowly, like a bull-dog wrenched from his victim, rolled

snarling, lazily, leisurely down the bay, not obeying and yet not

disobeying the signal.

All along the sunny coast, like flowers springing up in a

battle-field, were rows of little white cottages, tenanted by women

and children--love, life and peace in the midst of ruin and sudden

death. At the offending spectacle of homely peace among its enemies

the unglutted monster eased its huge wrath. Tumbling and bursting

among the poor little pasteboard shells of cottages, where children

played and women gossiped of the war, and prayed for its end, no

matter how, fell the huge globes and cones of murder. Shrieks and

cries, slain babes and wounded women on shore; surly, half-mutinous

officers and crew on that iron hulk, shocked at the fell work they

were set to do; and the glimmer and wash of the bay-water below--that

sweet, tranquil, half-transparent liquid, with idle weeds and chips

upon it, empty crates and boxes of dead merchandise, sacked of their

life and substance by the war, as one might swallow an oyster; the

soft veils of shadowy ships and the distant city spires; umbrageous

fires and slips of shining sand all mirrored in the soft and quiet

sea, while this devilish pother went on. There is a buoy adrift! No,

it is a sodden cask, perhaps of spoiling meat, while the people in the

town yonder are starving; and still the huge iron, gluttonous monster

bursts its foam of blood and death, while the surly crew curse and

think of mothers and babes at home. Better to look at the bay, the

idle, pleasing summer water, with chips and corks and weeds upon it;

better to look at the bubbling cask yonder--much better, captain,

if you only knew it! But the reluctant, heavy iron turret groans and

wheezes on its pivotal round, and it will be a minute or half a minute

before the throated hell speaks again. But it _will_ speak: machinery

is fatally accurate to time and place. Can nothing stay it, or

stop the trembling of those bursting iron spheres among yon pretty

print-like homes? No: look at the buoy, wish-wash, rolling lazily,

bobbing in the water, a lazy, idle cask, with nothing in the world

to do on this day of busy mischief. What hands coopered it in the new

West? what farmer filled it? There is the grunting of swine, lowing of

cattle, in the look of the staves. But the turret groans and wheezes

and goes around, whether you look at it or not. What cottage this

time? The soft lap-lap of the water goes on, and the tedious cask gets

nearer: it will slide by the counter. You have a curious interest in

that. No: it grates under the bow; it--Thunder and wreck and ruin!

Has the bay burst open and swallowed us? The huge, invulnerable iron

monster--not invulnerable after all--has met its master in the idle

cask. It is blind, imprisoned Samson pulling down the pillars of the

temple. The tough iron plates at the bow are rent and torn and twisted

like wet paper. A terrible hole is gashed in the hull. The monster

wobbles, rolls, gasps, and drinks huge gulps of water like a wounded

man--desperately wounded, and dying in his thirsty veins and arteries.

The swallowed torrent rushes aft, hissing and quenching the fires;

beats against the stern, and comes forward with the rush of that

repulse to meet the incoming wave. Into the boats, the water--anywhere

but here. She reels again and groans; and then, as a desperate hero

dies, she slopes her huge warlike beak at the hostile water and rushes

to her own ruin with a surge and convulsion. The victorious sea sweeps

over it and hides it, laughing at her work. She will keep it safely.

That is the unsung epic of the Milwaukee, without which I should have

little to say of the submarine diving during the bay-fight.

The harbor of Mobile is shaped like a rude Innuit boot. At the top,

Tensaw and Mobile Rivers, in their deltas, make, respectively, two

and three looplike bands, like the straps. The toe is Bonsecour

Bay, pointing east. The heel rests on Dauphin Island, while the main

channel flows into the hollow of the foot between Fort Morgan and

Dauphin Island. In the north-west angle, obscured by the foliage,

lay the devoted city, suffering no less from artificial famine, made

unnecessarily, than the ligatures that stopped the vital current of

trade. Tons of meat were found putrefying while the citizens, and

even the garrison, had been starving on scanty rations. Food could

be purchased, but at exorbitant rates, and the medium of exchange,

Confederate notes, all gone to water and waste paper. The true story

of the Lost Cause has yet to be written. North of Mobile, in the

Trans-Mississippi department, thousands whose every throb was devoted

to the enterprise, welcomed the Northern invaders, not as destroyers

of a hope already dead by the act of a few entrusted with its defence,

but as something better than the anarchy that was not Southern

independence or anything else human.

Such were the condition, period and place--the people crushed

between the upper and nether millstones of two hostile and contending

civilizations--when native thrift evoked a new element, that set

in sharp contrast the heroism of life and the heroism of death, the

courage that incurs danger to save against the courage that

accepts danger to destroy. The work was the saving of the valuable

arms--costing the government thirty thousand dollars per gun--and the

machinery of the sunken Milwaukee.[A] By a curious circumstance this

party of divers was composed partly, if not principally or entirely,

of mechanics and engineers who were exempt from military service

under the economic laws of the Confederacy, yet who in heart and soul

sympathized with the rebellion. They had worked to save for the South:

now they were to work and save for the North. It was a service of

superadded danger. All the peril incurred from missile weapons

was increased by the hidden danger of the secret under-sea and the

presence of the terrible torpedoes. These floated everywhere, in all

innocent, unsuspicious shapes. One monster, made of boiler iron, a

huge cross, is popularly believed to be still hidden in the bay. The

person possessing the chart wherein the masked battery's place was set

down is said to have destroyed it and fled. Let us hope, however, that

this is an error.

[Footnote A: The Milwaukee was sunk nearly due east of the city: the

Osage, Tecumseh, several despatch-boats and steamers, besides the

three monitors, were sunk by torpedoes in the bay.]

Keep in mind, in reading this account, the contrasted picture of peace

in Nature and war in man--the calm blue sky; the soft hazy outlines

of woods and bay-shore dropping their soft veils in the water; the

cottages, suggesting industry and love; the distant city; the delicate

and graceful spars of the Hartford; the busy despatch-steamers plying

to and fro; the bursting forts and huge ugly monitors; the starry

arches of flying shells by night and flying cloud by day; the soft lap

of the water; the sensuous, sweet beauty of that latitude of eternal

spring; and the soft dark violet of the outer sea, glassing itself in

calm or broken into millioned frets of blue, red and starry fire; the

danger above and the danger below; the dark mysterious caverns of the

sea, rich with coral grots and grove and abounding marine life; the

impenetrable gloom of the ship's hold, whose unimaginable darkness and

labyrinthine intricacy of machinery set obstacles at every turn and

move and step; the darkness; the fury; the hues and shape, all that

art can make or Nature fashion, gild or color wrought into one grand

tablature of splendor and magnificence. War and peaceful industry met

there in novel rivalry, and each claimed its privileges. The captain

of the Search said to the officers, while crowding his men behind the

turret, with sly, dry humor, "Come, you are all _paid_ to be shot at:

my men are not."

More than once the accuracy of the enemy's fire drove the little party

to shelter. Though the diver was shielded by the impenetrable fickle

element that gave Achilles invulnerability, the air-pump above was

exposed, and thus the diver might be slain by indirection. There

lay Achilles' heel, the exposed vulnerable part that Mother Thetis's

baptism neglected.

The work below was arduous: the hulk crowded with the entangling

machinery of sixteen engines, cuddies, ports, spars, levers, hatches,

stancheons, floating trunks, bibulous boxes heavy with drink, and the

awful, mysterious gloom of the water, which is not night or darkness,

but the absence of any ray to touch the sensitive optic nerve. The

sense of touch the only reliance, and the life-line his guide.

But the peril incurred can be better understood through an

illustrative example of a perilous adventure and a poor return.

Officers and men of the unfortunate monitor asked for the rescue of

their property, allowing a stipulated sum in lieu of salvage. Among

these was a petty officer, anxious for the recovery of his chest.

It involved peculiar hazards, since it carried the diver below

the familiar turret-chamber, through the _inextricabilis error_ of

entangling machinery in the engine-room, groping among floating and

sunken objects, into a remote state-room, the Acheron of the cavernous

hold. He was to find by touch a seaman's chest; handle it in that

thickening gloom; carry it, push it, move it through that labyrinthine

obscurity to a point from which it could be raised. To add

immeasurably to the intricacy of this undertaking, there was the need

of carrying his life-line and air-hose through all that entanglement

and obscurity. Three times in that horror of thick darkness like wool

the line tangled in the web of machinery, and three times he had, by

tedious endeavor, to follow it up, find the knot and release it. Then

the door of the little state-room, the throat of exit, was shut to,

and around and around the dense chamber he groped as if in a dream,

and could find no vent. All was alike--a smooth, slimy wall, glutinous

with that gelatinous liquid, the sea-water. The tangled line became a

blind guide and fruitful source of error; the hours were ebbing away,

drowning life and vital air in that horrible watery pit;

Aut hoc inclusi ligno occultantur Achivi,

or, a worse enemy than the subtle Greek's, death from the suspended

air-current. Speed, nimbleness, strength and activity were worthless:

with tedious fingers he must follow the life-line, find its

entanglements and slowly loosen them, carefully taking up the slack,

and so follow the straightened cord to the door. Then the chest: he

must not forget that. Slowly he heaves and pushes, now at this, now

at the life-line hitching on knob, handle, lever or projecting peg--on

anything or nothing in that maze of machinery; by involution and

evolution, like the unknown quantity in a cubic equation, through all

the twists, turns, assumptions and substitutions, and always with that

unmanageable, indivisible coefficient the box, until he reaches the

upper air.

In Aesop's fable, when the crane claimed the reward of the wolf for

using his long neck and bill as a forceps in extracting a bone from

the latter's oesophagus, Lupus suggests that for the crane to have had

his head down in the lupine throat and _not_ get it snapped off

was reward enough for any reasonable fowl. The petty officer was

sufficiently learned in the Lyceum to administer a like return. The

stipulated salvage was never paid or offered.[A]

[Footnote A: It was a warrant-officer of the Milwaukee: I do not wish

to be more definite; but the money (fifty dollars) may be sent to the

editor of this Magazine, who will forward it to the diver.]

The monitors had small square hatches or man-ports let into the deck,

admitting one person conveniently.

Hinc via, Tartanii quae fert Acherontis ad undas.

A swinging ladder, whose foot was clear of the floor, led down

into the recesses. A diver, having completed his task, ascended the

treacherous staircase to escape, and found the hatch blocked up.

A floating chest or box had drifted into the opening, and, fitting

closely, had firmly corked the man up in that dungeon, tight as a fly

in a bottle. From his doubtful perch on the ladder he endeavored to

push the obstacle from its insertion. Two or more equal difficulties

made this impossible. The box had no handle, and it was slippery with

the ooze and mucus of the sea. The leverage of pushing only wedged

it faster in the orifice. The inconstant ladder swayed from it as

a fulcrum. Again and again by art and endeavor and angle of push he

essayed, and the ladder made sport of it. It was deadly sport, that

swing and seesaw on the slippery rungs in the immeasurable loneliness

of the silent, shrouded cabin. It was no rush of air, sending life

tingling in the blood made brilliant with carmine of oxidation, but

the dense, mephitic sough of the thick wool of water. He descended

and sat upon the floor to think. Feasible methods had failed, and the

sands of his life were running out like the old physician's. Now to

try the impracticable. There are heaps of wisdom in the wrong way

sometimes, which, I suppose, is the reason some of us like it. The

box was out of his reach, choked in the gullet of that life-hole. No

spring or leap from floor or ladder could reach its slippery side

or bear it from its fixture. The sea had caught him prowling in its

mysteries, and blocked him up, as cruel lords of ancient days walled

up the intruder on their domestic privacy. Wit after brute force:

man and Nature were pitted against each other in the uncongenial

gloom--life the stake.

He groped about his prison, glutinous with infusoriae and the oily

consistence of the sea. Here a nail, there a block or lever, shaped

out mentally by the touch, theorized, studied upon and thrown down.

Now a hatchet, monkey-wrench, monkey's-tail, or gliding fish or

wriggling eel, companions of his imprisonment. At last the cold

touch of iron: the hand encloses and lifts it; its weight betrays its

length; he feels it to the end--blunt, square, useless. He tries the

other end--an edge or spike. That will do. Standing under the hatch,

guided by the ladder to the position, and with a strong swinging,

upward blow, the new tool is driven into the soft, fibrous and

adhesive pine bottom of the box. On the principle on which your

butler's practiced elbow draws the twisted screw sunk into the

cobwebbed seal of your '48 port, he uncorks himself. The box pulled

out of the hatch, the sea-gods threw up the sponge, that zoophyte

being handy.

These few incidents, strung together at random, and embracing only

limited experiences out of many in one enterprise, are illustrative,

in their variety and character, of this hardy pursuit, and the

fascination of danger which is the school of native hardihood.

But they give the reader a very imperfect idea of the nature and

appearance of the new element into which man has pushed his industry.

The havoc and spoil, the continued danger and contention, darken the

gloom of the submarine world as a flash of lightning leaves blacker

the shadow of the night and storm.

The first invention to promote subaqueous search was the diving-bell,

a clumsy vessel which isolates the diver. It is embarrassing, if not

dangerous, where there is a strong current or if it rests upon a slant

deck. It limits the vision, and in one instance it is supposed the

wretched diver was taken from the bell by a shark. It permits an

assistant, however, and a bold diver will plunge from the deck above

and ascend in the vessel, to the invariable surprise of his companion.

An example of one of its perils, settling in the mud, occurred, I

think, in the port of New York. A party of amateurs, supported by

champagne flasks and a reporter, went down. The bell settled and stuck

like a boy's sucker. One of the party proposed shaking or rocking the

bell, and doing so, the water was forced under and the bell lifted

from the ooze.

But a descent in submarine armor is the true way to visit the world

under water. The first sensation in descending is the sudden bursting

roar of furious, Niagarac cascades in the ears. It thunders and booms

upon the startled nerve with the rush and storm of an avalanche. The

sense quivers with it. But it is not air shaken by reflected blows: it

is the cascades driven into the enclosing helmet by the force-pump.

As the flexile hose has to be stiffly distended to bear an aqueous

gravity of twenty-five to fifty pounds to the square inch, the force

of the current can be estimated. The tympanum of the ear yields to

the fierce external pressure. The brain feels and multiplies the

intolerable tension as if the interior was clamped in a vice, and

that tumultuous, thunderous torrent pours on. Involuntarily the mouth

opens: the air rushes in the Eustachian tube, and with sudden velocity

strikes the intruded tension of the drum, which snaps back to its

normal state with a sharp, pistol-like crack. The strain is momently

relieved to be renewed again, and again relieved by the same attending

salutes.

In your curious dress you must appear monstrous, even to that marine

world, familiar with abnormal creations. The whale looks from eyes on

the top of his head; the flat-fish, sole, halibut have both eyes on

the same side; and certain Crustacea place the organ on a foot-stalk,

as if one were to hold up his eye in his hand to include a wider

horizon. But the monster which the fish now sees differs from all

these. It has four great goggle eyes arranged symmetrically around

its head. Peering through these plate-glass optics, the diver sees

the curious, strange beauty of the world around him, not as the bather

sees it, blurred and indistinct, but in the calm splendor of its own

thallassphere. The first thought is one of unspeakable admiration of

the miraculous beauty of everything around him--a glory and a splendor

of refraction, interference and reflection that puts to shame the

Arabian story of the kingdom of the Blue Fish. Above him is that pure

golden canopy with its rare glimmering lustrousness--something like

the soft, dewy effulgence that comes with sun-breaks through showery

afternoons. The soft delicacy of that pure straw-yellow that prevails

everywhere is crossed and lighted by tints and glimmering hues of

accidental and complementary color indescribably elegant. The floor of

the sea rises like a golden carpet in gentle incline to the surface;

but this incline, experience soon teaches, is an ocular deception,

the effect of refraction, such as a tumbler of water and a spoon can

exhibit in petty. It is perhaps the first observable warning that you

are in a new medium, and that your familiar friend, the light, comes

to you altered in its nature; and it is as well to remember this and

"make a note on it."

Raising your eyes to the horizontal and looking straight forward,

a new and beautiful wealth of color is developed. It is at first a

delicate blue, as if an accidental color of the prevailing yellow.

But soon it deepens into a rich violet. You feel as if you had never

before appreciated the loveliness of that rich tint. As your eye

dwells upon it the rich lustrous violet darkens to indigo, and sinking

into deeper hues becomes a majestic threat of color. It is ominous,

vivid blue-black--solid, adamantine, a crystal wall of amethyst. It is

all around you. You are cased, dungeoned in the solid masonry of the

waters. It is beauty indeed, but the sombre and awful beauty of the

night and storm. The eye turns for relief and reassurance to the

paly-golden lustrous roof, and watches that tender penciling which

brightens every object it touches. The hull of the sunken ship,

lying slant and open to the sun, has been long enough submerged to

be crusted with barnacles, hydropores, crustacea and the labored

constructions of the microscopic existences and vegetation that fill

the sea. The song of Ariel becomes vivid and realistic in its rich

word-power:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

The transfiguration of familiar objects is indeed curious and

wonderful. The hulk, once gaudy with paint and gilding, has come under

the skill of the lapidary and sea-artist. It is crusted with emerald

and flossy mosses, and glimmers with diamond, jacinth, ruby, topaz,

sapphire and gold. Every jewel-shape in leaf, spore, coral or plume,

lying on a greenish crystalline ground, is fringed with a soft

radiance of silver fire, and every point is tipped in minute ciliate

flames of faint steely purple. It is spotted with soft velvety black

wherever a shadow falls, that mingles and varies the wonderful display

of color. It is brilliant, vivid, changeable with the interferences

of light from the fluctuating surface above, which transmogrifies

everything--touches the coarsest objects with its pencil, and they

become radiant and spiritual. A pile of brick, dumped carelessly

on the deck, has become a huge hill of crystal jewelry, lively with

brilliant prismatic radiance. Where the light falls on the steps of

the staircase it shows a ladder of silver crusted with emeralds. The

round-house, spars, masts, every spot where a peak or angle catches

the light, have flushed into liquid, jeweled beauty; and each point, a

prism and mirror, catches, multiplies and reflects the other splendor.

A rainbow, a fleecy mist over the lake, made prismal by the sunlight,

a bunch of sub-aqueous moss, a soap-bubble, are all examples in our

daily experience of that transforming power of water in the display of

color. The prevailing tone is that soft, golden effulgence which,

like the grace of a cheerful and loving heart, blends all into one

harmonious whole.

But observation warns the spectator of the delusive character of all

that splendor of color. He lifts a box from the ooze: he appears

to have uncorked the world. The hold is a bottomless chasm. Every

indentation, every acclivity that casts a shadow, gives the impression

of that soundless depth. The bottom of the sea seems loopholed with

cavities that pierce the solid globe and the dark abysses of space

beyond. The diver is surrounded by pitfalls, real and imaginary. There

is no graduation. The shallow concave of a hand-basin is as the shadow

of the bottomless well.

If the exploration takes place in the delta of a great river, the

light is affected by the various densities of the double refracting

media. At the proper depth one can see clearly the line where these

two meet, clean cut and as sharply defined as the bottom of a green

glass tumbler through the pure water it contains. The salt brine or

gelatinous sea-water sinks weighted to the bottom, and over it flows

the fresh river-water. If the latter is darkened with sediment, it

obscures the silent depths with a heavy, gloomy cloud. In seasons of

freshet this becomes a total darkness.

But even on a bright, sunshiny day, under clear water, the shadow of

any object in the sea is unlike any shade in the upper atmosphere. It

draws a black curtain over everything under it, completely obscuring

it. Nor is this peculiarity lost when the explorer enters the shadow;

but, as one looking into a tunnel from without can see nothing

therein, though the open country beyond is plainly visible, so,

standing in that submarine shadow, all around is dark, though beyond

the sable curtain of the shadow the view is clear. Apply this optical

fact to the ghastly story of a diver's alleged experience in the

cabin of a sunken ship. It is narrated that there was revealed to

his appalled sight the spectacle of the drowned passengers in various

attitudes of alarm or devotion when the dreadful suffocation came.

The story is told with great effect and power, but unless a voltaic

lantern is included in the stage furniture, the ghastly tableaux must

sink into the limbo of incredibilities.

The cabin of a sunken vessel is dark beyond any supernal conception of

darkness. Even a cabin window does not alter this law, though it

may be itself visible, with objects on its surface, as in a child's

magic-lantern. As the rays of light pass through an object flatwise,

like the blade of a knife through the leaves of a book, and may be

admitted through another of like character in the plane of the first,

so a ray of light can penetrate with deflection through air and water.

But becoming polarized, the interposition of a third medium ordinarily

transparent will stop it altogether. Hence the plate-glass window

under water admits no light into the interior of a cabin. The distrust

of sight grows with the diver's experience. The eye brings its habit

of estimating proportion and distance from an attenuated atmosphere

into another and denser medium, and the seer is continually deceived

by the change. He hesitates, halts, and is observant of the pitfalls

about him. A gang-plank slightly above the surface of the deck is

bordered, where its shadow falls, by dismal trenches. There is a range

of hills crossing the deck before him. As he approaches he estimates

the difficulty of the ascent. At its apparent foot he reaches to

clamber the steep sides, and the sierra is still a step beyond his

reach. Drawing still nearer, he prepares to crawl up; his hand touches

the top; it is less than shoulder-high.

But perhaps the strongest illustration of the differing densities

of these two media is furnished by an attempt to drive a nail

under water. By an absolute law such an effort, if guided by sight

independent of calculation, must fail. Habit and experience, tested

in atmospheric light, will control the muscles, and direct the blow

at the very point where the nail-head is not. For this reason the

ingenious expedient of a voltaic lantern under water has proved to

be impracticable. It is not the light alone which is wanted, but that

sweet familiar atmosphere through which we are habituated to look. The

submarine diver learns to rely wholly on the truer sense of touch, and

guided by that he engages in tasks requiring labor and skill with the

easy assurance of a blind man in the crowded street.

The conveyance of sound through the inelastic medium of water is so

difficult that it has been called the world of silence. This is only

comparatively true. The fish has an auditory cavity, which, though

simple in itself, certifies the ordinary conviction of sound, but it

is dull and imperfect; and perhaps all marine creatures have other

means of communication. There is an instance, however, of musical

sounds produced by marine animals, which seems to show an appreciation

of harmony. In one of the lakes of Ceylon, Sir Emerson Tennent heard

soft musical sounds, like the first faint notes of the aeolian harp

or the faint vibrations of a wineglass when its rim is rubbed by a wet

finger. This curious harmony is supposed to be produced by a species

of testaceous mollusk. A similar intonation is heard at times along

the Florida coast.

Interesting as this may be, as indicating an appreciation of that

systematic order in arrangement which in music is harmony, it does not

alter the fact that to the ears of the diver, save the cascade of the

air through the life-hose, it is a sea of silence. No shout or spoken

word reaches him. Even a cannon-shot comes to him dull and muffled,

or if distant it is unheard. But a sharp, quick sound, that appears to

break the air, like ice, into sharp radii, can be heard, especially if

struck against anything on the water. The sound of driving a nail on

the ship above, for example, or a sharp tap on the diving-bell below,

is distinctly and reciprocally audible. Conversation below the surface

by ordinary methods is out of the question, but it can be sustained

by placing the metal helmets of the interlocutors together, thus

providing a medium of conveyance.

The effort to clothe with intelligence subaqueous life must have been

greatly strengthened among primitive nations by the musical sounds

to which I have referred. Those mysterious breathings were associated

with a human will, and gave forebodings from their very sweetness.

Everywhere they are associated with a passionate or pathetic mystery,

and the widely-spread area over which their island home is portrayed

as existing strengthens the conclusion that the strange music of the

sea belongs not to Ceylon or Florida or the Mediterranean alone. It

affords us another instance, by that common enjoyment of sweet sounds,

of the chain of sympathy between all intelligent creatures, and better

prepares us for familiar acquaintance with the beings which people the

sea. We have prejudices and preconceived ideas to get rid of, whose

strength has crystallized into aphorisms. "Cold as a fish" and

"fish-eyed" are ordinary expressions. Then the touch of a fish, cold,

slippery, serpent-like, causes an involuntary shrinking.

But the submarine diver has a new revelation of piscine character and

beauty, and perhaps can better understand the enticings of a siren or

fantastic Lurlei than the classical scholar. In the flush of aureal

light tinging their pearly glimmering armor are the radiant, graceful,

frolicsome inhabitants of the sea. The glutinous or oily exudation

that covers them is a brilliant varnish. Their lustrous colors,

variety of crystalline tints and beautiful markings and spots, attract

the eye of the artist even in the fish-market; but when glowing with

full life, lively, nimble, playful, surely the most graceful living

creatures of earth, air or sea, the soul must be blind indeed that can

look upon them unmoved.

The dull optic seen glazing in the death-throes upon the market-stall,

with coarse vulgar surroundings, becomes, in its native element,

full of intelligence and light. In even the smaller fry the round orb

glitters like a diamond star. One cannot see the fish without seeing

its eye. It is positive, persistent, prevalent, the whole animate

existence expressed in it. As far as the fish can be seen its eye is

visible. The glimmer of scales, the grace of perfect motion, the rare

golden pavilion with its jeweled floor and heavy violet curtains,

complete a scene whose harmony of color, radiance and animal life is

perfect. The minnow and sun-perch are the pages of the tourney on the

cloth of gold. There is a fearless familiarity in these playful

little things, a social, frank intimacy with their novel visitor, that

astonishes while it pleases. They crowd about him, curiously touch

him, and regard all his movements with a frank, lively interest.

Nor are the larger fish shy. The sheeps-head, red and black groper,

sea-trout and other, familiar fish of the sportsman, receive him with

frank bonhommie or fearless curiosity. In their large round beautiful

eyes the diver reads evidence of intelligence and curious wonder that

sometimes startles him with its entirely human expression. There is

a look of interest mixed with curiosity, leading to the irresistible

conclusion of a kindred nature. No faithful hound or pet doe could

express a franker interest in its eyes. Curiosity, which I take to

be expressly destructive of the now-exploded theory of instinct, is

expressed not only by the eye, but by the movements. As in man there

is an eager passion to handle that which is novel, so these curious

denizens of the sea are persistent in their efforts to touch the

diver. An instance of this occurred, attended with disagreeable

results to one of the parties, and that not the fish. The Eve of this

investigation was a large catfish. These fish are the true rovers of

the water. They have a large round black eye, full of intelligence

and fire: their warlike spines and gaff-topsails give them the true

buccaneer build. One of these, while the diver was engaged, incited by

its fearless curiosity, slipped up and touched him with its cold nose.

The man involuntarily threw back his hand, and the soft palm striking

the sharp gaff, it was driven into the flesh. There was an instant's

struggle before the fish wrenched itself loose from the bleeding

member, and then it only swung off a little, staring with its bold

black eyes at the intruder, as if it wished to stay for further

question. It is hard to translate the expression of that look of

curious wonder and surprise without appearing to exaggerate, but the

impression produced was that if the fish did not speak to him, it was

from no lack of intelligent emotions to be expressed in language.

A prolonged stay in one place gave a diver an opportunity to test this

intelligence further, and to observe the trustful familiarity of this

variety of marine life. He was continually surrounded at his work by

a school of gropers, averaging a foot in length. An accident having

identified one of them, he observed it was a daily visitor. After the

first curiosity the gropers apparently settled into the belief that

the novel monster was harmless and clumsy, but useful in assisting

them to their food. The species feed on Crustacea and marine

worms, which shelter under rocks, mosses and sunken objects at the

sea-bottom. In raising anything out of the ooze a dozen of these fish

would thrust their heads into the hollow for their food before the

diver's hand was removed. They would follow him about, eyeing his

motions, dashing in advance or around in sport, and evidently with

a liking for their new-found friend. Pleased with such an unexpected

familiarity, the man would bring them food and feed them from his

hand, as one feeds a flock of chickens. The resemblance, in their

familiarity and some of their ways, to poultry was, in fact, very

striking. As a little chick will sometimes seize a large crumb and

scurry off, followed by the flock, so a fish would sometimes snatch a

morsel and fly, followed by the school. If he dropped it or stopped to

enjoy his _bonne bouche_, his mates would be upon him. Sometimes two

would get the same morsel, and there would be a trial of strength,

accompanied with much flash and glitter of shining scales. But no

matter how called off, their interest and curiosity remained with the

diver. They would return, pushing their noses about him, caressingly

in appearance if not intent, and bob into the treasures of worm and

shellfish his labor exposed. He became convinced that they were

sportive, indulging in dash and play for the fun of it, rather than

for any grosser object to be attained.

This curious intimacy was continued for weeks: the fish, unless driven

away by some rover of prey of their kind, were in regular attendance

during his hours of work. Perhaps the solitude and silence of that

curious submarine world strengthened the impression of recognition

and intimacy, but by every criterion we usually accept in terrestrial

creation these little creatures had an interest and a friendly feeling

for one who furnished them food, and who was always careful to avoid

injuring them or giving them any unnecessary alarm. He could not,

of course, take up a fish in his hand, any more than a chicken will

submit to handling; but as to the comparative tameness of the two,

the fish is more approachable than the chicken. That they knew and

expected the diver at the usual hour was a conclusion impossible

to deny, as also that they grew into familiarity with him, and were

actuated by an intelligent recognition of his service to them. It

would be hard to convince this gentleman that a school of fish cannot

be as readily and completely tamed as a flock of chickens.

Why not? The fear of man is no instinctive feeling in the invertebrate

creation. The pioneer who penetrates into the uninhabited wilds of

our Western frontier finds bird and beast fearless and familiar. Man's

cruelty is a lesson of experience. The timid and fearful of the lower

creation belong to creatures of prey. The shark, for example, is as

cowardly as the wolf.

I thought to speak of other marine creations with which the diver

grows acquainted, finding in them only a repetition of the same degree

of life he has seen in the upper world. But let it be enough to state

the conclusion--as yet only an impression, and perhaps never to be

more--that in marine existence there is to be found the counterpart

always of some animate existence on earth, invertebrate or radiate,

in corresponding animals or insects, between whose habits and modes

of existence strong analogies are found. The shrimps that hang in

clusters on your hand under the water are but winged insects of the

air in another frame that have annoyed you on the land.

Let me dismiss the subject with the brief account of a diver caught in

a trap.

In the passion of blind destruction that followed and attended the

breaking out of hostilities between the North and the South, as a

child breaks his rival's playthings, the barbarism of war destroyed

the useful improvements of civilization. Among the things destroyed by

this iconoclastic fury was the valuable dry-dock in Pensacola Bay. It

was burned to the water's edge, and sunk. A company was subsequently

organized to rescue the wreck, and in the course of the submarine

labor occurred the incident to which I refer.

The dry-dock was built in compartments, to ensure it against sinking,

but the ingenuity which was to keep it above water now served

effectually to keep it down. Each one of these small water-tight

compartments held the vessel fast to the bottom, as Gulliver was bound

by innumerable threads to the ground of Lilliput. It was necessary

to break severally into the lower side of each of these chambers, and

allow the water to flow evenly in all. The interior of the hull was

checkered by these boxes. Huge beams and cross-ties intersected

each other at right angles, forming the frame for this honeycombed

interior, pigeon-holed like a merchant's desk. It was necessary to

tear off the skin and penetrate from one to the other in order to

effect this.

It was a difficult and tedious job under water. The net of

intersecting beams lay so close together that the passage between was

exceedingly narrow and compressed, barely admitting the diver's

body. The pens, so framed by intersecting beams, were narrowed and

straitened, embarrassing attempts at labor in them, which the cold,

slippery, serpent-like touch of the sea-water was not likely to make

pleasanter. It folded the shuddering body in its coils, and a most

ancient and fish-like smell did not improve the situation. The toil

was multiplied by the innumerable pigeon-holes, as if they fitted

into one another like a Chinese puzzle, with the unlucky diver in the

middle box. It was a nightmare of the sea, the furniture of a dream

solidified in woody fibre.

Into one of these crowding holes the diver crawled. There was the

tedious work of tearing off the casing to occupy an hour or more, and

when it was accomplished he endeavored to back out of his situation.

He was stopped fast and tight in his regression. The arrangement of

the armor about the head and shoulders, making a cone whose apex was

the helmet, prevented his exit. It was like the barb of a harpoon,

and caught him fast in the wood. Such a danger is not sudden in its

revelation. There is at first only a feeling of impatience at the

embarrassment, a disposition to "tear things." In vain attempts at

doubling and other gymnastic feats the diver wasted several hours,

until his companions above became alarmed at the delay. They renewed

and increased their labors at the force-pump, and the impetuous

torrent came surging about the diver's ears. It served to complete

his danger. It sprung the trap in which he lay enclosed. The inflated

armor swelled and filled up the crowded spaces. It stiffened out the

casing of the helmet to equal the burden of fifty pounds to the square

inch, and made it as hard as iron. He was caught like the gluttonous

fox. The bulky volume of included air made exit impossible. It was no

longer a labyrinth as before, where freedom of motion incited courage:

he was in the fetters of wind and water, bound fast to the floor of

his dungeon den. He signaled for the pump to stop. It was the only

alternative. He might die without that life-giving air, but he would

certainly die if its volume was not reduced. The cock at the back

of the helmet for discharging the vessel was out of his reach. The

invention never contemplated a case in which the diver would perish

from the presence of air.

As the armor worn was made tight at the sleeves with elastic

wristbands, his remedy was to insert his fingers under it, and slowly

and tediously allow the bubbling air to escape. In this he persevered

steadily, encouraged by the prospect of escape. The way was long and

difficult, but release certain with the reduction of that huge bulk.

But a new and subtler danger attacked him--the very wit of Nature

brought to bear upon his force and ingenuity. It was as if the

mysterious sirens of the sea saw in that intellectual force the real

strength of their prisoner, and sought to steal it from him while they

lulled him to indifference. Inhaling and reinhaling the reduced volume

of air, it became carbonized and foul, not with the warning of sudden

oppression, but

Sly as April melts to May,

And May slips into June.

The senses, intoxicated by the new companion sent them by the lungs,

began to sport with it, as ignorant children with a loaded shell,

forgetful of duty and the critical condition of the man. They began to

wander in vagaries and delusions. A soft chime of distant bells rang

in his ears with the sweet sleepy service of a Sabbath afternoon; the

sound of hymns and the organ mingled with the melody and the chant of

the sirens of the sea.

There is sweet music here that softer falls

Than petals from blown roses on the grass,

Or night-dew on still waters, between walls

Of shadowy granite in a gleaming pass--

Music that gentler on the spirit lies

Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.

Here are cool mosses deep,

And through the moss the ivies creep,

And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,

And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

The sensuous beauty, the infinite luxury of repose sung by the poet,

filled and steeped his senses. The desire to sleep was intoxicating,

delicious, irresistible; and with it ran delicious, restful thrills

through all his limbs, the narcotism of the blood. It was partly,

no doubt, the effect of inhaling that pernicious air; partly

that hibernation of the bear which in the freezing man precedes

dissolution; and possibly more than that, something more than any mere

physical cause--life perhaps preparing to lay this tired body down,

its future usefulness destroyed.

This delicious enervation had to be constantly resisted and dominated

by a superior will. One more strenuous effort to relieve that

straitened garrison, to release that imprisoned and fettered body,

and then, if that failed, an unconditional surrender to the armies of

eternal steep. But it did not fail. That constant, persevering tugging

of the fingers at the wristbands, pursued mechanically in that strange

condition of pleasing stupor, had reduced the exaggerated distensions

of the bulbous head-gear. A stout, energetic push set the diver free,

and he was drawn to the surface dazed, drowsy, and only half conscious

of the peril undergone. But with the rush of fresh, untainted air to

the lungs came an emotion of gratitude to the Giver of life and the

full consciousness of escape.

And this sums up my sketch illustrative of the peculiar character of

marine life, and the hazards of submarine adventure, hitherto known to

few, for--well, for _divers_ reasons.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

CONFIDENTIAL.

My ear has ever been considered public property for private usage. I

cannot call to mind the time when I was not somebody's confidante,

the business beginning as far back as the winter I ran down to Aunt

Rally's to receive my birthday-party of sweet or bitter sixteen, as

will appear.

Ralph Romer was the first to spread the news of my arrival in the

village among the girls of my own age. Ralph Romer it was who had

braved the dangers of "brier and brake" to find the bright holly

berries with which Aunt Hally had decorated the cheery little parlor

for the occasion; and it was with Ralph Romer I danced the oftenest on

that famous night.

"Wouldn't I just step out on the porch a short little minute," he

whispered as he came around in the rear of Aunt Hally to bid me

good-night, ending the whisper, according to the style of all

boy-lovers, "I've got something to tell you."

The door stood open and conveniently near, and I suppose I wanted to

see how high the snow had drifted since dark; and, a better reason

still, I couldn't afford to let Ralph take my hand off with him; and

so I had to go out on the porch just long enough to get it back,

while he said: "Ettie Moore says she loves me, and we are going to

correspond when I go back to college; and as you know all lovers

and their sweethearts must have a confidante to smuggle letters and

valentines across the lines, we have both chosen you for ours. Oh, I

was so afraid you wouldn't come!"

I found the snow had drifted--well, I don't believe I knew how many

inches.

I have not promised a recital of all my auricular experiences. Enough

to say, that in time I settled down into the conviction that it was

my special mission to be the receptacle of other people's secrets; and

they seemed determined to convince me that they thought so too.

So, when Mr. Tennent Tremont happened along and became a candidate for

auricular favors, like a tradesman who has gained the self-sustaining

ground which has made him indifferent as to custom-seeking, I could

afford to be entirely independent about giving a previous promise to

keep his secrets for him; and so, dear reader, they are as much yours

as mine.

When my brother introduced him into our family circle we took him

to be a Northern college-chum, met with during his

just-returned-from-trip to Washington; for it was in those days when

Southern hospitality was as much appreciated as it was liberally

bestowed. It was a good time for a modest stranger to come among new

faces. We were in the flutter and bustle which a wedding in the family

makes, and it gave him an opportunity to get used to us, and left us

none to observe him unpleasantly much.

But when the wedding was over, and I had made up my week of lost

sleep, and he and my brother had kept themselves out of the way on a

camp-hunt, for my mother to do up her week of house-cleaning,--it is

here that our story proper begins.

As we were leaving the breakfast-table one morning my brother caught

my dress-sleeve, and, dropping in the rear of Mr. Tennent Tremont,

allowed him to find the verandah: "Really, sis, I don't think you are

doing the clever thing, quite."

"How?"

"Why, in not helping me to entertain my friend."

"Getting tired of him?"

"No, he isn't one of that kind; but, to tell the truth, I am too busy

just now to give him the whole of my time."

"Too busy turning your own cakes. Yes, I see."

"Which is no more than my sister is doing; which reminds me to say

that J.B. will call this morning, he desired me to inform you. But,

dear sis, we must not be so absorbed in our own love-matters as to

give my friend only a moiety of our attention, for, poor fellow! he

has one of his own."

"So I am to bore him for the sake of relieving you? Is that my role?"

"Now stop! He simply wants a lady confidante."

I broke away from my brother's hold, and ran up to my room to see if

all was right for my expected caller, giving my right ear a pull, by

way of saying to that victimized organ, "You are needed."

And what think you I did next? Got out my embroidery-material bag, and

put it in order for action at a moment's warning. I was prepared for a

reasonable amount of martyrdom pertaining to my profession, but I was

always an economist of time, and not another unemployed hour would I

yield to the selfish demands of my forthcoming job.

The next day was one of November drizzle, the house confinement of

which, my adroit brother declared, could only be mitigated by my

presence in the sitting-room until the improved state of the weather

allowed their escape from it.

I was in the habit of appropriating such weather to my piano, and I

had not touched it for a month. Whether Mr. Tennent Tremont's nerves

were in a sound state or not, I was determined to practice until

twelve. But when he came in from the library and assisted me in

opening the instrument, I was obliged to ask him what he would have.

They were my first direct words to him, our three weeks' guest.

"Oh, 'Summer Night' is a favorite," he said.

I gave him the song, and then executed the long variations; then,

dropping my tired hands in my lap, inquired whether he liked vocal or

instrumental best.

"Not any more of either, just now, thanking you kindly for what you

have given me," he said. "Have you ever been a confidante, Miss ----?"

"That is my vocation, Mr. Tremont," I replied, grasping my bag.

"Which? your embroidery or--"

"Both combined," I tried to say pleasantly, "as on this occasion. I am

at Mr. Tremont's service;" and I threaded my tapestry-needle.

Without a prefatory word he began: "Years before your young heart was

awakened to 'the sweetest joy, the wildest woe,' I loved."

"And single yet!" I exclaimed as I let my hands drop and glanced up

at his brown hair, to see if all those years had left their silver

footprints there.

"And single yet," he repeated slowly, "and still worshiping at the

same shrine; and to no other will I ever bow until this head is

silvered o'er, and this strong arm palsied with the infirmities of

age--if a long life is indeed to be mine."

His ardor startled me, but I managed to stitch away composedly, and he

went on:

"I know it is in the highest degree selfish to inflict on you a

recital of what may not interest you; but I have tried to keep my

secret buried from human eyes, from all but _hers_, and you are now

the only being on earth to whom I have ever _said_, 'I love.' As

intimate as I have been with your brother, if he knows it, it is by

his penetration, for no word of acknowledgment has ever passed my lips

before. May I go on?" he asked.

"Oh yes," I answered, taken by surprise. "I suppose so. It is a relief

to talk, and to listen, I have told you, is my vocation."

"How long can you listen?" he questioned in delighted eagerness.

I fancied he would have to be allowanced, and I held up my paper

pattern before me: "This bouquet of flowers is to be transferred.

I will give you all the time it will take to do it. Remember, the

catastrophe must be reached by that time. Some one else will probably

want my ear."

"But," said he, "listening is not the only duty of a confidante: you

must aid me by your counsel. Only a woman may say how a woman may be

won."

"You have my sympathies, Mr. Tremont, on the score of your being a

very dear brother's friend. I know nothing of her--next to nothing of

you. I can neither counsel nor aid you."

"That brother is familiar with every page of my outward life-history.

It was in our family he spent his vacation, while you and your father

were traveling in Europe."

"Well, then, that will do about yourself. Now about her?"

The door-bell was rung: the waiter announced--well, my obliging

brother has already given enough of his name--"Mr. J.B." My confessor

withdrew.

The next morning, as I was bringing the freshened flower-vases into

the sitting-room, he brought me my bag, saying, "Now about her."

I opened the piano, repeated his favorite, kept my seat and cultivated

my roses vigorously.

"Miss ----," he began, "I would not knowingly give pain to a human

creature. Yesterday, when your visitor found me by your side, I

observed a frown on his face. I detest obtrusiveness, but if there is

anything in the relation in which you stand to each other which will

make my attentions objectionable to either of you, they shall cease

this moment. You are at perfect liberty to repeat to him every word I

have said to you."

"I thank you sincerely for your considerateness," I said. "I am under

no obligations of the kind to him or any other gentleman."

He introduced his topic by saying: "I am glad that I shall have to

say little more of myself. Oh, what a strange joy it is to be able to

speak unreservedly of her, and of the long pent-up hopes and fears

of the past years! And now, if you will assist me in interpreting

her conduct toward me--if you will inspire me with even faint hope

of success--if you will advise me as you would a brother how to

proceed,--gratitude will be too weak a word for my feeling toward you

for the remainder of my life."

"I have not yet sufficient light on her part of the affair to aid you

by advice," I answered. "In these slowly-developing love-affairs

there is usually but one great hindering cause. Do you know," I said,

laughing as much as I dared, looking into his woebegone face, "that

you have not told me what has passed between you?"

His moment or two of death silence made me almost regret my last

words.

"In the first of our acquaintance I was ever tortured by her

indifference. My first attentions were quietly received, never

encouraged. Then came the still more torturing fear--agony let me call

it--lest she was pre-engaged. Thank God! that burden was lifted from

my poor heart, but only, it seemed, to make room for the very one of

all in the catalogue of causes by which a lover's hope dies beyond the

possibility of a resurrection. It is the rock--no, I fear the

placid waters of friendship into which my freighted bark is now

drifting--which may lie between it and the bright isle of love, the

safe harbor" (he shuddered), "not the blissful possession."

Reader, the roses were not growing under my needle: my sympathies were

at last fully enlisted.

"You have well said," I answered. "Friendship is the 'nine notch'

in which a lover makes 'no count' in the game of hearts. But steer

bravely past these dark gulfs of despair. Have you ever had recourse

to jealousy in your desperation?" I queried.

"I scorn such a base ally. Your brother can tell you I am here partly

because I would avoid increasing an affection in another which I

cannot return."

"Does she know of that?" I asked, not at all prepared in my own mind

to yield the potency of the ally in my sincere desire to aid him by

this test of a woman's affection.

"Yes: I have no reason, however, for thinking that the fact has raised

her estimate of the article," he said, making a poor attempt to smile.

I felt ashamed of my suggestion, and said quickly, "You correspond,

of course: how are her letters?" Now I was sure of my safest clue in

finding her out.

"It was through the medium of her letters that I first obtained my

knowledge of her mind, her temperament, her disposition, her admirable

domestic virtues; for they were written without reserve. They excited

my highest admiration; they stimulated my desire to know more of her;

but they contain no word of love for me."

His want of boldness almost excited my contempt. My skill was baffled

on every side, and, not caring much to conceal my impatience, I said,

"You have asked me to advise you as I would my brother. She is cold

and selfish: give her up."

"Give her up!" he said with measured and emphatic slowness--"give

her up, when I have sought her beneath every clime on which the sun

shines--not for months, but for years? Give her up, when her presence

gives me all I have ever known of happiness? Give her up!" and he

leaned his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes.

I had imagined him gifted with wonderful self-control, but when I

looked up from my work all color had faded from his cheeks, the lips

seemed ready to yield the little blood left there by the clinch of the

white-teeth upon them, while every muscle of the face quivered with

spasmodic effort to control emotion. When the eyes were opened and

fixed on the ceiling, I saw no trace in them of anger, revenge, or

even of wounded pride. They were full of tears, ready to gush in one

last flood-tide of feeling over a subdued, chastened, but breaking

heart.

It was very evident that my treatment was not adding much comfort to

my patient, however salutary it might prove in the end. I knew of his

intention to leave the next day: there was little time left me to aid

him, and I had come to regard the unknown woman's mysterious nature or

strategic warfare as pitted against my superior penetration. That

he might be victorious she must be vanquished. _She_ was, then, my

antagonist.

The deepening twilight was producing chilliness. I flooded the room

with brilliant light, stirred the grate into glowing warmth, and

invited him to a seat near the fire.

"You will not leave me, will you? This may be--_it will be_--my last

demand on you as a confidante. How is the bouquet progressing?" he

asked.

"See," I said, holding my embroidery up before me: "we must hurry. I

have but one more tendril to add."

"Tendrils are clinging things, like hope, are they not?" he said

pensively.

But sentimentalizing was not the business of the hour, and I intimated

as much to him. "Yes," I replied, "but hope must now give place to

effort. I see you are not going to take my 'give-her-up' advice."

"No--only from her who has the right to give it."

I now considered my patient out of danger.

"Then why do you torture yourself longer with doubts? Perhaps your

irresolution has caused a want of confidence in the strength of

your affection. At least give her an opportunity to define her true

position toward you. Beard the lions of indifference and friendship in

their dens, and do not yield to unmanly cowardice. Strange that I have

given you the counsel last which should have been given first! But do

not, I beseech you, lose any time in seeking her. Assure her of your

long and unwavering devotion. Constancy is the most valued word in a

true woman's vocabulary. You have staked too much happiness to lose:

you _must_ win."

"And if I lose," he said--holding up something before him which I

took to be a picture, though it was in the shape of a heart--"and if

I lose, then perish all of earth to me. But leave me only this, and

should I hold you thus, and gaze on what I have first and last and

only loved until this perishable material on which I have placed you

turn to dust, still will you be graven on a heart whose deathless love

can know no death; for a thing so holy as the love I bear you was not

made to die."

My work--now my completed work--dropped beneath my fingers, for the

last stitch was taken.

If I could not prevent his self-torture, he should not, at least,

torture me longer; and snatching the thing from his grasp, I exclaimed

as I closed my hands over it, "Now, before I return it, you must, you

_shall_, promise me that you will take the last advice I gave you; or

will you allow me to look at it, and then unseal the silent lips

and give you the prophetic little 'yes' or 'no' which a professed

physiognomist like your confidante can always read in the eye?"

"I would rather you did the last," he said; and I rose, leaned my

elbow on the corner of the mantel nearest the gaslight, rested my head

on my empty hand, so as to shade my eyes from the intensity of the

brilliant burner near me, and with the awe creeping over me with

which the old astrologers read the horoscope of the midnight stars,

I looked, and saw--only a wonderfully faithful copy of the portrait

hanging just over me, of which Mr. Tennent Tremont's confidante was

the original. I threw it from me, and burst into tears. He stood quite

near me. I thought I hated him, but my obtuse, blundering, idiotic

self more than him. I waved my hand in token either of his silence or

withdrawal, for in all my life long I, with a whole dictionary in

my mind of abusive epithets, was never more at a loss for a word. My

token was unheeded.

He only murmured softly,

I had never seen thee weeping:

I cannot leave thee now.

When you snatched my picture from me a moment ago I saw a glistening

tear of sympathy in your eye; but what are these?"

"So cruel! so ungenerous! so unfair!" I said, still pressing my hands

tightly over my eyes. "How can I ever forgive you?"

With softer murmur than the last he repeated the words,

"'Tis sweet to let the pardoned in."

"Astounding presumption that!" I said, now giving him the benefit of

my full gaze--"to speak of pardon before making a confession of

your guilt! But before I give you time even for that, the remaining

mysteries which still hang around your tale of woe shall be cleared

up. Please to inform the court how the original of your purloined

sketch could have been the object of years of devotion, when it has

been only four weeks to-day since you laid your mortal eyes on her?"

"Ah! you may well say mortal; but you know the soul too has its visual

organs. I saw and loved and worshiped my ideal in those years, and

sought her too--how unceasingly!--and I said,

Only for the real will I with the ideal part:

Another shall not even tempt my heart.

When I saw her just four weeks since, I knew her,

And my heart responded as, with unseen wings,

An angel touched its unswept strings,

And whispers in its song,

Where hast thou strayed so long?"

But the avenging demon of curiosity was not to be exorcised by

sentimental evasion: "Those letters, sir, of which you spoke, _they_

must have been of a real, tangible form--not a part of the mythical

phantasmagoria of your idealistic vision."

He laughed as a light-hearted child would, but knitted his brow with

a perplexed air as he said, "Why don't the British government send

a woman to find the source of the Nile? I must thank your

unsophisticated brother's pride in his sister's epistolary

accomplishments for my privilege of perusal. What next?"

I thought a moment. Before, I had fifty other queries to propound, but

now as I looked into the glowing anthracite before me which gave us

those pleasant Reveries, they very naturally all resolved themselves

into explained mysteries without his aid.

He insists that the "prophetic little yes or no" never came.

Upon my honor, dear reader, as a confidante, I still think it the

most unfair procedure which ever "disgraced the annals of civilized

warfare;" but I shall have abundant opportunity for revenge, for we

are to make the journey of life together.

GLIMPSES OF JOHN CHINAMAN.

When John Marshall picked up the first golden nugget in California,

a call was sounded for the gathering of an immense gold-seeking

army made up of many nationalities; and among the rest China sent a

battalion some fifty thousand strong.

John Chinaman has remained with us ever since, despised and abused,

being neither a co-worshiper nor a co-sympathizer in aught save

the getting of gold. In dress, custom and language his is still a

nationality as distinct from ours as are the waters of the Gulf Stream

from those of the ocean.

It is possible that this may be but the second migration of Tartars to

the American shore. It is possible that the North American Indian and

the Chinaman may be identical in origin and race. Close observers find

among the aboriginal tribes resident far up on the north-west American

coast peculiar habits and customs, having closely-allied types among

the Chinese. The features of the Aleuts, the natives of the Aleutian

Islands, are said to approximate closely to those of the Mongolians.

The unvarying long black hair, variously-shaded brown skin, beardless

face and shaven head are points, natural and artificial, common to

the Indian and Mongolian. There is a hint of common custom between the

Indian scalplock and Chinese cue.

"John" has been a thorough gleaner of the mines. The "superior race"

allowed him to make no valuable discoveries. He could buy their

half-worked-out placers. The "river-bed" they sold him when its

chances of yielding were deemed desperate. When the golden fruitage

of the banks was reduced to a dollar per day, they became "China

diggings." But wherever "John" settled he worked steadily, patiently

and systematically, no matter whether his ten or twelve hours' labor

brought fifty cents or fifty dollars; for his industry is of an

untiring mechanical character. In the earlier and flusher days of

California's gold-harvest the white man worked spasmodically. He

was ever leaving the five-dollar diggings in hand for the fifty- or

hundred-dollar-per-day claims afar off in some imaginary bush. These

golden rumors were always on the wing. The country was but half

explored, and many localities were rich in mystery. The white vanguard

pushed north, south and east, frequently enduring privation and

suffering. "John," in comparative comfort, trotted patiently after,

carrying his snugly made-up bundle of provisions and blankets at one

end of a bamboo pole, his pick, shovel, pan and rocker at the other,

to work over the leavings. The leavings sometimes turned out more gold

than "new ground," much to the chagrin of the impatient Caucasian. But

John, according to his own testimony, never owned a rich claim. Ask

him how much it yielded per day, and he would tell you, "sometimes

four, sometimes six bittee" (four or six shillings). He had many

inducements for prevarication. Nearly every white man's hand was

against him. If he found a bit of rich ground, "jumpers" were ready to

drive him from it: Mexicans waylaid him and robbed him of his dust. In

remote localities he enclosed his camp by strong stockades: even these

were sometimes forced and carried at night by bands of desperadoes.

Lastly came the foreign miner's tax-collector, with his demand of four

dollars monthly per man for the privilege of digging gold. There

were hundreds and thousands of other foreign laborers in the

mines--English, German, French, Italian and Portuguese--but they paid

little or none of this tax, for they might soon be entitled to a vote,

and the tax-collector was appointed by the sheriff of the county, and

the sheriff, like other officials, craved a re-election. But John was

never to be a voter, and so he shouldered the whole of this load, and

when he could not pay, the official beat him and took away his tools.

John often fought this persecutor by strategy. In localities where no

white men would betray him he signalized his coming from afar. From

the crags of Red Mountain on the Tuolumne River I have often seen the

white flag waved as the dreaded collector came down the steep trail

to collect his monthly dues. That signal or a puff of smoke told the

Chinese for miles along the river-valley to conceal themselves from

the "license-man." Rockers, picks and shovels were hastily thrust into

clumps of chapparal, and their owners clambered up the hillsides

into artificial caves or leafy coverts. Out of companies of fifty

the collector finds but twenty men at work. These pay their tax, the

official rides on down the river, the hidden thirty Mongolians emerge

from cover; and more than once has a keen collector "doubled on them"

by coming back unexpectedly and detecting the entire gang on their

claim.

John has been invaluable to the California demagogue, furnishing

for him a sop of hatred and prejudice to throw before "enlightened

constituencies." It needs but to mention the "filthy Chinaman" to

provoke an angry roar from the mass-meeting. Yet the Chinaman is

not entirely filthy. He washes his entire person every day when

practicable; he loves clean clothes; his kitchen-utensils will bear

inspection. When the smallpox raged so severely in San Francisco a few

years since, there were very few deaths among his race. But John

_is_ not nice about his house. He seems to have none of our ideas

concerning home comfort. Smoke has no terror for him; soap he keeps

entirely for his clothes and person; floor-and wall-washing are things

never hinted at; and the refuse of his table is scarcely thrown out

of doors. Privacy is not one of his luxuries--he wants a house full:

where there is room for a bunk, there is room for a man. An anthill,

a beehive, a rabbit-warren are his models of domestic comfort: what is

stinted room for two Americans is spaciousness for a dozen Chinese.

Go into one of their cabins at night, and you are in an oven full of

opium- and lamp-smoke. Recumbent forms are dimly seen lying on bunks

above and below. The chattering is incessant. Stay there ten minutes,

and as your eye becomes accustomed to the smoke you will dimly see

blue bundles lying on shelves aloft. Anon the bundles stir, talk and

puff smoke. Above is a loft six feet square: a ladder brings it in

communication with the ground floor. Mongolians are ever coming down,

but the gabble of tongues above shows that a host is still left. Like

an omnibus, a Chinese house is never full. Nor is it ever quiet. At

all hours of the night may be heard their talk and the clatter of

their wooden shoes. A Chinaman does not retire like an American,

intending to make a serious business of his night's sleeping. He

merely "lops down" half dressed, and is ready to arise at the least

call of business or pleasure.

While at work in his claim his fire is always kindled near by, and

over it a tea-pot. This is his beverage every half hour. His tea must

be hot, strong and without milk or sugar. He also consumes a terrible

mixture sold him by white traders, called indiscriminately brandy, gin

or whisky, yet an intoxicated Chinaman is the rarest of rare sights.

Rice he can cook elegantly, every grain being steamed to its utmost

degree of distension. Soup he makes of no other meat than pork. The

poorest among his hordes must have a chicken or duck for his holiday.

He eats it merely parboiled. He will eat dog also, providing it is not

long past maturity.

The Chinese grocery-stores are museums to the American. There are

strange dried roots, strange dried fish, strange dried land and marine

plants, ducks and chickens, split, pressed thin and smoked; dried

shellfish; cakes newly made, yellow, glutinous and fatty, stamped with

tea-box characters; and great earthen jars filled with rottenness. I

speak correctly if perhaps too forcibly, for when those imposing jars

are opened to serve a customer with some manner of vegetable cut in

long strips, the native-born American finds it expedient to hold

his nose. American storekeepers in the mines deal largely in Chinese

goods. They know the Mongolian names of the articles inquired for,

but of their character, their composition, how they are cooked or

how eaten, they can give no information. It is heathenish "truck," by

whose sale they make a profit. Only that and nothing more.

A Chinese miner's house is generally a conglomeration of old boards,

mats, brush, canvas and stones. Rusty sheets of tin sometimes help to

form the edifice. Anything lying about loose in the neighborhood is

certain in time to form a part of the Mongolian mansion.

When the white man abandons mining-ground he often leaves behind very

serviceable frame houses. John comes along to glean the gold left by

the Caucasian. He builds a cluster of shapeless huts. The deserted

white man's house gradually disappears. A clapboard is gone, and then

another, and finally all. The skeleton of the frame remains: months

pass away; piece by piece the joists disappear; some morning they are

found tumbled in a heap, and at last nothing is left save the cellar

and chimneys. Meantime, John's clusters of huts swell their rude

proportions, but you must examine them narrowly to detect any traces

of your vanished house, for he revels in smoke, and everything about

him is soon colored to a hue much resembling his own brownish-yellow

countenance. Thus he picks the domiciliary skeleton bare, and then

carries off the bones. He is a quiet but skillful plunderer. John No.

1 on his way home from his mining-claim rips off a board; John No.

2 next day drags it a few yards from the house. John No. 3 a week

afterward drags it home. In this manner the dissolution of your

house is protracted for months. In this manner he distributes the

responsibility of the theft over his entire community. I have seen a

large boarding-house disappear in this way, and when the owner, after

a year's absence, revisited the spot to look after his property, he

found his real estate reduced to a cellar.

John himself is a sort of museum in his character and habits. We must

be pardoned for giving details of these, mingled promiscuously,

rather after the museum style. His New Year comes in February. For

the Chinaman of limited means it lasts a week, for the wealthy it may

endure three. His consumption of fire-crackers during that period is

immense. He burns strings a yard in length suspended from poles over

his balconies. The uproar and sputtering consequent on this festivity

in the Chinese quarter at San Francisco is tremendous. The city

authorities limit this Celestial Pandemonium to a week.

He does not forsake the amusement of kite-flying even when arrived at

maturity. His artistic imitations of birds and dragons float over

our housetops. To these are often affixed contrivances for producing

hollow, mournful, buzzing sounds, mystifying whole neighborhoods.

His game of shuttlecock is to keep a cork, one end being stuck with

feathers, flying in the air as long as possible, the impelling member

being the foot, the players standing in a circle and numbering from

four to twenty. Some show great dexterity in kicking with the heel.

His vocal music to our ears seems a monotonous caterwaul. His violin

has but one string: his execution is merely a modified species of

saw-filing.

He loves to gamble, especially in lotteries. He is a diligent student

of his own comfort. Traveling on foot during a hot day, he protects

himself with an umbrella and refreshes himself with a fan. In place of

prosaic signs on his store-fronts, he often inscribes quotations from

his favorite authors.

He is a lover of flowers. His balconies and window-sills are often

thickly packed with shrubs and creepers in pots. He is not a speedy

and taciturn eater. His tea-table talks are full of noisy jollity, and

are often prolonged far into the night.

He is a lover of the drama. A single play sometimes requires months

for representation, being, like a serial story, "continued" night

after night. He never dances. There is no melody in the Mongolian

foot. Dancing he regards as a species of Caucasian insanity.

To make an oath binding he must swear by the head of a cock cut off

before him in open court. Chinese testimony is not admissible in

American courts. It is a legal California axiom that a Chinaman

cannot speak the truth. But cases have occurred wherein, he being an

eye-witness, the desire to hear what he _might_ tell as to what he had

seen has proved stronger than the prejudice against him; and the more

effectually to clinch the chances of his telling the truth, the above,

his national form of oath, has been resorted to. He has among us some

secret government of his own. Before his secret tribunals more than

one Mongolian has been hurried in Star-Chamber fashion, and never

seen afterward. The nature of the offences thus visited by secret and

bloody punishment is scarcely known to Americans. He has two chief

deities--a god and a devil. Most of his prayers are offered to his

devil. His god, he says, being good and well-disposed, it is not

necessary to propitiate him. But his devil is ugly, and must be won

over by offering and petition. Once a year, wherever collected in any

number, he builds a flimsy sort of temple, decorates it with ornaments

of tinsel, lays piles of fruit, meats and sugared delicacies on an

altar, keeps up night and day a steady crash of gongs, and installs

therein some great, uncouth wooden idols. When this period of worship

is over the "josh-house" disappears, and the idols are unceremoniously

stowed away among other useless lumber.

He shaves with an instrument resembling a butcher's cleaver in

miniature. Nature generally denies him beard, so he shaves what a

sailor would term the fore and after part of his head. He reaps his

hirsute crop dry, using no lather. His cue is pieced out by silken

braid, so interwoven as gradually to taper into a slim tassel,

something like a Missouri mule-driver's "black snake" whip-lash. To

lose this cue is to lose caste and standing among his fellows. No

misfortune for him can be greater.

Coarse cowhide boots are the only articles of American wear that he

favors. He inclines to buy the largest sizes, thinking he thereby gets

the most for his money, and when his No. 7 feet wobble and chafe in

No. 12 boots he complains that they "fit too much."

He cultivates the vegetables of his native land in California. They

are curiosities like himself. One resembles our string-bean, but is

circular in shape and from two to three feet in length. It is not

in the least stringy, breaks off short and crisp, boils tender very

quickly and affords excellent eating. He is a very careful cultivator,

and will spend hours picking off dead leaves and insects from the

young plants. When he finds a dead cat, rat, dog or chicken, he throws

it into a small vat of water, allows it to decompose, and sprinkles

the liquid fertilizer thus obtained over his plantation. Watermelon

and pumpkin seeds are for him dessert delicacies. He consumes his

garden products about half cooked in an American culinary point of

view, merely wilting them by an immersion in boiling water.

There are about fifteen English words to be learned by a Chinaman on

arriving in California, and no more. With these he expresses all his

wants, and with this limited stock you must learn to convey all that

is needful to him. The practice thus forced upon one in employing

a Chinese servant is useful in preventing a circumlocutory habit of

speech. Many of our letters the Mongolian mouth has no capacity for

sounding. _R_ he invariably sounds like _l_, so that the word "rice"

he pronounces "lice"--a bit of information which may prevent an

unpleasant apprehension when you come to employ a Chinese cook. He

rejects the English personal pronoun I, and uses the possessive "my"

in its place; thus, "My go home," in place of "I go home."

When he buries a countryman he throws from the hearse into the

air handfuls of brown tissue-paper slips, punctured with Chinese

characters. Sometimes, at his burial-processions, he gives a small

piece of money to every person met on the road. Over the grave he

beats gongs and sets off packs of fire-crackers. On it he leaves

cooked meats, drink, delicacies and lighted wax tapers. Eventually the

bones are disinterred and shipped to his native land. In the remotest

mining-districts of California are found Chinese graves thus opened

and emptied of their inmates. I have in one instance seen him, so

far as he was permitted, render some of these funeral honors to an

American. The deceased had gained this honor by treating the Chinese

as though they were partners in our common humanity. "Missa Tom," as

he was termed by them, they knew they could trust. He acquired among

them a reputation as the one righteous American in their California

Gomorrah. Chinamen would come to him from distant localities, that

he might overlook their bills of sale and other documents used in

business intercourse with the white man. Their need of such, an honest

adviser was great. The descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers often took

advantage of their ignorance of the English language, written or

spoken. "Missa Tom" suddenly died. I had occasion to visit his farm a

few days after his death, and on the first night of my stay there saw

the array of meats, fruit, wine and burning tapers on a table in front

of the house, which his Chinese friends told me was intended as an

offering to "Missa Tom's" spirit.