CANTO XXIII.

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF

LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOLUME XIII.

[Illustration]

BOSTON:

TICKNOR AND FIELDS,

135, WASHINGTON STREET.

* * * * *

LONDON: TRÜBNER AND COMPANY.

M DCCC LXIV.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR AND

FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of

Massachusetts.

PRINTED BY SAM'L CHISM, Franklin Printing House, 112 Congress St.,

Boston

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED BY H.O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY

CONTENTS.

Ambassadors in Bonds _Caroline Chesebro_

Annesley Hall and Newstead Abbey _Mrs. R.C. Waterston_

Beginning of the End, The _C.C. Hazewell_

Bryant _G.S. Hillard_

California as a Vineland

Convulsionists of St. Médard, The _Robert Dale Owen_

Cruise on Lake Ladoga, A _Bayard Taylor_

Fast-Day at Foxden, A

Fighting Facts for Fogies _C.C. Hazewell_

First Visit to Washington, The _J.T. Trowbridge_

Fouquet the Magnificent _F. Sheldon_

Genius _J. Brownlee Brown_

Glacial Period _Prof. Louis Agassiz_

Glaciers, External Appearance of _Prof. Louis Agassiz_

Glen Roy, in Scotland, The Parallel Roads of _Prof. Louis Agassiz_

Gold-Fields of Nova Scotia, The _Arthur Gilman_

Guides, A Talk about _Maria S. Cummins_

Half-Life, A, and Half a Life _Miss E.H. Appleton_

House and Home Papers _Harriet Beecher Stowe_

Irving, Washington _Donald G. Mitchell_

Life on the Sea Islands _Miss Forten_

Minister Plenipotentiary, The _O.W. Holmes_

Mormons, Among the _Fitz-Hugh Ludlow_

My Book _Gail Hamilton_

New-England Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, The, _J.G. Palfrey_

Northern Invasions _E.E. Hale_

Old Bachelor, Some Account of the Early Life of an _Mrs. A.M. Diaz_

Our Progressive Independence _O.W. Holmes_

Our Soldiers _Mrs. Furness_

Peninsular Campaign, The _Lt.-Col. B.L. Alexander_

Pictor Ignotus _Gail Hamilton_

Presidential Election, The _C.C. Hazewell_

Queen of California, The _E.E. Hale_

Ray _Harriet E. Prescott_

Relation of Art to Nature, On the _J. Eliot Cabot_

Rim, The _Harriet E. Prescott_

Robson _George Augustus Sala_

Schoolmaster's Story, The _Mrs. A.M. Diaz_

Stephen Yarrow _Author of "Life in the Iron Mills"_

Thackeray, William Makepeace _Bayard Taylor_

Types _William Winter_

Victory, How to Use _E.E. Hale_

Yo-Semite, Seven Weeks in the Great _Fitz-Hugh Ludlow_

Wet-Weather Work _Donald G. Mitchell_

Whittier _D.A. Wasson_

Winthrop, Governor John, in Old England _G.E. Ellis_

POETRY.

Black Preacher, The _J.R. Lowell_

Brother of Mercy, The _John G. Whittier_

Dante's "Paradiso," Three Cantos of _H.W. Longfellow_

Gold Hair _Robert Browning_

Kalif of Baldacca, The _H.W. Longfellow_

Last Charge, The _O.W. Holmes_

Memoriæ Positum R.G.S _J.R. Lowell_

My Brother and I _J.T. Trowbridge_

Neva, The _Bayard Taylor_

On Picket Duty _Mrs. W.T. Johnson_

Our Classmate _O.W. Holmes_

Planting of the Apple-Tree, The _W.C. Bryant_

Presence _Alice, Gary_

Prospice _Robert Browning_

Reaper's Dream, The _T.B. Read_

Reënlisted _Lucy Larcom_

Shakspeare _O.W. Holmes_

Snow _Elizabeth A.C. Akers_

Snow-Man, The _C.J. Sprague_

Song _Alice Cary_

To a Young Girl Dying _T.W. Parsons_

Under the Cliff _Robert Browning_

Wreck of Rivermouth, The _John G. Whittier_

REVIEWS AND LITERACY NOTICES.

Adams's Church Pastorals

Agassiz's Methods of Study in Natural History

Alger's Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life

Boynton's History of West Point

Browning's Sordello, Strafford, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day

Craik's History of English Literature

Draper's History of the Intellectual Development of Europe

Dream Children

Foederalist, The, Dawson's Edition

Gillett's Life and Times of Huss

Hallam's Remains

Hannah Thurston

Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire

Mill's Principles of Political Economy

My Days and Nights on the Battle-field

My Farm of Edgewood

Peculiar

Possibilities of Creation

Ray's Mental Hygiene

Renan, De l'Origine du Langage

Smiles's Industrial Biography

Spencer's Illustrations of Progress

Thackeray's Roundabout Papers

Ticknor's Life of Prescott

Tuckerman's Poems

Tyndall on Heat

Weiss's Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XIII.--JANUARY, 1864--NO. LXXV.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by TICKNOR AND

FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of

Massachusetts.

* * * * *

GOVERNOR JOHN WINTHROP IN OLD ENGLAND.

Our magazine was introduced to the world bearing on the cover of its

first number a vignette of the portraiture of the ever honored and

revered John Winthrop, first Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts

Bay. The effigies expressed a countenance, features, and a tone of

character in beautiful harmony with all that we know of the man, all

that he was and did. Gravity and loftiness of soul, tempered by a mild

and tender delicacy, depth of experience, resolution of purpose, native

dignity, acquired wisdom, and an harmonious equipoise of the robust

virtues and the winning graces have set their unmistakable tokens on

those lineaments. That vignette, after renewing from month to month

before our readers, for nearly four years, as gracious and fragrant a

memory as can engage the love of a New-England heart, gave place, in the

month of June, 1861, to the only emblem, no longer personal, which might

claim to supplant it. The national flag, during a struggle which has

seen its dignity insulted only to rouse and nerve the spirit which shall

vindicate its glory, has displaced that bearded and ruffed portraiture.

The visitor to the Massachusetts State-House may see, hanging in its

Senate-Chamber, tolerably well preserved on its canvas, what is

believed, on trustworthy evidence, to be Vandyck's own painting of

Winthrop. Another portrait of him--not so agreeable to the eye, nor so

faithful, we are sure, to the original, yet reputed to date from the

lifetime of its subject--hangs in the Hall of the American Antiquarian

Society at Worcester. Those of our readers who have not lovingly pored

and paused over Mr. Savage's elaborately illustrated edition of Governor

Winthrop's Journal do not know what a profitable pleasure invites them,

whenever they shall have grace to avail themselves of it. But who that

knows John Winthrop through such materials of memory and such fruits of

high and noble service as up to this time have been accessible and

extant here has not longed for, and will not most heartily welcome, a

new contribution, coming by surprise, unlooked for, unhoped for even,

but yielding, from the very fountain-head, the means of a most intimate

converse with him in that period of his life till now wholly unrecorded

for us? We had known his character as displayed here. We have now a most

authentic and complete development of the process by which that

character was moulded and built abroad. The President of the

Massachusetts Historical Society has been privileged to do a service

which, with most rare felicity, embraces his indebtedness to his own

good name, to his official place, and to the city and State which have

invested him with so many of their highest honors.

The Honorable Robert C. Winthrop, a descendant in the seventh generation

from our honored First Governor, seizing upon a brief vacation-interval

in the course of his high public service, made a visit to England in the

summer of 1847. He was naturally drawn towards his ancestral home at

Groton, in Suffolk. The borough itself, with its own due share of

historic interest, from men of mark and their deeds, is composed of one

of those clusters of villages which are sure in an English landscape to

have some charm in their picturesque combinations. The visitor had the

privilege of worshipping on a Sunday in the same parish church where his

ancestors, holding the right of presentation, had joined in the same

form of service, to whose font they had brought their children in

baptism, and at whose altar-rails they had stood for "the solemnization

of matrimony," and knelt in the office of communion. The second entry

made in the parish register, still retained in the vestry, records the

death of the head of the family in 1562. Outside the church, and close

against its walls, is the tomb of the Winthrop family, which, by a happy

coincidence, had just been repaired, as if ready to receive a visitor

from a land where tombs are not supposed to have the justification of

age for being dilapidated. The father, the grandfather, and perhaps the

great-grandfather of our John Winthrop were committed to that

repository. The family name and arms, with a Latin inscription in memory

of the parents of the Governor, are legible still, "_Beati sunt

pacifici_" is the benediction which either the choice of those who rest

beneath it, or the congenial tribute of some survivor, has selected to

close the epitaph. Only traces of the cellar of the mansion-house and of

its garden-plot are now visible to mark the home where the Chief

Magistrates of Massachusetts and Connecticut, father and son, had lived

together and had matured the "conclusions" on which they exiled

themselves.

A monstrous and idle tradition, heard by the visitor, as he surveyed the

outlines of his ancestral home, prompted him to that labor of love which

he has so felicitously performed, and with such providential helps, in a

biography. The absurdity of the tradition, equally defiant as it is of

the consistencies of character and the facts of chronology, is a warning

to those who rely on these floating confoundings of fact and fiction,

which, as some one has said, "are almost as misleading as history." Two

hundred years and more had seen that manor-house deserted of its former

occupants. The neighboring residents had kept their name in remembrance,

more, probably, through the help of the tomb than of the dwelling.

Speculation and romance would deal with them as an extinct or an exiled

family. The story had become current on the spot, that the Winthrops

were regicides, and had fled to America, having, however, buried some

precious hoard of money about their premises before their flight. Our

author suggests the altogether likely idea that a suspicion might have

attached to him as having come over to search for that treasure. Little

may he have imagined what thoughts may have distracted the reverence of

some of his humble fellow-worshippers in Groton Church who whispered the

nature of his errand one to another. Our honored Governor and his son of

Connecticut had been near a score of years on this soil before Charles

I. was beheaded. Mr. Savage informs us that he was once asked by a

descendant of the father whether he had received before his death

tidings of the execution of his old master. The annotator is able to

quote a letter from Roger Williams, "to his honored kind friend, Mr.

John Winthrop at Nameag," [New London,] lettered on the back, "Mr.

Williams of ye high news about the king." This letter, conveying recent

tidings, was dated at Narragansett, June 26, 1649, two months after the

elder Winthrop had died in Boston.

It was but natural that even the absurdity of the tradition lingering

around the traces of the Groton manor should have served, with other far

more constraining inducements, to excite in the visitor a purpose to

employ his first period of relief from official service in rendering an

act of public as well as of private obligation to the memory of his

progenitors,--especially as there existed no adequate and extended

biography, but only scattered and fragmentary memorials of them in our

copious literary stores. Happily for him, and surely to the highest

gratification of those who were to be his readers, materials most

abundant, and of the most authentic and self-revealing sort, in journals

and letters, were attainable, to give to the work essentially the

character of an autobiography, and that, too, of the most attractive

cast. A second visit of the author to England in 1859-60, and the most

opportune reception of a large collection of original papers, preserved

in another line of the Governor's descendants, put his fortunate

biographer in possession of the means for completing a work surpassed by

no similar volume known to us in the gracious attractions and in the

substantial interest of its contents. The book may safely rely for its

due reception upon the noble character, complete and harmonious in all

the virtues, and upon the eminent public services, of its subject. It

has other strong recommendations, affording, in style, method, and

spirit, a model for books of the same class, and embracing all those

paramount qualities of thoroughness, research, accuracy, good taste,

incidental illustration, and, above all, an appreciative spirit, which

stamp the worth of such labors.

We must leave almost unnoticed the author's elaborate chapter on the

pedigree and the early history of the Winthrop family. He is content to

begin this side of those who "came over with the Conqueror," and to

accept for ancestry men and women untitled, of the sterling English

stock, delvers of the soil, and spinners of the fabrics of which it

affords the raw material. He finds almost his own full name introducing

a record on the Rolls of Court in the County of York for the year 1200.

Adam Winthrop, grandfather of our Governor, himself the father, as he

was also the son of other Adams, was born in Lavenham, Suffolk, October

9, 1498, six years after the discovery of this country by Columbus, and

in the same year in which occurred the voyage of Vespucius, who gave his

name to the continent. This second Adam Winthrop, at the age of

seventeen, went to London, binding himself as an apprentice for ten

years under the well-esteemed and profitable guild of the "clothiers,"

or cloth-workers. At the expiration of his apprenticeship, in 1526, he

was sworn a citizen of London, and, after filling the subordinate

dignities of his craft, rose to the mastership of his company in 1551.

The Lordship of the Manor of Groton, at the dissolution of the

monasteries, was granted to Adam Winthrop in 1544. Retaining his

mercantile relations in the great city, and probably residing there at

intervals, he seated himself in landed dignity at his manor, and there

he died in 1562. His memorialist now holds in his possession the

original bronze plate which was put upon his tomb three hundred years

ago, and which was probably removed to give place to the new inscription

connected with the repairs already referred to. This ancient sepulchral

brass bears in quaint old English characters the following

inscription:--"Here lyeth Mr. Adam Wynthrop, Lorde & Patron of Groton,

whiche departed owt of this Worlde the IXth day of November, in the

yere of owre Lorde God MCCCCCLXII." His widow, who had been his second

wife, married William Mildmay; and his daughter Alice married Mr.

Mildmay's son Thomas, who, being afterwards knighted, secured to the

cloth-worker's daughter the title of "Lady Mildmay." In the cabinet of

the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, the visitor, on the

asking, may be gratified with the sight and touch of a curious old relic

which will bring him almost into contact with a most agreeable

family-circle of the olden time. It is a serviceable posset-pot, with a

silver tip and lid, both of which are gilded, the cover, still playing

faithfully on its hinge, being chased with the device of Adam and Eve in

the garden partaking of the forbidden fruit. An accompanying record

reads as follows:--"At ye Feast of St. Michael, Ano. 1607, my Sister,

ye Lady Mildmay, did give me a Stone Pot, tipped & covered wth. a

Silver Lydd." How many comforting concoctions and compounds, alternating

with herb-drinks and medicated potions, may have been quaffed or

swallowed with wry face from that precious old cup, who can now tell?

Probably it ministered its more inviting contents to the elders of the

successive generations in the family, while it was known by the younger

members in their turn in connection with certain penalties for

overeating and chills got from hard play. While having the relic in

hand, the other day, the prompting was irresistible to bring it close to

the appropriate organ, to ascertain, if possible, what had been the

predominant character of its contents. But, faithful as the grave, it

would reveal no secrets; having parted with all transient and artificial

odors, it has resumed, as is most fitting, the smell of its parent

earth.

The writer of that record accompanying the "Stone-Pot" with its "Silver

Lydd" was Adam Winthrop, father of our Governor, and son of the

last-mentioned Lord of Groton. This third Adam Winthrop--the sixth child

of his father's second wife, and the eleventh of his thirteen

children--was born in London, "in the street which is called Gracious,"

(Grace-Church,) August 10, 1548. Losing his father at the age of

fourteen, he was early bred as a lawyer in London, but soon engaged in

agricultural interests at Groton, to the lordship of which he acceded by

a license of alienation from an elder brother. There are sundry

authentic relics and tokens of this good man which reveal to us those

traits of his character, and those ways and influences of his domestic

life, under the high-toned, yet most genial training of which his son

was educated to the great enterprise Providence intended for him. There

are even poetical pieces extant which prove that Adam sought intercourse

with the Muses by making advances on his own part, though we must

confess that he does not appear to have been fairly met half-way by that

capricious and fastidious sisterhood. Many of his almanacs and diaries,

with entries dating from 1595, and from which the author makes liberal

and interesting transcripts in an Appendix, have been happily preserved,

and have a grateful use to us. They help us to reconstruct an old home,

a pleasant one, in or near which three generations of a good stock lived

together after the highest pattern of an orderly, exemplary, prospered,

and pious household. We infer from many significant trifles, that, while

the old English comfort-loving, generous, and hospitable style prevailed

there, the severer spirit of Puritanism had not attained ascendancy.

Intercourse with the metropolis, though embarrassed with conditions

requiring some buffeting and hardship, was compensated by the zest of

adventure, and it was frequent enough to quicken the minds and to add to

the bodily comforts and refinements of the family. Adam Winthrop must

have been a fine specimen of the old English gentleman, with all of

native polish which courtly experiences might or might not have given

him, and with a simple, high-toned, upright, and neighborly spirit,

which made him an apt and a faithful administrator of a great variety of

trusts. His old Bible, now in the possession of Mr. George Livermore of

Cambridge, represented the divine presence and law in his household,

for all its members, parents and children, masters and servants. He

entertained hospitably his full share of "the godly preachers," who were

the wandering luminaries, and, in some respects, the angelic visitants

of those days. He was evidently a very patient listener to sermons,

though we have not the proof in any surviving notebooks of his that one

of his excellent son John's furnishes us, that he took pains to

transcribe the heads, the savory passages, and the textual attestations

of the elaborate, but utterly juiceless sermons of the time. The entries

in his almanacs afford a curious variety, in which interesting events of

public importance alternate with homely details touching the affairs of

his neighborhood and the incidents in the domestic life of his relatives

and acquaintance. One matter, as we shall soon see, on which a fact in

the life, of Governor Winthrop depends, finds an unexpected disclosure

from Adam's pen. Here are a few excerpts from these entries:--"1597. The

VIth of July I received a privie seale to lend the Q. matie [Elizabeth]

£XX. for a yere."--"1602. Sept. the 27th day in ye mornying the Bell

did goe for mother [a conventional epithet] Tiffeyn, but she recouered."

This decides a matter which has sometimes been disputed,--that, while

with us, in our old times, "the passing bell" indicated the progress of

a funeral train, anciently in England it signified that a soul was

believed to be passing from a body supposed to be _in extremis_. And a

doleful sound it must have been to those of whom it made a false report,

as of "mother Tiffeyn."--"_Decem._ ye XXI day my brother Alibaster came

to my house & toulde me yt he made certayne inglishe verses in his

sleepe, wh. he recited unto me, & I lent him XLs."--"1603 April ye

28th day was the funeralles kept at Westminster for our late Queene

Elizabethe."--"1603. On Munday ye seconde of Maye, one Keitley, a

blackesmythe, dwellinge in Lynton in Cambridgeshire, had a poore man to

his father whom he kepte. A gentleman of ye same Towne sent a horse to

shoe, the father held up the horses legge whilest his soonne did shoe

him. The horse struggled & stroke the father on ye belly with his foote

& overthrewe him. The soonne laughed thereat & woulde not helpe his

father uppe, for the which some that were present reproved him greatlye.

The soonne went forwarde in shoinge of ye horse, & when he had donne he

went uppon his backe, mynding to goe home with him. The horse presently

did throughe him of his backe against a poste & clave his hed in sonder.

Mistress Mannocke did knowe ye man, for his mother was her nurse.

_Grave judicium Dei in irrisorem patris sui_." These little scraps of

Latin, sometimes running into a distich, are frequent signs of a certain

classical proclivity of the writer. Any one who should infer, from the

good man's arbitrary mode of spelling many words, that he was an

illiterate person, would be grievously mistaken, in his ignorance of the

universal characteristic and license of that age in that matter. The

Queen herself was by no means so good a "speller," by our standard, as

was Adam Winthrop. The extraordinary way in which letters were then left

out of words where they were needed, and most lavishly multiplied where

no possible use could be made of them, is a phenomenon never accounted

for.

Adam Winthrop was for several years auditor of the accounts of Trinity

and St. John's Colleges, Cambridge, and records his visits to the

University in the discharge of his duties. We have specimens of a

pleasant correspondence between him and his sister, Lady Mildmay, also

with his wife, marked by a sweet and gentle tone, the utterance of a

kindly spirit,--fragrant records of hearts once so warm with love.

It must have been with supreme delight that Adam entered in his diary,

that on January 12, 1587, [January 22, 1588, N.S.,] was born his only

son, John, one of five children by his second wife. John came into the

world between the years that marked, respectively, the execution of

Mary, Queen of Scots, and the visit of the Spanish Armada. We can well

conceive under what gracious and godly influences he received his early

nurture. His mother died only one year before he, at the age of

forty-two, embarked for America, his father having not long preceded

her. Evidence abundant was in our possession that John Winthrop had

received what even now would be called a good education, and what in his

own time was a comparatively rare one. It had generally been taken for

granted, however, that he had never been a member of either of the

Universities. His present biographer tells us that long before

undertaking his present grateful task he had never been reconciled to

admit the inference which had been drawn from silence on this point. He

remembered, by references in his own reading, that by some oversight

there had been an omission of names in the Cambridge University Register

from June, 1589, to June, 1602, and that no admissions were recorded

earlier than 1625. John Winthrop might, therefore, have at least "gone

to college," if he had not "gone through college." His biographer had

also noticed in the Governor's "Christian Experience," drawn up and

signed by him in New England on his forty-ninth birthday, 1636-7, an

allusion to his having been at Cambridge when "about 14 yrs of age," and

having had a lingering fever there. An entry in the records of his

father must have been a most grateful discovery to the Governor's

descendant in the seventh generation. "1602. The 2d of December I rode

to Cambridge. The VIIIth day John my soonne was admitted into Trinitie

College." But the old mystery vanishes only to give place to another,

which has a spice of romance in it. John Winthrop did not graduate at

Cambridge. He was a lawful husband when seventeen years of age, and a

happy father at eighteen.

In a time-stained and most precious document from his pen and from his

heart, relating his religious experience, to be referred to more

particularly by-and-by, he charges himself in his youth with grievous

sin. What we know of his whole life and character would of itself forbid

us to accept literally his severe self-judgment, much more to draw from

his language the inference which like language would warrant, if used in

our times. Those who have even but a superficial acquaintance with

religious diaries, especially with such as date from near that age, need

not be told that their writers, when sincerely devout by the Puritan

standard, aimed to search and judge their own hearts and lives with all

that penetrating, self-revealing, unsparing scrutiny and severity which

they believed were turned upon them by the all-seeing eye of infinite

purity. They wished to anticipate the Great Tribunal, and to avert the

surprise of any new disclosure there by admitting to themselves while

still in the flesh the worst that it could pronounce against them. Men

and women who before the daily companions and witnesses of their lives

would stand stoutly, and honestly too, in self-defence against all

imputations, and might even boast themselves--as St. Paul did--of a

surplusage of merits of some sort, when registering the barometer and

the thermometer of their religious experience were the most unrelenting

self-accusers. It is safe to say, as a general thing, that those who in

that introspection, in the measurement of their heats and chills of

piety, grieved most deeply and found the most ingenious causes for

self-infliction were either the most calculating hypocrites or the most

truly godly. To which of the two classes any one particular individual

might belong could not always be infallibly concluded from what he

wrote. That comfort-loving and greed-indulging, yet picturesque, old

sinner, Samuel Pepys, Esq., did not profess to keep a religious diary.

But many such diaries have been kept by men who might have covered

alternate pages with matter similar to his own, or with worse. We must

interpret the religious diaries of that age by aids independent of

those which their contents furnish us. John Winthrop, writing of his

youth when he had grown to the full exalted stature of Christian

manhood, and though sweetly mellowed in the graces of his character by

genial ripening from within his soul, was still a Puritan of the

severest standard theologically, and, by principle, charges himself with

heinous sin. We feel assured that he was not only guiltless of any folly

or error that would deserve such a designation, but that he even

overstated the degree of his addiction to the lighter human faults. Only

after such a preliminary assertion of incredulity as to any literal

truth in them, could we consent to copy his own words, as follows:--"In

my youth I was very lewdly disposed, inclining unto & attempting (so far

as my heart enabled me) all kinds of wickedness, except swearing &

scorning religion, wh. I had no temptation unto in regard of my

education. About ten years of age I had some notions of God: for, in

some frighting or danger, I have prayed unto God, & found manifest

answer: ye remembrance whereof, many years after, made me think that

God did love me: but it made me no whit the better. After I was twelve

years old, I began to have some more savor of religion: & I thought I

had more understanding in divinity than many of my years," etc. Yes, he

evidently had. And though the kind of "divinity" which had trained his

soul was of a grim sort, his own purity and gentleness of spirit

softened it while accepting it. He adds,--"Yet I was still very wild &

dissolute: & as years came on, my lusts grew stronger, but yet under

some restraint of my natural reason, whereby I had that command of

myself that I could turn into any form. I would, as occasion required,

write letters, &c. of mere vanity; & if occasion was, I could write

savoury & godly counsel." Seeing, however, that he was made a Justice of

the Peace when eighteen years of age, the inference is a fair one--his

own self-accusation to the contrary notwithstanding--that he was known

in his own neighborhood as a youth of extraordinary excellence of

character.

It would appear from the entries in his father's diaries that he was a

member of college some eighteen months. Why he left before completing

his course is to find its explanation for us either in the extreme

sickness before referred to as visited upon him there, or in the

agreeable "change in his condition," as the awkward and sheepish phrase

is, which immediately followed. The latter alternative leaves scope and

offers temptations for such inventiveness of fancy about details and

incidents, whys and wherefores, as the absence of all but the following

stingy revelations may justify. The good Adam, after recording, in

November, 1604, and in the ensuing March, two mysterious rides with his

son, has left, this, under date of March 28th, 1605:--"My soonne was

sollemly contracted to Mary Foorth, by Mr. Culverwell minister of Greate

Stambridge in Essex _cum consensu parentum_." Another ride into Essex,

this time by the son alone, is entered under April 9th, and then on the

16th his marriage, "_Ætatis suæ 17 [annis] 3 mensibus et 4 diebus

completis_." This reads pleasantly:--"The VIIIth of May my soonne & his

wife came to Groton from London, & ye IXth I made a marriage feaste,

when Sr. Thomas Mildmay & his lady my sister were present. The same day

my sister Veysye came to me, & departed on ye 24th of Maye. My dawter

Fones came the VIIIth & departed home ye XXIIId of Maye." An

expeditious closing up, with honey-moon and marriage-feast, of an

evident love-passage, whose longer or shorter antecedents are not

revealed. The biographer leaves his readers their choice of assigning

the abrupt close of the college course of John Winthrop either to his

grievous sickness, or to his love for Mary Forth, daughter and sole heir

of John Forth, Esq., of Great Stambridge. We incline rather to the

latter alternative as the stronger one, inasmuch as love for Mary may

not only have been the direct cause of his loathing Cambridge, but may

even have been the cause of his sickness, which in that case becomes so

secondary a cause as hardly to be a cause at all. One thing is certain:

our honored Puritan ancestors had no scruples against short engagements,

early marriages, or rematings as often as circumstances favored.

The young bridegroom himself, in the record of his experience, which we

quote again for another purpose, reserves the confession of any haste on

his own part to enter the married state, and would seem delicately to

insinuate parental influence in the case. "About eighteen years of age,

being a man in stature & understanding, as my parents conceived me, I

married into a family under Mr. Culverwell his ministry in Essex, &,

living there sometimes, I first found ye ministry of the word come home

to my heart with power (for in all before I found only light): & after

that, I found ye like in ye ministry of many others: so as there began

to be some change: wh. I perceived in myself, & others took notice of."

Six children were born to John Winthrop and his first wife,--three sons

and three daughters. John, the eldest of these, afterwards Governor of

Connecticut, was born February 22, 1606. Mary, the only one of the

daughters surviving infancy, also came to this country, and married a

son of Governor Thomas Dudley. In less than eleven years after her

marriage, Mary Forth died, the husband being not yet twenty-eight years

old, and the eldest child but nine.

The earliest record of his religious experience appears to have been

made under date of 1606. Read with the allowances and abatements to

which reference has already been made, all that this admirable man has

left for us of this self-revelation--little dreaming that it would have

such readers--is profoundly interesting and instructive, when estimated

from a right point of view and with any degree of congeniality of

spirit. Those who are familiar with his published New-England Journal

have already recognized in him a man of a simple and humble spirit, of a

grave, but not a gloomy temperament, kindly in his private estimate and

generous in his public treatment of others, most unselfish, and rigidly

upright. The noble native elements of his character, and the peculiar

tone and style of the piety under which his religious experience was

developed, mutually reacted upon each other, the result being that his

natural virtues were refined and spiritualized, while the morbid and

superstitious tendencies of his creed were to a degree neutralised. He

seems to refer the _crisis_ in his religious experience to a date

immediately following upon his first marriage. But, as we shall see, a

repeated trial in the furnace of sharp affliction deepened and enriched

that experience. He tells us that during those happy years of his first

marriage he had proposed to himself a change from the legal profession

to the ministry. By a second marriage, December 6, 1615, to Thomasine

Clopton, of a good family in the neighborhood, he had the promise of

renewed joy in a condition which his warm-hearted sociability and his

intense fondness for domestic relations made essential to his happiness,

if not to his virtue. But one single year and one added day saw her and

her infant child committed to the tomb, and made him again desolate. His

biographer, not without misgivings indeed, but with a deliberation and

healthfulness of judgment which most of his readers will approve as

allowed to overrule them, has spread before us at length, from the most

sacred privacy of the stricken mourner, heart-exercises and scenes in

the death-chamber, such as engage with most painful, but still

entrancing sympathy, the very soul of the reader. We know not where, in

all our literature, to find matter like this, so bedewed and steeped in

tenderness, so swift in its alternations between lacerating details and

soothing suggestions. The author has put into print all that remains of

the record of John Winthrop's "Experience," in passages written

contemporaneously with its incidents,--a document distinct from the

record of his "Christian Experience," written here. The account of

Thomasine's death-bed exercises, as deciphered from the perishing

manuscript, must, we think, stand by itself, either for criticism, or

for the defiance of criticism. What we have had of similar scenes only

in fragments, and as seen though veils, is here in the fulness of all

that can harrow or comfort the human heart, spread before us clear of

any withholding. It was the same year in which Shakspeare died, in a

house built by Sir Hugh Clopton, a member of the same family-connection

with Thomasine. Hour by hour, almost minute by minute, the stages of her

transition are reported with infinite minuteness. Her own prayers, and

those of a steady succession of religious friends, are noted; the

melting intonations of her own utterances of anxiety or peace; the

parting counsels or warnings addressed to her dependants; the last

breathings of affection to those dearest; the occasional aberrations and

cloudings of intelligence coming in the progress of her disease, which

were assigned to temptations from Satan: all these are given to us. "Her

feaver increased very violently upon hir, wh. the Devill made advantage

of to moleste hir comforte, but she declaringe unto us with what

temptations the devill did assault hir, bent hirselfe against them,

prayinge with great vehemence for Gods helpe, & that he would not take

away his lovinge kindnesse from hir, defyinge Satan, & spitting at him,

so as we might see by hir setting of hir teethe, & fixinge her eyes,

shakinge hir head & whole bodye, that she had a very greatt conflicte

with the adversarye." The mourner follows this scene to its close.

Having transfigured all its dreariest passages with the kindling glow of

his own undismayed faith, he lets his grateful spirit crown it with a

sweet peace, and then he pays a most tender tribute to the gentle

loveliness, fidelity, and Christian excellence of her with whom he had

shared so true, though so brief, a joy.

This renewed affliction is turned by the still young sufferer to uses

which should assure and intensify his piety according to the best

Puritan type of it. He continues his heart-record. He subjects his mode

of life, his feelings, habits and aims, the material of his daily food,

and the degree of his love for various goods, as they are to be measured

by a true scale, to the most rigid tests. He spares himself in nothing.

The Bible does him as direct a service in rebuke and guidance as if

every sentence in it had been written for himself. It is interesting to

note that the quotations from it are from a version that preceded our

own. His rules of self-discipline and spiritual culture, while wholly

free from unwholesome asceticism, nevertheless required the curbing of

all desires, and the utter subjection of every natural prompting to a

crucial test, before its innocent or edifying character could pass

unchallenged.

Vain would be the attempt in our generation to make Puritanism lovely or

attractive. Its charms were for its original and sincere disciples, and

do not survive them. There is no fashion of dress or furniture which may

not be revived, and, if patronized as fashion, be at least tolerated.

But for Puritanism there is no restoration. Its rehabilitated relics do

not produce their best influence in any attempt to attract our

admiration,--which they cannot do,--but in engaging our hearts' tolerant

respect and confidence towards those who actually developed its

principles at first-hand, its original disciples, who brought it into

discredit afterwards by the very fidelity of their loyalty to it.

Puritanism is an engaging and not offensive object to use, when regarded

as the characteristic of only one single generation of men and women and

children. It could not pass from that one generation into another

without losing much of what grace it had, and acquiring most odious and

mischievous elements. Entailed Puritanism being an actual impossibility,

all attempts to realize it, all assumptions of success in it, have the

worst features of sham and hypocrisy. The diligent students of the

history and the social life of our own colonial days know very well what

an unspeakable difference there was, in all that makes and manifests

characters and dispositions, between the first comers here and the first

native-born generation, and how painfully that difference tells to the

discredit of the latter. The tap-roots of Puritanism struck very deep,

and drew the sap of life vigorously. They dried very soon; they are now

cut; and whatever owed its life exclusively to them has withered and

must perish. A philosophy of Nature and existence now wholly discredited

underlay the fundamental views and principles of Puritanism. The early

records of our General Court are thickly strown with appointments of

Fast-Days that the people might discover the especial occasion of God's

anger toward them, manifested in the blight of some expected harvest, or

in a scourge upon the cattle in the field. Some among us who claim to

hold unreduced or softened the old ancestral faith have been twice in

late years convened in our State-House, by especial call, to legislate

upon the potato-disease and the pleuro-pneumonia among our herds. Their

joint wisdom resulted in money-appropriations to discover causes and

cures. The debates held on these two occasions would have grievously

shocked our ancestors. But are there any among us who could in full

sincerity, with logic and faith, have stood for the old devout theory of

such visitations?

But if it would be equally vain and unjust to attempt to make Puritanism

lovely to ourselves,--a quality which its noblest disciples did not

presume to make its foremost attraction,--there is all the more reason

why we should do it justice in its original and awfully real presentment

in its single generation of veritable discipleship. What became

drivelling and cant, presumption and bigotry, pretence and hypocrisy, as

soon as a fair trial had tested it, was in the hearts, the speech, the

convictions, and the habits of a considerable number of persons in one

generation, the most thoroughly honest and earnest product of all the

influences which had trained them. We read the heart-revelations of John

Winthrop with the profoundest confidence, and even with a constraining

sympathy. We venture to say that when this book shall be consulted,

through all time to come, for the various uses of historical, religious,

or literary illustration, not even the most trifling pen will ever turn

a single sentence from its pages to purposes of levity or ridicule. Here

we have Puritanism at first-hand: the original, unimitated, and

transient resultant of influences which had been working to produce it,

and which would continue their working so as to insure modifications of

it. Winthrop notes it for a special Providence that his wife discovered

a loathsome spider in the children's porridge before they had partaken

of it. His religious philosophy stopped there. He did not put to himself

the sort of questions which open in a train to our minds from any one

observed fact, else he would have found himself asking after the special

Providence which allowed the spider to fall into the porridge. His

friend and successor in high-magistracy in New England, Governor John

Endecott, wrote him a letter years afterward which is so characteristic

of the faith of both of them that we will make free use of it. The

letter is dated Salem, July 28th, 1640, and probably refers to the

disaster by which the ship Mary Rose "was blown in pieces with her own

powder, being 21 barrels," in Charlestown harbor, the day preceding.[A]

"DEAREST SIR,--Hearing of ye remarkable stroake of Gods

hand uppon ye shippe & shippes companie of Bristoll, as also of

some Atheisticall passages & hellish profanations of ye Sabbaths

& deridings of ye people & wayes of God, I thought good to desire

a word or two of you of ye trueth of what you have heard. Such an

extraordinary judgement would be searched into, what Gods meaninge

is in it, both in respect of those whom it concernes more

especiallie in England, as also in regard of ourselves. God will

be honred in all dealings. We have heard of severall ungodlie

carriadges in that ship, as, first, in their way overbound they

wld. constantlie jeere at ye holy brethren of New England, & some

of ye marineer's would in a scoffe ask when they should come to

ye holie Land? 2. After they lay in the harbor Mr. Norice sent to

ye shippe one of our brethren uppon busines, & hee heard them

say, This is one of ye holie brethren, mockinglie &

disdainefullie. 3. That when some have been with them aboard to

buy necessaries, ye shippe men would usuallie say to some of them

that they could not want any thinge, they were full of ye

Spiritt. 4. That ye last Lords Day, or ye Lords Day before,

there were many drinkings aboard with singings & musick in tymes

of publique exercise. 5. That ye last fast ye master or captaine

of the shippe, with most of ye companie, would not goe to ye

meetinge, but read ye booke of common prayer so often over that

some of ye company said hee had worne that threed-bare, with many

such passages. Now if these or ye like be true, as I am persuaded

some of them are, I think ye trueth heereof would be made knowen,

by some faithfull hand in Bristoll or else where, for it is a very

remarkable & unusuall stroake," etc., etc.

Governor Winthrop, who was a man of much milder spirit than Endecott,

faithfully records this judgment, under its date in his Journal, with

additional particulars. The explosion took place "about dinner time, no

man knows how, & blew up all, viz. the captain, & nine or ten of his

men, & some four or five strangers. There was a special providence that

there were no more, for many principal men were going aboard at that

time, & some were in a boat near the ship, & others were diverted by a

sudden shower of rain, & others by other occasions." The good Governor

makes this startling record the occasion for mentioning "other examples

of like kind." Yet the especial providential significance which both he

and Endecott could assign to such a calamity would need a readjustment

in its interpretation, if compelled to take in two other conditions

under which the mysterious ways of that Providence are manifested,

namely: first, that many ships on board which there have been no such

profane doings have met with similar disaster; and second, that many

ships on board which there has been more heinous sinning have escaped

the judgment.

But, as we have said, Puritanism was temporarily consistent with the

philosophy of life and Nature for one age. It held no divided sway over

John Winthrop, but filled his heart, his mind, and his spirit. If, by

its influence over any one human being, regarded as an unqualified,

unmodified style of piety, demanding entire allegiance, and not yielding

to any mitigation through the tempering qualities of an individual,--if,

of itself and by itself, Puritanism could be made lovely to us, John

Winthrop might well be charged with that exacting representative office.

We repeat, that we have no abatement to make of our exalted regard for

him through force of a single sentence from his pen. Most profoundly are

we impressed by the intensity and thoroughness of conviction, the

fulness and frankness of avowal, and the delicate and fervent

earnestness of self-consecration, which make these ancient oracles of a

human heart fragrant with the odor of true piety. He uses no hackneyed

terms, no second-hand or imitated phrases. His language, as well as his

thoughts, his method, and ideal standard, are purely his own. Indeed, we

might set up and sustain for him a claim of absolute individuality, if

not even of originality, in the standard of godliness and righteousness

which he fashioned for himself, and then with such zeal and heroism

sought to attain.

Entering a third time the married state, John Winthrop, in April, 1618,

took to wife Margaret, daughter of Sir John Tyndal. The clouds, which

had gathered so deeply in repeated bereavement and gloom over his

earlier years of domestic life, yielded now, and left alike the sky and

the horizon of his prospects, to give place soon to the anxieties of

grave enterprises, which animated while they burdened his spirit. This

excellent and brave-hearted lady, as she opens her soul, and almost

reveals what must have been a sweet and winning countenance, to the

reader of her own letters in these pages, will henceforward be one of

the enshrined saints of the New-England calendar. Little did she dream

at her marriage what a destiny was before her. There was in store for

her husband nearly thirty years of the truest heart-love and the closest

sympathy in religious trust and consecration with her. We may anticipate

our narrative at this point, to say that her situation did not allow her

to accompany him on his own removal to this side of the ocean, but she

followed him a year and a half afterwards, arriving in November, 1631,

with his eldest son and others of his children, having lost on the

voyage an infant whom he had probably never seen. Her death, in a

prevailing sickness, June 14, 1647, drew from her husband this tribute

to her:--"In this sickness the Governour's wife, daughter of Sir John

Tindal, Knight, left this world for a better, being about fifty-six

years of age: a woman of singular virtue, prudence, modesty, & piety &

specially beloved & honored of all the country." Though in the December

of the same year we find the Governor again married, now to the Widow

Martha Coytemore, we refer the incident to wilderness-straits and the

exactions of necessity or expediency in domestic life.

But we must return to Margaret, the bride. It seems that there was some

objection offered to Winthrop's suit by the lady's relatives. In one of

the two charming letters which are preserved as written during his

courtship to her, he refers to some "unequall conflicte" which she had

to bear. These two letters, with one addressed to the lady by Father

Adam, are unique as specimens of Puritan love-making. Solomon's Song is

here put to the best use for which it is adapted, its only safe use.

The family-letters, which now increase in number, and vastly in their

cheerfulness and radiance of spirit, and the birth of more children,

present to us the most captivating glimpses of the English life of our

first Chief Magistrate. From a will which he made in Groton in 1620, of

course superseded after his change of country, it appears that he had

then five sons and one daughter. The Lordship of Groton had been

assigned to him by his father. This was the year of the hegira of the

Plymouth Pilgrims, but we have as yet no intimation that Winthrop was

looking in this direction.

For more than a decade of years the family-history now passes on, for

the most part placidly, interspersed with those incidents and anxieties

which give alike the charm and the import to the routine of existence to

any closely knit fellowships sharing it together. Enough of the fragrant

old material, in fast decaying papers, has come to light and been

transcribed for security against all future risks, to preserve to us a

fair restoration of the lights and shades of that domestic experience.

Time has dealt kindly in sparing a variety of specimens, so as to give

to that restoration a kaleidoscopic character. Winthrop's frequent

visits to London, on his professional errands, gave occasion to constant

correspondence between him and his wife, and so we have epistles

burdened with the intensities and refinements of the purest affection.

An occasional reference to church affairs by the Patron of Groton, with

extracts from the record of his religious experience, continue for us

the evidence that Winthrop was growing and deepening in the roots of

his noble style of life. His piety evidently ripened and mellowed into

the richest fruitage which any form of theological or devotional faith

can produce. A severe and wellnigh fatal illness in London, which he

concealed from his wife at Groton till its crisis was past, was made by

him the occasion, as of many other good resolutions, so also of a

renouncement of the use of tobacco, in which, by his own account, he,

like many men as well as women at that time, had gone to excess. His

good wife, though positively enjoined by him not to venture upon the

winter's journey, in the letter which communicated to her the first

tidings of his illness, immediately went to him in the great city,

attended only by a female servant. In a previous malady from which he

had suffered severely in one of his hands while at home, his son John,

in London, had consulted in his behalf one of the helpful female

practitioners of the time, and the correspondence relating to her

advice, her ointments, and their efficacy, gives us some curiously

illustrative matter in the history of the healing art. The good woman

was sure that she could at once cure her patient, if he could be beneath

her hands. She would receive no compensation.

A mystery has attached to a certain "office" which Winthrop held in

London, and to which, in one of his previously published letters, he

referred as having lost it. It now appears that that office was an

Attorneyship of the Court of Wards and Liveries, an honorable and

responsible trust. Its duties, with other provisional engagements,

separated him so much from his home at one period, that he meditated the

removal of his family from Groton. His wife's letters on the subject are

delightful revelations of confidences. It is still only by inference

that we can assign the loss of his office, to the business of which we

have many references, to any especial cause. It may have been

surrendered by him because he longed for more home-life, or because the

growing spirit of discontent and apprehension as to the state of public

affairs, which he shared with so many of his friends, made him obnoxious

to the controlling heads in civil life.

We have also some admirable specimens of his correspondence with his son

John, who, after his preliminary education at the school at Bury St.

Edmund's, became, in 1622, in his seventeenth year, a member of Trinity

College, Dublin, near his uncle and aunt Downing, parents of the famous

Sir George Downing. These are beautiful and wise and generous

expressions of a father's love and advice and dealings with a son,

exposed to temptation at a critical age, and giving promise of the

abilities and virtues which he afterwards exhibited so nobly as Governor

of Connecticut. In one of the letters, to which the father asks replies

in Latin, he writes, "I will not limit your allowance less than to ye

uttermost of mine own estate. So as, if £20 be too little (as I always

accounted it), you shall have £30; & when that shall not suffice, you

shall have more. Only hold a sober & frugal course (yet without

baseness), & I will shorten myself to enlarge you." In another letter

there is this fit commemoration of his father, Adam, dying at the age of

seventy-five:--"I am sure, before this, you have knowledge of that wh.,

at the time when you wrote, you were ignorant of: viz., the departure of

your grandfather (for I wrote over twice since). He hath finished his

course: & is gathered to his people in peace, as the ripe corn into the

barn. He thought long for ye day of his dissolution, & welcomed it most

gladly. Thus is he gone before; & we must go after, in our time. This

advantage he hath of us,--he shall not see ye evil wh. we may meet with

ere we go hence. Happy those who stand in good terms with God & their

own conscience: they shall not fear evil tidings: & in all changes they

shall be ye same."

There are likewise letters to the student at Dublin from his brother

Forth, who succeeded him at the school at St. Edmund's. It is curious to

note in these epistles of the school-boy the indifferent success of his

manifestly sincere effort to use the technical language of Puritanism

and to express its aims and ardors. The youth evidently feels freer when

writing of the fortunes of some of his school-mates. This same Forth

Winthrop became in course a student at Cambridge, and we have letters to

his father, carried by the veritable Hobson immortalized by Milton.

The younger John went, on graduating, to London, to fit himself for the

law. His name is found on the books as admitted to the Inner Temple in

1624. He appears early to have cherished some matrimonial purposes which

did not work felicitously. Not liking his profession, he turned his

thoughts toward the sea. He obtained a secretaryship in the naval

service, and joined the expedition under the Duke of Buckingham,

designed to relieve the French Protestants at Rochelle, in 1627. He

afterwards made an Oriental tour, of the stages of which we have some

account in his letters, in 1628-9, from Leghorn, Constantinople, etc. He

was thwarted in a purpose to visit Jerusalem, and returned to England,

by Holland. Notwithstanding the industrious fidelity of his father as a

letter-writer, the son received no tidings from home during his whole

absence of nearly fifteen months. What a contrast with our times!

Before undertaking this Oriental tour, the younger John had had

proposals made to him, which seem to have engaged his own inclinations,

to connect himself with Endecott's New-England enterprise. He wrote to

consult the wishes of his father on the subject; but that father, who in

less than two years was to find himself pledged to a more comprehensive

scheme, involving a life-long exile in that far-off wilderness,

dissuaded his son from the premature undertaking. It does not appear

that the father had as yet presented to his mind the possibility of any

such step. Yet, from the readiness which marked his own earnest and

complete sympathy in the enterprise when first we find him concerned in

it, we must infer that he had much previous acquaintance and sympathy

with the early New-England adventurers from the moment that a religious

spirit became prominent in their fellowship. He was a man who undertook

no great work without the most careful deliberation, and a slow maturing

of his decision.

During the absence of John at the East, many interesting and serious

incidents occurred in the personal experience and in the domestic

relations of his father, which doubtless helped the preparation of his

spirit for the critical event of his life. He had that severe and

threatening illness in London already referred to. We have many letters

covering the period, filled with matter over which, as so full of what

is common to the human heart in all time, we linger with consenting

sympathy. A wayward and unconverted son, Henry by name, caused his

father an anxiety which we see struggling painfully with parental

affection and a high-toned Christian aim for all the members of his

family. The son's course indicated rather profitlessness and

recklessness than vice. He connected himself with an enterprise at

Barbadoes. He drew heavily on his father's resources for money, and

returned him some tobacco, which the father very frankly writes to him

was "very ill-conditioned, foul, & full of stalks, & evil-colored." He

came over in the same expedition, though not in the same ship, with his

father, and was accidentally drowned at Salem, July 2, 1630. In the

first letter which the good Governor wrote to his wife after his landing

here, dated "Charlestown, July 16, 1630," are these sentences:--"We have

met with many sad & discomfortable things, as thou shalt hear after; &

ye Lord's hand hath been heavy upon myself in some very near to me. My

son Henry! my son Henry! ah, poor child!" While the father was writing

from London to this son, then supposed to be at Barbadoes, he had other

matters of anxiety. His endeared brother-in-law, Fones, died, April 15,

1629, and four days afterwards Winthrop was called to part, at Groton,

with his venerated mother, who died under the roof where she had lived

so happily and graciously with his own family in his successive sorrows

and delights.

The loss or resignation of his office, with the giving up of his

law-chamber in London, and his evident premonitions of the sore troubles

in affairs of Church and State which were soon to convulse his native

land, doubtless guided him to a decision, some of the stages and

incidents of which have left no record for us. Enough, however, of the

process may still be traced among papers which have recently come to

light, to open to us its inner workings, and to explain its development.

A ride with his brother Downing into Lincolnshire, July 28, 1629, finds

an entry in Winthrop's "Experiences," that it may mark his gratitude to

the Providence which preserved his life, when, as he writes, "my horse

fell under me in a bogge in the fennes, so as I was allmost to ye

waiste in water." Beyond all doubt this ride was taken by the

sympathizing travellers on a prearranged visit to Isaac Johnson, another

of the New-England worthies, at Sempringham, on business connected with

the Massachusetts enterprise. But the first recovered and extant

document which proves that Winthrop was committing himself to the great

work is a letter of his son John's, dated London, August 21, 1629, in

reply to one from his father, which, it is evident from the tenor of the

answer, had directly proposed the embarking of the interest of the whole

family in the enterprise. A certain mysterious paper of "Conclusions,"

referred to by the son, had been inclosed in the father's letter, which

appears to be irrecoverable. There has been much discussion, with rival

and contested claims and pleas, as to the authorship of that most

valuable and critical document containing the propositions for the

enterprise, with reasons and grounds, objections and answers. Our author

urges, with force of arguments and the evidence of authentic papers,

entirely to our satisfaction, that John Winthrop was essentially and

substantially the digester and exponent of those pregnant

considerations. The correspondence which follows proves how

conscientiously the enterprise was weighed, and the reasons and

objections debated. Godly ministers were consulted for their advice and

coöperation. No opposition or withholding of any shade or degree would

seem to have been made by any member of Winthrop's family; his gentle,

meek-hearted, but most heroic and high-souled wife, being, from first to

last, his most cordial sympathizer and ally. We next find him entering

into the decisive "Agreement," at Cambridge, with eleven other of the

foremost adventurers to New England, which pledged them "to inhabit and

continue there." It was only after most protracted, and, we may be sure,

most devout deliberation, that the great decision was made, which

involved the transfer of the patent, the setting up of a self-governing

commonwealth on the foreign soil, and the committal of those who were to

be its members to a life-long and exacting undertaking, from which there

were to be no lookings-back. A day was appointed for the company to

meet, on which two committees were chosen, to weigh and present with

full force, respectively, the reasons for a removal, and the reasons

against it. The "show of hands," when these committees reported, fixed

the purpose of the company on what they did not hesitate to believe was

the leading of Providence.

From that moment we find Winthrop busy with cares and efforts of the

most exacting character, drawing upon all his great energies, and

engaging the fondest devotion of his manly and Christian heart. He gave

himself, without stint or regret, with an unselfish and supreme

consecration, to the work, cherishing its great aim as the matter of his

most earnest piety, and attending to its pettiest details with a

scrupulous fidelity which proved that conscience found its province

there. We seem almost to be made spectators of the bustle and fervor of

the old original Passover scenes of the Hebrew exodus. It is refreshing

to pause for a moment over a touch of our common humanity, which we meet

by the way. Winthrop in London "feeds with letters" the wife from whom

he was so often parted. In one of them he tells her that he has

purchased for her the stuff for a "gowne" to be sent by the carrier, and

he adds, "Lett me knowe what triminge I shall send for thy gowne." But

Margaret, who could trust her honored husband in everything else, was a

woman still, and must reserve, not only the rights of her sex, but the

privilege of her own good taste for the fitnesses of things. So she

guardedly replies,--in a postscript, of course,--"When I see the cloth,

I will send word what triminge will serve." In a modest parenthesis of

another letter to her, dated October 29, 1629, he speaks of himself, as

if all by the way, as "beinge chosen by ye Company to be their

Governor." The circumstances of his election and trust, so honorable and

dignified, are happily told with sufficient particularity on our own

Court Records. Governor Cradock, his honored predecessor, not intending

immediate emigration, put the proposition, and announced the result

which gave him such a successor.

Attending frequently upon meetings of the Company, and supervising its

own business as well as his private affairs, all having in view what

must then have been in the scale of the time a gigantic undertaking,

full of vexations and embarrassments, Winthrop seizes upon a few days of

crowded heart-strugglings to make his last visit at the dear homestead,

and then to take of it his eternal farewell. How lovingly and admiringly

do we follow him on his way from London, taking his last view of those

many sweet scenes which were thenceforward to embower in his memory all

the joys of more than forty years! He did not then know for what a

rugged landscape, and for what uncouth habitations, he was to exchange

those fair scenes and the ivy-clad and -festooned churches and cottages

of his dear England. His wife, for reasons of prudence, was to remain

for a while with some of his children, beside his eldest son, and was to

follow him when he had made fit preparation for her. His last letters to

her (and each of many was written as the last, because of frequent

delays) after the embarkation of the company, are gems and jewels of a

heart which was itself the pure shrine of a most fond and faithful love.

His leave-taking at Groton was at the end of February, 1630; his

embarkation was on March 22. The ships were weather-bound successively

at Cowes and at Yarmouth, whence were written those melting epistles. A

letter which he wrote to Sir William Spring, one of the Parliamentary

members from Suffolk, a dear religions friend of his, overflows with an

ardor and intenseness of affection which passes into the tone and

language of feminine endearment, and fashions passages from the Song of

Solomon into prayers. One sentence of that letter keeps sharp its

lacerating point for the reader of to-day. "But I must leave you all:

our farewells usually are pleasant passages; mine must be sorrowful;

this addition of forever is a sad close." And it was to be forever.

Winthrop was never to see his native land again. Many of his associates

made one or more homeward voyages. A few of them returned to resume

their English citizenship in those troublous times which invited and

exercised energies like those which had essayed to tame a wilderness.

But the great and good leader of his blessed exodus never found the

occasion, we know not that he ever felt the prompting, to recross the

ocean. The purpose of his life and soul was a unit in its substance and

consecration, and it had found its object. For nineteen years, most of

them as Governor, and always as the leading spirit and the recognized

Moses of the enterprise, he was spared to see the planting and the

building-up which subdued the wilderness and reared a commonwealth. He

had most noble and congenial associates in the chief magistrates of the

other New-England colonies. Bradford and Winslow of Plymouth, Eaton of

New Haven, his own son and Haynes and Hopkins of Connecticut, and

Williams of Providence Plantations, were all of them men of signal

virtue. They have all obtained a good report, and richly and eminently

do they deserve it. They were, indeed, a providential galaxy of

pure-hearted, unspotted, heroic men. There is a mild and sweet beauty in

the star of Winthrop, the lustre of which asks no jealous or rival

estimation.

* * * * *

THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE.

Come, let us plant the apple-tree!

Cleave the tough greensward with the spade;

Wide let its hollow bed be made;

There gently lay the roots, and there

Sift the dark mould with kindly care,

And press it o'er them tenderly,

As, round the sleeping infant's feet,

We softly fold the cradle-sheet:

So plant we the apple-tree.

What plant we in the apple-tree?

Buds, which the breath of summer days

Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;

Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast

Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest.

We plant upon the sunny lea

A shadow for the noontide hour,

A shelter from the summer shower,

When we plant the apple-tree.

What plant we in the apple-tree?

Sweets for a hundred flowery springs,

To load the May-wind's restless wings,

When, from the orchard-row, he pours

Its fragrance through our open doors;

A world of blossoms for the bee;

Flowers for the sick girl's silent room;

For the glad infant sprigs of bloom.

We plant with the apple-tree.

What plant we in the apple-tree?

Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,

And redden in the August noon,

And drop, as gentle airs come by

That fan the blue September sky;

While children, wild with noisy glee,

Shall scent their fragrance as they pass,

And search for them the tufted grass

At the foot of the apple-tree.

And when above this apple-tree

The winter stars are quivering bright,

And winds go howling through the night,

Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth,

Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth,

And guests in prouder homes shall see,

Heaped with the orange and the grape,

As fair as they in tint and shape,

The fruit of the apple-tree.

The fruitage of this apple-tree

Winds and our flag of stripe and star

Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,

Where men shall wonder at the view,

And ask in what fair groves they grew;

And they who roam beyond the sea

Shall look, and think of childhood's day,

And long hours passed in summer play

In the shade of the apple-tree.

Each year shall give this apple-tree

A broader flush of roseate bloom,

A deeper maze of verdurous gloom,

And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower,

The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower;

The years shall come and pass, but we

Shall hear no longer, where we lie,

The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh,

In the boughs of the apple-tree.

And time shall waste this apple-tree.

Oh, when its aged branches throw

Thin shadows on the sward below,

Shall fraud and force and iron will

Oppress the weak and helpless still?

What shall the tasks of mercy be,

Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears

Of those who live when length of years

Is wasting this apple-tree?

"Who planted this old apple-tree?"

The children of that distant day

Thus to some aged man shall say;

And, gazing on its mossy stem,

The gray-haired man shall answer them:

"A poet of the land was he,

Born in the rude, but good old times;

'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes

On planting the apple-tree."

* * * * *

RAY.

So Beltran was a Rebel.

Vivia stood before the glass, brushing out black shadows from her long,

fine hair. There lay the letter as little Jane had left it, as she had

let it lie till all the doors had clanged between, as she had laid it

down again. She paused, with the brush half lifted, to glance once more

at the clear superscription, to turn it and touch with her finger-tips

the firm seal. Then she went on lengthening out the tresses that curled

back again at the end like something instinct with life.

How long it had been in coming!--gradual journeys up from those Southern

shores, and slumber in some comrade's care till a flag of truce could

bear it across beneath the shelter of its white wing. Months had passed.

And where was Beltran now? Living,--Vivia had a proud assurance in her

heart of that! Her heart that went swiftly gliding back into the past,

and filling old scenes with fresh fire. Thinking thus, she bent forward

with dark, steady gaze, as if she sought for its pictures in the

uncertain depths of the mirror, and there they rose as of old the

crystal gave them back to the seeker. It was no gracious woman bending

there that she saw, but a scene where the very air infused with sunlight

seemed to glow, the house with its wide veranda veiled in vines, and

above it towering the rosy cloud of an oleander-tree, behind it the far

azure strip of the bay, before it the long low line of sandy beach where

the waters of the Gulf forever swung their silver tides with a sullen

roar,--for the place was one of those islands that make the perpetual

fortifications of the Texan coast. Vivia, a slender little maiden of

eleven summers, rocks in a boat a rod from shore, and by her side, his

length along the warm wave, his arm along the boat, a boy floats in his

linen clothes, an amphibious child, so undersized as to seem but little

more than a baby, and yet a year her senior. He swims round and round

the skiff in circling frolics, followed by the great dog who gambols

with them, he dives under it and comes up far in advance, he treads

water as he returns, and, seizing the painter, draws it forward while

she sits there like Thetis guiding her sea-horses. Then, as the sun

flings down more fervid showers, together they beach the boat and

scamper up the sand, where old Disney, who has been dredging for oysters

in the great bed below, crowns his basket with little Ray, and bears him

off perched aloft on his bent back. Vivia walks beside the old slave in

her infantile dignity, and disregards the sundry attempts of Ray's

outstretched arms, till of a sudden the beating play of hoofs runs along

the ground, and Beltran, with his morning's game, races by on his fiery

mustang, and, scarcely checking his speed as he passes, stoops from the

saddle and lifts the little girl before him. Vivia would look back in

triumph upon Ray in his ignoble conveyance, but the affair has already

been too much for him, he has flung himself on the instant from old

Disney's basket, as if he were careless whether he fell under the

horse's feet or not, but knowing perfectly well that Beltran will catch

him. And Beltran, suddenly pulling up with a fierce rein, does catch

him, bestows him with Vivia, slightly to her dainty discomfort, and

dashes on. Noon deepens; Vivia does not sleep, she seeks Ray, Ray who

does not sleep either, but who is not to be beguiled. For, one day, the

child in his troubled dreams had been found by Beltran with a white coil

of fangs and venom for his pillow; and never since has Beltran taken his

noontide siesta but Ray watches beside him till the thick brown lashes

lift themselves once more. For, if Ray knows what worship is, he would

show you Beltran enshrined in his heart, this brother a dozen years his

elder, who had hailed his birth with stormy tears of joy, who had

carried him for years when he was yet too weak to walk, who in his own

full growth would seem to have absorbed the younger's share, were it not

that, tiny as Ray may be, his every nerve is steel, made steel, though,

by the other, and so trained and suppled and put at his service. It was

Beltran who had first flung him astride the saddle and sent him loping

off to town alone, but who had secretly followed him from thicket to

thicket, and stood ready in the market-place at last to lift him down;

it was Beltran who had given him his own rifle, had taught him to take

the bird on the wing, had led him out at night to see the great silent

alligator in his scale-armor sliding over the land from the coast and

plunging into the fresh waters of the bay,--who took him with him on the

long journeys for gathering in the cattle of the vast stock-farm, let

him sleep beside himself on the bare prairie-floor, like a man, with his

horse tethered to his boot, told him the spot in the game on which to

draw his bead, showed him what part to dress, and made him _chef de

cuisine_ in every camp they crossed; it was he who had taught him how to

hold himself in any wild stampede, on the prairie how to conquer fire

with fire, to find water as much his element as air; it is Beltran, in

short, who has made him this little marvel which at twelve years old he

finds himself to be,--this brother who serves him so, and whom he

adores, for whom he passionately expresses his devotion,--this brother

whom he loves as he loves the very life he lives. So Vivia, too, sits

down at Beltran's feet that day, and busies herself with those pink

plumes of the spoonbill's wings which he brought home to her,--so that,

when he wakes, he sees her standing there like the spirit of his dream,

her dark eyes shining out from under the floating shadowy hair, and the

rosy wings trembling on her little white shoulders. And just then

Beltran has no word for Ray, the customary smiling word always waited

for, since his eyes are on the vision at his feet, and straightway the

child springs down, springs where he can intercept Beltran's view, seems

to rise in his wrath a head above the girl, and, looking at Beltran all

the while, slaps Vivia on the cheek. Instantly two hands have clasped

about his wrists, two hands that hold him in a vice, and two eyes are

gazing down into his own and paralyzing him. Still the grasp, the gaze,

continue; as Vivia watches that look, a great blue glow from those eyes

seems to cloud her own brain. The color rises on Ray's cheeks, his angry

eyes fall, his chest heaves, his lips tremble, off from the long black

lashes spin sprays of tears, he cannot move, he is so closely held, but

slowly he turns his head, meets the red lips of the forgiving girl with

his, then casts himself with sobs on Beltran's breast. And all that

evening, as the sudden heavy clouds drive down and quench sunset and

starlight, while they sit about a great fire, Beltran keeps her at his

side and Ray maintains his place, and within there is light and love,

and without the sand trembles to the shock of sound and the thunder of

the surf, and the heaven is full of the wildly flying blast of the

Norther.

Still, as Vivia gazed into the silent mirror, the salient points of her

life started up as if memory held a torch to them in their dark

recesses, and another picture printed its frosty _spiculæ_ upon the gray

surface of the glass before her. No ardent arch of Southern noontide

now, no wealth of flower and leaf, no pomp of regnant summer, but winter

has darkened down over sad Northern countries, and white Arctic splendor

hedges a lake about with the beauty of incomparable radiance; the trees

whose branches overhang the verge are foamy fountains, frozen as they

fall; distantly beyond them the crisp upland fields stretch their snowy

sparkle to touch the frigid-flashing sapphire of the sky, and bluer than

the sky itself their shadows fall about them; every thorn, every stem,

is set, a spike of crusted lustre in its icy mail; the tingling air

takes the breath in silvery wreaths; and wherever the gay garment of a

skater breaks the monotone with a gleam of crimson or purple, the

shining feet beneath chisel their fantastic curves upon a floor that is

nothing but one glare of crystal sheen. And here, hero of the scene,

glides Beltran, master of the Northern art as school-days made him,

skates as of old some young Viking skated, all his being bubbling in a

lofty glee, with blue eyes answering this icy brilliance as they dazzle

back from the tawny countenance, with every muscle rippling grace and

vigor to meet the proud volition, lithely cutting the air, swifter than

the swallow's wing in its arrowy precision, careless as the floating

flake in effortless motion, skimming along the lucid sheathing that

answers his ringing heel with a tune of its own, and swaying in his

almost aërial medium, lightly, easily, as the swimming fish sways to the

currents of the tide. Scoring whitely their tracery of intricate lines,

the groups go by in whorls, in angles, in sweeping circles, and the ice

shrinks beneath them; here a fairy couple slide along, waving and bowing

and swinging together; far away some recluse in his pleasure sports

alone with folded arms, careening in the outward roll like the mast of a

phantom-craft; everywhere inshore clusters of ruddy-cheeked boys race

headlong with their hawkey-sticks, and with their wild cries, making

benders where the ice surges in a long swell: and constantly in

Beltran's wake slips Vivia, a scarlet shadow, while a clumsy little

black outline is ever designing itself at her heels as Ray strives in

vain to perfect the mysteries of the left stroke. All about, the keen

air breathes its exhilaration, and the glow seems to penetrate the pores

till the very blood dances along filled with such intoxicating

influence; all above, the afternoon heaven deepens till it has no hidden

richness, and between one and the pale gold of the coldly reddening

horizon the white air seems hollow as the flaw in some great transparent

jewel. Still they wind away in their gladness, when hurriedly Beltran

reaches his hand for the heedless Vivia's, and hurriedly she sees

terrifying grooves spreading round them, a great web-work of

cracks,--the awful ice lifts itself, sinks, and out of a monstrous

fissure chill death rises to meet them and ingulf them. In an instant,

Ray, who might have escaped, has hurled himself upon them, and then, as

they all struggle for one drowning breath in the flood, Vivia dimly

divines through her horror an arm stretched first towards Ray, snatched

back again, and bearing her to safety. Ray has already scrambled from

the shallow breach where his brother alone found bottom; waiting hands

assist Beltran; but as she lingers that moment shivering on the brink,

blindly remembering the double movement of that arm beneath the ice, she

silently asks, with a thrill, if he suffered Ray to save himself because

he was a boy, and could, or because--because she was Vivia!

Southern noontide, winter twilight lost themselves again, as Vivia

gazed, in the soft starry gleam of an April midnight. A quiet room,

dimly lighted by a flame that dying eyes no longer see; two figures

kneeling, one at either side of the mother,--the little apple-blossom of

a mother brought up to die among her own people,--one shaking with his

storm of sobs, the other supporting the dear, weary head on his strong

breast, and stifling his very heart-beat lest it stir the frail life too

roughly. And the mother lifts the lids of her faint eyes, as when a

parting vapor reveals rifts of serene heaven, gazes for a moment into

the depths of her first-born's tenderness, gropes darkly for his fingers

and for the hot little hand thrust eagerly forth to meet hers, closes

one about the other, and folds them both upon her own heart. Then

Beltran bends and gathers from the lips the life that kindled his. With

a despairing cry, Ray flings himself forward, and dead and living lie in

Beltran's arms, while the strong convulsion of his heart rends up a

hollow groan from its emptiness. And Vivia draws aside the curtain, and

the gentle wind brings in the sweet earthy scent of fresh furrows lately

wet with showers, and the ever-shifting procession of the silent stars

unveil themselves of gauzy cloud, and glance sadly down with their

abiding eyes upon these fleeting shadows.

After all, who can deny that there is magic in a mirror, a weird

atmosphere imprisoned, between the metal and the glass, borrowing the

occult powers of the gulf of space, and returning to us our own wraith

and apparition at any hour of the day or night when we smite it with a

ray of light,--reaching with its searching power into the dark places

where we have hidden ourselves, and seizing and projecting them in open

sight? Who doubts that this sheeny panel on so many walls, with wary art

slurring off its elusive gleam, could, at the one compelling word, paint

again the reflections of all on which it silently dreams in its reticent

heart,--the joy, the grief, the weeping face, the laughing lip, the

lover's kiss, the tyrant's sneer, almost the crouched and bleeding soul

on which that sneer descended, of which some wandering beam carried

record? When we remember the violin, inwardly ridged with the vibrations

of old tunes, old discords, who would wonder to find some charactery of

light tracing its indelible script within the crystal substance? And

here, if Vivia saw one other scene blaze out before her and vanish, why

not believe, for fancy's sake, that it was as real a picture as the

image of the dark and beautiful girl herself bending there with the

carmine stain upon her cheek, the glowing, parted lips, the shining

eyes, the shadowy hair?

Late spring down on the Maryland farm: you know it by the intense blue

through that quaint window draped with such a lushness of vines, such a

glory of blossom. In at the open door, whose frame is arabesqued with

hanging sprays of sweetbrier, with the pendent nest, with fluttering

moth-wings sunshine-dusted, with crowds of bursting buds, pours the

mellow sun in one great stream, pours from the peach-orchards the

fragrant breeze laden with bird-song. A girl, standing aside, with

clasped hands drooping before her, her gaze upon a shadow on the floor

in the midst of that broad stream of light. Casting that shadow, under

the lintel, a young man clad for travel. Since he left his Southern

home, ruin has befallen it; he dares not ask one lapped in luxury to

share such broken fortunes as his seem to-day, even though such stout

shoulders, so valiant a heart, buffet them. If she loves, it is enough;

they can wait; their treasure neither moth nor rust can corrupt; their

jewel is imperishable. If she loves--He is looking in her eyes, holding

to her his hands. Slowly the girl meets his glance. A long look, one

long, silent look, infinitude in its assurance, its glow wrapping her,

blue and smiling as heaven itself, reaching him like the evening star

seen through tears,--a word, a touch, had profaned with a trait of

earthliness so remote, so spiritual a betrothal. He goes, and still the

upward-smiling girl sees the sunshine, hears the bird-song,--a boy

dashes by the door and down the path to meet the last, close-lingering

embrace of two waiting arms at the gate,--and then there is nothing but

Vivia bending and gazing at herself in the glass with a flushed and

fevered eagerness of rapture.

"The wild, sweet tunes that darkly deep

Thrill through thy veins and shroud thy sleep,

That swing thy blood with proud, glad sway,

And beat thy life's arterial play,--

Still wilt thou have this music sweep

Along thy brain its pulsing leap,--

Keep love away! keep love away!

"The joy of peace that wide and high

Like light floods through the soaring sky,

The day divine, the night akin,

Heaven in the heart, ah, wilt thou win,

The secret of the hoarded years,

Life rounded as the shining spheres,--

Let love come in! let love come in!"

she sang, to case her heart of its swelling gladness.

But here Vivia dared not concentrate her recollections, dared not dally

with such distant delight,--twisted and tossed her hair into its coils,

and once more opened the letter. Ray had not lived for three years under

converging influences, years which are glowing wax beneath the seal of

fresh impressions, years when one puts off or takes on the tendencies

of a lifetime,--Ray had not lived those three school-years without

contracting habits, whims, determinations of his own: let her have

Beltran's reasons to meet Ray's objections.

They were up at the little meadow-side cottage of Mrs. Vennard, Ray's

maternal aunt, a quiet widow, who was glad to receive her dying sister

in her house a year and a half ago, as she had often received her boys

before, and who was still willing to eke out her narrow income with the

board of one nephew and any summer guest; and as that summer guest,

owing to an old family-friendship that overlooked differences of rank

and wealth, Vivia had, for many a season, been established. Here, when

bodings of trouble began to darken her sunny fields, she had, in early

spring, withdrawn again, leaving her maiden aunt to attend to the

affairs of the homestead, or to find more luxurious residence in

watering-places or cities, as she chose. For Vivia liked the placid life

and freedom of the cottage, and here, too, she had oftenest met those

dear friends to whom one winter her father, long since dead, had taken

her, and half of all that was pleasant in her life had inwoven itself

with the simple surroundings of the place. Here, in that fatal spring

when the first tocsin alarmed the land, Ray, now scarcely any longer a

boy, yet with a boy's singleness of mind, though possessing neither

patience nor power for subtilties of difficult reason and truth,

thinking of no lonely portion, but of the one great fact of country, had

been fired with spontaneous fervor, and had ever since been like some

restive steed champing the bit and quivering to start. As for Vivia, she

was a Maryland woman. Too burningly indignant, the blood bubbled in her

heart for words sometimes, and she would be glad of Beltran's weapons

with which to confront Kay when he returned from Boston, whither, the

day before, without a word's explanation, he had betaken himself. So she

turned again to the open letter, and scanned its weightiest paragraphs.

"There is a strange reversal of right and wrong, when the American Peace

Society declares itself for war. There is, then, a greater evil than

war, even than civil war, with its red, fratricidal hands?--Slavery.

But, could that be destroyed, it would be the first great evil ever

overcome by force of arms. They fight tangibly with an intangible foe;

tangible issues rise between them; the black, intangible phantom hovers

safe behind. But even should they visibly succeed, is there not left the

very root of the matter to put forth fresh growth,--that moral condition

in which the thing lived at all? An evil that has its source in the

heart must be eradicated by slow medicinal cure of the blood. To fight

against the stars in their courses, one must have brands of starry

temper. No sudden shocks of battle will sweep Slavery from the sphere.

Can one conquer the universe by proclamation? 'Lyra will rise

to-morrow,' said some one, after Cæsar reformed the calendar.

'Doubtless,' replied Cicero, 'there is an edict for it.' But, believe

me, there can be no broad, stupendous evil, unless it be a part of God's

plan; and in His own time, without other help from us than the

performance of our duty, it will slough off its slime and rise into some

fair superstructure. Our efforts dash like spray against the rock,--the

spray is broken, the rock remains. To annihilate evil with evil,--that

is an error in itself against which every man is justified in taking up

his sword.

"So far, I have allowed the sin. Yet, sin or not, in this country the

estate of the slave is unalterable. Segregately, the institution is

their protection. For though there is no record of the contact of

superior and inferior races on a basis of equality, where the inferior

did not absorb the superior, yet, if every slave were set free to-day,

imbruted through generations, it could not be on a basis of equality

that we should meet, and they would be as inevitably sunk and lost as

the detritus that a river washes into the sea. If the black stay here,

it must be as a menial. In his own latitudes, where, after the third

generation, the white man ceases to exist, he is the stronger; there the

black man is king: let him betake himself to his realm. Abolition is

impracticable, colonization feasible; on either is gunpowder wasted: one

cannot explode a lie by the blast.

"But saying the worst of our incubus that can be said, could all its

possible accumulation of wrong and woe exceed that of four years of such

a war as this? Think a moment of what this land was, what a great beacon

and celestial city across the waves to the fugitives from tyranny; think

of our powerful pride in eastern seas, in western ports, when each

ship's armament carried with it the broadside of so many sovereign

States, when each citizen felt his own hand nerved with a people's

strength, when no young man woke in the morning without the perpetual

aurora of high hopes before him, when peace and plenty were all about

us,--and then think of misery at every hearth, of civilization thrust

back a century, of the prestige of freedom lost among the nations, of

the way paved for despots. And how needlessly!

"They taunted us, us the source of all their wealth, with the pauper's

deserting the poor-house; we put it to proof; when, lo! with a hue and

cry, the blood-hounds are upon us, the very dogs of war. So needless a

war! For has it not been a fundamental principle that every people has a

right to govern itself? We chose to exercise that right. Was it worth

the while to refuse it? Exhausted, drained, dispeopled, they may chain a

vassal province to their throne; but, woe be to them, upon that

conquering day, their glory has departed from them! The first Revolution

was but the prologue to this: that was sealed in blood; in this might

have been demonstrated the progress made under eighty years of freedom,

by a peaceful separation. It is the Flight of the Tartar Tribe anew, and

the whole barbarous Northern nation pours its hordes after, hangs on the

flank, harasses, impedes, slaughters,--but we reach the shadow of the

Great Wall at last. If we had not the right to leave the league, how had

we the right to enter? If we had not the right to leave, they also had

not the right to withhold us. Yet, when we entered, resigning much,

receiving much, retaining more, we were each a unit, a power, a

commonwealth, a nation, or, as we chose to term it, a State,--as much a

state as any of the great states of Europe, as Britain, as France, as

Spain, and jealously ever since have we individually regarded any

infringement on our integrity. That, and not the mere tangle of race

that in time must unravel itself, is the question of the age. Long ago

it was said that our people, holding it by transmission, never having

struggled for it, would some day cease rightly to value the one chief

bulwark of liberty. Nothing is more true. They of the North will lose

it, we of the South shall gain it; for, battling on a grander scale than

our ancestors, the South is to-day taking out the great _habeas corpus_

of States!"

No matter whether all this was sophistry or truth. Beltran had said

it,--that was enough; so strongly did she feel his personality in what

he wrote, that the soul was exultant, jubilant, defiant, within her.

Other words there were in the letter, such words as are written to but

one; the blood swept up to Vivia's lips as she recalled them, and her

heart sprang and bounded like one of those balls kept in perpetual play

by the leaping, bubbling column of a fountain. She was in one of those

dangerous states of excitement after which the ancients awaited

disaster. That last picture of the mirror dazzled her vision again; she

saw the sunshine, smelt the perfume, heard the bird-song. How a year had

changed the scene! The house was a barrack; now down in her Maryland

peach-orchards the black muzzles of Federal cannon yawned, and under the

flickering shadows and sunshine the grimy gunners, knee-deep in grass

and dew, brushed away the startled clover-blooms, as they touched fire

to the breach. Beltran was a Rebel. Vivia was a Rebel, too! She ran

down-stairs into her little parlor overflowing with flowers. As she

walked to and fro, the silent keys of her pianoforte met her eye.

Excellent conductors. Half standing, half sitting, she awoke its voices,

and, to a rolling, silvery thunder of accompaniment, commenced

singing,--

"The lads of Kilmarnock had swords and had spears

And lang-bladed daggers to kill cavaliers,

But they shrunk to the wall and the causey left free

At one toss of the bonnet of Bonny Dundee!

So fill up my cup, come fill up my can,

Saddle my horses and call up my men,

Open your west-port and let me gae free,

For it's up with the bonnets of Bonny Dundee!"

Some one in the distance, echoing the last line with an emphasis, caught

her ear in the pause. It was Ray. He had already returned, then. She

snatched the letter and sped into the kitchen, where she was sure to

find him.

Mrs. Vennard rocked in her miniature sitting-room at one side,

contentedly matching patchwork. Little Jane Vennard, her

step-daughter,--usually at work in the mills, but, since their close,

making herself busy at home, whither she had brought a cookery-book

through which Ray declared he expected to eat his way,--bustled about

from room to room. Ray sat before the fire in the kitchen and toasted

some savory morsel suspended on a string athwart the blaze.

"Where have you been, Ray?" said Vivia, approaching, with her glowing

cheeks, her sparkling eyes. "And what are you doing now?"

"Trying camp-life again," replied Ray, looking up at her in a fixed

admiration.

"I've had a letter from Beltran."

"Oh! where is he?" cried Ray.

"Beltran is in camp."

"And where?"

"Perhaps on the Rio Grande, perhaps on the Potomac."

"Do you mean to say," cried Ray, springing up, while string and all fell

into the coals, "that Beltran, my brother"--

"Is a Rebel."

"Then I am a rebel, too," said Ray, chokingly, sitting down again, and

mechanically stooping to pick up the burning string,--"a rebel to him!"

"You won't be a rebel to him, if you'll listen to reason,--his reason."

"He's got no reason. It's only because he was there."

"Now, Raymond Lamar! if you talk so, you sha'n't read the letter!"

"I don't want to read it."

"Have you left off loving Beltran, because he differs from you?"

"Left off loving Beltran!"

Vivia waited a moment, leaning on the back of his chair, and then Ray,

bending, covered his face with his hands, and the large tears oozed from

between his brown fingers.

Little Jane, whipping the frothy snow of her eggs, went on whipping all

the harder for fear Ray should know she saw him. And Vivia, with one

hand upon his head, took away the brown fingers, that her own cool,

fragrant palm might press upon his burning lids. Such sudden tears

belong to such tropical natures. For there was no anger or sullenness in

Ray's grief; he was just and simply sorry.

"He must have forgotten me," said Ray, after a sober while.

"There was this note for you in mine, and a draft on New York, because

he thought you might be in arrears."

"No, I'm not. Aunty can have the draft, though; she may need it before I

come back," said Ray, brokenly, gazing into the fire. "Do you suppose

Beltran wrote mine or yours first?"

"Yours."

"Then you've the last thing he ever set his hand to, perhaps!"

"Don't talk so, child!" said Vivia, with an angry shiver. "Come back!

Where are you going?"

"I enlisted, yesterday, in the Kansas Cavalry."

"Great heavens, Ray! was there not another regiment in all the world

than one to be sent down to New Mexico to meet Beltran and the Texan

Rangers?" cried Vivia, wringing her hands.

Ray was on his feet again, a swarm of expletives buzzing inarticulately

at his lips.

"I never thought of that," said he, whiter than ashes.

"What made you? oh, what made you?"

"There was no other company. I liked this captain. He gave me to-day's

furlough. I'm going to-night; little Jane's promised to fix my traps;

she's making me these cookies now, you see. Pshaw! Beltran's up on the

Potomac, or else you couldn't have gotten this letter,--don't you know?

You made my heart jump into my mouth!"

And resuming his seat, to find his string and jack in cinders, he turned

round astride his chair and commenced notching his initials into its

back, with cautious glances at his aunt.

"That's for little Jane to cry over after I'm gone," said he.

"Ray--How do you think Beltran will like it?"

"I can't help what Beltran likes. I shall be doing God's work."

"Beltran says God does His own work. He only requires of us our duty."

"That is my duty."

"You feel, Ray, as if you were possessed by the holy ardor of another

Sir Galahad!"

"I feel, Vivia, that I shall give what strength I have towards ridding

the world of its foulest disease."

"With what a good grace that comes from you!"

"With all the better grace."

"The old Berserker rage over again!"

"Quite as fine as running amuck."

"Ray, the race that does not rise for itself deserves its fate."

"Vivia, no race deserves such a fate as this one has found."

"Idle! I have seen slavery; own slaves: there is nothing monstrous in

it."

"In Maryland."

"Anywhere."

"Wailing children, sundered families, women under the lash"--

"You know very well, Ray, that there is a law against the separation of

families."

"I never heard of it."

"Audubon says there is."

"A little bird told him," interpolated Jane.

"But I've seen them separated."

"I don't believe," urged Vivia, "but for exceptional abuses, there's a

system providing for a happier peasantry on the face of the earth."

"It can't be a good system that allows such abuses."

"There are even abuses of the sacraments."

"Pshaw, Vivia!"

"Well, Ray, I don't believe in this pseudo-chivalry of yours, any more

than Beltran does."

"If Beltran said black was white, you'd think that true!"

"_If_ Beltran said so, it _would_ be true."

"It's no more likely that he should be right than that I should be."

"You couldn't have spoken so about Beltran once!"

"Well, black or white, slave or free, never think I shall sit by and see

my country fall to ruins."

"Your country? Do you suppose you love it any more than I do?"

"You're a woman."

"Suppose I am a woman, you unkind boy"--

"Well, you only love half of it,--the Southern half."

"I love my whole country!" cried Vivia, all aflame. "I love these

purple, rust-stained granites here, the great savannas there,--the pine

forests, the sea-like prairies,--every river rolling down its rocky

bed,--every inch of its beautiful, glorious soil,--all its proud, free

people. I love my whole country!"

"Only you hate some of its parasites. But Beltran would tell you that

you haven't got any country. You may love your native State. As for

country, it's nothing but a--what-you-may-call-it."

"Very true. It is in observing the terms of that

what-you-may-call-it,--that federation, that bond,--in mutual

concessions, in fraternal remembrances, that we gain a country. And what

a country!"

"Yes, what a country, Vivia! And shall I consent to resign an atom of it

while there's a drop of blood in my body, to lose a single grain of its

dust? When Beltran brought me here three years ago, I sailed day and

night up a mighty river, from one zone into another,--sailed for weeks

between banks that were still my own country. And if I had ever

returned, we should have passed by the thundering ledges of New England,

Jersey surfs and shallows, the sand-bars of the Carolinas, the shores of

Florida lying like a faint green cloud long and low upon the

horizon,--sailing a thousand miles again in our own waters. Enormous

borders! and throughout their vast stretch happiness and promise! And

shall I give such dominion to the first traitor that demands it? No! nor

to the thousandth! There she lies, bleeding, torn, prostrate, a byword!

Why, Vivia, this was my country, she that made me, reared me, gladdened

me! It is the now crusade. I understand none of your syllogisms. My

country is in danger. Here's my hand!"

And Ray stood erect, bristling and fiery, as some one reddening in the

very light of battle.

And answering him only with flashing eyes, Vivia sang, in her

triumphant, thrilling tones,--

"Hark to a wandering child's appeal,

Maryland! my Maryland!

My mother State, to thee I kneel,

Maryland! my Maryland!

For life and death, for woe and weal,

Thy peerless chivalry reveal,

And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,

Maryland! my Maryland!"

"You're a wicked girl, Vivia, if you _are_ as beautiful as Phryne!"

exclaimed Ray, while little Jane picked herself up from the table,

across which she had been leaning with both arms and her dish-towel, and

staring forgetfully at him.

Vivia laughed.

"Well, you young fanatic," said she, "we can't convert each other. We

are both incontrovertible. Let us be friends. One needs more time than

we have to quarrel in."

"Yes," said Ray. "I am going this afternoon, and I shall drink of every

river west of the Mississippi before I come back. It's a wild life, a

royal life; I am thirsty for its excitement and adventure."

"Jane," called Mrs. Vennard from within, "did you find all the nests

to-day?"

"All but two, Ma'am," said little Jane, as she let a tempting odor

escape from the tin oven. "The black hen got over the fence last night;

she's down in the lot. And the cropple-crown laid away."

"You'd better get them."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"If you'd just as lief."

"Oh, yes, Ma'am!"

"We'll go, too," said Ray.

"Oh, no, you needn't."

"We'd like to, little Jane. Are the cookies done? By George! don't they

look like manna? They'll last all the way to Fort Riley. And be manna in

the wilderness. Smoking hot. Have some, Vivia? Little Jane, I say, 't

would be jolly, if you'd go along and cook for the regiment."

"Is that all you'd want of me?"

"It's a wonderful region for grasshoppers out there, you know; you'd

improvise us such charming dishes of locusts and wild honey! As for

cookies, a snowflake and a sunbeam, and there they are," said Ray,

making inroads on the Fort-Riley stores; while little Jane set down a

cup of beaten cream by his side.

"Janets are trumps! Vivia, don't you wish you were going to the war?"

"Yes," said Vivia.

"There is something in it, isn't there?" said Ray. "You'll sit at home,

and how your blood will boil! What keeps you women alive? Darning

stockings, I suppose. There's only one thing I dread: 't would be hard

to read of other men's glory, and I lying flat on my back. Would you

make me cookies then, little Jane?"

Little Jane only gave him one swift, shy look: there was more promise in

it than in many a vow. In return, Ray tossed her the sparkle of his

dancing glance an instant, and then his eager fancies caught him again.

"We read of them," said he, "those splendid scenes. What can there be

like acting them? Ah, what a throb there is in it! The rush, the roar,

the onslaught, the clanging trumpet, the wreathing smoke, and the mad

horses. Dauntlessly defying danger. Ravishing fame from the teeth of the

battery. See in what a great leap of the heart you spring with the

forlorn hope up the escalade! Your soul kindles and flashes with your

blade. You are nothing but a wrath. To die so, with all one's spirit at

white-heat, awake, alert, aflame, must send one far up and along the

heights of being. And if you live, there are other things to do; and how

the women feel their fiery pulses fly, their hot tears start, as you go

by, thinking of all the tumult, the din, the daring, the danger, and you

a part of it!"

Little Jane was trembling and tying on her bonnet. As for Vivia, she

burst into tears.

"Oh, Ray!" sobbed she, "I wish I were a man!"

"I don't!" said he. "Oh, it's rip-roarious! Come, let's follow our

leader. We'll bring you back the cropple-crown, auntie."

And so they departed, while, breaking into fresh carols, ringing and

dulcet, as they went, Vivia's voice resounded till the woods pealed to

the echo:--

"He waved his proud arm, and the trumpets were blown

The kettle-drums clashed, and the horsemen rode on,

Till o'er Ravelston crags and on Clermiston lea

Died away the wild war-notes of Bonny Dundee!"

Pursuing the white sun-bonnet down the pasture, Ray kept springing ahead

with his elastic foot, threshing the juniper-plats that little Jane had

already searched, and scattering about them the pungent fragrance of the

sweet-fern thickets,--the breath of summer itself; then returning for a

sober pace or two, would take off his hat, thrust a hand through the

masses of his hair that looked like carved ebony, and show Vivia that

his shadow was exactly as long as her own. And Vivia saw that all this

beating and longing and burning had loosened and shot into manhood a

nature that under the snow of its eightieth winter would yet be that of

a boy. Ray could never be any taller than he was to-day, but he had

broad, sturdy shoulders and a close-knit, nervous frame, while in his

honest, ugly face, that, arch or grave, kept its one contrast of black

eyes and brilliant teeth, there was as much to love as in the superb

beauty of Beltran.

They had reached the meadow's edge at length; Ray was growing more

serious, as the time hurried, when little Jane, with a smothered

exclamation, prepared to cross the wall. For there they were, sleek and

glossy, chattering gently to each other, pecking about, the wind blowing

open their feathers till they became top-heavy, and looking for all the

world, as Janet said, like pretty little old ladies dressed up to go out

to tea. And near them, quite at home in the marshy domain, strutted and

lunched a fine gallant of a turkey, who ruffled his redness, dropped all

his plumes about him, and personated nothing less than some stately

dowager sailing in flounces and brocades. Ray caught back their

discoverer, launched a few stepping-stones across, and, speeding from

foothold to foothold, very soon sent His Magnificence fluttering over

the fence and forward before them, and returned with the two little

runaway hens slung over his arm, where, after a trifle of protestation

and a few subdued cackles of crestfallen acquiescence, having a great

deal to tell the other hens on reaching home once more, they very

contentedly enjoyed the new aspect of the world upsidedown.

"And here's where she's made her nest," said little Jane, stepping aside

from a tangle of blackberry-vines, herds-grass, and harebells, where lay

a half-dozen pullet pearls. "A pretty mother you'd make, Miss, gadding

and gossiping down in the meadow with that naughty black hen! Who do you

suppose is going to bring up your family for you? Did you speak to the

butterflies to hatch them under their yellow wings? I shall just tie you

to an old shoe!"

And taking the winking, blinking culprits from Kay, she ran along home

to make ready his package, for which there was not more than an hour

left. Vivia turned to follow, for she also wanted to help; but Ray,

lingering by the wall and pointing out some object, caused her to

remain.

"It will be such a long time before I see it again," said he.

They leaned upon the stone wall, interspersed, overgrown, and veiled

with moss and maiden-hair and blossoming brambles. Before them lay the

long meadow, sprinkled with sunbeams, green to its last ripe richness,

discolored only where the tall grass made itself hoary in the breeze, or

where some trail of dun brown ran up through all intermediate tints to

break in a glory of gold at the foot of the screen of woods that far

away gloomed like a frowning fortress of shade, but, approaching,

feathered off its tips in the glow, and let the mellow warmth of olive

light gild to a lustrous depth all its darkly verdurous hollows. Near

them the vireos were singing loud and sweet.

"Vivia," said Ray, after a pause, "if I should never come back"--

"You will come back."

"But if I never did,--should you greatly care?"

"Beginning to despond! That is good! You won't go, then?"

"If the way lay over the bottomless pit, I should go."

"And you can't get free, if you want to?"

"No!"

"Ray, I could easily raise money enough upon my farm to buy"--

"If you talk so," said Ray, whipping off the flowers, but looking up at

her as he bent, and smiling, "I shall inform against you, and have your

farm confiscated."

"What! I can't talk as I please in a free country? Oh, it's not free,

then! They've discovered at length that there's something better than

freedom. They sent a woman to prison this spring for eating an orange in

the street. They confiscated a girl's wedding-gown the other day, and

now they've confiscated her bridegroom. Oh, it's a great cause that

can't get along without my wedding-gown! _Noblesse oblige_!"

"It takes more wedding-gowns than yours, Vivia. Dips them in mourning."

"Pray God it won't take mine yet!" cried she, with sudden fire.

"Vivia," said Ray, facing her, "I asked you a question. Why didn't you

answer it? Shouldn't you care?"

"You know, dear child, I should,--we all should, terribly."

"But, Vivia, I mean, that you--that I"--

He paused, the ardor and eagerness suspended on cheek and lip, for Vivia

met his glance and understood its simple speech,--since in some degree a

dark eye lets you into the soul, where a blue one bluffs you off with

its blaze, and under all its lucent splendor is as impenetrable as a

turquoise. A girl of more vanity would have waited for plainer words.

But Vivia only placed her warm hand on his, and said gently,--

"Ray, I love Beltran."

There was a moment's quiet, while Ray looked away,--supporting his chin

upon one hand, and a black cloud sweeping torridly down the stern face.

One sharp struggle. A moment's quiet. Into it a wild rose kept shaking

sweetness. After it a vireo broke into tremulous melody, gushing higher,

fuller, stronger, clearer. Ray turned, his eyes wet, his face beaming.

Said he,--

"I am more glad than if it were myself!"

Then Vivia bent, and, flushed with noble shame, she kissed him on the

lips. A word, a grasp, she was leaning alone over the old stone wall,

the birds were piping and fluting about her, and Ray was gone.

* * * * *

A month of rushing over land and lake, of resting at the very spots

where he and Beltran had stayed together three years ago, of repeating

the brief strolls they took, of reading again and again that last note,

and Ray had crossed the great river of the West, and reached the

headquarters of his regiment. There, induing their uniforms, and

training their horses, all of which were yet to be shod, they brushed

about the country, and skirmished with guerrillas, until going into camp

for thorough drill preparatory to active service.

Convoying Government-trains through a region where were assembled in

their war-paint thousands of Indians from the wild tribes of the plains

and hills was venturous work enough, but it was not that to which Ray

aspired. He must be one of those cherubim who on God's bidding speed; he

could not serve with those who only stand and wait. His hot soul grew

parched and faint with longing, and all the instincts of his battling

blood began to war among themselves. At length one night there was

hammering and clinking at the red field-fires, and by daybreak they were

off for a mad gallop over plain and mountain, down river-banks and

across deserts into New Mexico.

Fording the shallow Arkansas, trailing their way through prairie and

timber,--reaching and skirting the scorching stretch,--riding all day,

consumed with thirst, from green-mantling pool to pool, till the last

lay sixty miles behind them, and men and horses made desperately for the

stream, dashing in together to drink their fill, when they found it

again foaming down the centre of its vast level plain, that receded

twenty miles on either side without shrub or hillock,--finally their

path wound in among the hills, and a day dawned that Ray will never

forget.

The stars were large and solemn, hovering golden out of the high, dark

heaven, as the troop defiled into the _cañon_; they glinted with a

steely lustre through the roof of fallen trees that arched the gorge

from side to side, then a wind of morning blew and they grew pallid and

wan in a shining haze, and, towering far up above them, vaguely terrific

in shadow, the horsemen saw the heights they were to climb all grayly

washed in the night-dew. So they swept up the mountain-side in their gay

and breezy career, on from ascent to ascent, from abutment to abutment,

crossing shrunken torrents, winding along sheer precipices, up into the

milky clouds of heaven itself, till the rosy flare of dawn bathed all

the air about them. There they halted, while, struggling after them, the

first triumphant beam struck the bosses of their harness to glittering

jewel-points, and, breaking through layer on layer of curdling vapor at

their feet, suffused it to a wondrous fleece, where carnation and violet

and the fire that lurks in the opal, wreathing with gorgeous involution,

seethed together, until, at last, the whole resplendent mist wound

itself away in silver threads on the spindles of the wind. Then boot in

the stirrup again, onward, over the mountain's ridge, desolate rook

defying the sun, downward, plunging through hanging forests, clearing

the chasm, bridging ravines, and still at noon the eagles, circling and

screaming above them, shook over them the dew from their plumes.

Downward afresh in their wild ride, the rainbows of the cascades flying

beside them, their afternoon shadows streaming up behind them, darkness

beginning to gather in the deeps below them, the mighty mountain-masses

around rearing themselves impenetrably in boding blackness and mystery

against the yellow gleam, the purple breath of evening wrapping them,

the dew again, again the stars, and they camped at the foot of a spur

of hills with a waterfall for sentry on their left.

Through all the dash of the day, Ray had been in sparkling spirits, a

very ecstasy of excitement, brimmed with an exuberance of valiant glee

that played itself away in boyish freaks of daring and reckless acts of

horsemanship. Now a loftier mood had followed, and, still wrought to

some extreme tension, full of blind anticipation and awful assurance, he

sat between the camp-fires, his hands clasped over his knees, and

watched the evening star where it hung in a cleft of the rocks and

seemed like the advent of some great spirit of annunciation. The tired

horses had been staked out to graze, a temporary abatis erected,

scouting-parties sent off in opposite directions, and at last the frosty

air grew mild and mellow over the savory steam of broiling steaks and

coffee smoking on beds of coals. There was a moment's lull in the hum of

the little encampment, in all the jest and song and jingling stir of

this scornfully intrepid company; perhaps for an instant the sense of

the wilderness overawed them; perhaps it was only the customary

precursor of increasing murmur;--before leaving his place, Ray suddenly

stooped and laid his ear on the earth. There it was! Far off, far off,

the phantasmal stroke of hoofs, rapid, many, unswerving. It had

come,--all that he had awaited,--fate, or something else. Low and clear

in the distance one bugle blew blast of warning. When he rose, the great

yellow planet, wheeling slowly down the giant cleft in the rock, had

vanished from sight.

Every man was on his feet, the place in alarum. Behind and beside them

loomed the precipice and the waterfall;--there was surrender, there was

conquest; there was no retreat. The fires were extinguished, the

breastworks strengthened, weapons adjusted, and all the ireful

preparations for hasty battle made. Then they expected their foe. Slowly

over the crown of the mountain above them an aurora crept and brandished

its spears.

As they waited there those few breathless moments, Ray examined his

rifle coolly enough, and listened to the chirp of a solitary cricket

that sung its thin strain so unbrokenly on the edge of strife as to

represent something sublime in its petty indifference. He was stationed

on the extreme left; near him the tumult of the torrent drowned much

discordant noise, its fairy scarf forever forming and falling and

floating on the evening air. He thought of Vivia sitting far away and

looking out upon the quiet starlight night; then he thought of swampy

midnight lairs, with maddened men in fevered covert there,--of little

children crying for their mothers,--of girls betrayed to hell,--of flesh

and blood at price,--of blistering, crisping fagot and stake to-day,--of

all the anguish and despair down there before him. And with the vivid

sting of it such a wrath raged along his veins, such a holy fire, that

it seemed there were no arms tremendous enough for his handling, through

his shut teeth darted imprecatory prayers for the power of some almighty

vengeance, his soul leaped up in impatient fury, his limbs tingled for

the death-grapple, when suddenly sound surged everywhere about them and

they were in the midst of conflict. Silver trumpet-peals and clash and

clang of iron, crying voices, whistling, singing, screaming shot,

thunderous drum-rolls, sharp sheet of flame and instant abyss of

blackness, horses' heads vaulting into sight, spurts of warm blood upon

the brow, the bullet rushing like a blast beside the ear, all the

terrible tempest of attack, trampled under the flashing hoof, climbing,

clinching, slashing, back-falling beneath cracking revolvers, hand to

hand in the night, both bands welded in one like hot and fusing metal, a

spectral struggle of shuddering horror only half guessed by lurid gleams

and under the light cloud flying across the stars. Clearly and remotely

over the plain the hidden east sent up a glow into the sky; its

reflection lay on Ray; he fought like one possessed of a demon,

scattering destruction broadcast, so fiercely his anger wrapped him,

white and formidable. Fresh onset after repulse, and, like the very

crest of the toppling wave, one shadowy horseman in all the dark rout,

spurring forward, the fight reeling after him, the silver lone star

fitfully flashing on his visor, the boy singled for his rifle;--inciting

such fearless rivalry, his fall were the fall of a hundred. Something

hindered; the marksman delayed an instant; he would not waste a shot;

and watching him, the dim outline, the sweeping sabre, the proud

prowess, a strange yearning pity seized Ray, and he had half the mind to

spare. In the midst of the shock and uproar there came to him a pulse of

the brain's double action; he seemed long ago to have loved, to have

admired, to have gloried in this splendid valor. But with the hint, and

the humanity of it, back poured the ardor of his sacred devotion, all

the impulsions of his passionate purpose: here was God's work! And then,

with one swift bound of magnificent daring and defiance, the horseman

confronted him, the fore-feet of his steed planted firmly half up the

abatis, and his steel making lightnings round about him. There was a

blinding flare of light full upon Ray's fiery form; in the sudden

succeeding darkness horseman and rider towered rigid like a monolith of

black marble. A great voice cried his name, a sabre went hurtling in one

shining crescent across the white arc of the waterfall. Too late! There

was another flare of light, but this time on the rider's face, a sound

like the rolling of the heavens together in a scroll, and Ray, in one

horrid, dizzy blaze, saw the broad gleam of the ivory brow, of the azure

fire in the eyes, heard the heavy, downfalling crash, and, leaping over

the abatis, deep into the midst of the slippery, raging death below,

seized and drew something away, and fell upon it prostrate. There, under

the tossing torrent, dragging himself up to the seal of their agony and

their reproach, Ray looked into those dead eyes, which, lifted beyond

the everlasting stars, felt not that he had crossed their vision.

Far away from outrage and disaster, many a weary stretch of travel, the

meadow-side cottage basked in the afternoon sunlight of late

Indian-summer. All the bare sprays of its shadowing limes quivered in

the warmth of their purple life against a divine depth of heaven, and

the woody distances swathed themselves in soft blue smoke before the

sighing south-wind.

Round the girl who sat on the low door-stone, with idle hands crossed

before her, puffs of ravishing resinous fragrance floated and fainted.

Two butterflies, that spread their broad yellow wings like detached

flakes of living sunshine stolen out of the sweet November weather,

fluttered between the glossy darkness of her hair and a little

posthumous rose, that, blowing beside the door, with time only half to

unfold its white petals, surveyed the world in a quaint and sad

surprise.

Vivia looked on all the tender loveliness of the dying year with a

listless eye: waiting, weary waiting, makes the soul torpid to all but

its pain. It was long since there had been any letter from Ray. In all

this oppression of summer and of autumn there had come no report of

Beltran. Her heart had lost its proud assurance, worn beneath the long

strain of such suspense. Could she but have one word from him, half the

term of her own life would be dust in the balance. A thousand

fragmentary purposes were ever flitting through her thought. If she

might know that he was simply living, if she could be sure he wanted

her, she would make means to break through that dividing line, to find

him, to battle by his side, to die at his feet! Her Beltran! so grave,

so good, so heroic! and the thought of him in all his pride and beauty

and power, in all his lofty gentleness and tender passion, in his

strength tempered with genial complaisance and gracious courtesy, sent

the old glad life, for a second, spinning from heart to lip.

The glassy lake began to ruffle itself below her, feeling the pulses of

its interfluent springs, or sending through unseen sluices word of

nightfall and evening winds to all its clustering companions that

darkened their transparent depths in forest-shadows. As she saw it, and

thought how soon now it would ice itself anew, the remembrance rushed

over her, like a warm breath, of the winter's night after their escape

from its freezing pool, when Beltran sat with them roasting chestnuts

and spicing ale before the fire that so gayly crackled up the

kitchen-chimney, a night of cheer. And how had it all faded! whither had

they all separated? where were those brothers now? Heaven knew.

It had been a hard season, these months at the cottage. The price of

labor had been high enough to exceed their means, and so the land had

yielded ill, the grass was uncut on many a meadow; Ray's draft had not

been honored; Vivia had of course received no dividend from her

Tennessee State-bonds, and her peach-orchards were only a place of

forage. Still Vivia stayed at the cottage, not so much by fervent

entreaty, or because she had no other place to go to, as because there

were strange, strong ties binding her there for a while. Should all else

fail, with the ripened wealth of her voice at command, her future was of

course secure from want. But there was a drearier want at Vivia's door,

which neither that nor any other wealth would ever meet.

Little Jane came up the field with a basket of the last barberries

lightly poised upon her head. A narrow wrinkle was beginning to divide

the freckled fairness of her forehead. She kept it down with many an

endeavor. Trying to croon to herself as she passed, and stopping only to

hang one of the scarlet girandoles in Vivia's braids, she went in. The

sunshine, loath to leave her pleasant little figure, followed after her,

and played about her shadow on the floor.

Vivia still sat there and questioned the wide atmosphere, that, brooding

palpitant between her and the lake, still withheld the desolating secret

that horizon must have whispered to horizon throughout the aching

distance.

"Oh that the bells in all these silent spires

Would clash their clangor on the sleeping air,

Ring their wild music out with throbbing choirs,

Ring peace in everywhere!"

she sang, and trembled as she sang. But there the burden broke, and

rising, her eyes shaded by her hand, Vivia gazed down the lonely road

where a stage-coach rolled along in a cloud of dust. What prescience,

what instinct, it was that made her throw the shawl over her head, the

shawl that Beltran liked to have her wear, and hasten down the field and

away to lose herself in the wood, she alone could have told.

The slow minutes crept by, the coach had passed at length with loud

wheel and resounding lash, its last dust was blowing after it, and it

had left upon the door-stone a boy in army-blue, with his luggage beside

him. A ghastly visage, a shrunken form, a crippled limb, were what he

brought home from the war. With his one foot upon the threshold, he

paused, and turned the face, gray under all its trace of weather, and

furrowed, though so young, to meet the welcoming wind. He gazed upon the

high sky out of which the sunshine waned, on the long champaign blending

its gold and russet in one, on the melancholy forest over which the

twilight was stealing; he lifted his cap with a gesture as if he bade it

all farewell,--then he grasped his crutch and entered.

Without a word, Mrs. Vennard dropped the needles she was sorting upon

the mat about her. Little Jane sprang forward, but checked herself in a

strange awe.

"Let me go to bed, auntie," said he, with a dry sob; "and I never want

to get up again!"

* * * * *

Midnight was winding the world without in a white glimmer of misty

moonlight, when the sharp beam of a taper smote Ray's sleepless eyes,

and he saw Vivia at last standing before him. Over her wrapper clung the

old shawl whose snowy web was sown with broidery of linnæa-bells, green

vine and rosy blossom. Round her shoulders fell her shadowy hair.

Through her slender fingers the redness of the flame played, and on her

cheek a hectic coming and going like the broad beat and flush of an

artery left it whiter than the spectral moonlight on the pane. She took

away her hand, and let the illumination fall full upon his face,--a face

haggard as a dead man's.

"Ray," she said, "where is Beltran?" Only silence replied to her. He lay

and stared up at her in a fixed and glassy glare. Breathless silence.

Then Ray groaned, and turned his face to the wall. Vivia blew out the

light.

* * * * *

The weeks crept away with the setting-in of the frosts. Little Jane's

heart was heavy for all the misery she saw about her, but she had no

time to make moan. Ray's amputated ankle was giving fresh trouble, and

after that was well over, he still kept his room, refusing food or fire,

and staring with hot, wakeful eyes at the cold ceiling. Vivia lingered,

subdued and pale, beside the hearth, doing any quiet piece of work that

came to hand; no one had seen her shed tears,--she had shown no

strenuous sorrow; on the night of Ray's return she had slept her first

unbroken sleep for months; her nerves, stretched so intensely and so

long, lay loosely now in their passionate reaction; some element more

interior than they saved her from prostration. She stayed there, sad and

still, no longer any sparkle or flush about her, but with a mildness so

unlike the Vivia of June that it had in it something infinitely

touching. She would have been glad to assist little Jane in her crowded

duties, yet succeeded only in being a hindrance; and learning a little

of broths and diet-drinks every day, she contented herself with sitting

silent and dreamy, and transforming old linen garments into bandages.

Mrs. Vennard, meanwhile, waited on her nephew and bewailed herself.

But for little Jane,--she had no time to bewail herself. She had all

these people, in fact, on her hands, and that with very limited means to

meet their necessities. It was true they need not experience actual

want,--but there was her store to be managed so that it should be at

once wholesome and varied, and the first thing to do was to take an

account of stock. The autumn's work had already been well done. She had

carried berries enough to market to let her preserve her quinces and

damsons in sirups clear as sunshine, and make her tiny allowance of

currant and blackberry wines, where were innocently simulated the

flavors of rare vintages. Crook-necked squashes decked the tall

chimney-piece amid bunches of herbs and pearly strings of onions. She

and Vivia had gathered the ripened apples themselves, and now goodly

garlands of them hung from the attic-rafters, above the dried beans

whose blossoms had so sweetened June, and above last year's corn-bins.

That corn the first passing neighbor should take to mill and exchange a

portion of for cracked wheat; and as the flour-barrel still held out,

they would be tolerably well off for cereals, little Jane thought. They

had kept only one cow, and Tommy Low would attend to her for the sake of

his suppers,--suppers at which Vivia must forego her water-cresses now;

but Janet had a bed of mushrooms growing down-cellar, that, broiled and

buttered, were, she fancied, quite equal to venison-steaks. The hens, of

course, must be sacrificed, all but a dozen of them; for, as there was

no fresh meat for them in winter, they wouldn't lay, and would be only a

dead weight, she said to herself, as, with her apron thrown over her

neck, she stood watching them, finger on lip. However, that would give

them poultry all through the holidays. Then there were the pigs to be

killed on halves by a neighbor, as almost everything else out-doors had

now to be done; and when that was accomplished, she found no time to

call her soul her own while making her sausage and bacon and souse and

brawn. Part of the pork would produce salt fish, without which what

farm-house would stand?--and with old hucklebones, her potatoes and

parsnips, those ruby beets and golden carrots, there was many a Julien

soup to be had. Jones's-root, bruised and boiled, made a chocolate as

good as Spanish. Instead of ginger, there were the wild caraway-seeds

growing round the house. If she could only contrive some sugar and some

vanilla-beans, she would be well satisfied to open her campaign. But as

there had been for weeks only one single copper cent and two

postage-stamps in the house, that seemed an impossibility. Hereupon an

idea seized little Jane, and for several days she was busy in a

mysterious rummage. Garrets and closets surrendered their hoards to her;

files of old newspapers, old ledgers, old letter-backs, began to

accumulate in heaps,--everything but books, for Jane had a religious

respect for their recondite lore; she cut the margins off the magazines,

and she grew miserly of the very shreds ravelling under Vivia's fingers.

At length, one morning, after she had watched the windows unweariedly as

a cat watches a mouse-hole, she hurriedly exclaimed,--

"There he is!"

"Who" asked Mrs. Vennard as hurriedly, with a dim idea that people in

their State received visits from the sheriff.

"Our treasurer!" said little Jane.

And, indeed, the red cart crowned with yellow brooms and dazzling tin,

the delight of housewives in lone places, was winding along the road;

and in a few moments little Jane accosted its driver, standing

victorious in the midst of her bags and bundles and baskets.

"How much were white rags?"

"Twelve cents."

Laconic, through the urgencies of tobacco.

"What?"

"Twelve cents."

"And colored?"

"Wal, they were consider'ble."

"And paper?"

"Six cents. 'T used to be half a cent Six cents now."

"But the reason?" breathlessly.

"Reckoned 'twas the war's much as anything."

One good thing out of Nazareth! Little Jane saw herself on the road to

riches, and immediately had thoughts of selling the whole

household-equipment for rags. She displayed her commodities.

"Did he pay in money?"

"Didn't like to; but then he did."

"Fine day, to-day."

"Wal, 'twas."

And when the reluctant tinman went on his way again, she returned to

spread the fabulous result before her mother. There were sugars and

spices and whatnot. And though--woe worth the day!--she found that the

sum yielded only half what once it would, still, by drinking her own tea

in its acritude, they would do admirably; for tea even little Jane

required as her tonic, and without it felt like nothing but a mollusk.

All this was very well, so far as it went; but the thrifty housekeeper

soon found that it went no way at all. Those for whom she made her

efforts wanted none of their results. She would have given all she had

in the world to help these suffering beings; but her little cooking and

concocting were all that she could do, and those they disregarded

utterly. When in the dull forenoon she would have enlivened Vivia with

her precious elderberry-wine, that a connoisseur must taste twice before

telling from purplest Port, and Vivia only wet her lips at it, or when

she carried Ray a roasted apple, its burnished sides bursting with juice

and clotted with cream, and the boy glanced at it and never saw it,

little Jane felt ready to cry; and she set to bethinking herself

seriously if there were nothing else to be done.

One day, it was the day before Christmas, Jane took up to Ray's room one

of her trifles, a whip, whose _suave_ and frothy nothingness was piled

over the sweet plum-pulp at bottom. Ray lay on the outside of the bed,

with his thick poncho over him; he looked at her and at her tray, played

with the teaspoon a moment, then rolled upon his side and shut his

eyes. Little Jane took a half-dozen steps about the room, reached the

door, hesitated, and came back.

"Ray," said she, under her breath and with tears in her voice, "I wish

you wouldn't do so. You don't know how it makes me feel. I can't do

anything for you but bring whips and custards; and you won't touch

those."

Ray turned and looked up at her.

"Do you care, Janet?" said he; and, rising on one arm, he lifted the

glass, and finished its delicate sweetmeat with a gust.

But as he threw himself back, little Jane took heart of grace once more.

"Ray, dear," said she, "I don't think it's right for you to stay here

alone in the cold. Won't you come down where it's warm? It's so much

more cheerful by the fire."

"I don't want to be cheerful," said Ray.

Janet looked at the door, then summoned her forces, and, holding the

high bedpost with both hands, said,--

"Ray, if God sent you any trouble, He never meant for you to take it so.

You are repulsing Him every day. You are straightening yourself against

Him. You are like a log on His hands. Can't you bend beneath it? Dear

Ray, you need comfort, but you never will find it till you take up your

life and your duties again, and come down among us."

"What duties have I?" said Ray, hoarsely, looking along his footless

limb. "The sooner my life ends, oh, the better! I want no comfort!"

But little Jane had gone.

Christmas day dawned clear and keen; the sky was full of its bluest

sparkle, and, wheresoever it mounted and stretched over snowy fields,

seemed to hold nothing but gladness. Vivia had wrapped herself in her

cloak, and walked two miles to an early church-service, so if by any

accord of worship she might put her heart in tune with the universe. She

had been at home a half-hour already, and sat in her old nook with some

idle work between her fingers. A broad blaze rolled its rosy volumes up

the chimney, and threw its reflections on the shining shelves and into

the great tin-kitchen, that, planted firmly, held up to the heat the

very bird that had moved so majestically over the spring meadow, and

which Mrs. Vennard was at present basting with such assiduity, that, if

ever the knife should penetrate the crisp depth of envelope, it would

certainly find the inclosure unscathed by fire. Little Jane was stirring

enormous raisins into some wonderful batter of a pudding,--for she

remembered the time when somebody used to pick out all his plums and

leave the rest, and she meant, that, so far as her skill and her

resources would go, there should be no abatement of Christmas cheer

to-day. And if, after all, everybody disdained the bounteous affair, why

it could go to Tommy Low's mother, who would not by any means disdain

it. Every now and then she turned an anxious ear for any movement in the

cold distance,--but there was only silence.

Suddenly Vivia started. A door had swung to, a strange sharp sound

echoed on the staircase, the kitchen-door opened and closed, and Ray set

his back against it. He did not attempt to move, but stood there darkly

surveying them. Vivia looked at him a second, then rose quickly, crossed

the room, and kissed him. Immediately Mrs. Vennard made a commotion,

while the other led him forward and placed him in her chair. Little Jane

pushed aside the pudding hastily, and proceeded to mull some of her mock

Sherry, that his heart might be warmed within him; and the cat came

rubbing against his crutch, as if she would make friends with it and

take it into the family. Mrs. Vennard resumed her basting; Vivia began

talking to him about her work and about her walk, murmuring pleasantly

in her clear, low tone,--Janet now and then putting in a word. Ray sat

there, sipping his spicy draught, and looking out with an unacquainted

air at the stir to which his coming had lent some gladness. But his face

was yet overcast with the shadows of the grave. In vain Mrs. Vennard

fussed and fidgeted, in vain little Jane uttered any of her brisk, but

sorry jesting, in vain Vivia's gentle voice;--it all touched Ray's heart

no other way than as the rain slips along a tombstone. Vivia folded her

work and disappeared; she was going to light a fire in her parlor, where

there had been none yet, and where by-and-by in the evening shadows she

might play to Ray, and charm him, perhaps, to rest. Mrs. Vennard divined

her purpose, and hurried after her to join in the task. Ray found

himself alone in his corner; he shivered. In spite of all the weeks of

solitude, a sudden chill seized him; he gathered up his crutches, and

stalked on them to the table where little Jane was yet finding something

to do. She brought him a chair, and for a minute or two he watched her;

then he was only staring vacantly at his hands, as they lay before him

on the table.

If Janet was a busy soul, she was just as certainly a busybody. She had

the loving and innocent habit of making herself a member of every one's

equation. Just now she ached inwardly, when looking at Ray, and it was

impossible for her not to try and help him.

"Ray, dear," said she, leaving her work and standing before him, "I

think you ought to smile now. Vivia has forgiven you. Take it as an

earnest that God forgives you, too."

"I haven't sinned against God," said Ray. "I don't know who I sinned

against. I killed my brother."

And his face fell forward on his hands and wet them with jets of

scalding tears. Full of awe and misery, little Jane dropped upon her

knees beside him, and, clasping his hands in hers, said to herself some

silent prayer.

* * * * *

After that placid-ending Christmas, after that first prayer, those first

tears, after Vivia's music at nightfall, Ray was another creature. He no

longer shut himself up in his room, but was down and about with little

Jane at peep of day. Indeed, he had now a horror of being alone,

following Janet from morn till eve, like a shadow, and stooping forward,

when the dark began to gather, with great, silent tears rolling over his

face, unless she came and took the cricket at his foot, slipping her

warm hand into his, and helping him to himself with the unspoken

sympathy. But it was a horror which nothing wholly lulled to sleep at

last but Vivia's singing. Every night, for an hour or more, Vivia

wrought the music's spell about him, while he lay back in his chair, and

little Jane retreated across the hearth, not daring to intrude on such a

season. They were seldom purely sad things that she played: sometimes

the melody murmured its _cantabile_ like a summer brook into which

moonbeams bent, flowing along the lowland, breaking only in sprays of

tune, and seeming to paint in its bosom the sleeping shadows of the fair

field-flowers; and if ever the gentle strain lost its way, and found

itself wandering among the massive chords, the profound melancholy, the

blind groping of any Fifth Symphony or piercing Stabat Mater, she

answered it, singing Elijah's hymn of rest; and as she sang, there grew

in her voice a strength, a sweetness, that satisfied the very soul. When

the nine-o'clock bell rang in from the village through the winter

night's crystal clearness, little Jane would lightly nudge her mother

and steal away to bed; and in the ruddy twilight of the felling fire the

two talked softly, talked,--but never of that dark thing lying most

deeply in the heart of either. Perhaps, by-and-by, when the thrilling

wound should be only a scar, if ever that time should come, the one

would be able to speak, the other to hear.

Week after week, now, Ray began to occupy himself about the house more

and more, resuming in succession odd little jobs that during all this

time had remained unfinished as on the day he went. He seemed desirous

of taking up the days exactly as he had left them, of bridging over this

gap and chasm, of ignoring the fatal summer. Something so dreadful had

fallen into his life that it could not assimilate itself with the

tissues of daily existence. The work must be slow that would volatilize

such a black body of horror till it leavened all the being into power

and grace undreamed of before.

But little Jane did not philosophize upon what she was so glad to see;

she hailed every sign of outside interest as a symptom of returning

health, and gave him a thousand occasions. Yesterday there were baskets

to braid, and to-day he must initiate her in the complications of a

dozen difficult sailor's-knots that he knew, and to-morrow there would

be woodchuck-traps to make and show her how to set. For Janet's chief

vexation had overtaken her in the absence of fresh eggs for breakfast,

an absence that would be enduring, unless the small game of the forest

could be lured into her snares and parcelled among the apathetic hens.

Many were the recipes and the consultations on the subject, till at last

Ray wrote out for her, in black-letter, a notice to be pinned up in the

sight of every delinquent: "Twelve eggs, or death!" Whether it were the

frozen rabbit-meat flung among them the day before, or whether it were

the timely warning, there is no one to tell; but the next morning twelve

eggs lay in the various hiding-places, which Mrs. Vennard declared to be

as good eggs as ever were laid, and custards and cookies renewed their

reign. Here, suddenly, Ray remembered the purse in his haversack,

containing all his uncounted pay. It was a weary while that he stayed

alone in the cold, leaning over it as if he stared at the thirty pieces

of silver, a faint sickness seized him, then hurriedly sweeping it up,

with a red spot burning cruelly into either cheek, he brought it down,

and emptied it in little Jane's lap, though he would rather have seen it

ground to impalpable dust. But, after a moment's thought, the astonished

recipient kept it for a use of her own. Finally, one night, Ray proposed

to instruct Janet in some particular branch of his general ignorance;

and after those firelight-recitations, little Jane forgot to move her

seat away, and her hand was kept in his through all the hour of Vivia's

slow enchantment.

So the cold weather wore away, and spring stole into the scene like a

surprise, finding Vivia as the winter found her,--but Ray still

undergoing volcanic changes, now passionless lulls and now rages and

spasms of grief: gradually out of them all he gathered his strength

about him.

It was once more a morning of early June, sunrise was blushing over the

meadows, and the gossamers of hoar dew lay in spidery veils of woven

light and melted under the rosy beams. From her window one heard Vivia

singing, and the strain stole down like the breath of the heavy

honeysuckles that trellised her pane:--

"No more for me the eager day

Breaks its bright prison-bars;

The sunshine Thou hast stripped away,

But bared the eternal stars.

"Though in the cloud the wild bird sings,

His song falls not for me,

Alone while rosy heaven rings,--

But, Lord, alone with Thee!"

One well could know, in listening to the liquid melody of those clear

tones, that love and sorrow had transfused her life at last to woof and

warp of innermost joy that death itself could neither tarnish nor

obscure. In a few moments she came down and joined Ray, where he stood

upon the door-stone, with one arm resting over the shoulder of little

Jane, and watched with him the antics of a youth who postured before

them. It was some old acquaintance of Ray's, returned from the war; and

as if he would demonstrate how wonderfully martial exercise supples

joint and sinew, he was leaping in the air, turning his heel where his

toe should be, hanging his foot on his arm and throwing it over his

shoulder in a necklace, skipping and prancing on the grass like a

veritable saltinbanco. Ray looked grimly on and inspected the

evolutions; then there was long process of question and answer and

asseveration, and, when the youth departed, little Jane had announced

with authority that Ray should throw away his crutch and stand on two

feet of his own again.

"What a gay fellow he is!" said Ray, drawing a breath of relief.

"They're all alike, dancing on graves. To be an old Téméraire decked out

in signal-flags after thunderous work well done, and settling down, is

one thing. But we,--to-day, when one would think every woman in the land

should wear the sackcloth and ashes of mourning, we break into a

splendor of apparel that defies the butterflies and boughs of the dying

year."

"Two striking examples before you," said little Jane, with a laugh, as

she looked at her old print and at Vivia's gray gown.

"I wasn't thinking of you. I saw the ladies in the village

yesterday,--they were pied and parded."

"Children," said Mrs. Vennard from within, "I've taken up the coffee

now. I sha'n't wait a minute longer. Vivia, I'll beat an egg into

yours."

But the children had wandered down to the lake-shore, oblivious of her

cry, and were standing on the rock watching their images glassed below

and ever freshly shattered with rippling undulations. A wherry chained

beside them Vivia rocked lightly with her foot.

"You and little Jane will set me down by-and-by?" she asked. "'T will be

so much pleasanter than the coach."

"And, Vivia dear, you will go, then?" exclaimed little Jane, with

tearful eyes. "You will certainly go?"

"Yes," said Vivia, looking out and far away, "I shall go to do that"--

"Which no one can ever do for _you_," said Ray, with a shudder.

"Which some woman will praise Heaven for."

"God bless you, Vivia!" cried little Jane.

"He has already blessed me," said Vivia, softly.

Janet nestled nearer to Ray's side, as they stood. There was a tremor of

gladness through all the dew of her glance. Ray looked down at her for a

moment, and his hard brow softened, in his eyes hung a light like the

reflection of a star in a breaking wave.

"He has blessed me, too," said he. "Some day I shall be a man again. I

have thrown away my crutch, Vivia,--for all my life I am going to have

this little shoulder to lean upon."

And over his sombre face a smile crept and deepened, like the yellow

ray, that, after a long, dark day of driving rain, suddenly gilds the

tree-tops and brims the sky; and though, when it went, the gloom shut

drearily down again, still it bore the promise of fair day to-morrow.

* * * * *

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.

BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.

I.

THE RAVAGES OF A CARPET.

"My dear, it's so cheap!"

These words were spoken by my wife, as she sat gracefully on a roll of

Brussels carpet which was spread out in flowery lengths on the floor of

Messrs. Ketchem & Co.

"It's _so_ cheap!"

Milton says that the love of praise is the last infirmity of noble

minds. I think he had not rightly considered the subject. I believe that

last infirmity is the love of getting things cheap! Understand me, now.

I don't mean the love of getting cheap things, by which one understands

showy, trashy, ill-made, spurious articles, bearing certain apparent

resemblances to better things. All really sensible people are quite

superior to that sort of cheapness. But those fortunate accidents which

put within the power of a man things really good and valuable for half

or a third of their value what mortal virtue and resolution can

withstand? My friend Brown has a genuine Murillo, the joy of his heart

and the light of his eyes, but he never fails to tell you, as its

crowning merit, how he bought it in South America for just nothing,--how

it hung smoky and deserted in the back of a counting-room, and was

thrown in as a makeweight to bind a bargain, and, upon being cleaned,

turned out a genuine Murillo; and then he takes out his cigar, and calls

your attention to the points in it; he adjusts the curtain to let the

sunlight fall just in the right spot; he takes you to this and the other

point of view; and all this time you must confess, that, in your mind as

well as his, the consideration that he got all this beauty for ten

dollars adds lustre to the painting. Brown has paintings there for which

he paid his thousands, and, being well advised, they are worth the

thousands he paid; but this ewe-lamb that he got for nothing always

gives him a secret exaltation in his own eyes. He seems to have credited

to himself personally merit to the amount of what he should have paid

for the picture. Then there is Mrs. Croesus, at the party yesterday

evening, expatiating to my wife on the surprising cheapness of her

point-lace set,--"Got for just nothing at all, my dear!" and a circle of

admiring listeners echoes the sound. "Did you ever _hear_ anything like

it? I never heard of such a thing in my life"; and away sails Mrs.

Croesus as if she had a collar composed of all the cardinal virtues. In

fact, she is buoyed up with a secret sense of merit, so that her satin

slippers scarcely touch the carpet. Even I myself am fond of showing a

first edition of "Paradise Lost," for which I gave a shilling in a

London book-stall, and stating that I would not take a hundred dollars

for it. Even I must confess there are points on which I am mortal.

But all this while my wife sits on her roll of carpet, looking into my

face for approbation, and Marianne and Jane are pouring into my ear a

running-fire of "How sweet! How lovely! Just like that one of Mrs.

Tweedleum's!"

"And she gave two dollars and seventy-five cents a yard for hers, and

this is"--

My wife here put her hand to her mouth, and pronounced the incredible

sum in a whisper, with a species of sacred awe, common, as I have

observed, to females in such interesting crises. In fact, Mr. Ketchem,

standing smiling and amiable by, remarked to me that really he hoped

Mrs. Crowfield would not name generally what she gave for the article,

for positively it was so far below the usual rate of prices that he

might give offence to other customers; but this was the very last of

the pattern, and they were anxious to close off the old stock, and we

had always traded with them, and he had a great respect for my wife's

father, who had always traded with their firm, and so, when there were

any little bargains to be thrown in any one's way, why, he naturally, of

course--And here Mr. Ketchem bowed gracefully over the yardstick to my

wife, and I consented.

Yes, I consented; but whenever I think of myself at that moment, I

always am reminded, in a small way, of Adam taking the apple; and my

wife, seated on that roll of carpet, has more than once suggested to my

mind the classic image of Pandora opening her unlucky box. In fact, from

the moment I had blandly assented to Mr. Ketchem's remarks, and said to

my wife, with a gentle air of dignity, "Well, my dear, since it suits

you, I think you had better take it," there came a load on my prophetic

soul, which not all the fluttering and chattering of my delighted girls

and the more placid complacency of my wife could entirely dissipate. I

presaged, I know not what, of coming woe; and all I presaged came to

pass.

In order to know just _what_ came to pass, I must give you a view of the

house and home into which this carpet was introduced.

My wife and I were somewhat advanced housekeepers, and our dwelling was

first furnished by her father, in the old-fashioned jog-trot days, when

furniture was made with a view to its lasting from generation to

generation. Everything was strong and comfortable,--heavy mahogany,

guiltless of the modern device of veneering, and hewed out with a square

solidity which had not an idea of change. It was, so to speak, a sort of

granite foundation of the household structure. Then, we commenced

housekeeping with the full idea that our house was a thing to be lived

in, and that furniture was made to be used. That most sensible of women,

Mrs. Crowfield, agreed fully with me that in our house there was to be

nothing too good for ourselves,--no rooms shut up in holiday attire to

be enjoyed by strangers for three or four days in the year, while we

lived in holes and corners,--no best parlor from which we were to be

excluded,--no best china which we were not to use,--no silver plate to

be kept in the safe in the bank, and brought home only in case of a

grand festival, while our daily meals were served with dingy Britannia.

"Strike a broad, plain average," I said to my wife; "have everything

abundant, serviceable; and give all our friends exactly what we have

ourselves, no better and no worse";--and my wife smiled approval on my

sentiment.

Smile! she did more than smile. My wife resembles one of those convex

mirrors I have sometimes seen. Every idea I threw out, plain and simple,

she reflected back upon me in a thousand little glitters and twinkles of

her own; she made my crude conceptions come back to me in such perfectly

dazzling performances that I hardly recognized them. My mind warms up,

when I think what a home that woman made of our house from the very

first day she moved into it. The great, large, airy parlor, with its

ample bow-window, when she had arranged it, seemed a perfect trap to

catch sunbeams. There was none of that discouraging trimness and newness

that often repel a man's bachelor-friends after the first call, and make

them feel,--"Oh, well, one cannot go in at Crowfield's now, unless one

is dressed; one might put them out." The first thing our parlor said to

any one was, that we were not people to be put out, that we were

wide-spread, easy-going, and jolly folk. Even if Tom Brown brought in

Ponto and his shooting-bag, there was nothing in that parlor to strike

terror into man and dog; for it was written on the face of things, that

everybody there was to do just as he or she pleased. There were my books

and my writing-table spread out with all its miscellaneous confusion of

papers on one side of the fireplace, and there were my wife's great,

ample sofa and work-table on the other; there I wrote my articles for

the "North American," and there she turned and ripped and altered her

dresses, and there lay crochet and knitting and embroidery side by side

with a weekly basket of family-mending, and in neighborly contiguity

with the last book of the season, which my wife turned over as she took

her after-dinner lounge on the sofa. And in the bow-window were canaries

always singing, and a great stand of plants always fresh and blooming,

and ivy which grew and clambered and twined about the pictures. Best of

all, there was in our parlor that household altar, the blazing

wood-fire, whose wholesome, hearty crackle is the truest household

inspiration. I quite agree with one celebrated American author who holds

that an open fireplace is an altar of patriotism. Would our

Revolutionary fathers have gone barefooted and bleeding over snows to

defend air-tight stoves and cooking-ranges? I trow not. It was the

memory of the great open kitchen-fire, with its back-log and fore-stick

of cord-wood, its roaring, hilarious voice of invitation, its dancing

tongues of flame, that called to them through the snows of that dreadful

winter to keep up their courage, that made their hearts warm and bright

with a thousand reflected memories. Our neighbors said that it was

delightful to sit by our fire,--but then, for their part, they could not

afford it, wood was so ruinously dear, and all that. Most of these

people could not, for the simple reason that they felt compelled, in

order to maintain the family-dignity, to keep up a parlor with great

pomp and circumstance of upholstery, where they sat only on

dress-occasions, and of course the wood-fire was out of the question.

When children began to make their appearance in our establishment, my

wife, like a well-conducted housekeeper, had the best of

nursery-arrangements,--a room all warmed, lighted, and ventilated, and

abounding in every proper resource of amusement to the rising race; but

it was astonishing to see how, notwithstanding this, the centripetal

attraction drew every pair of little pattering feet to our parlor.

"My dear, why don't you take your blocks up-stairs?"

"I want to be where oo are," said with a piteous under-lip, was

generally a most convincing answer.

Then the small people could not be disabused of the idea that certain

chief treasures of their own would be safer under papa's writing-table

or mamma's sofa than in the safest closet of their own domains. My

writing-table was dockyard for Arthur's new ship, and stable for little

Tom's pepper-and-salt-colored pony, and carriage-house for Charley's new

wagon, while whole armies of paper dolls kept house in the recess behind

mamma's sofa.

And then, in due time, came the tribe of pets who followed the little

ones and rejoiced in the blaze of the firelight. The boys had a splendid

Newfoundland, which, knowing our weakness, we warned them with awful

gravity was never to be a parlor-dog; but, somehow, what with little

beggings and pleadings on the part of Arthur and Tom, and the piteous

melancholy with which Rover would look through the window-panes, when

shut out from the blazing warmth into the dark, cold veranda, it at last

came to pass that Rover gained a regular corner at the hearth, a regular

_status_ in every family-convocation. And then came a little

black-and-tan English terrier for the girls; and then a fleecy poodle,

who established himself on the corner of my wife's sofa; and for each of

these some little voices pleaded, and some little heart would be so near

broken at any slight, that my wife and I resigned ourselves to live in

menagerie, the more so as we were obliged to confess a lurking weakness

towards these four-footed children ourselves.

So we grew and flourished together,--children, dogs, birds, flowers, and

all; and although my wife often, in paroxysms of housewifeliness to

which the best of women are subject, would declare that we never were

fit to be seen, yet I comforted her with the reflection that there were

few people whose friends seemed to consider them better worth seeing,

judging by the stream of visitors and loungers which was always setting

towards our parlor. People seemed to find it good to be there; they said

it was somehow home-like and pleasant, and that there was a kind of

charm about it that made it easy to talk and easy to live; and as my

girls and boys grew up, there seemed always to be some merry doing or

other going on there. Arty and Tom brought home their college friends,

who straightway took root there and seemed to fancy themselves a part of

us. We had no reception-rooms apart, where the girls were to receive

young gentlemen; all the courting and flirting that were to be done had

for their arena the ample variety of surface presented by our parlor,

which, with sofas and screens and lounges and recesses and writing-and

work-tables disposed here and there, and the genuine _laisser aller_ of

the whole _menage_, seemed, on the whole, to have offered ample

advantages enough; for, at the time I write of, two daughters were

already established in marriage, and a third engaged, while my youngest

was busy, as yet, in performing that little domestic ballet of the cat

with the mouse, in the case of a most submissive youth of the

neighborhood.

All this time our parlor-furniture, though of that granitic formation I

have indicated, began to show marks of that decay to which things

sublunary are liable. I cannot say that I dislike this look in a room.

Take a fine, ample, hospitable apartment, where all things, freely and

generously used, softly and indefinably grow old together, there is a

sort of mellow tone and keeping which pleases my eye. What if the seams

of the great inviting arm-chair, where so many friends have sat and

lounged, do grow white? What, in fact, if some easy couch has an

undeniable hole worn in its friendly cover? I regard with tenderness

even these mortal weaknesses of these servants and witnesses of our good

times and social fellowship. No vulgar touch wore them; they may be

called, rather, the marks and indentations which the glittering in and

out of the tide of social happiness has worn in the rocks of our strand.

I would no more disturb the gradual toning-down and aging of a well-used

set of furniture by smart improvements than I would have a modern dauber

paint in emendations in a fine old picture.

So we men reason; but women do not always think as we do. There is a

virulent demon of housekeeping, not wholly cast out in the best of them,

and which often breaks out in unguarded moments. In fact, Miss Marianne,

being on the lookout for furniture wherewith to begin a new

establishment, and Jane, who had accompanied her in her peregrinations,

had more than once thrown out little disparaging remarks on the

time-worn appearance of our establishment, suggesting comparison with

those of more modern-furnished rooms.

"It is positively scandalous, the way our furniture looks," I one day

heard her declaring to her mother; "and this old rag of a carpet!"

My feelings were hurt, not the less so that I knew that the large cloth

which covered the middle of the floor, and which the women call a

bocking, had been bought and nailed down there, after a solemn

family-counsel, as the best means of concealing the too evident darns

which years of good cheer had made needful in our stanch old household

friend, the three-ply carpet, made in those days when to be a three-ply

was a pledge of continuance and service.

Well, it was a joyous and bustling day, when, after one of those

domestic whirlwinds which the women are fond of denominating

house-cleaning, the new Brussels carpet was at length brought in and

nailed down, and its beauty praised from mouth to mouth. Our old friends

called in and admired, and all seemed to be well, except that I had that

light and delicate presage of changes to come which indefinitely brooded

over me.

The first premonitory symptom was the look of apprehensive suspicion

with which the female senate regarded the genial sunbeams that had

always glorified our bow-window.

"This house ought to have inside blinds," said Marianne, with all the

confident decision of youth; "this carpet will be ruined, if the sun is

allowed to come in like that."

"And that dirty little canary must really be hung in the kitchen," said

Jane; "he always did make such a litter, scattering his seed-chippings

about; and he never takes his bath without flirting out some water. And,

mamma, it appears to me it will never do to have the plants here. Plants

are always either leaking through the pots upon the carpet, or

scattering bits of blossoms and dead leaves, or some accident upsets or

breaks a pot. It was no matter, you know, when we had the old carpet;

but this we really want to have kept nice."

Mamma stood her ground for the plants,--darlings of her heart for many a

year,--but temporized, and showed that disposition towards compromise

which is most inviting to aggression.

I confess I trembled; for, of all radicals on earth, none are to be

compared to females that have once in hand a course of domestic

innovation and reform. The sacred fire, the divine _furor_, burns in

their bosoms, they become perfect Pythonesses, and every chair they sit

on assumes the magic properties of the tripod. Hence the dismay that

lodges in the bosoms of us males at the fateful spring and autumn

seasons, denominated house-cleaning. Who can say whither the awful gods,

the prophetic fates, may drive our fair household divinities; what sins

of ours may be brought to light; what indulgences and compliances, which

uninspired woman has granted in her ordinary mortal hours, may be torn

from us? He who has been allowed to keep a pair of pet slippers in a

concealed corner, and by the fireside indulged with a chair which he

might, _ad libitum_, fill with all sorts of pamphlets and miscellaneous

literature, suddenly finds himself reformed out of knowledge, his

pamphlets tucked away into pigeon-holes and corners, and his slippers

put in their place in the hall, with, perhaps, a brisk insinuation about

the shocking dust and disorder that men will tolerate.

The fact was, that the very first night after the advent of the new

carpet I had a prophetic dream. Among our treasures of art was a little

etching, by an English artist-friend, the subject of which was the

gambols of the household fairies in a baronial library after the

household were in bed. The little people are represented in every

attitude of frolic enjoyment. Some escalade the great arm-chair, and

look down from its top as from a domestic Mont Blanc; some climb about

the bellows; some scale the shaft of the shovel; while some, forming in

magic ring, dance festively on the yet glowing hearth. Tiny troops

promenade the writing-table. One perches himself quaintly on the top of

the inkstand, and holds colloquy with another who sits cross-legged on a

paper-weight, while a companion looks down on them from the top of the

sand-box. It was an ingenious little device, and gave me the idea which

I often expressed to my wife, that much of the peculiar feeling of

security, composure, and enjoyment which seems to be the atmosphere of

some rooms and houses came from the unsuspected presence of these little

people, the household fairies, so that the belief in their existence

became a solemn article of faith with me.

Accordingly, that evening, after the installation of the carpet, when my

wife and daughters had gone to bed, as I sat with my slippered feet

before the last coals of the fire, I fell asleep in my chair, and, lo!

my own parlor presented to my eye a scene of busy life. The little

people in green were tripping to and fro, but in great confusion.

Evidently something was wrong among them; for they were fussing and

chattering with each other, as if preparatory to a general movement. In

the region of the bow-window I observed a tribe of them standing with

tiny valises and carpet-bags in their hands, as though about to depart

on a journey. On my writing-table another set stood around my inkstand

and pen-rack, who, pointing to those on the floor, seemed to debate some

question among themselves; while others of them appeared to be

collecting and packing away in tiny trunks certain fairy treasures,

preparatory to a general departure. When I looked at the social hearth,

at my wife's sofa and work-basket, I saw similar appearances of

dissatisfaction and confusion. It was evident that the household fairies

were discussing the question of a general and simultaneous removal. I

groaned in spirit, and, stretching out my hand, began a conciliatory

address, when whisk went the whole scene from before my eyes, and I

awaked to behold the form of my wife asking me if I were ill or had had

the nightmare that I groaned so. I told her my dream, and we laughed at

it together.

"We must give way to the girls a little," she said. "It is natural, you

know, that they should wish us to appear a little as other people do.

The fact is, our parlor is somewhat dilapidated; think how many years we

have lived in it without an article of new furniture."

"I hate new furniture," I remarked, in the bitterness of my soul. "I

hate anything new."

My wife answered me discreetly, according to approved principles of

diplomacy. I was right. She sympathized with me. At the same time, it

was not necessary, she remarked, that we should keep a hole in our

sofa-cover and arm-chair; there would certainly be no harm in sending

them to the upholsterer's to be new-covered; she didn't much mind, for

her part, moving her plants to the south back-room, and the bird would

do well enough in the kitchen: I had often complained of him for singing

vociferously when I was reading aloud.

So our sofa went to the upholsterer's; but the upholsterer was struck

with such horror at its clumsy, antiquated, unfashionable appearance,

that he felt bound to make representations to my wife and daughters:

positively, it would be better for them to get a new one, of a tempting

pattern, which he showed them, than to try to do anything with that.

With a stitch or so here and there it might do for a basement

dining-room; but, for a parlor, he gave it as his disinterested

opinion,--he must say, if the case were his own, he should get, etc.,

etc. In short, we had a new sofa and new chairs, and the plants and the

birds were banished, and some dark green blinds were put up to exclude

the sun from the parlor, and the blessed luminary was allowed there only

at rare intervals when my wife and daughters were out shopping, and I

acted out my uncivilized male instincts by pulling up every shade and

vivifying the apartment as in days of old.

But this was not the worst of it. The new furniture and new carpet

formed an opposition party in the room. I believe in my heart that for

every little household fairy that went out with the dear old things

there came in a tribe of discontented brownies with the new ones. These

little wretches were always twitching at the gowns of my wife and

daughters, jogging their elbows, and suggesting odious comparisons

between the smart new articles and what remained of the old ones. They

disparaged my writing-table in the corner; they disparaged the

old-fashioned lounge in the other corner, which had been the maternal

throne for years; they disparaged the work-table, the work-basket, with

constant suggestions of how such things as these would look in certain

well-kept parlors where new-fashioned furniture of the same sort as ours

existed.

"We don't have any parlor," said Jane, one day. "Our parlor has always

been a sort of log-cabin,--library, study, nursery, greenhouse, all

combined. We never have had things like other people."

"Yes, and this open fire makes such a dust; and this carpet is one that

shows every speck of dust; it keeps one always on the watch."

"I wonder why papa never had a study to himself; I'm sure I should think

he would like it better than sitting here among us all. Now there's the

great south-room off the dining-room; if he would only move his things

there, and have his open fire, we could then close up the fireplace, and

put lounges in the recesses, and mamma could have her things in the

nursery,--and then we should have a parlor fit to be seen."

I overheard all this, though I pretended not to,--the little busy chits

supposing me entirely buried in the recesses of a German book over which

I was poring.

There are certain crises in a man's life when the female element in his

household asserts itself in dominant forms that seem to threaten to

overwhelm him. The fair creatures, who in most matters have depended on

his judgment, evidently look upon him at these seasons as only a

forlorn, incapable male creature, to be cajoled and flattered and

persuaded out his native blindness and absurdity into the fairy-land of

their wishes.

"Of course, mamma," said the busy voices, "men can't understand such

things. What _can_ men know of housekeeping, and how things ought to

look? Papa never goes into company; he don't know and don't care how the

world is doing, and don't see that nobody now is living as we do."

"Aha, my little mistresses, are you there?" I thought; and I mentally

resolved on opposing a great force of what our politicians call

_backbone_ to this pretty domestic conspiracy.

"When you get my writing-table out of this corner, my pretty dears, I'd

thank you to let me know it."

Thus spake I in my blindness, fool that I was. Jupiter might as soon

keep awake, when Juno came in best bib and tucker, and with the _cestus_

of Venus, to get him to sleep. Poor Slender might as well hope to get

the better of pretty Mistress Anne Page, as one of us clumsy-footed men

might endeavor to escape from the tangled labyrinth of female wiles.

In short, in less than a year it was all done, without any quarrel, any

noise, any violence,--done, I scarce knew when or how, but with the

utmost deference to my wishes, the most amiable hopes that I would not

put myself out, the most sincere protestations, that, if I liked it

better as it was, my goddesses would give up and acquiesce. In fact, I

seemed to do it of myself, constrained thereto by what the Emperor

Napoleon has so happily called the logic of events,--that old,

well-known logic by which the man who has once said A must say B, and he

who has said B must say the whole alphabet. In a year, we had a parlor

with two lounges in decorous recesses, a fashionable sofa, and six

chairs and a looking-glass, and a grate always shut up, and a hole in

the floor which kept the parlor warm, and great, heavy curtains that

kept out all the light that was not already excluded by the green

shades.

It was as proper and orderly a parlor as those of our most fashionable

neighbors; and when our friends called, we took them stumbling into its

darkened solitude, and opened a faint crack in one of the window-shades,

and came down in our best clothes, and talked with them there. Our old

friends rebelled at this, and asked what they had done to be treated so,

and complained so bitterly that gradually we let them into the secret

that there was a great south-room which I had taken for my study, where

we all sat, where the old carpet was down, where the sun shone in at the

great window, where my wife's plants flourished and the canary-bird

sang, and my wife had her sofa in the corner, and the old brass andirons

glistened and the wood-fire crackled,--in short, a room to which all the

household fairies had emigrated.

When they once had found _that_ out, it was difficult to get any of them

to sit in our parlor. I had purposely christened the new room _my

study_, that I might stand on my rights as master of ceremonies there,

though I opened wide arms of welcome to any who chose to come. So, then,

it would often come to pass, that, when we were sitting round the fire

in my study of an evening, the girls would say,--

"Come, what do we always stay here for? Why don't we ever sit in the

parlor?"

And then there would be manifested among guests and family-friends a

general unwillingness to move.

"Oh, hang it, girls!" would Arthur say; "the parlor is well enough, all

right; let it stay as it is, and let a fellow stay where he can do as he

pleases and feels at home"; and to this view of the matter would respond

divers of the nice young bachelors who were Arthur's and Tom's sworn

friends.

In fact, nobody wanted to stay in our parlor now. It was a cold,

correct, accomplished fact; the household fairies had left it,--and when

the fairies leave a room, nobody ever feels at home in it. No pictures,

curtains, no wealth of mirrors, no elegance of lounges, can in the least

make up for their absence. They are a capricious little set; there are

rooms where they will _not_ stay, and rooms where they _will_; but no

one can ever have a good time without them.

* * * * *

THREE CANTOS OF DANTE'S "PARADISO."

[Transcribers Note: Line that had notes associated with them have been

numbered. The notes have been moved to the end of the canto.]

CANTO XXIII.

Even as a bird, 'mid the beloved leaves, [1]

Quiet upon the nest of her sweet brood

Throughout the night, that hideth all things from us,

Who, that she may behold their longed-for looks

And find the nourishment wherewith to feed them,

In which, to her, grave labors grateful are,

Anticipates the time on open spray

And with an ardent longing waits the sun,

Gazing intent, as soon as breaks the dawn:

Even thus my Lady standing was, erect

And vigilant, turned round towards the zone

Underneath which the sun displays least haste; [12]

So that beholding her distraught and eager,

Such I became as he is, who desiring

For something yearns, and hoping is appeased.

But brief the space from one When to the other;

From my awaiting, say I, to the seeing

The welkin grow resplendent more and more.

And Beatrice exclaimed: "Behold the hosts

Of the triumphant Christ, and all the fruit

Harvested by the rolling of these spheres!" [21]

It seemed to me her face was all on flame;

And eyes she had so full of ecstasy

That I must needs pass on without describing.

As when in nights serene of the full moon

Smiles Trivia among the nymphs eternal

Who paint the heaven through all its hollow cope,

Saw I, above the myriads of lamps,

A sun that one and all of them enkindled, [29]

E'en as our own does the supernal stars.

And through the living light transparent shone

The lucent substance so intensely clear

Into my sight, that I could not sustain it.

O Beatrice, my gentle guide and dear!

She said to me: "That which o'ermasters thee

A virtue is which no one can resist.

There are the wisdom and omnipotence

That oped the thoroughfares 'twixt heaven and earth,

For which there erst had been so long a yearning."

As fire from out a cloud itself discharges,

Dilating so it finds not room therein,

And down, against its nature, falls to earth,

So did my mind, among those aliments

Becoming larger, issue from itself,

And what became of it cannot remember.

"Open thine eyes, and look at what I am: [45]

Thou hast beheld such things, that strong enough

Hast thou become to tolerate my smile."

I was as one who still retains the feeling

Of a forgotten dream, and who endeavors

In vain to bring it back into his mind,

When I this invitation heard, deserving

Of so much gratitude, it never fades

Out of the book that chronicles the past.

If at this moment sounded all the tongues

That Polyhymnia and her sisters made [55]

Most lubrical with their delicious milk,

To aid me, to a thousandth of the truth

It would not reach, singing the holy smile,

And how the holy aspect it illumed.

And therefore, representing Paradise,

The sacred poem must perforce leap over,

Even as a man who finds his way cut off.

But whoso thinketh of the ponderous theme,

And of the mortal shoulder that sustains it,

Should blame it not, if under this it trembles.

It is no passage for a little boat

This which goes cleaving the audacious prow,

Nor for a pilot who would spare himself.

"Why does my face so much enamor thee,

That to the garden fair thou turnest not,

Which under the rays of Christ is blossoming?

There is the rose in which the Word Divine [72]

Became incarnate; there the lilies are

By whose perfume the good way was selected."

Thus Beatrice; and I, who to her counsels

Was wholly ready, once again betook me

Unto the battle of the feeble brows.

As in a sunbeam, that unbroken passes [78]

Through fractured cloud, ere now a meadow of flowers

Mine eyes with shadow covered have beheld,

So I beheld the multitudinous splendors

Refulgent from above with burning rays,

Beholding not the source of the effulgence.

O thou benignant power that so imprint'st them! [89]

Thou didst exalt thyself to give more scope

There to the eyes, that were not strong enough.

The name of that fair flower I e'er invoke

Morning and evening utterly enthralled

My soul to gaze upon the greater fire.

And when in both mine eyes depicted were

The glory and greatness of the living star

Which conquers there, as here below it conquered,

Athwart the heavens descended a bright sheen [98]

Formed in a circle like a coronal,

And cinctured it, and whirled itself about it.

Whatever melody most sweetly soundeth

On earth, and to itself most draws the soul,

Would seem a cloud that, rent asunder, thunders,

Compared unto the sounding of that lyre

Wherewith was crowned the sapphire beautiful,

Which gives the clearest heaven its sapphire hue. [106]

"I am Angelic Love, that circle round

The joy sublime which breathes from out the bosom

That was the hostelry of our Desire;

And I shall circle, Lady of Heaven, while

Thou followest thy Son, and mak'st diviner

The sphere supreme, because thou enterest it."

Thus did the circulated melody

Seal itself up; and all the other lights

Were making resonant the name of Mary.

The regal mantle of the volumes all [116]

Of that world, which most fervid is and living

With breath of God and with his works and ways,

Extended over us its inner curve,

So very distant, that its outward show,

There where I was, not yet appeared to me.

Therefore mine eyes did not possess the power

Of following the incoronated flame,

Which had ascended near to its own seed.

And as a little child, that towards its mother

Extends its arms, when it the milk has taken,

Through impulse kindled into outward flame,

Each of those gleams of white did upward stretch

So with its summit, that the deep affection

They had for Mary was revealed to me.

Thereafter they remained there in my sight,

_Regina coeli_ singing with such sweetness, [132]

That ne'er from me has the delight departed.

Oh, what exuberance is garnered up

In those resplendent coffers, which had been

For sowing here below good husbandmen!

There they enjoy and live upon the treasure [137]

Which was acquired while weeping in the exile

Of Babylon, wherein the gold was left.

There triumpheth beneath the exalted Son

Of God and Mary, in his victory,

Both with the ancient council and the new,

He who doth keep the keys of such a glory. [143]

[Line 1: Dante is with Beatrice in the eighth circle, that of the fixed

stars. She is gazing upwards, watching for the descent of the Triumph of

Christ.]

[Line 12: Under the meridian, or at noon, the shadows being shorter move

slower, and, therefore the sun seems less in haste.]

[Line 21: By the beneficent influences of the stars.]

[Line 29: The old belief that the stars were fed by the light of the

sun. So Milton,--

"Hither, as to their fountain, other stars

Repair, and in their golden urns draw light."

Here the stars are souls, the sun is Christ.]

[Line 45: Beatrice speaks.]

[Line 55: The Muse of harmony and singing.]

[Line 72: The rose is the Virgin Mary, _Rosa Mundi, Rosa Mystica_; the

lilies are the Apostles and other saints.]

[Line 78: The struggle between his eyes and the light.]

[Line 89: Christ reascends, that Dante's dazzled eyes, too feeble to

bear the light of his presence, may behold the splendors around him.

The greater fire is the Virgin Mary, greater than any of those

remaining. She is the living star, surpassing in brightness all other

souls in heaven, as she did here on earth: _Stella Maris, Stella

Matutina_.]

[Line 98: The Angel Gabriel, or Angelic Love.]

[Line 106: Sapphire is the color in which the old painters arrayed the

Virgin.]

[Line 116: The regal mantle of all the volumes, or rolling orbs, of the

world is the crystalline heaven, or _Primus Mobile_, which infolds all

the others like a mantle.]

[Line 132: Easter hymn to the Virgin.]

[Line 137: Caring not for gold in the Babylonian exile of this life,

they laid up treasures in the other.]

[Line 143: St. Peter, keeper of the keys, with the holy men of the Old

and the New Testament.]