As we return homeward, we soon find ourselves surrounded by the familiar

birds that shun the forest and assemble around the habitations of men.

Among them the Blue-Bird meets our sight, upon the roofs and fences as

well as in the field and orchard. At the risk of introducing him into a

company to which he does not strictly belong, I will attempt in this

place to describe some of his habits. The Blue-Bird (_Sylvia sialis_)

arrives very early in spring, and is detained late in the autumn by his

habit of raising two or more broods of young in the season. He is said

to bear a strong resemblance to the English Robin-Redbreast, being

similar in form and size, each having a red breast and short

tail-feathers, with only this manifest difference, that one is

olive-colored above where the other is blue. But the Blue-Bird does not

equal the Redbreast as a songster. His notes are few, not greatly

varied, though melodious and sweetly and plaintively modulated, and

never loud. On account of their want of variety, they do not enchain a

listener, but they constitute a delightful part in the woodland melodies

of morn.

The importance of the inferior singers in making up a general chorus is

not always appreciated. In an artificial musical composition, as in an

oratorio or an anthem, though there is a leading part, which is commonly

the air, that gives character to the whole, yet this principal part

would often be a very indifferent piece of melody, if performed without

its accompaniments. These accompaniments by themselves would seem still

more unimportant and trifling. Yet if the composition be the work of a

master, however trifling and comparatively insignificant these brief

strains or snatches, they are intimately connected with the harmony of

the piece, and could not be omitted without a serious derangement of the

grand effect. The inferior singing-birds, on the same principle, are

indispensable as aids in giving additional effect to the notes of the

chief singers.

Though the Robin is the principal musician in the general orison of

dawn, his notes would become tiresome, if heard without accompaniments.

Nature has so arranged the harmony of this chorus, that one part shall

assist another; and so exquisitely has she combined all the different

voices, that the silence of any one can never fail to be immediately

perceived. The low, mellow warble of the Blue-Bird seems a sort of echo

to the louder voice of the Robin; and the incessant trilling or running

accompaniment of the Hair-Bird, the twittering of the Swallow, and the

loud and melodious piping of the Oriole, frequent and short, are sounded

like the different parts of a regular band of instruments, and each

performer seems to time his part as if by design. Any discordant sound,

that may happen to be made in the midst of this performance, never fails

to disturb the equanimity of the singers, and some minutes must elapse

before they recommence their parts.

It would be difficult to draw a correct comparison between the different

birds and the various instruments in an orchestra. It would be more easy

to signify them by notes on the gamut. But if the Robin were supposed to

represent the German flute, the Blue-Bird might be considered as the

flageolet, frequently, but not incessantly, interposing a few mellow

strains, the Swallow and the Hair-Bird the octave flute, and the Golden

Robin the bugle, sounding occasionally a low but brief strain. The

analogy could not be carried farther without losing force and

correctness.

All the notes of the Blue-Bird--his call-notes, his notes of alarm, his

chirp, and his song--are equally plaintive, and closely resemble each

other. I am not aware that this bird ever utters a harsh note. His

voice, which is one of the earliest to be heard in the spring, is

associated with the early flowers and with all pleasant vernal

influences. When he first arrives, he perches upon the roof of a barn or

upon some still leafless tree, and pours forth his few and frequent

notes with evident fervor, as if conscious of the delights that await

him. These mellow notes are all the sounds he titters for several weeks,

seldom chirping, crying, or scolding like other birds. His song is

discontinued in the latter part of summer; but his peculiar plaintive

call, consisting of a single note pensively modulated, continues all

day, until the time of frost. This sound is one of the melodies of

summer's decline, and reminds us, like the notes of the green nocturnal

grasshopper, of the fall of the leaf, the ripened harvest, and all the

melancholy pleasures of autumn.

The Blue-Bird builds his nest in hollow trees and posts, and may be

encouraged to breed and multiply around our habitations, by erecting

boxes for his accommodation. In whatever vicinity we may reside, whether

in the clearing or in the heart of the village, if we set up a little

bird-house in May, it will certainly be occupied by a Blue-Bird, unless

preoccupied by a bird of some other species. There is commonly so great

a demand for such accommodations among the feathered tribes, that it is

not unusual to see birds of several different species contending for the

possession of one box.

After the middle of August, as a new race of winged creatures awake into

life, the birds, who sing of the seed-time, the flowers, and of the

early summer harvests, give place to the inferior band of

insect-musicians. The reed and the pipe are laid aside, and myriads of

little performers have taken up the harp and the lute, and make the air

resound with the clash and din of their various instruments. An anthem

of rejoicing swells up from myriads of unseen harpists, who heed not the

fate that awaits them, but make themselves merry in every place that is

visited by sunshine or the south-wind. The golden-rod sways its

beautiful nodding plumes in the borders of the fields and by the rustic

roadsides; the purple gerardia is bright in the wet meadows, and the

scarlet lobelia in the channels of the sunken streamlets. But the birds

heed them not; for these are not the wreaths that decorate the halls of

their festivities. Since the rose and the lily have faded, they have

ceased to be tuneful; some, like the Bobolink, assemble in small

companies, and with a melancholy chirp seem to mourn over some sad

accident that has befallen them; others still congregate about their

usual resorts, and seem almost like strangers in the land.

Nature provides inspiration for every sentiment that contributes to the

happiness of man, as she provides sustenance for his various physical

wants. But all is not gladness that elevates the soul into bliss; we may

be made happy by sentiments that come not from rejoicing, even from

objects that waken tender recollections of sorrow. As if Nature designed

that the soul of man should find sympathy, in all its healthful moods,

from the voices of her creatures, and from the sounds of inanimate

objects, she has provided that all seasons should pour into his ear some

pleasant intimations of heaven. In autumn, when the harvest-hymn of the

day-time has ceased, at early nightfall, the green nocturnal

grasshoppers commence their autumnal dirge, and fill the mind with a

keen sense of the rapid passing of time. These sounds do not sadden the

mind, but deepen the tone of our feelings, and prepare us for a renewal

of cheerfulness, by inspiring us with the poetic sentiment of

melancholy. This sombre state of the mind soon passes away, effaced by

the exhilarating influence of the clear skies and invigorating breezes

of autumn, and the inspiriting sounds of myriads of chirping insects

that awake with the morning and make all the meadows resound with the

shout of their merry voices.

SONG OF THE WOOD-SPARROW.

[Illustration: de de de d d d d d r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r

r r r r r r r r r r r r r re.]

NOTE.--In the early part of the season the song ends with the first

double bar; later in the season it is extended, in frequent instances,

as in the notes that follow.

SONG OF THE CHEWINK.

[Illustration: twee ta t' we we we we twee tu t' we we we we]

SONG OF THE GREEN WARBLER.

[Illustration: Hear me St. The - re - sa. Hear me St. The - re - sa.]

SONG OF THE WOOD-THRUSH.

[Illustration: too too tillere ilere tillere tilere

too issele issele tse se se se s s s s se

too tillery tillery oo villilil villilil too too illery ilery

eh villia villia villia oo airvee ehu, etc.]

NOTE.--I have not been able to detect any order in the succession of

these strains, though some order undoubtedly exists, and might be

discovered by long-continued observation. The intervals in the above

sketch cannot be given with exactness.

SONG OF THE VEERY.

[Illustration: e-e ve re a e-e verea e-e verea e-e verea vere lil lily]

or,

[Illustration: e villia villia villia villia ve rehu.]

NOTE.--I am far from being satisfied with the above representation of

the song of the Veery, in which there are certain trilling and liquid

sounds that hardly admit of notation.

SONG OF THE RED MAVIS.

[Illustration: drop it drop it cover it up cover it up]

pull it up pull it up tut tut tut see see see there you

have it hae it hae it

see tut tut work away work away drop it drop it cover it

up cover it up.]

NOTE.--The Red Mavis makes a short pause at the end of each bar. These

pauses are irregular in time, and cannot be correctly noted.

NOTE OF THE PEWEE.

[Illustration: pe - a - wee pe - a - wee.]

SONG OF THE BLUE-BIRD.

[Illustration]

THE MINISTER'S WOOING.

CHAPTER I.

Mrs. Katy Scudder had invited Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Jones, and Deacon

Twitchel's wife to take tea with her on the afternoon of June second,

A.D. 17--.

When one has a story to tell, one is always puzzled which end of it to

begin at. You have a whole corps of people to introduce that _you_ know

and your reader doesn't; and one thing so presupposes another, that,

whichever way you turn your patchwork, the figures still seem

ill-arranged. The small item that I have given will do as well as any

other to begin with, as it certainly will lead you to ask, "Pray, who

was Mrs. Katy Scudder?"--and this will start me systematically on my

story.

You must understand that in the then small seaport-town of Newport, at

that time unconscious of its present fashion and fame, there lived

nobody in those days who did not know "the Widow Scudder."

In New England settlements a custom has obtained, which is wholesome and

touching, of ennobling the woman whom God has made desolate, by a sort

of brevet rank which continually speaks for her as a claim on the

respect and consideration of the community. The Widow Jones, or Brown,

or Smith, is one of the fixed institutions of every New England

village,--and doubtless the designation acts as a continual plea for one

whom bereavement, like the lightning of heaven, has made sacred.

The Widow Scudder, however, was one of the sort of women who reign

queens in whatever society they move in; nobody was more quoted, more

deferred to, or enjoyed more unquestioned position than she. She was not

rich,--a small farm, with a modest, "gambrel-roofed," one-story cottage,

was her sole domain; but she was one of the much-admired class who, in

the speech of New England, are said to have "faculty,"--a gift which,

among that shrewd people, commands more esteem than beauty, riches,

learning, or any otherworldly endowment. _Faculty_ is Yankee for _savoir

faire_, and the opposite virtue to shiftlessness. Faculty is the

greatest virtue, and shiftlessness the greatest vice, of Yankee man and

woman. To her who has faculty nothing shall be impossible. She shall

scrub floors, wash, wring, bake, brew, and yet her hands shall be small

and white; she shall have no perceptible income, yet always be

handsomely dressed; she shall have not a servant in her house,--with a

dairy to manage, hired men to feed, a boarder or two to care for,

unheard-of pickling and preserving to do,--and yet you commonly see her

every afternoon sitting at her shady parlor-window behind the lilacs,

cool and easy, hemming muslin cap-strings, or reading the last new book.

She who hath faculty is never in a hurry, never behindhand. She can

always step over to distressed Mrs. Smith, whose jelly won't come,--and

stop to show Mrs. Jones how she makes her pickles so green,--and be

ready to watch with poor old Mrs. Simpkins, who is down with the

rheumatism.

Of this genus was the Widow Scudder,--or, as the neighbors would have

said of her, she that _was_ Katy Stephens. Katy was the only daughter of

a shipmaster, sailing from Newport harbor, who was wrecked off the coast

one cold December night and left small fortune to his widow and only

child. Katy grew up, however, a tall, straight, black-eyed girl, with

eyebrows drawn true as a bow, a foot arched like a Spanish woman's, and

a little hand which never saw the thing it could not do,--quick of

speech, ready of wit, and, as such girls have a right to be, somewhat

positive withal. Katy could harness a chaise, or row a boat; she could

saddle and ride any horse in the neighborhood; she could cut any garment

that ever was seen or thought of; make cake, jelly, and wine, from her

earliest years, in most precocious style;--all without seeming to

derange a sort of trim, well-kept air of ladyhood that sat jauntily on

her.

Of course, being young and lively, she had her admirers, and some

well-to-do in worldly affairs laid their lands and houses at Katy's

feet; but, to the wonder of all, she would not even pick them up to look

at them. People shook their heads, and wondered whom Katy Stephens

expected to get, and talked about going through the wood to pick up a

crooked stick,--till one day she astonished her world by marrying a man

that nobody ever thought of her taking.

George Scudder was a grave, thoughtful young man,--not given to talking,

and silent in the society of women, with that kind of reverential

bashfulness which sometimes shows a pure, unworldly nature. How Katy

came to fancy him everybody wondered,--for he never talked to her, never

so much as picked up her glove when it fell, never asked her to ride or

sail; in short, everybody said she must have wanted him from sheer

wilfulness, because he of all the young men of the neighborhood never

courted her. But Katy, having very sharp eyes, saw some things that

nobody else saw. For example, you must know she discovered by mere

accident that George Scudder always was looking at her, wherever she

moved, though he looked away in a moment, if discovered,--and that an

accidental touch of her hand or brush of her dress would send the blood

into his cheek like the spirit in the tube of a thermometer; and so, as

women are curious, you know, Katy amused herself with investigating the

causes of these little phenomena, and, before she knew it, got her foot

caught in a cobweb that held her fast, and constrained her, whether she

would or no, to marry a poor man that nobody cared much for but herself.

George was, in truth, one of the sort who evidently have made some

mistake in coming into this world at all, as their internal furniture is

in no way suited to its general courses and currents. He was of the

order of dumb poets,--most wretched when put to the grind of the hard

and actual; for if he who would utter poetry stretches out his hand to a

gainsaying world, he is worse off still who is possessed with the desire

of living it. Especially is this the case, if he be born poor, and with

a dire necessity upon him of making immediate efforts in the hard and

actual. George had a helpless invalid mother to support; so, though he

loved reading and silent thought above all things, he put to instant use

the only convertible worldly talent he possessed, which was a mechanical

genius, and shipped at sixteen as a ship-carpenter. He studied

navigation in the forecastle, and found in its calm diagrams and

tranquil eternal signs food for his thoughtful nature, and a refuge from

the brutality and coarseness of sea-life. He had a healthful, kindly

animal nature, and so his inwardness did not ferment and turn to Byronic

sourness and bitterness; nor did he needlessly parade to everybody in

his vicinity the great gulf which lay between him and them. He was

called a good fellow,--only a little lumpish,--and as he was brave and

faithful, he rose in time to be a shipmaster. But when came the business

of making money, the aptitude for accumulating, George found himself

distanced by many a one with not half his general powers.

What shall a man do with a sublime tier of moral faculties, when the

most profitable business out of his port is the slave-trade? So it was

in Newport in those days. George's first voyage was on a slaver, and he

wished himself dead many a time before it was over,--and ever after

would talk like a man beside himself, if the subject was named. He

declared that the gold made in it was distilled from human blood, from

mothers' tears, from the agonies and dying groans of gasping,

suffocating men and women, and that it would scar and blister the soul

of him that touched it; in short, he talked as whole-souled unpractical

fellows are apt to talk about what respectable people sometimes do.

Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship, with a procession of

expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which

closely-packed heathens are brought over to enjoy the light of the

gospel.

So, though George was acknowledged to be a good fellow, and honest as

the noon-mark on the kitchen floor, he let slip so many chances of

making money as seriously to compromise his reputation among thriving

folks. He was wastefully generous,--insisted on treating every poor dog

that came in his way, in any foreign port, as a brother,--absolutely

refused to be party in cheating or deceiving the heathen on any shore,

or in skin of any color,--and also took pains, as far as in him lay, to

spoil any bargains which any of his subordinates founded on the

ignorance or weakness of his fellow-men. So he made voyage after voyage,

and gained only his wages and the reputation among his employers of an

incorruptibly honest fellow.

To be sure, it was said that he carried out books in his ship, and read

and studied, and wrote observations on all the countries he saw, which

Parson Smith told Miss Dolly Persimmon would really do credit to a

printed book; but then they never _were_ printed, or, as Miss Dolly

remarked of them, they never seemed to come to anything,--and coming to

anything, as she understood it, meant standing in definite relations to

bread and butter.

George never cared, however, for money. He made enough to keep his

mother comfortable, and that was enough for him, till he fell in love

with Katy Stephens. He looked at her through those glasses which such

men carry in their souls, and she was a mortal woman no longer, but a

transfigured, glorified creature,--an object of awe and wonder. He was

actually afraid of her; her glove, her shoe, her needle, thread, and

thimble, her bonnet-string, everything, in short, she wore or touched,

became invested with a mysterious charm. He wondered at the impudence of

men that could walk up and talk to her,--that could ask her to dance

with such an assured air. _Now_ he wished he were rich; he dreamed

impossible chances of his coming home a millionnaire to lay unknown

wealth at Katy's feet; and when Miss Persimmon, the ambulatory

dress-maker of the neighborhood, in making up a new black gown for his

mother, recounted how Captain Blatherem had sent Katy Stephens "'most

the splendidest India shawl that ever she did see," he was ready to tear

his hair at the thought of his poverty. But even in that hour of

temptation he did not repent that he had refused all part and lot in the

ship by which Captain Blatherem's money was made, for he knew every

timber of it to be seasoned by the groans and saturated with the sweat

of human agony. True love is a natural sacrament; and if ever a young

man thanks God for having saved what is noble and manly in his soul, it

is when he thinks of offering it to the woman he loves. Nevertheless,

the India-shawl story cost him a night's rest; nor was it till Miss

Persimmon had ascertained, by a private confabulation with Katy's

mother, that she had indignantly rejected it, and that she treated the

Captain "real ridiculous," that he began to take heart. "He ought not,"

he said, "to stand in her way now, when he had nothing to offer. No, he

would leave Katy free to do better, if she could; he would try his luck,

and if, when he came home from the next voyage, Katy was disengaged,

why, then he would lay all at her feet."

And so George was going to sea with a secret shrine in his soul, at

which he was to burn unsuspected incense.

But, after all, the mortal maiden whom he adored suspected this private

arrangement, and contrived--as women will--to get her own key into the

lock of his secret temple; because, as girls say, "she was _determined_

to know what was there." So, one night, she met him quite accidentally

on the sea-sands, struck up a little conversation, and begged him in

such a pretty way to bring her a spotted shell from the South Sea like

the one on his mother's mantel-piece, and looked so simple and childlike

in saying it, that our young man very imprudently committed himself by

remarking, that, "When people had rich friends to bring them all the

world from foreign parts, he never dreamed of her wanting so trivial a

thing."

Of course Katy "didn't know what he meant,--she hadn't heard of any rich

friends." And then came something about Captain Blatherem; and Katy

tossed her head, and said, "If anybody wanted to insult her, they might

talk to her about Captain Blatherem,"--and then followed this, that, and

the other till finally, as you might expect, out came all that never was

to have been said; and Katy was almost frightened at the terrible

earnestness of the spirit she had evoked. She tried to laugh, and ended

by crying, and saying she hardly knew what; but when she came to herself

in her own room at home, she found on her finger a ring of African gold

that George had put there, which she did not send back like Captain

Blatherem's presents.

Katy was like many intensely matter-of-fact and practical women, who

have not in themselves a bit of poetry or a particle of ideality, but

who yet worship these qualities in others with the homage which the

Indians paid to the unknown tongue of the first whites. They are

secretly weary of a certain conscious dryness of nature in themselves,

and this weariness predisposes them to idolize the man who brings them

this unknown gift. Naturalists say that every defect of organization has

its compensation, and men of ideal natures find in the favor of women

the equivalent for their disabilities among men.

Do you remember, at Niagara, a little cataract on the American side,

which throws its silver sheeny veil over a cave called the Grot of

Rainbows? Whoever stands on a rock in that grotto sees himself in the

centre of a rainbow-circle, above, below, around. In like manner, merry,

chatty, positive, busy, housewifely Katy saw herself standing in a

rainbow-shrine in her lover's inner soul, and liked to see herself so. A

woman, by-the-by, must be very insensible, who is not moved to come upon

a higher plane of being, herself, by seeing how undoubtingly she is

insphered in the heart of a good and noble man. A good man's, faith in

you, fair lady, if you ever have it, will make you better and nobler

even before you know it.

Katy made an excellent wife; she took home her husband's old mother and

nursed her with a dutifulness and energy worthy of all praise, and made

her own keen outward faculties and deft handiness a compensation for the

defects in worldly estate. Nothing would make Katy's black eyes flash

quicker than any reflections on her husband's want of luck in the

material line. "She didn't know whose business it was, if _she_ was

satisfied. She hated these sharp, gimlet, gouging sort of men that would

put a screw between body and soul for money. George had that in him that

nobody understood. She would rather be his wife on bread and water than

to take Captain Blatherem's house, carriages, and horse, and all,--and

she _might_ have had 'em fast enough, dear knows. She was sick of making

money when she saw what sort of men could make it,"--and so on. All

which talk did her infinite credit, because _at bottom_ she _did_ care,

and was naturally as proud and ambitious a little minx as ever breathed,

and was thoroughly grieved at heart at George's want of worldly success;

but, like a nice little Robin Redbreast, she covered up the grave of her

worldliness with the leaves of true love, and sung a "Who cares for

that?" above it.

Her thrifty management of the money her husband brought her soon bought

a snug little farm, and put up the little brown gambrel-roofed cottage

to which we directed your attention in the first of our story. Children

were born to them, and George found, in short intervals between voyages,

his home an earthly paradise. Ho was still sailing, with the fond

illusion, in every voyage, of making enough to remain at home,--when the

yellow fever smote him under the line, and the ship returned to Newport

without its captain.

George was a Christian man;--he had been one of the first to attach

himself to the unpopular and unworldly ministry of the celebrated Dr.

H., and to appreciate the sublime ideality and unselfishness of those

teachings which then were awakening new sensations in the theological

mind of New England. Katy, too, had become a professor with her husband

in the same church, and his death, in the midst of life, deepened the

power of her religious impressions. She became absorbed in religion,

after the fashion of New England, where devotion is doctrinal, not

ritual. As she grew older, her energy of character, her vigor and good

judgment, caused her to be regarded as a mother in Israel; the minister

boarded at her house, and it was she who was first to be consulted in

all matters relating to the well-being of the church. No woman could

more manfully breast a long sermon, or bring a more determined faith to

the reception of a difficult doctrine. To say the truth, there lay at

the bottom of her doctrinal system this stable corner-stone,--"Mr.

Scudder used to believe it,--_I_ will." And after all that is paid about

independent thought, isn't the fact, that a just and good soul has thus

or thus believed, a more respectable argument than many that often are

adduced? If it be not, more's the pity,--since two-thirds of the faith

in the world is built on no better foundation.

In time, George's old mother was gathered to her son, and two sons and a

daughter followed their father to the invisible,--one only remaining of

the flock and she a person with whom you and I, good reader, have joint

concern in the further unfolding of our story.

CHAPTER II.

As I before remarked, Mrs. Katy Scudder had invited company to tea.

Strictly speaking, it is necessary to begin with the creation of the

world, in order to give a full account of anything. But, for popular

use, something less may serve one's turn, and therefore I shall let the

past chapter suffice to introduce my story, and shall proceed to arrange

my scenery and act my little play on the supposition you know enough to

understand things and persons.

Being asked to tea in our New England in the year 17-- meant something

very different from the same invitation in our more sophisticated days.

In those times, people held to the singular opinion, that the night was

made to sleep in; they inferred it from a general confidence they had in

the wisdom of Mother Nature, supposing that she did not put out her

lights and draw her bed-curtains and hush all noise in her great

world-house without strongly intending that her children should go to

sleep; and the consequence was, that very soon after sunset the whole

community very generally set their faces bedward, and the toll of the

nine-o'clock evening-bell had an awful solemnity in it, sounding to the

full. Good society in New England in those days very generally took its

breakfast at six, its dinner at twelve, and its tea, at six. "Company

tea," however, among thrifty, industrious folk, was often taken an hour

earlier, because each of the _invitées_ had children to put to bed, or

other domestic cares at home, and, as in those simple times people were

invited because you wanted to see them, a tea-party assembled themselves

at three and held session till sundown, when each matron rolled up her

knitting-work and wended soberly home.

Though Newport, even in those early times, was not without its families

which affected state and splendor, rolled about in carriages with

armorial emblazonments, and had servants in abundance to every turn

within-doors, yet there, as elsewhere in New England, the majority of

the people lived with the wholesome, thrifty simplicity of the olden

time, when labor and intelligence went hand in hand, in perhaps a

greater harmony than the world has ever seen.

Our scene opens in the great old-fashioned kitchen, which, on ordinary

occasions, is the family dining and sitting-room of the Scudder family.

I know fastidious moderns think that the working-room, wherein are

carried on the culinary operations of a large family, must necessarily

be an untidy and comfortless sitting-place; but it is only because they

are ignorant of the marvellous workings which pertain to the organ of

"faculty," on which we have before insisted. The kitchen of a New

England matron was her throne-room, her pride; it was the habit of her

life to produce the greatest possible results there with the slightest

possible discomposure; and what any woman could do, Mrs. Katy Scudder

could do _par excellence_. Everything there seemed to be always done and

never doing. Washing and baking, those formidable disturbers of the

composure of families, were all over with in those two or three

morning-hours when we are composing ourselves for a last nap,--and only

the fluttering of linen over the green yard, on Monday mornings,

proclaimed that the dreaded solemnity of a wash had transpired. A

breakfast arose there as by magic; and in an incredibly short space

after, every knife, fork, spoon, and trencher, clean and shining, was

looking as innocent and unconscious in its place as if it never had been

used and never expected to be.

The floor,--perhaps, Sir, you remember your grandmother's floor, of

snowy boards sanded with whitest sand; you remember the ancient

fireplace stretching quite across one end,--a vast cavern, in each

corner of which a cozy seat might be found, distant enough to enjoy the

crackle of the great jolly wood-fire; across the room ran a dresser, on

which was displayed great store of shining pewter dishes and plates,

which always shone with the same mysterious brightness; and by the side

of the fire, a commodious wooden "settee," or settle, offered repose to

people too little accustomed to luxury to ask for a cushion. Oh, that

kitchen of the olden times, the old, clean, roomy New England

kitchen!--who that has breakfasted, dined, and supped in one has not

cheery visions of its thrift, its warmth, its coolness? The noon-mark on

its floor was a dial that told of some of the happiest days; thereby did

we right up the shortcomings of the solemn old clock that tick-tacked in

the corner, and whose ticks seemed mysterious prophecies of unknown good

yet to arise out of the hours of life. How dreamy the winter twilight

came in there,--as yet the candles were not lighted,--when the crickets

chirped around the dark stone hearth, and shifting tongues of flame

flickered and cast dancing shadows and elfish lights on the walls, while

grandmother nodded over her knitting-work, and puss purred, and old

Rover lay dreamily opening now one eye and then the other on the family

group! With all our ceiled houses, let us not forget our grandmothers'

kitchens!

But we must pull up, however, and back to our subject-matter, which is

in the kitchen of Mrs. Katy Scudder, who has just put into the oven, by

the fireplace, some wondrous tea-rusks, for whose composition she is

renowned. She has examined and pronounced perfect a loaf of cake, which

has been prepared for the occasion, and which, as usual, is done exactly

right. The best room, too, has been opened and aired,--the white

window-curtains saluted with a friendly little shake, as when one says,

"How d'ye do?" to a friend;--for you must know, clean as our kitchen is,

we are genteel, and have something better for company. Our best room in

here has a polished little mahogany tea-table, and six mahogany chairs,

with claw talons grasping balls; the white sanded floor is crinkled in

curious little waves, like those on the sea-beach; and right across the

corner stands the "buffet," as it is called, with its transparent glass

doors, wherein are displayed the solemn appurtenances of company

tea-table. There you may see a set of real China teacups, which George

bought in Canton, and had marked with his and his wife's joint

initials,--a small silver cream-pitcher, which has come down as an

heirloom from unknown generations,--silver spoons and delicate China

cake-plates, which have been all carefully reviewed and wiped on napkins

of Mrs. Scudder's own weaving.

Her cares now over, she stands drying her hands on a roller-towel in the

kitchen, while her only daughter, the gentle Mary, stands in the doorway

with the afternoon sun streaming in spots of flickering golden light on

her smooth pale-brown hair,--a _petite_ figure in a full stuff petticoat

and white short gown, she stands reaching up one hand and cooing to

something among the apple-blossoms,--and now a Java dove comes whirring

down and settles on her finger,--and we, that have seen pictures, think,

as we look on her girlish face, with its lines of statuesque beauty, on

the tremulous, half-infantine expression of her lovely mouth, and the

general air of simplicity and purity, of some old pictures of the

girlhood of the Virgin. But Mrs. Scudder was thinking of no such Popish

matter, I can assure you,--not she! I don't think you could have done

her a greater indignity than to mention her daughter in any such

connection. She had never seen a painting in her life, and therefore was

not to be reminded of them; and furthermore, the dove was evidently, for

some reason, no favorite,--for she said, in a quick, imperative tone,

"Come, come, child! don't fool with that bird,--it's high time we were

dressed and ready,"--and Mary, blushing, as it would seem, even to her

hair, gave a little toss, and sent the bird, like a silver fluttering

cloud, up among the rosy apple-blossoms. And now she and her mother have

gone to their respective little bedrooms for the adjustment of their

toilettes, and while the door is shut and nobody hears us, we shall talk

to you about Mary.

Newport at the present day blooms like a flower-garden with young ladies

of the best _ton_,--lovely girls, hopes of their families, possessed of

amiable tempers and immensely large trunks, and capable of sporting

ninety changes of raiment in thirty days and otherwise rapidly emptying

the purses of distressed fathers, and whom yet travellers and the world

in general look upon as genuine specimens of the kind of girls formed by

American institutions.

We fancy such a one lying in a rustling silk _négligée_, and, amid a

gentle generality of rings, ribbons, puffs, laces, beaux, and

dinner-discussion, reading our humble sketch;--and what favor shall our

poor heroine find in her eyes? For though her mother was a world of

energy and "faculty," in herself considered, and had bestowed on this

one little lone chick all the vigor and all the care and all the

training which would have sufficed for a family of sixteen, there were

no results produced which could be made appreciable in the eyes of such

company. She could not waltz or polk, or speak bad French or sing

Italian songs; but, nevertheless, we must proceed to say what was her

education and what her accomplishments.

Well, then, she could both read and write fluently in the mother-tongue.

She could spin both on the little and the great wheel, and there were

numberless towels, napkins, sheets, and pillow-cases in the household

store that could attest the skill of her pretty fingers. She had worked

several samplers of such rare merit, that they hung framed in different

rooms of the house, exhibiting every variety and style of possible

letter in the best marking-stitch. She was skilful in all sewing and

embroidery, in all shaping and cutting, with a quiet and deft handiness

that constantly surprised her energetic mother, who could not conceive

that so much could be done with so little noise. In fact, in all

household lore she was a veritable good fairy; her knowledge seemed

unerring and intuitive; and whether she washed or ironed, or moulded

biscuit or conserved plums, her gentle beauty seemed to turn to poetry

all the prose of life.

There was something in Mary, however, which divided her as by an

appreciable line from ordinary girls of her age. From her father she had

inherited a deep and thoughtful nature, predisposed to moral and

religious exaltation. Had she been born in Italy, under the dissolving

influences of that sunny, dreamy clime, beneath the shadow of

cathedrals, and where pictured saints and angels smiled in clouds of

painting from every arch and altar, she might, like fair St. Catherine

of Siena, have seen beatific visions in the sunset skies, and a silver

dove descending upon her as she prayed; but, unfolding in the clear,

keen, cold New England clime, and nurtured in its abstract and positive

theologies, her religious faculties took other forms. Instead of lying

entranced in mysterious raptures at the foot of altars, she read and

ponder treatises on the Will, and listened in rapt attention while her

spiritual guide, the venerated Dr. H., unfolded to her the theories of

the great Edwards on the nature of true virtue. Womanlike, she felt the

subtile poetry of these sublime abstractions which dealt with such

infinite and unknown quantities,--which spoke of the universe, of its

great Architect, of man, of angels, as matters of intimate and daily

contemplation; and her teacher, a grand-minded and simple-hearted man as

ever lived, was often amazed at the tread with which this fair young

child walked through these high regions of abstract thought,--often

comprehending through an ethereal clearness of nature what he had

laboriously and heavily reasoned out; and sometimes, when she turned her

grave, childlike face upon him with some question or reply, the good man

started as if an angel had looked suddenly out upon him from a cloud.

Unconsciously to himself, he often seemed to follow her, as Dante

followed the flight of Beatrice, through the ascending circles of the

celestial spheres.

When her mother questioned him, anxiously, of her daughter's spiritual

estate, he answered, that she was a child of a strange graciousness of

nature, and of a singular genius; to which Katy responded, with a

woman's pride, that she was all her father over again. It is only now

and then that a matter-of-fact woman is sublimated by a real love; but

if she is, it is affecting to see how impossible it is for death to

quench it; for in the child the mother feels that she has a mysterious

and undying repossession of the father.

But, in truth, Mary was only a recast in feminine form of her father's

nature. The elixir of the spirit that sparkled within, her was of that

quality of which the souls of poets and artists are made; but the keen

New England air crystalizes emotions into ideas, and restricts many a

poetic soul to the necessity of expressing itself only in practical

living.

The rigid theological discipline of New England is fitted to produce

rather strength and purity than enjoyment. It was not fitted to make a

sensitive and thoughtful nature happy, however it might ennoble and

exalt.

The system of Dr. H. was one that could have had its origin in a soul at

once reverential and logical,--a soul, moreover, trained from its

earliest years in the habits of thought engendered by monarchical

institutions. For although he, like other ministers, took an active part

as a patriot in the Revolution, still he was brought up under the shadow

of a throne, and a man cannot ravel out the stitches in which early days

have knit him. His theology was, in fact, the turning to an invisible

Sovereign of that spirit of loyalty and unquestioning subjugation which

is one of the noblest capabilities of our nature. And as a gallant

soldier renounces life and personal aims in the cause of his king and

country, and holds himself ready to be drafted for a forlorn hope, to be

shot down, or help make a bridge of his mangled body, over which the

more fortunate shall pass to victory and glory, so he regarded himself

as devoted to the King Eternal, ready in His hands to be used to

illustrate and build up an Eternal Commonwealth, either by being

sacrificed as a lost spirit or glorified as a redeemed one, ready to

throw not merely his mortal life, but his immortality even, into the

forlorn hope, to bridge with a never-dying soul the chasm over which

white-robed victors should pass to a commonwealth of glory and splendor

whose vastness dwarf the misery of all the lost infinitesimal.

It is not in our line to imply the truth or the falsehood of those

systems of philosophic theology which seem for many years to have been

the principal outlet for the proclivities of the New England mind, but

as psychological developments they have an intense interest. He who does

not see a grand side to these strivings of the soul cannot understand

one of the noblest capabilities of humanity.

No real artist or philosopher ever lived who has not at some hours risen

to the height of utter self-abnegation for the glory of the invisible.

There have been painters who would have been crucified to demonstrate

the action of a muscle,--chemists who would gladly have melted

themselves and all humanity in their crucible, if so a new discovery

might arise out of its fumes. Even persons of mere artistic sensibility

are at times raised by music, painting, or poetry to a momentary trance

of self-oblivion, in which they would offer their whole being before the

shrine of an invisible loveliness. These hard old New England divines

were the poets of metaphysical philosophy, who built systems in an

artistic fervor, and felt self exhale from beneath them as they rose

into the higher regions of thought. But where theorists and philosophers

tread with sublime assurance, woman often follows with bleeding

footsteps;--women are always turning from the abstract to the

individual, and feeling where the philosopher only thinks.

It was easy enough for Mary to believe in _self_-renunciation, for she

was one with a born vocation for martyrdom; and so, when the idea was

put to her of suffering eternal pains for the glory of God and the good

of being in general, she responded to it with a sort of sublime thrill,

such as it is given to some natures to feel in view of uttermost

sacrifice. But when she looked around on the warm, living faces of

friends, acquaintances, and neighbors, viewing them as possible

candidates for dooms so fearfully different, she sometimes felt the

walls of her faith closing round her as an iron shroud,--she wondered

that the sun could shine so brightly, that flowers could flaunt such

dazzling colors, that sweet airs could breathe, and little children

play, and youth love and hope, and a thousand intoxicating influences

combine to cheat the victims from the thought that their next step might

be into an abyss of horrors without end. The blood of youth and hope was

saddened by this great sorrow, which lay ever on her heart,--and her

life, unknown to herself, was a sweet tune in the minor key; it was only

in prayer, or deeds of love and charity, or in rapt contemplation of

that beautiful millennial day which her spiritual guide most delighted

to speak of, that the tone of her feelings ever rose to the height of

joy.

Among Mary's young associates was one who had been as a brother to her

childhood. He was her mother's cousin's son,--and so, by a sort of

family immunity, had always a free access to her mother's house. He took

to the sea, as the most bold and resolute young men will, and brought

home from foreign parts those new modes of speech, those other eyes for

received opinions and established things, which so often shock

established prejudices,--so that he was held as little better than an

infidel and a castaway by the stricter religious circles in his native

place. Mary's mother, now that Mary was grown up to woman's estate,

looked with a severe eye on her cousin. She warned her daughter against

too free an association with him,--and so----We all know what comes to

pass when girls are constantly warned not to think of a man. The most

conscientious and obedient little person in the world, Mary resolved to

be very careful. She never would think of James, except, of course, in

her prayers; but as these were constant, it may easily be seen it was

not easy to forget him.

All that was so often told her of his carelessness, his trifling, his

contempt of orthodox opinions, and his startling and bold expressions,

only wrote his name deeper in her heart,--for was not his soul in peril?

Could she look in his frank, joyous fate and listen to his thoughtless

laugh, and then think that a fall from mast-head, or one night's storm,

might----Ah, with what images her faith filled the blank! Could she

believe all this and forget him?

You see, instead of getting our tea ready, as we promised at the

beginning of this chapter, we have filled it with descriptions and

meditations, and now we foresee that the next chapter will be equally

far from the point. But have patience with us; for we can write only as

we are driven, and never know exactly where we are going to land.

CHAPTER III.

A quiet, maiden-like place was Mary's little room. The window looked out

under the overarching boughs of a thick apple-orchard, now all in a

blush with blossoms and pink-tipped buds, and the light came

golden-green, strained through flickering leaves,--and an ever-gentle

rustle and whirr of branches and blossoms, a chitter of birds, and an

indefinite whispering motion, as the long heads of orchard-grass nodded

and bowed to each other under the trees, seemed to give the room the

quiet hush of some little side-chapel in a cathedral, where green and

golden glass softens the sunlight, and only the sigh and rustle of

kneeling worshippers break the stillness of the aisles. It was small

enough for a nun's apartment, and dainty in its neatness as the waxen

cell of a bee. The bed and low window were draped in spotless white,

with fringes of Mary's own knotting. A small table under the

looking-glass bore the library of a well-taught young woman of those

times. "The Spectator," "Paradise Lost," Shakspeare, and "Robinson

Crusoe" stood for the admitted secular literature, and beside them the

Bible and the works then published of Mr. Jonathan Edwards. Laid a

little to one side, as if of doubtful reputation, was the only novel

which the stricter people in those days allowed for the reading of their

daughters: that seven-volumed, trailing, tedious, delightful old bore,

"Sir Charles Grandison,"--a book whose influence in those times was so

universal, that it may be traced in the epistolary style even of the

gravest divines. Our little heroine was mortal, with all her divinity,

and had an imagination which sometimes wandered to the things of earth;

and this glorious hero in lace and embroidery, who blended rank,

gallantry, spirit, knowledge of the world, disinterestedness, constancy,

and piety, sometimes walked before her, while she sat spinning at her

wheel, till she sighed, she hardly knew why, that no such men walked the

earth now. Yet it is to be confessed, this occasional raid of the

romantic into Mary's balanced and well-ordered mind was soon

energetically put to rout, and the book, as we have said, remained on

her table under protest,--protected by being her father's gift to her

mother during their days of courtship. The small looking-glass was

curiously wreathed with corals and foreign shells, so disposed as to

indicate an artistic eye and skilful hand; and some curious Chinese

paintings of birds and flowers gave rather a piquant and foreign air to

the otherwise homely neatness of the apartment.

Here in this little retreat Mary spent those few hours which her

exacting conscience would allow her to spare from her busy-fingered

household-life; here she read and wrote and thought and prayed;--and

here she stands now, arraying herself for the tea company that

afternoon. Dress, which in our day is becoming in some cases the whole

of woman, was in those times a remarkably simple affair. True, every

person of a certain degree of respectability had state and festival

robes; and a certain camphor-wood brass-bound trunk, which was always

kept solemnly locked in Mrs. Katy Scudder's apartment, if it could have

spoken, might have given off quite a catalogue of brocade satin and

laces. The wedding-suit there slumbered in all the unsullied whiteness

of its stiff ground broidered with heavy knots of flowers; and there

were scarfs of wrought India muslin and embroidered crape, each of which

had its history,--for each had been brought into the door with beating

heart on some return voyage of one who, alas, should return no more! The

old trunk stood with its histories, its imprisoned remembrances,--and a

thousand tender thoughts seemed to be shaping out of every rustling fold

of silk and embroidery, on the few yearly occasions when all were

brought out to be aired, their history related, and then solemnly locked

up again. Nevertheless, the possession of these things gave to the women

of an establishment a certain innate dignity, like a good conscience; so

that in that larger portion of existence commonly denominated among them

"every day," they were content with plain stuff and homespun. Mary's

toilette, therefore, was sooner made than those of Newport belles of the

present day; it simply consisted in changing her ordinary "short gown

and petticoat" for another of somewhat nicer materials,--a skirt of

India chintz and a striped jacconet short-gown. Her hair was of the kind

which always lies like satin; but, nevertheless, girls never think their

toilette complete unless the smoothest hair has been shaken down and

rearranged. A few moments, however, served to braid its shining folds

and dispose them in their simple knot on the back of the head; and

having given a final stroke to each side with her little dimpled hands,

she sat down a moment at the window, thoughtfully watching where the

afternoon sun was creeping through the slats of the fence in long lines

of gold among the tall, tremulous orchard-grass, and unconsciously she

began warbling, in a low, gurgling voice, the words of a familiar hymn,

whose grave earnestness accorded well with the general tone of her life

and education:--

"Life is the time to serve the Lord,

The time to insure the great reward."

There was a swish and rustle in the orchard-grass, and a tramp of

elastic steps; then the branches were brushed aside, and a young man

suddenly emerged from the trees a little behind Mary. He was apparently

about twenty-five, dressed in the holiday rig of a sailor on shore,

which well set off his fine athletic figure, and accorded with a sort of

easy, dashing, and confident air which sat not unhandsomely on him. For

the rest, a high forehead shaded by rings of the blackest hair, a keen,

dark eye, a firm and determined mouth, gave the impression of one who

had engaged to do battle with life, not only with a will, but with

shrewdness and ability.

He introduced the colloquy by stepping deliberately behind Mary, putting

his arms round her neck, and kissing her.

"Why, James!" said Mary, starting up, and blushing. "Come, now!"

"I have come, haven't I?" said the young man, leaning his elbow on the

window-seat and looking at her with an air of comic determined

frankness, which yet had in it such wholesome honesty that it was

scarcely possible to be angry. "The fact is, Mary," he added, with a

sudden earnest darkening of the face, "I won't stand this nonsense any

longer. Aunt Katy has been holding me at arm's length ever since I got

home; and what have I done? Haven't I been to every prayer-meeting and

lecture and sermon, since I got into port, just as regular as a

psalm-book? and not a bit of a word could I get with you, and no chance

even so much as to give you my arm. Aunt Kate always comes between us

and says, 'Here, Mary, you take my arm.' What does she think I go to

meeting for, and almost break my jaws keeping down the gapes? I never

even go to sleep, and yet I'm treated in this way! It's too bad! What's

the row? What's anybody been saying about me? I always have waited on

you ever since you were that high. Didn't I always draw you to school on

my sled? didn't we always use to do our sums together? didn't I always

wait on you to singing-school? and I've been made free to run in and out

as if I were your brother;--and now she is as glum and stiff, and always

stays in the room every minute of the time that I am there, as if she

was afraid I should be in some mischief. It's too bad!"

"Oh, James, I am sorry that you only go to meeting for the sake of

seeing me; you feel no real interest in religious things; and besides,

mother thinks now I'm grown so old, that----Why, you know things are

different now,--at least, we mustn't, you know, always do as we did when

we were children. But I wish you did feel more interested in good

things."

"I _am_ interested in one or two good things, Mary,--principally in you,

who are the beat I know of. Besides," he said quickly, and scanning her

face attentively to see the effect of his words, "don't you think there

is more merit in my sitting out all these meetings, when they bore me so

confoundedly, than there is in your and Aunt Katy's doing it, who really

seem to find something to like in them? I believe you have a sixth

sense, quite unknown to me; for it's all a maze,--I can't find top, nor

bottom, nor side, nor up, nor down to it,--it's you can and you can't,

you shall and you sha'n't, you will and you won't,"----

"James!"

"You needn't look at me so. I'm not going to say the rest of it. But,

seriously, it's all anywhere and nowhere to me; it don't touch me, it

don't help me, and I think it rather makes me worse; and then they tell

me it's because I'm a natural man, and the natural man understandeth not

the things of the Spirit. Well, I _am_ a natural man,--how's a fellow to

help it?"

"Well, James, why need you talk everywhere as you do? You joke, and

jest, and trifle, till it seems to everybody that you don't believe in

anything. I'm afraid mother thinks you are an infidel, but I _know_ that

can't be; yet we hear of all sorts of things that you say."

"I suppose you mean my telling Deacon Twitchel that I had seen as good

Christians among the Mahometans as any in Newport. _Didn't_ I make him

open his eyes? It's true, too!"

"In every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is

accepted of Him," said Mary; "and if there are better Christians than us

among the Mahometans, I am sure I'm glad of it. But, after all, the

great question is, 'Are we Christians ourselves?' Oh, James, if you only

were a real, true, noble Christian!"

"Well, Mary, you have got into that harbor, through all the sandbars and

rocks and crooked channels; and now do you think it right to leave a

fellow beating about outside, and not go out to help him in? This way of

drawing up, among you good people, and leaving us sinners to ourselves,

isn't generous. You might care a little for the soul of an old friend,

anyhow!"

"And don't I care, James? How many days and nights have been one prayer

for you! If I could take my hopes of heaven out of my own heart and give

them to you, I would. Dr. H. preached last Sunday on the text, 'I could

wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen'; and he

went on to show how we must be willing to give up even our own

salvation, if necessary, for the good of others. People said it was hard

doctrine, but I could feel my way through it very well. Yes, I would

give my soul for yours; I wish I could."

There was a solemnity and pathos in Mary's manner which checked the

conversation. James was the more touched because he felt it all so real,

from one whose words were always yea and nay, so true, so inflexibly

simple. Her eyes filled with tears, her face kindled with a sad

earnestness, and James thought, as he looked, of a picture he had once

seen in a European cathedral, where the youthful Mother of Sorrows is

represented,

"Radiant and grave, as pitying man's decline;

All youth, but with an aspect beyond time;

Mournful, but mournful of another's crime;

She looked as if she sat by Ellen's door,

And grieved for those who should return no more."

James had thought he loved Mary; he had admired her remarkable beauty,

he had been proud of a certain right in her before that of other young

men, her associates; he had thought of her as the keeper of his home; he

had wished to appropriate her wholly to himself;--but in all this there

had been, after all, only the thought of what she was to be to him; and

this, for this poor measure of what he called love, she was ready to

offer, an infinite sacrifice.

As a subtile flash of lightning will show in a moment a whole landscape,

tower, town, winding stream, and distant sea, so that one subtile ray of

feeling seemed in a moment to reveal to James the whole of his past

life; and it seemed to him so poor, so meagre, so shallow, by the side

of that childlike woman, to whom the noblest of feelings were

unconscious matters of course, that a sort of awe awoke in him; like the

Apostles of old, he "feared as he entered into the cloud"; it seemed as

if the deepest string of some eternal sorrow had vibrated between them.

After a moment's pause, he spoke in a low and altered voice:--

"Mary, I am a sinner. No psalm or sermon ever taught it to me, but I see

it now. Your mother is quite right, Mary; you are too good for me; I am

no mate for you. Oh, what would you think of me, if you knew me wholly?

I have lived a mean, miserable, shallow, unworthy life. You are worthy,

you are a saint, and walk in white! Oh, what upon earth could ever make

you care so much for me?"

"Well, then, James, you will be good? Won't you talk with Dr. H.?"

"Hang Dr. H.!" said James. "Now, Mary, I beg your pardon, but I can't

make head or tail of a word Dr. H. says. I don't get hold of it, or know

what he would be at. You girls and women don't know your power. Why,

Mary, you are a living gospel. You have always had a strange power over

us boys. You never talked religion much, but I have seen high fellows

come away from being with you as still and quite as one feels when one

goes into a church. I can't understand all the hang of predestination,

and moral ability, and natural ability, and God's efficiency, and man's

agency, which Dr. H. is so engaged about; but I can understand _you_,

_you_ can do me good!"

"Oh, James, can I?"

"Mary, I'm going to confess my sins. I saw, that, somehow or other, the

wind was against me in Aunt Katy's quarter, and you know we fellows who

take up the world in both fists don't like to be beat. If there's

opposition, it sets us on. Now I confess I never did care much about

religion, but I thought, without being really a hypocrite, I'd just let

you try to save my soul for the sake of getting you; for there's nothing

surer to hook a woman than trying to save a fellow's soul. It's a

dead-shot, generally, that. Now our ship sails to-night, and I thought

I'd just come across this path in the orchard to speak to you. You know

I used always to bring you peaches and juneatings across this way, and

once I brought you a ribbon."

"Yes, I've got it yet, James."

"Well, now, Mary, all this seems mean to me, mean, to try and trick and

snare you, who are so much too good for me. I felt very proud this

morning that I was to go out first mate this time, and that I should

command a ship next voyage. I meant to have asked you for a promise, but

I don't. Only, Mary, just give me your little Bible, and I'll promise to

read it all through soberly, and see what it all comes to. And pray for

me; and if, while I'm gone, a good man comes who loves you, and is

worthy of you, why, take him, Mary,--that's my advice."

"James, I am not thinking of any such things; I don't ever mean to be

married. And I'm glad you don't ask me for any promise,--because it

would be wrong to give it; mother don't even like me to be much with

you. But I'm sure all I have said to you to-day is right; I shall tell

her exactly all I have said."

"If Aunt Katy knew what things we fellows are pitched into, who take the

world headforemost, she wouldn't be so selfish. Mary, you girls and

women don't know the world you live in; you ought to be pure and good:

you are not as we are. You don't know what men, what women--no, they're

not women!--what creatures, beset us in every foreign port, and

boarding-houses that are gates of hell; and then, if a fellow comes back

from all this and don't walk exactly straight, you just draw up the hems

of your garments and stand close to the wall, for fear he should touch

you when he passes. I don't mean you, Mary, for you are different from

most; but if you would do what you could, you might save us. But it's no

use talking, Mary. Give me the Bible; and please be kind to my

dove,--for I had a hard time getting him across the water, and I don't

want him to die."

If Mary had spoken all that welled up in her little heart at that

moment, she might have said too much; but duty had its habitual seal

upon her lips. She took the little Bible from her table and gave it with

a trembling hand, and James turned to go. In a moment he turned back,

and stood irresolute.

"Mary," he said, "we are cousins; I may never come back; you might kiss

me this once."

The kiss was given and received in silence, and James disappeared among

the thick trees.

"Come, child," said Aunt Katy, looking in, "there is Deacon Twitchel's

chaise in sight,--are you ready?"

"Yes, mother."

[To be continued.]

THE AUTOCRAT GIVES A BREAKFAST TO THE PUBLIC.

Before my friend the Professor takes his place at our old table, where,

Providence permitting, he means to wish you all a happy New Year on or

about the First of January next, I wish you to do me the favor of being

my guests at the table which you see spread before you.

This table is a very long one. Legs in every Atlantic and inland

city,--legs in California and Oregon,--legs on the shores of 'Quoddy and

of Lake Pontchartrain,--legs everywhere, like a millipede or a

banian-tree.

The schoolmistress that was,--and is,--(there are her little scholars at

the side-table.)--shall pour out coffee or tea for you as you like.

Sit down and make yourselves comfortable.--A teaspoon, my dear, for

Minnesota.--Sacramento's cup is out.

Bridget has become a thought, and serves us a great deal faster than the

sticky lightning of the submarine _par vagum_, as the Professor calls

it.--Pepper for Kansas, Bridget.--A sandwich for Cincinnati.--Rolls and

sardines for Washington.--A bit of the Cape Ann turkey for

Boston.--South Carolina prefers dark meat.--Fifty thousand glasses of

_eau sucrée_ at once, and the rest simultaneously.--Now give us the nude

mahogany, that we may talk over it.--Bridget becomes as a mighty wind

and peels off the immeasurable table-cloth as a northwester strips off

the leafy damask from the autumn woods.

[At this point of the entertainment the Reporter of the "Oceanic

Miscellany" was introduced, and to his fluent and indefatigable pen we

owe the further account of the proceedings.--_Editors of the "Oceanic

Miscellany."_]

--The liberal and untiring editors of the "Oceanic Miscellany"

commissioned their special reporter to be present at the Great Breakfast

given by the personage known as the Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,

furnishing him with one of the _caput-mortuum_ tickets usually

distributed on such occasions.

The tables groaned with the delicacies of the season, provided by the

distinguished caterers whose names are familiar in our mouths as

household words. After the usual contest for places,--a proceeding more

honored in the breach than the observance,--the band discoursed sweet

music. The creature comforts were then discussed, consisting of the

various luxuries that flesh is heir to, together with fish and fowl, too

numerous to mention. After the material banquet had cloyed the hungry

edge of appetite, began the feast of reason and the flow of soul. As,

take him for all in all, the bright particular star of the evening was

the distinguished individual who played the part of mine host, we shall

make no apology for confining our report to the

SPEECH OF THE AUTOCRAT.

I think on the whole we have had a good time together, since we became

acquainted. So many pleasant looks and words as have passed between us

must mean something. For one person who speaks well or ill of us we may

safely take it for granted that there are ten or a hundred, or an

indefinite number, who feel in the same way, but are shy of talking.

Now the first effect of being kindly received is unquestionably a

pleasing internal commotion, out of which arises a not less pleasing

secondary sensation, which the unthinking vulgar call conceit, but which

is in reality an increased consciousness of life, and a most important

part of the mechanism by which a man is advertised of his ability to

serve his fellows, and stirred up to use it.

In the present instance, the immediate effects of the warm general

welcome received were the following demonstrations:--

1. The purchase of a glossy bell-crowned hat, which is worn a little

inclined to one side, at the angle of self-reliance,--this being a very

slight dip, as compared to the outrageous slant of country dandies and

the insolent obliquity indulged in by a few unpleasantly conspicuous

city-youth, who prove that "it takes three generations to make a

gentleman."

2. A movement towards the acquisition of a pair of pantaloons with a

stripe running down the leg; also of a slender canary-colored cane, to

be carried as formerly in the time when Mr. Van Buren was

President.--[_A mild veto from the schoolmistress was interposed._]

3. A manifest increase of that _monstraridigitativeness_,--if you will

permit the term,--which is so remarkable in literary men, that, if

public opinion allowed it, some of them would like to wear a smart

uniform, with an author's button, so that they might be known and hailed

everywhere.

4. An undeniable aggravation of the natural tendency to caress and

cosset such products of the writer's literary industry as have met with

special favor. This is shown by a willingness to repeat any given

stanza, a line of which is referred to, and a readiness to listen to

even exaggerated eulogy with a twinkling stillness of feature and

inclination of the titillated ear to the operator, such as the Mexican

Peccary is said to show when its dorsal surface is gently and

continuously irritated with the pointed extremity of a reed or of a

magnolia-branch. What other people think well of, we certainly have a

right to like, ourselves.

All this self-exaltation, which some folks make so much scandal of, is

the most natural thing in the world when one gets an over-dose of fair

words. The more I reflect upon it, the more I am convinced that it is

well for a man to think too highly of himself while he is in the working

state. Sydney Smith could discover no relation between Modesty and

Merit, excepting that they both began with an M. Considered simply as a

machine out of which work is to be got, the wheels of intellect run best

when they are kept well oiled by the public and the publisher.

Therefore, my friends, if any of you have uttered words of kindness, of

flattery, of extreme over-praise, even, let me thank you for it.

Criticism with praise in it is azotized food; it makes muscle; to expect

a man to write without it is like giving nothing but hay to a roadster

and expecting to get ten miles an hour out of him. A young fellow cannot

be asked to go on making love forever, if he does not get a smile now

and then to keep hope alive. The truth is, Bridget would have whisked

off the table-cloth and given notice of quitting, and the whole

establishment would have gone to pieces at the end of No. 1, if you had

not looked so very good-natured about it that it was impossible to give

up such amiable acquaintance.

The above acknowledgments and personal revelations are preliminary to

the following more general statement, which will show how they must be

qualified.

Every man of sense has two ways of looking at himself. The first is an

everyday working view, in which he makes the most of his gifts and

accomplishments. It is the superficial stratum in which praise and blame

find their sphere of action,--the region of comparisons,--the habitat

where envy and jealousy are to be looked for, if they have not been

weeded out and flung into the compost-heap of dead vices, with which, if

we understand moral husbandry, we fertilize our living virtues. It is

quite foolish to abuse this thin upper layer of our mental soil. The

grasses do not strike their roots deep in towards the centre, like the

oaks, but they are the more useful and necessary vegetable of the two.

The cheap, but perpetual activities of life grow out of this upper

stratum of our being. How silly to try to be wiser than Providence!

Don't tell me about the vain illusions of self-love. There is nothing so

real in this world as Illusion. All other things may desert a man, but

this fair angel never leaves him. She holds a star a billion miles over

a baby's head, and laughs to see him clawing and batting himself as he

tries to reach it. She glides before the hoary sinner down the path

which leads to the inexorable gate, jingling the keys of heaven at her

girdle.

Underneath this surface-soil lies another stratum of thought, where the

tap-roots of the larger mental growths penetrate and find their

nourishment. Out of this comes heroism in all its shapes; here the

enterprises that overshadow half the planet, when full grown, lie,

tender, in their cotyledons. Here there is neither praise nor blame,

nothing but a passionless self-estimate, quite as willing to undervalue

as to rate too highly. The less clay and straw the task-master has given

his servant, the smaller the tale of bricks he will be required to

furnish. Many a man not remarkable for conceit has shuddered as some

effort or accident has revealed to him a depth of power of which he

never thought himself the possessor and broken his peace with the fatal

words, "Sleep no more!"

This deeper self-appreciation is a slow and gradual process. At first, a

child thinks he can do everything. I remember when I thought I could

lift a house, if I would only try hard enough. So I began with the hind

wheel of a heavy old family-coach, built like that in which my Lady

Bountiful carried little King Pippin, if you happen to remember the

illustrations of that story. I lifted with all my might, and the planet

pulled down with all its might. The planet beat. After that, my ideas of

the difference between my will and my muscular force were more

accurately defined. Then came the illusion, that I could, of course,

"lick," "serve out," or "polish off," various small boys who had been or

might be obnoxious to me. The event of the different "set-tos" to

which, this hypothesis led not uniformly confirming it, another

limitation of my possibilities was the consequence. In this way I groped

along into a knowledge of my physical relations to the organic and

inorganic universe.

A man must be very stupid indeed, if, by the time he is fully ripened,

he does not know tolerably well what his physical powers are. His

weight, his height, his general development, his constitutional force,

his good or ill looks, he has had time to find out; and he is a fool, if

he does not carry a reasonable consciousness of these conditions with

him always. It is a little harder with the mind; but some qualities are

generally estimated fairly enough by their owners. Thus, a man may be

trusted when he says he has a good or a bad memory. Not so of his

opinion of his own judgment or imagination. It is only by a very slow

process that he finds out how much or how little of those qualities he

possesses. But it is one of the blessed privileges of growing older,

that we come to have a much clearer sense of what we can do and what we

cannot, and settle down to our work quietly, knowing what our tools are

and what we have to do with them.

Therefore, my friends, if I should at any time put on any airs on the

strength of your good-natured treatment, please to remember that these

are only the growth of that thin upper stratum of character I was

telling you of. I conceive that the fact of a man's coming out in a book

or two, even supposing them to have a success such as I should never

think of, is to the sum total of that man's life and character as the

bed of tulips and hyacinths you may see in spring, at the feet of the

"Great Elm," on our Boston Common, is to the solemn old tree itself. The

serene, strong life, reaching deep underground and high overhead, robed

itself in April and disrobed itself in October when the Common was a

cow-pasture, and observes the same seasons now that the old tree is

belted with an iron girdle and finds its feet covered with flowers.

Alas! my friends, the fence and the tulips are painfully suggestive.

Authorship is an iron girdle, and the blossoms of flattery that are

scattered at its feet are useful to it only as their culture keeps the

soil open to the sun and rain. No man can please the reading public ever

so little without being too highly commended for it in the heat of the

moment; and so, if he thinks of starting again for the prize of public

approbation, he finds himself heavily handicapped, and perhaps weighted

down, simply because he has made good running for some former stakes.

I don't like the position of my friend the Professor. I consider him

fully as good a man as myself.--I have, you know, often referred to him

and quoted him, and sometimes got so mixed up with him, that, like the

Schildbürgers at their town-meeting, I was puzzled to disentangle my own

legs from his, when I wanted to stand up by myself, they were got into

such a snarl together.--But I don't like the position of my friend the

Professor.

The first thing, of course, when he opens his mouth, will be to compare

him with his predecessor. Now, if he has the least tact in the world, he

will begin dull, so as to leave a wide margin for improvement. You may

be perfectly certain that he can talk and write just as well as I can;

but you don't think, surely, that he is going to begin where I left off.

Not unless we are to have a wedding in the first number;--and you are

not sure whether or not there is to be any wedding at all while the

Professor holds my seat at the table.

But I will tell you one thing,--if you sit a year or so at a long table,

you will see what life is. Christenings, weddings, funerals,--these are

the three legs it stands on; and you have a chance to see them all in a

twelvemonth, if the table is really a long one. I don't doubt the

Professor will have something to tell besides his opinions and fancies;

and if you like a book of thoughts with occasional incidents, as well as

a book of incidents with occasional thoughts, why, I see no reason why

you should not accept this talk of the Professor's as kindly as if it

had a fancy name and called itself a novel.

Life may be divided into two periods,--the hours of taking food, and the

intervals between them,--or, technically, into the _alimentary_ and the

_non-alimentary_ portions of existence. Now our social being is so

intensified during the first of these periods, that whoso should write

the history of a man's breakfasts or dinners or suppers would give a

perfect picture of his most important social qualities, conditions, and

actions, and might omit the non-alimentary portion of his life

altogether from consideration. Thus I trust that the breakfasts of which

you have had some records have given you a pretty clear idea, not only

of myself, but of those more interesting friends and fellow-boarders of

mine to whom I have introduced you, and with some of whom, in company

with certain new acquaintances, my friend the Professor will keep you in

relation during the following year. So you see that over the new

table-cloth which is going to be spread there may very possibly be a new

drama of life enacted; but all that, if it should be so, is incidental

and by the way;--for what the Professor wishes particularly to do, and

means to do, is to talk about life and men and things and books and

thoughts; but if there should be anything better than talk occurring

before his eyes, either at the small world of the breakfast-table or in

the greater world without, he holds himself at liberty to relate it or

discourse upon it.

I suppose the Professor will receive a good many letters, as I did,

containing suggestions, counsel, and articles in prose and verse for

publication. He desires me to state that he is very happy to hear from

known and unknown friends, provided they will not mistake him for an

editor, and will not be offended if their communications are not made

the subject of individual notice. There may be times when, having

nothing to say, he will be very glad to print somebody's note or copy of

verses; I don't think it very likely; for life, is short, and the world

is brimful, and rammed down hard, with strange things worth seeing and

telling, and Mr. Worcester's great Quarto Dictionary is soon coming out,

crammed with all manner of words to talk with,--so that the Professor

will probably find little room, except for an answer to a question now

and then, or the acknowledgment of some hint he may have thought worth

taking.

* * * * *

--The speaker shut himself off like a gas-burner at this point, and the

company soon dispersed. I sauntered down to the landlady's, and obtained

from her the following production from the papers left by the gentleman,

whose pen, ranging from grave to gay, from lively to severe, has held

the mirror up to Nature, and given the form and pressure of his thoughts

and feelings for the benefit of the numerous and constantly-increasing

multitudes of readers of the "Oceanic Miscellany," a journal which has

done and is doing so much for the gratification and improvement of the

masses.

_A Poem from the Autocrat's Lose Papers._

[I find the following note written in pencil on the MSS.--_Reporter Oc.

Misc._]

This is a true story. Avis, Avise, or Avice, (they pronounce it

_Arris_,) is a real breathing person. Her home is not more than an hour

and a half's space from the palaces of the great ladies who might like

to look at her. They may see her and the little black girl she gave

herself to, body and soul, when nobody else could bear the sight of her

infirmity,--leaving home at noon, or even after breakfast, and coming

back in season to undress for the evening's party.

AVIS.

I may not rightly call thy name,--

Alas! thy forehead never knew

The kiss that happier children claim,

Nor glistened with baptismal dew.

Daughter of want and wrong and woe,

I saw thee with thy sister-band,

Snatched from the whirlpool's narrowing flow

By Mercy's strong yet trembling hand.

--"Avis!"--With Saxon eye and cheek,

At once a woman and a child,

The saint uncrowned I came to seek

Drew near to greet us,--spoke and smiled.

God gave that sweet sad smile she wore

All wrong to shame, all souls to win,--

A heavenly sunbeam sent before

Her footsteps through a world of sin.

--"And who is Avis?"--Hear the tale

The calm-voiced matrons gravely tell,--

The story known through all the vale

Where Avis and her sisters dwell.

With the lost children running wild,

Strayed from the hand of human care,

They find one little refuse child

Left helpless in its poisoned lair.

The primal mark is on her face,--

The chattel-stamp,--the pariah-stain

That follows still her hunted race,--

The curse without the crime of Cain.

How shall our smooth-turned phrase relate

The little suffering outcast's ail?

Not Lazarus at the rich man's gate

So turned the rose-wreathed revellers pale.

Ah, veil the living death from sight

That wounds our beauty-loving eye!

The children turn in selfish fright,

The white-lipped nurses hurry by.

Take her, dread Angel! Break in love

This bruised reed and make it thine!--

No voice descended from above,

But Avis answered, "She is mine."

The task that dainty menials spurn

The fair young girl has made her own;

Her heart shall teach, her hand shall learn

The toils, the duties yet unknown.

So Love and Death in lingering strife

Stand face to face from day to day,

Still battling for the spoil of Life

While the slow seasons creep away.

Love conquers Death; the prize is won;

See to her joyous bosom pressed

The dusky daughter of the sun,--

The bronze against the marble breast!

Her task is done; no voice divine

Has crowned her deed with saintly fame;

No eye can see the aureole shine

That rings her brow with heavenly flame.

Yet what has holy page more sweet,

Or what had woman's love more fair

When Mary clasped her Saviour's feet

With flowing eyes and streaming hair?

Meek child of sorrow, walk unknown.

The Angel of that earthly throng,

And let thine image live alone

To hallow this unstudied song!

LITERARY NOTICES.

_Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time, with other Papers._ By CHARLES

KINGSLEY, Author of "Hypatia," "Two Years Ago," etc. Boston: Ticknor &

Fields. 12mo.

This collection of Mr. Kingsley's miscellaneous writings is marked by

the same qualities of mind and temper which have given celebrity and

influence to his novels. An earnest man, with strong convictions

springing from a fervid philanthropy, fertile in thought, confident in

statement, resolute in spirit, with many valuable ideas and not a few

curious crotchets, and master of a style singularly bold, vivid,

passionate, and fluent, he always stimulates the mind, if he does not

always satisfy it. The defects of his intellect, especially in the

treatment of historical questions, proceed from the warmth of his

temperament. His impulses irritate his reason. Intellectually impatient

with all facts and arguments which obstruct the full sweep of his

theory, he has an offensive habit of escaping from objections he will

not pause to answer, by the calling of names and the introduction of

Providence. He is most petulantly disdainful of others when he has

nothing but paradoxes with which to oppose their truisms. He has a trick

of adopting the manner and expressions of Carlyle, in speaking of

incidents and characters to which they are ludicrously inapplicable, and

becomes flurried and flippant on occasions where Carlyle would put into

the same words his whole scowling and scornful strength. He frequently

mistakes sympathy with suffering for insight into its causes, and an

eloquent statement of what he thinks desirable for an interpretation of

what really is. He has bright glimpses of truth, but they are due rather

to the freedom of his thinking than to its depth; and in the hurry and

impatient pressure of his impulses, he does not discriminate between his

ideas and his whims. He seems to be in a state of insurrection against

the limitations of his creed, his profession, and his own mind, and the

impression conveyed by his best passages is of splendid incompleteness.

It would be ungracious to notice these defects in a writer who possesses

so many excellences, were it not that he forces them upon the attention,

and in their expression is unjust to other thinkers. His intellectual

conceit finds its vent in intellectual sauciness, and is all the worse

from appearing to have its source in conceit of conscience and

benevolence.

In spite of these faults, however, Mr. Kingsley's reputation is not

greater than he deserves. He is one of the most sincere; truthful, and

courageous of writers, has no reserves or concealments, and pours out

his feelings and opinions exactly as they lie in his own heart and

brain. We at least feel assured that he has no imperfections which he

does not express, and that there is no disagreement between the book and

the man. He is commonly on the right side in the social and political

movements of the day, if he does not always give the right reasons for

his position. His love, both of Nature and human nature, is intense and

deep, and this gives a cordiality, freshness, and frankness to his

writings which more than compensate for their defects.

The present volume of his miscellanies contains not only his essays and

reviews, but his four lectures on "Alexandria and her Schools," and his

"Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers." Of the essays, those on "North

Devon" and "My Winter Garden" are the best specimens of his descriptive

power, and those on "Raleigh" and "England from Wolsey to Elizabeth," of

his talents and accomplishments as a thinker on historical subjects. The

literary papers on "Tennyson," "Burns," "The Poetry of Sacred and

Literary Art," and "Hours with the Mystics," are full of striking and

suggestive, if somewhat perverse, thought. The volume, as a whole, is

read with mingled feelings of vexation and pleasure; but whether

provoked or delighted, we are always interested both in the author and

his themes.

_A Journey due North: Being Notes of a Residence in Russia._ By GEORGE

AUGUSTUS SALA. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

Although the matter of this brilliant volume is of intrinsic interest,

its charm is due more to the mode of description than even to the things

described. It gives us Russia from a Bohemian point of view. The

characteristics of Mr. Sala are keen observation, vivid description,

lively wit, indomitable assurance, and incapacity of being surprised. To

his resolute belief in himself, in what he sees with his own eyes and

conceives with his own brain, the book owes much of its raciness, its

confident, decisive, "knowing" tone, its independence of the judgments

of others, and its freedom from all the deceptions which proceed from

such emotions as wonder and admiration. The volume is read with a

pleasure similar to that we experience in listening to the animated talk

of an acquaintance fresh from novel scenes of foreign travel, who

reproduces his whole experience in recalling his adventures, and gives

us not merely incidents and pictures, but his own feelings of delight

and self-elation.

The three introductory chapters, describing the journey to St.

Petersburg, are perhaps the most brilliant portions of the book. The

delineations of his fellow-passengers, in the voyage from Stettin to

Cronstadt, especially the portraits of the swearing Captain Smith and

the accomplished Hussian noble, are admirable equally for their humor

and their sagacity. The account of the landing at Cronstadt, the scenes

at the Custom-House, the author's first walk in St. Petersburg, and his

first drive in a droschky, are masterpieces of familiar narration, and

fairly convert the readers of his hook into companions of his journey.

The description of the manners and customs of the Russian people, the

shrewd occasional comments on the policy of the government, and the

thorough analysis of the rascality of the Russian police, are admirable

in substance, if somewhat flippant in expression. In power of holding

the amused attention of the reader, equally by the pertinence of the

matter and the impertinence of the tone, the volume is unexcelled by any

other book on the subject of Russia.

_The New Priest in Conception Bay_. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co.

1858. 2 vols. 12mo.

The southeastern portion of the island of Newfoundland, as may be seen

by a glance at the map, may be well described by that expressive epithet

of "nook-shotten," which in Shakspeare is applied to the mother-island

of which it is a dependent. The land is indented by bays and estuaries,

so that it bears the same relation to the water that the parted fingers

of an outstretched hand do to the spaces of air that are between them.

One of these inlets bears the name of Conception Bay; and it is around

the shores of this bay that the scene of this novel is laid. Everything

in it suffers a sea-change; everything is set to the music of the winds

and the waves. We find ourselves among a people with whom the sea is

all, and the land only an appendage to the sea,--a place to dry fish,

and mend nets, and haul up boats, and caulk ships. But though the view

everywhere, morally and physically, is bounded by the sea, and though

one of the finest of the characters is a fisherman, yet the moving

springs of the story are found in elements only accidentally connected

with the sea, and by no means new to novel-writers or playwrights. The

plot of the novel is taken from, or founded upon, the peculiar relations

existing between the Roman Catholic priesthood and the female sex; and,

with only a change in costume and scenery, the events might have taken

place in Maryland, Louisiana, or France.

The novel is one of a peculiar class. To borrow a convenient phraseology

recently introduced into the language, its interest is more subjective

than objective,--or, in other words, is derived more from marked and

careful delineations of individual character than from the march of

events or brilliant procession of incidents. With a single

exception,--the abduction of the fisherman's daughter,--the occurrences

narrated are such as might happen any day in any small community living

near the sea. Novels constructed on this plan are less likely to be

popular than those in which the interest is derived from a

skilfully-contrived plot and a rapid and stirring succession of moving

events. To what extent the work before us may be popular we wilt not

undertake even to guess; for we have had too frequent experience of the

capriciousness of public taste to hazard any prediction as to the

reception a particular book may meet with, especially if it rely

exclusively upon its own merits, and be not helped by the previous

reputation of the writer. But we certainly can and will say that to

readers of a certain cast it will present strong attractions, and that

no candid critic can read it without pronouncing it to be a remarkable

work and the production of an original mind. The author we should judge

to be a man who had lived a good deal in solitude, or at least removed

from his intellectual peers,--who had been through much spiritual

struggle in the course of his life,--who had been more accustomed to

think than to write, at least for the press,--and whose own observation

had revealed to him some of the darker aspects of the Roman Catholic

faith and practice.

There is very little skill in the construction of the plot. Most of the

events stand to each other in the relation of accidental and not of

necessary succession, and might be transposed without doing any harm.

Many pages are written simply as illustrations of character; and a fair

proportion of the novel might be called with strict propriety a series

of sketches connected by a slight thread of narrative. But it would be

unreasonable to deal sharply with an author for this defect; for the

faculty of making a well-constructed story, in which every event shall

come in naturally, and yet each bring us one step nearer to the

journey's end, is now one of the lost arts of earth. But this is not

all. A considerable portion of it must be pronounced decidedly slow. We

use the word not in its slang application, but in the sense in which

Goldsmith used it in the first line of "The Traveller," or rather, as

Johnson told him he used it, when he said to him,--"You do not mean

tardiness of locomotion; you mean that sluggishness of mind which comes

upon a man in solitude." But the slowness of which novel-readers will

complain is not mere commonplace, least of all is it dulness. It is the

leisurely movement of a contemplative mind full of rich thought and

stored with varied learning. Such a writer _could not_ have any sympathy

with the mercurial, vivacious, light-of-foot story-tellers of the French

school. The author of "The New Priest in Conception Bay," we surmise,

has not been in the habit of packing up his thoughts for the market, by

either writing for the press, or conversing with clever and

nimble-witted men and women, and thus does not always distinguish

between cargo and dunnage. The current of the story often flows with a

very languid movement. It happens, rather unluckily, that this is

particularly true of the first seventy pages of the first volume. We

fear that many professional novel-readers may break down in the course

of these pages; and we confess ourselves to have been a little

discouraged. But after the ninth chapter, and the touching account which

Skipper George gives of the death of his boys,--a story which the most

indifferent cannot peruse without emotion,--the reader may be safely

left in the author's hands. They will go on together to the end, after

this, on good terms. And the prospect brightens, and the horses are

whipped up, as we advance. The second volume is much more interesting,

in the common sense of the word,--more stirring, more rapid, more

animated, than the first.

It is but putting our criticism into another form to say that the novel

is too long, and, as a mere story, might with advantage be compressed

into at least two-thirds of its present bulk. There are, especially, two

departments or points to which this remark is applicable. In the first

place, the conversations are too numerous, too protracted, and run too

much into trivialities and details. In the second place, the

descriptions of scenery are too frequently introduced, and pushed to a

wearisome enumeration of particulars and minute delineation of details.

In this peculiarity the author is kept in countenance by most

respectable literary associates. This sort of Pre-Raphaelite style of

scenery-painting in words is a characteristic of most recent American

novel, especially such as are written by women. Every rock, every clump

of trees, every strip of sea-shore, every sloping hillside, sits for its

portrait, and is reproduced with a tender conscientiousness of touch

wholly disproportioned to the importance of the subject. When human

hearts and human passions are animating or darkening the scene, we do

not want to be detained by a botanist's description of plants or a

geologist's sketch of rocks. The broad, free sweeps of Scott's brush in

"The Pirate" are more effective than the delicate needle-point lines of

the writer before us.

We think, too, that too much use is made of those strange and uncouth

dialects which have to be represented to the eye by bad spelling. We

have the familiar Yankee type in Mr. Bangs, and a new form of

phraseology in the speech of the Newfoundland fishermen. A little of

this is well enough, but it should not be pushed to an extreme. The

author's style, in general, is vigorous and expressive; it is the garb

of an original mind, and often takes striking forms; but in grace and

simplicity there is room for improvement, and we doubt not that

improvement will come with practice.

There are many passages which we should like to quote as specimens of

the imaginative power, forcible description, and apt illustration which

are shown in this work. Whether the author has ever written verse or

not, he is a poet in the best sense of that much-abused word. To him

Nature in all its forms is animated; it sympathizes with all his moods,

and takes on the hues of his thought. There are very few of these

paragraphs that are easily separable; they are fixed in the page, and

cannot be understood apart from it. Besides, many of these beauties are

minute,--a gleaming word here and there,--but making the track of the

story glow like the phosphorescent waters of the tropics.

We give a few paragraphs at random:--

"Does the sea hold the secret?

"Along the wharves, along the little beaches, around the

circuit of the little coves, along the smooth or broken face of

rock, the sea, which cannot rest, is busy. These little waves

and this long swell, that now are here at work, have been ere

now at home in the great inland sea of Europe, breathed on by

soft, warm winds from fruit-groves, vineyards, and wide fields

of flowers,--have sparkled in the many-colored lights, and felt

the trivial oars and dallying fingers of the loiterers, on the

long canals of Venice,--have quenched the ashes of the

Dutchman's pipe, thrown overboard from his dull, laboring

_treckschuyt_,--have wrought their patient tasks in the dim

caverns of the Indian Archipelago,--have yielded to the little

builders under water means and implements to rear their

towering altar, dwelling, monument.

"These little waves have crossed the ocean, tumbling like

porpoises at play, and, taking on a savage nature in the Great

Wilderness, have thundered in close ranks and countless numbers

against man's floating fortress,--have stormed the breach and

climbed up over the walls in the ship's riven side,--have

followed, howling and hungry as mad wolves, the crowded

raft,--have leaped upon it, snatching off, one by one, the

weary, worn-out men and women,--have taken up and borne aloft,

as if on hands and shoulders, the one chance human body that is

brought in to land, and the long spur, from which man's dancing

cordage wastes by degrees, find yields its place to long, green

streamers, much like those that clung to this tall, taper tree

when it stood in the Northern forest.

"These waves have rolled their breasts about amid the wrecks

and weeds of the hot stream that comes up many thousands of

miles out of the Gulf of Mexico, as the great Mississippi goes

down into it, and by-and-by these waves will move, all numb and

chilled, among the mighty icebergs and ice-fields that must be

brought down from the poles."

* * * * *

"She asked, 'Have you given up being a priest, Mr. Urston?'

"'Yes!' he answered, in a single word, looking before him, as

it were along his coming life, like a quoit-caster, to see how

far the uttered word would strike; then, turning to her, and in

a lower voice, added, 'I've left that, once and forever.'"

* * * * *

"He stood still with his grief; and, as Mr. Wellon pressed his

honest, hard hand, he lifted to his pastor one of those

childlike looks that only come out on the face of the true man,

that has grown, as oaks grow, ring around ring, adding each

after-age to the childhood that has never been lost, but has

been kept innermost. This fisherman seemed like one of those

that plied their trade, and were the Lord's disciples, at the

Sea of Galilee, eighteen hundred years ago. The very flesh and

blood inclosing such a nature keep a long youth through life.

Witness the genius, (who is only the more thorough man,) poet,

painter, sculptor, finder-out, or whatever; how fresh and fair

such an one looks out from under his old age! Let him be

Christian, too, and he shall look as if--shedding this

outward--the inward being would walk forth a glorified one."

* * * * *

"As he mentioned his fruitless visits, a startling, most

repulsive leer just showed itself in Ladford's face; but it

disappeared as suddenly and wholly as a monster that has come

up, horrid and hideous, to the surface of the sea, and then has

sunk again, bodily, into the dark deep, and is gone, as if it

had never come, except for the fear and loathing that it leaves

behind. This face, after that look, had nothing repulsive in

it, but was only the more subdued and sad."

The author's mind so teems with images, that he does not always

discriminate between the good and the bad. Occasionally we find some

that are manifestly faulty and overstrained.

"It is one on which the tenderness of the deep heart of the

Common Mother breaks itself; over which _the broad, dark,

silent wings of a dread mystery are stretched_."

* * * * *

"Her voice had in it that tender _touch_ which _lays itself,

warm and loving_, on the heart."

* * * * *

"And then her voice began _to drop down_, as it were, _from

step to step_,--and _the steps seemed cold and damp, as it went

down them lingeringly_:--'or for

trial,--disappointment,--whatever comes!'--and at the last, _it

seemed to have gone down into a sepulchral vault_."

We do not admire any one of the above,--least of all the last, in which

the human voice is embodied as a sexton going down the steps of a tomb.

Why, too, as a matter of verbal criticism, should the author use such

words as "tragedist," "exhibitress," and "cheaty?"

In the delineation of character the author shows uncommon power and is

entitled to high praise. His portraits are animated, life-like, and

individual. Father Terence is drawn with a firm and skilful touch. The

task which the author prescribed to himself--to present an ecclesiastic

without learning, without intellectual power, without enthusiasm, and

with the easy habits of a careless and enjoyable temperament, and yet

who should be respectable, and even venerable, by reason of the

soundness of his instincts and his thorough right-heartedness--was not

an easy one; but in the execution he has been entirely successful. We

cannot but surmise that he has met sometime and somewhere a living man

with some of the characteristic traits of Father Terence. Father

Ignatius, the conventional type of the dark, wily, and dangerous

ecclesiastical intriguer, is an easier subject, but not so well done. He

is a little too melodramatic; and we apply with peculiar force to him a

criticism to which all the characters are more or less obnoxious, that

he is too constantly and uniformly manifesting the peculiar traits by

which the author distinguishes him from others. Father Debree and Mrs.

Barré are drawn with powerful and discriminating touch, and we recognize

the skill of the writer in the fact that we had read a considerable

portion of the novel before we had any suspicion of the former relations

between them. We may here say that we think that the women who may read

this work will want to know, a little more fully and distinctly than the

author has seen fit to tell, what were the causes and influences which

led to the severing of those relations. We cannot state our meaning more

clearly, without doing what we think should never be done in the review

of a new novel, and that is, telling the story, and thus removing half

the impulse to read it. Skipper George and his household, and the

smuggler Ladford, are very well drawn,--not distinctly original, and yet

with distinctive individual traits, which sharp observation must, to

some extent, have furnished the author with.

But to our commendation of the characters we must make one exception: we

humbly and respectfully submit that Mr. Bangs is a portentous bore, and

we heartily wish that he had been drowned before he ever set his foot

upon the shores of Newfoundland. It is possible, however, that in this

case we are not impartial judges; for we confess, that, for our own

private reading, we are heartily weary of the Yankee,--we mean as a

literary creation,--of the eternal repetition of the character of which

Sam Slick is the prototype,--which is for the most part a caricature,

and no more to be found upon the solid earth than a griffin or a

centaur. And in our judgment the theological discussions between this

worthy and Father Terence are not in good taste. The author surely would

not have us suppose that the wretched, skimble-skamble stuff which the

latter is made to talk is any fair representative of the arguments by

which the Church of Rome maintains its dogmas and vindicates its claims.

A considerable amount of literary skill and a quick perception of the

ludicrous are shown in the ridiculous aspect which the good Father's

statements and reasonings are made to assume in passing through Mr.

Bangs's mind; but we doubt whether such exhibitions are profitable to

the cause of good religion, and whether the advantage thereby secured to

Protestantism is not purchased at the price of some danger to

Christianity. It is not well to teach men the art of making mysteries

ridiculous.

But we take leave of our author and his book with high respect for his

powers,--we do not know but that we may say his genius,--and with no

small admiration for this particular expression of them. The very

minuteness of our criticism involves a compliment. It has been truly

said, that many men never write a book at all, but that very few write

only one. We think that the author of "The New Priest in Conception Bay"

must and will write more. A mind so fruitful and inventive, a spiritual

nature so high and earnest, and an observation so keen and correct,

cannot fail to accumulate materials for future use. We predict that his

next novel will be better than this,--that it will have all its

substantial and essential merits, and will show more constructive skill

and a more practised hand in literary artisanship. His gold will be more

neatly wrought, and not less pure and abundant.

_Summer Time in the Country._ By Rev. ROBERT ARIS WILLMOTT. London and

New York: George Routledge. Square 12mo. Illustrated.

We first made the acquaintance of this work in a shilling volume, a

"railway-library edition," and were charmed with its genial tone, its

nice appreciation of rural scenery, its agreeable and unpedantic

learning. It is a diary for the summer months, with notes upon the

changing aspects of Nature, reminiscences from the poets, and

appropriate comments. We are glad now to welcome the book in this form,

wherein satin paper, careful typography, delicate engravings, and

handsome binding have been employed to give it an appropriate dress.

_Annual Obituary Notices of Eminent Persons who died in the United

States during the Year 1857._ By NATHAN CROSBY. Boston: Phillips,

Sampson, & Co. 8vo. pp. 430.

The object of this work is best stated in the words of the author, as

being "the result of a long and earnest desire to give a more permanent

and accessible memorial to those who have originated and developed our

institutions,--those whose names should be remembered by the generations

to come, as the statesmen, the soldiers, the men of science and skill,

the sagacious merchants, the eminent clergymen and

philanthropists,--those who have brought our country to the prosperity

and distinction it now enjoys."

Eulogies, funeral sermons, and obituaries soon pass out of remembrance,

and an annual compilation like this cannot fail to be of service. The

work appears to have been done with impartiality and care.

_The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, with an Original Memoir._

Illustrated by F. R. PICKERSGILL, JOHN TENNIEL, BIRKET FOSTER, FELIX

DARLEY, and others. New York: J. S. Redfield. 8vo. pp. 250.

The poems of Poe have taken their place in literature; it is too late to

attempt anything like a contemporaneous criticism, too early to

anticipate the judgement of posterity. But whatever were the faults of

this gifted and erratic genius, much that he has written has become a

part of the thought and memory of the present generation of readers, and

will doubtless go to our children with equal claims.

In this volume it would seem that the arts connected with book-making

have culminated; paper, typography, drawing, and engraving are all

admirable. There are no fewer than fifty-three wood-engravings, of

various degrees of excellence, but all exquisitely finished. The lovers

of fine editions of poetry will find this a gift-book which the most

fastidious taste will approve. If we could add that this mechanical

excellence was from American hands, it would be much more grateful to

our national pride.

_Black's Atlas of North America._ Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.

Nothing could well be more convenient than this series of twenty maps.

They are carefully executed, of a size not too large for easy handling,

and bound in a thin, light volume. They are preceded by some

introductory statistical matter which is very useful for purposes of

ready reference, and accompanied by an index so arranged that one can

find the name he seeks on any map with great facility. We have seen no

maps of North America which seemed to us, on the whole, at once so cheap

and good.

* * * * *

Among the announcements of illustrated works in press, we notice "The

Stratford Gallery, comprising Forty-five Ideal Portraits described by

Mrs. J. W. Palmer. Illustrated with Fine Engravings on Steel, from

Designs by Eminent Hands."

In one vol. 8vo. Antique morocco. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

* * * * *

The many admirers of the "AUTOCRAT" will learn with pleasure that a fine

edition of his charming volume is in preparation, with tinted paper,

illustrated by Hoppin, and bound in elegant style. Probably no

holiday-book will be in such demand this season.