They were in the North, when one morning Zelma was startled by hearing

the manager say that the next night they should play at Walton. It was

there that Lawrence Bury died; it was there he slept, in the stranger's

unvisited grave. She would seek out that grave and sink on it, as on the

breast of one beloved, though long estranged. It would cool the dull,

ceaseless fever of her heart to press it against the cold mound, and to

whisper into the rank grass her faithful remembrance, her forgiveness,

her unconquerable love.

But it was late when the players reached Walton; and, after the

necessary arrangements for the evening were concluded, Zelma found that

she had no time for a pilgrimage to the parish churchyard. She could see

it from a window of her lodgings;--it was high-walled, dark and damp,

crowded with quaint, mossy tomb-stones, and brooded over by immemorial

yews. In the deepening, misty twilight, there was something awful in the

spot. It was easy to fancy unquiet spectres lurking in its gloomy

shadows, waiting for the night Yet Zelma's heart yearned toward it, and

she murmured softly, as she turned away, "Wait for me, love!"

The play, on this night, was "The Fair Penitent." In the character of

Calista Mrs. Bury had always been accounted great, though it was

distasteful to her. Indeed, for the entire play she expressed only

contempt and aversion; yet she played her part in it faithfully and

carefully, as she performed all professional tasks.

In reading this tragedy now, one is at a loss to understand how such

trash could have been tolerated at the very time of the revival of a

pure dramatic literature,--how such an unsavored broth of sentiment,

such a meagre hash of heroics, could have been relished, even when

served by Kembles, after the rich, varied, Olympian banquets of

Shakspeare.

The argument is briefly this:--

Calista, daughter of Sciolto, is betrothed to Altamount, a young lord,

favored by Sciolto. Altamount has a friend, Horatio, and an enemy,

Lothario, secretly the lover and seducer of Calista, whose dishonor is

discovered by Horatio, shortly after her marriage with Altamount, to

whom he reveals it. Calista denies the charge, with fierce indignation

and scorn; and the young husband believes her and discredits his friend.

But the fourth act brings the guilt of Calista and the villany of

Lothario fully to light. Lothario is killed by the injured husband,

Sciolto goes mad with shame and rage, and Calista falls into a state of

despair and penitence.

The fifth act opens with Sciolto's elaborate preparations for vengeance

on his daughter. The stage directions for this scene are,--

["A room hung with black: on one side Lothario's

body on a bier; on the other a table,

with a skull and other bones, a book, and a

lamp on it. Calista is discovered on a couch,

in black, her hair hanging loose and disordered.

After soft music, she rises and comes

forward."]

She takes the book from the table, but, finding it the pious prosing of

some "lazy, dull, luxurious gownsman," flings it aside. She examines the

cross-bones curiously, lays her hand on the skull, soliloquizing upon

mortality, somewhat in the strain of Hamlet; then peers into the coffin

of Lothario, beholds his pale visage, "grim with clotted blood," and the

stern, unwinking stare of his dead eyes. Sciolto enters and bids her

prepare to die; but while she stands meek and unresisting before him,

his heart fails him; he rushes out, and is shortly after killed by

Lothario's faction. Calista then dies by her own hand, leaving Altamount

desperate and despairing.

Poor Calista is neither a lovely nor a lofty character; but there is

something almost grand in her fierce pride, in her defiant _hauteur_, in

her mighty struggle with shame. Mrs. Siddons made the part terribly

impressive. Mrs. Bury softened it somewhat, giving it a womanly dignity

and pathos that would seem foreign and almost impossible to the

character.

* * * * *

When Zelma entered her dressing-room, on that first night at Walton, she

found on her table a small spray of hawthorn-blossoms.

"How came these flowers here?" she asked, in a hurried, startled tone.

"I placed them there," replied her little maid, Susan, half-frightened

by the strange agitation of her mistress. "I plucked the sprig in our

landlady's garden; for I remembered that you loved hawthorn-blossoms,

and used often to buy them in Covent-Garden Market."

"Ah, yes; thank you, Susan. I do indeed love them, and I will wear them

to-night."

As she said this, she placed the flowers in her bosom,--but, the little

maid noticed, not as an ornament, but quite out of sight, where her

close bodice would crush them against her heart.

During the first acts of the play, Zelma was languid, absent, and more

unequal than usual. A strange sense of evil, a vague foreboding, haunted

her. It was in vain that she said to herself, "What have I, a lonely,

disappointed woman, loveless and joyless, to fear of misfortune

more,--since death itself were welcome as change, and doubly welcome as

rest?" The nameless fear still clung to her, sending cold thrills along

her veins, fiercely grasping and holding her palpitating heart.

When, in the last act, reclining on her sombre couch, she waited through

the playing of the "soft music," there came to her a little season of

respite and calm. Tender thoughts, and sweet, wild fancies of other days

revisited her. The wilted hawthorn-blossoms in her bosom seemed to

revive and to pour forth volumes of fragrance, which enveloped her like

an atmosphere; and as she rose and advanced slowly toward the

foot-lights, winking dimly like funeral lamps amid the gloom of the

scene, it strangely seemed to her that she was going down the long,

sweet lane of Burleigh Grange. The magic of that perfume, and something

of kindred sweetness in the sad, wailing music, brought old times and

scenes before her with preternatural distinctness. Then she became

conscious of a _something_ making still darker and deeper the gloomy

shadows cast by the black hangings of the scene,--a presence, not

palpable or visible to the senses, but terribly real to the finer

perceptions of the spirit,--a presence unearthly, yet familiar and

commanding, persistent, resistless, unappeasable,--moving as she moved,

pausing as she paused, clutching at her hands, and searching after her

eyes. The air about her seemed heavy with a brooding horror which sought

to resolve itself into shape,--the dread mystery of life in death

waiting to be revealed. Her own soul seemed groping and beating against

the veil which hides the unseen; she gasped, she trembled, and great

drops, like the distillation of the last mortal anguish, burst from her

forehead.

She was roused by a murmur of applause from the audience. She was acting

so well! Nerving herself by an almost superhuman effort, her

phantom-haunted soul standing at bay, she approached the table, and

began, in a voice but slightly broken, the reading of her melancholy

soliloquy. But, as she laid her hand on the skull, she gave a wild start

of horror,--not at the touch of the cold, smooth bone, nor at the blank,

black stare of the eyeless sockets, but at finding beneath her hand a

mass of soft, curling hair, damp, as with night-dew!--at beholding eyes

with "speculation" in them,--ay, with human passions, luminous and

full,--eyes that now yearned with love, now burned with hate,--ah, God!

the eyes of Lawrence Bury!

With a shrill, frenzied shriek, Zelma sprang back and stood for a moment

shuddering and crouching in a mute agony of fear. Then she burst into

wild cries of grief and passionate entreaty, stretching her tremulous

hands into the void air, in piteous imploring.

"She has gone mad! Take her away!" shouted the excited audience; but

before any one could reach her, she had fallen on the stage in strong

convulsions.

The actors raised her and bore her out; and as they did so, a little

stream of blood was seen to bubble from her lips. A medical man, who

happened to be present, having proffered his services, was hurried

behind the scenes to where the sufferer lay, on a rude couch in the

green-room, surrounded by the frightened players, and wept over by her

faithful little maid.

The audience lingered awhile within sound of the fitful, frenzied cries

of the dying actress, and then dispersed in dismay and confusion.

Zelma remained for some hours convulsed and delirious; but toward

morning she sank into a deep, swoon-like sleep of utter exhaustion. She

awoke from this, quite sane and calm, but marble-white and cold,--the

work of death all done, it seemed, save the dashing out of the sad, wild

light yet burning in her sunken eyes. But the bright red blood no longer

oozed from her lips, and they told her she was better. She gave no heed

to the assurance, but, somewhat in her old, quick, decisive way, called

for the manager. Scarcely had he reached her side, when she began to

question him eagerly, though in hoarse, failing tones, in regard to the

skull used in the play of the preceding night. The manager had procured

it of the sexton, he said, and knew nothing more of it.

She sent for the sexton. He came,--a man "of the earth, earthy,"--a man

with a grave-ward stoop and a strange uneven gait, caught in forty

years' stumbling over mounds. A smell of turf and mould, an odor of

mortality, went before him.

He approached the couch of the actress, and looked down upon her with a

curious, professional look, as though he were peering into a face newly

coffined or freshly exhumed; but when Zelma fixed her live eyes upon

him, angry and threatening, and asked, in abrupt, yet solemn tones,

"Whose was that skull you brought for me last night?" he fell back with

an exclamation of surprise and terror. As soon as he could collect

himself sufficiently, he replied, that, to the best of his knowledge,

the skull had belonged to a poor play-actor, who had died in the parish

some sixteen or, it might be, eighteen years before; and compelled by

the merciless inquisition of those eyes, fixed and stern, though

dilating with horror, he added, that, if his memory served him well, the

player's name was _Bury_.

A strong shudder shivered through the poor woman's frame at this

confirmation of the awful revealment of the previous night; but she

replied calmly, though with added sternness,--"He was my husband. How

dared you disturb his bones? Are you a ghoul, that you burrow among

graves and steal from the dead?"

The poor man eagerly denied being anything so inhuman. The skull had

rolled into a grave he had been digging by the side of the almost

forgotten grave of the poor player; and, as the manager had bespoken one

for the play, he had thought it no harm to furnish him this. But he

would put it back carefully into its place that very day.

"See that you do it, man, if you value the repose of your own soul!"

said Zelma, with an awful impressiveness, raising herself on one elbow

and looking him out of the room.

When he was gone, she sunk back and murmured, partly to herself, partly

to her little maid, who wept through all, the more that she did not

understand,--"I knew it was so; it was needless to ask. Well, 'tis well;

he will forgive me, now that I come when he calls me, accomplishing to

the utmost my vow. He will make peace with me, when I take my old place

at his side,--when my head shall lie as low as his,--when he sees that

all the laurels have dropped away,--when he sees the sorrow shining

through the dark of my hair in rifts of silver."

After a little time she grew restless, and would return to her lodgings.

As the doctor and her attendant were about placing her in a sedan-chair

to bear her away, a strange desire seized her to behold the theatre and

tread the boards once more. They conducted her to the centre of the

stage, and seated her on the black couch of Calista. There they left her

quite alone for a while, and stood back where they could observe without

disturbing her. They saw her gaze about her dreamily and mournfully;

then she seemed to be recalling and reciting some favorite part. To

their surprise, the tones of her voice were clear and resonant once

more; and when she had ceased speaking, she rose and walked toward them,

slowly, but firmly, turning once or twice to bow proudly and solemnly to

an invisible audience. Just before she reached them, she suddenly

pressed her hand on her heart, and the next instant felt forward into

the arms of her maid. The young girl could not support the weight--the

_dead_ weight, and sank with it to the floor. Zelma had made her last

exit.

THE MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS.

A SECOND EPISTLE TO DOLOROSUS.

So you are already mending, my dear fellow? Can it be that my modest

epistle has done so much service? Are you like those invalids in Central

Africa, who, when the medicine itself is not accessible, straightway

swallow the written prescription as a substitute, inwardly digest it,

and recover? No,--I think you have tested the actual _materia medica_

recommended. I hear of you from all directions, walking up hills in the

mornings and down hills in the afternoons, skimming round in wherries

like a rather unsteady water-spider, blistering your hands upon

gymnastic bars, receiving severe contusions on your nose from

cricket-balls, shaking up and down on hard-trotting horses, and making

the most startling innovations in respect to eating, sleeping, and

bathing. Like all our countrymen, you are plunging from one extreme to

the other. Undoubtedly, you will soon make yourself sick again; but your

present extreme is the safer of the two. Time works many miracles; it

has made Louis Napoleon espouse the cause of liberty, and it may yet

make you reasonable.

After all, that advice of mine, which is thought to have benefited you

so greatly, was simply that which Dr. Abernethy used to give his

patients: "Don't come to me,--go buy a skipping-rope." If you can only

guard against excesses, and keep the skipping-rope in operation, there

are yet hopes for you. Only remember that it is equally important to

preserve health as to attain it, and it needs much the same regimen. Do

not be like that Lord Russell in Spence's Anecdotes, who only went

hunting for the sake of an appetite, and who, the moment he felt any

sensation of vitality in the epigastrium, used to turn short round,

exclaiming, "I have found it!" and ride home from the finest chase. It

was the same Lord Russell, by the way, who, when he met a beggar and was

implored to give him something, because he was almost famished with

hunger, called him a happy dog, and envied him too much to relieve him.

From some recent remarks of your boarding-house hostess, my friend, I am

led to suppose that you are now almost as well off, in point of

appetite, as if you were a beggar; and I wish to keep you so.

How much the spirits rise with health! A family of children is a very

different sight to a healthy man and to a dyspeptic. What pleasure you

now take in yours! You are going to live more in their manner and for

their sakes, henceforward, you tell me. You are to enter upon business

again, but in a more moderate way; you are to live in a pleasant little

suburban cottage, with fresh air, a horse-railroad, and good schools.

For I am startled to find that your interest In your offspring, like

that of most American parents, culminates in the school-room. This

important matter you have neglected long enough, you think, foolishly

absorbed in making money for them. Now they shall have money enough, to

be sure, but wisdom in plenty. Angelina shall walk in silk attire, and

knowledge have to spare. To which school shall you send her? you ask me,

with something of the old careworn expression, pulling six different

prospectuses from your pocket. Put them away, Dolorosus; I know the

needs of Angelina, and I can answer instantly. Send the girl, for the

present at least, to that school whose daily hours of session are the

shortest, and whose recess-times and vacations are of the most

formidable length.

No, anxious parent, I am not joking. I am more anxious for your children

than you are. On the faith of an ex-teacher and ex-school-committee-

man,--for what respectable middle-aged American man but has passed

through both these spheres of uncomfortable usefulness?--I am terribly

in earnest. Upon this point asserted,--that the merit of an American

school, at least so far as Angelina is concerned, is in inverse ratio to

the time given to study,--I will lay down incontrovertible propositions.

Sir Walter Scott, according to Carlyle, was the only perfectly healthy

literary man who ever lived,--in fact, the one suitable text, he says,

for a sermon on health. You may wonder, Dolorosus, what Sir Walter Scott

has to do with Angelina, except to supply her with novel-reading, and

with passages for impassioned recitation, at the twilight hour, from the

"Lady of the Lake." But that same Scott has left one remark on record

which may yet save the lives and reasons of greater men than himself,

more gifted women (if that were possible) than Angelina, if we can only

accept it with the deference to which that same healthiness of his

entitles it. He gave it as his deliberate opinion, in conversation with

Basil Hall, that five and a half hours form the limit of healthful

mental labor for a mature person. "This I reckon very good work for a

man," he said,--adding, "I can very seldom reach six hours a day; and I

reckon that what is written after five or six hours' hard mental labor

is not good for much." This he said in the fulness of his magnificent

strength, and when he was producing, with astounding rapidity, those

pages of delight over which every new generation still hangs enchanted.

He did not mean, of course, that this was the maximum of possible mental

labor, but only of wise and desirable labor. In later life, driven by

terrible pecuniary involvements, he himself worked far more than this.

Southey, his contemporary, worked far more,--writing, in 1814, "I cannot

get through more than at present, unless I give up sleep, or the little

exercise I take (walking a mile and back, after breakfast); and, that

hour excepted, and my meals, (barely the meals, for I remain not one

minute after them,) the pen or the book is always in my hand." Our own

time and country afford a yet more astonishing instance. Theodore

Parker, to my certain knowledge, has often spent in his study from

twelve to seventeen hours daily, for weeks together. But the result in

all these cases has sadly proved the supremacy of the laws which were

defied; and the nobler the victim, the more tremendous the warning

retribution.

Let us return, then, from the practice of Scott's ruined days to the

principles of his sound ones. Supposing his estimate to be correct, and

five and a half hours to be a reasonable limit for the day's work of a

mature brain, it is evident that even this must be altogether too much

for an immature one. "To suppose the youthful brain," says the recent

admirable report by Dr. Ray, of the Providence Insane Hospital, "to be

capable of an amount of work which is considered an ample allowance to

an adult brain is simply absurd, and the attempt to carry this fully

into effect must necessarily be dangerous to the health and efficacy of

the organ." It would be wrong, therefore, to deduct less than a

half-hour from Scott's estimate, for even the oldest pupils in our

highest schools; leaving five hours as the limit of real mental effort

for them, and reducing this, for all younger pupils, very much farther.

It is vain to suggest, at this point, that the application of Scott's

estimate is not fair, because the mental labor of our schools is

different in quality from his, and therefore less exhausting. It differs

only in being more exhausting. To the robust and affluent mind of the

novelist, composition was not, of itself, exceedingly fatiguing; we know

this from his own testimony; he was able, moreover, to select his own

subject, keep his own hours, and arrange all his own conditions of

labor. And on the other hand, when we consider what energy and genius

have for years been brought to bear upon the perfecting of our

educational methods,--how thoroughly our best schools are now graded

and systematized, until each day's lessons become a Procrustes-bed to

which all must fit themselves,--how stimulating the apparatus of prizes

and applauses, how crushing the penalties of reproof and

degradation,--when we reflect, that it is the ideal of every school,

that the whole faculties of every scholar should be concentrated upon

every lesson and every recitation from beginning to end, and that

anything short of this is considered partial failure,--it is not

exaggeration to say, that the daily tension of brain demanded of

children in our best schools is altogether severer, while it lasts, than

that upon which Scott based his estimate. But Scott is not the only

authority in the case; let us ask the physiologists.

So said Horace Mann, before us, in the days when the Massachusetts

school system was in process of formation. He asked the physiologists,

in 1840, and in his next Report printed the answers of three of the most

eminent. The late Dr. Woodward, of Worcester, promptly said, that

children under eight should never be confined more than one hour at a

time, nor more than four hours a day; and that, if any child showed

alarming symptoms of precocity, it should be taken from school

altogether. Dr. James Jackson, of Boston, allowed the children four

hours' schooling in winter and five in summer, but only one hour at a

time, and heartily expressed his "detestation of the practice of giving

young children lessons to learn at home." Dr. S. G. Howe, reasoning

elaborately on the whole subject, said, that children under eight should

not be confined more than half an hour at a time,--"by following which

rule, with long recesses, they can study four hours daily"; children

between eight and fourteen should not be confined more than

three-quarters of an hour at a time, having the last quarter of each

hour for exercise in the playground,--and he allowed six hours of school

in winter, or seven in summer, solely on condition of this deduction of

twenty-five per cent, for recesses.

Indeed, the one thing about which doctors do _not_ disagree is the

destructive effect of premature or excessive mental labor. I can quote

you medical authority for and against every maxim of dietetics beyond

the very simplest; but I defy you to find one man who ever begged,

borrowed, or stole the title of M.D., and yet abused those two honorary

letters by asserting, under their cover, that a child could safely study

as much as a man, or that a man could safely study more than six hours a

day. Most of the intelligent men in the profession would probably admit,

with Scott, that even that is too large an allowance in maturity for

vigorous work of the brain.

Taking, then, five hours as the reasonable daily limit of mental effort

for children of eight to fourteen years, and one hour as the longest

time of continuous confinement, (it was a standing rule of the Jesuits,

by the way, that no pupil should study more than two hours without

relaxation,) the important question now recurs, To what school shall we

send Angelina?

Shall we send her, for instance, to Dothegirls' Hall? At that seminary

of useful knowledge, I find by careful inquiry that the daily

performance is as follows, at least in summer. The pupils rise at or

before five, A.M.; at any rate, they study from five to seven, two

hours. From seven to eight they breakfast. From eight to two they are in

the schoolroom, six consecutive hours. From two to three they dine. From

three to five they are "allowed" to walk or take other exercise,--that

is, if it is pleasant weather, and if they feel the spirit for it, and

if the time is not all used up in sewing, writing letters, school

politics, and all the small miscellaneous duties of existence, for which

no other moment is provided during day or night. From five to six they

study; from six to seven comes the tea-table; from seven to nine study

again; then bed and (at least for the stupid ones) sleep.

Eleven solid hours of study each day, Dolorosus! Eight for sleep, three

for meals, two during which out-door exercise is "allowed." There is no

mistake about this statement; I wish there were. I have not imagined it;

who could have done so, short of Milton and Dante, who were versed in

the exploration of kindred regions of torment? But as I cannot expect

the general public to believe the statement, even if you do,--and as

this letter, like my previous one, may accidentally find its way into

print,--and as I cannot refer to those who have personally attended the

school, since they probably die off too fast to be summoned as

witnesses,--I will come down to a rather milder statement, and see if

you will believe that.

Shall we send her, then, to the famous New York school of Mrs.

Destructive? This is recently noticed as follows in the "Household

Journal":--"Of this most admirable school, for faithful and well-bred

system of education, we have long intended to speak approvingly; but in

the following extract from the circular the truth is more expressively

given:--'From September to April the time of rising is a quarter before

seven o'clock, and from April to July half an hour earlier; then

breakfast; after which, from eight to nine o'clock, study,--the school

opening at nine o'clock, with reading the Scriptures and prayer. From

nine until half past twelve, the recitations succeed one another, with

occasional short intervals of rest. From half past twelve to one,

recreation and lunch. From one to three o'clock, at which hour the

school closes, the studies are exclusively in the French language....

From three to four o'clock in the winter, but later in the summer,

exercise in the open air. There are also opportunities for exercise

several times in the day, at short intervals, which cannot easily be

explained. From a quarter past four to five o'clock, study; then dinner,

and soon after, tea. From seven to nine, two hours of study; immediately

after which all retire for the night, and lights in the sleeping

apartments must be extinguished at half past nine.'" You have summed up

the total already, Dolorosus; I see it on your lips;--nine--hours--

and--a quarter of study, and one solitary hour for exercise, not

counting those inexplicable "short intervals which cannot easily be

explained!"

You will be pleased to hear that I have had an opportunity of witnessing

the brilliant results of Mrs. Destructive's system, in the case of my

charming little neighbor, Fanny Carroll. She has lately returned from a

stay of one year under that fashionable roof. In most respects, I was

assured, the results of the school were all that could be desired; the

mother informed me, with delight, that the child now spoke French like

an angel from Paris, and handled her silver fork like a seraph from the

skies. You may well suppose that I hastened to call upon her; for the

gay little creature was always a great pet of mine, and I always quoted

her with delight, as a proof that bloom and strength were not

monopolized by English girls. In the parlor I found the mother closeted

with the family physician. Soon, Fanny, aged sixteen, glided in,--a pale

spectre, exquisite in costume, unexceptionable in manners, looking in

all respects like an exceedingly used-up belle of five-and-twenty. "What

were you just saying that some of my Fanny's symptoms were, Doctor?"

asked the languid mother, as if longing for a second taste of some

dainty morsel. The courteous physician dropped them into her eager palm,

like sugar-plums, one by one: "Vertigo, headache, neuralgic pains, and

general debility." The mother sighed once genteelly at me, and then

again, quite sincerely, to herself;--but I never yet saw an habitual

invalid who did not seem to take a secret satisfaction in finding her

child to be a chip of the old block, though block and chip were both

wofully decayed. However, nothing is now said of Miss Carroll's

returning to school; and the other day I actually saw her dashing

through the lane on the family pony, with a tinge of the old brightness

in her cheeks. I ventured to inquire of her, soon after, if she had

finished her education; and she replied, with a slight tinge of satire,

that she studied regularly every day, at various "short intervals,

which could not easily be explained."

Five hours a day the safe limit for study, Dolorosus, and these terrible

schools quietly put into their programmes nine, ten, eleven hours; and

the deluded parents think they have out-manoeuvred the laws of Nature,

and made a better bargain with Time. But these are private, exclusive

schools, you may say, for especially favored children. We cannot afford

to have most of the rising generation murdered so expensively; and in

our public schools, at least, one thinks there may be some relaxation of

this tremendous strain. Besides, physiological reformers had the making

of our public system. "A man without high health," said Horace Mann, "is

as much at war with Nature as a guilty soul is at war with the spirit of

God." Look first at our Normal Schools, therefore, and see how finely

their theory, also, presents this same lofty view.

"Those who have had much to do with students, especially with the female

portion," said a Normal School Report a few years since, "well know the

sort of martyr-spirit that extensively prevails,--how ready they often

are to sacrifice everything for the sake of a good lesson,--how false

are their notions of true economy in mental labor, ... sacrificing their

physical natures most unscrupulously to their intellectual. Indeed, so

strong had this passion for abuse become [in this institution], that no

study of the laws of the physical organization, no warning, no painful

experiences of their own or of their associates, were sufficient to

overcome their readiness for self-sacrifice." And it appears, that, in

consequence of this state of things, circulars were sent to all

boarding-houses in the village, laying down stringent rules to prevent

the young ladies from exceeding the prescribed amount of study.

Now turn from theory to practice. What was this "prescribed amount of

study" which these desperate young females persisted in exceeding in

this model school? It began with an hour's study before daylight (in

winter),--a thing most dangerous to eyesight, as multitudes have found

to their cost. Then from eight to half past two, from four to half past

five, from seven to nine,--with one or two slight recesses. Ten hours

and three quarters daily, Dolorosus! as surely as you are a living

sinner, and as surely as the Board of Education who framed that

programme were sinners likewise. I believe that some Normal Schools have

learned more moderation now; but I know also what forlorn wrecks of

womanhood have been strewed along their melancholy history, thus far;

and at what incalculable cost their successes have been purchased.

But it is premature to contemplate this form of martyrdom, for Angelina,

who has to run the gantlet of our common schools and high schools first.

Let us consider her prospects in these, carrying with us that blessed

maxim, five hours' study a day,--"Nature loves the number five," as

Emerson judiciously remarks,--for our aegis against the wiles of

schoolmasters.

The year 1854 is memorable for a bomb-shell then thrown into the midst

of the triumphant school-system of Boston, in the form of a solemn

protest by the city physician against the ruinous manner in which the

children were overworked. Fact, feeling, and physiology were brought to

bear, with much tact and energy, and the one special point of assault

was the practice of imposing out-of-school studies, beyond the habitual

six hours of session. A committee of inquiry was appointed. They

interrogated the grammar-school teachers. The innocent and unsuspecting

teachers were amazed at the suggestion of any excess. Most of them

promptly replied, in writing, that "they had never heard of any

complaints on this subject from parents or guardians"; that "most of the

masters were watchful upon the matter"; that "none of them _pressed_

out-of-school studies"; while "the general opinion appeared to be, that

a moderate amount of out-of-school study was both necessary for the

prescribed course of study and wholesome in its influence on character

and habits." They suggested that "commonly the ill health that might

exist arose from other causes than excessive study"; one attributed it

to the use of confectionery, another to fashionable parties, another to

the practice of "chewing pitch,"--anything, everything, rather than

admit that American children of fourteen could possibly be damaged by

working only two hours day _more_ than Walter Scott.

However, the committee thought differently. At any rate, they fancied

that they had more immediate control over the school-hours than they

could exercise over the propensity of young girls for confectionery, or

over the improprieties of small boys who, yet immature for tobacco,

touched pitch and were defiled. So by their influence was passed that

immortal Section 7 of Chapter V. of the School Regulations,--the Magna

Charta of childish liberty, so far as it goes, and the only safeguard

which renders it prudent to rear a family within the limits of Boston:--

"In assigning lessons to boys to be studied out of school-hours, the

instructors shall not assign a longer lesson than a boy of good capacity

can acquire by an hour's study; but no out-of-school lessons shall be

assigned to girls, nor shall the lessons to be studied in school be so

long as to require a scholar of ordinary capacity to study out of school

in order to learn them."

It appears that since that epoch this rule has "generally" been

observed, "though many of the teachers would prefer a different

practice." "The rule is regarded by some as an uncomfortable

restriction, which without, adequate reason (!) retards the progress of

pupils." "A majority of our teachers would consider the permission to

assign lessons for study at home to be a decided advantage and

privilege." So say the later reports of the committee.

Fortunately for Angelina and the junior members of the house of

Dolorosus, you are not now directly dependent upon Boston regulations. I

mention them only because they represent a contest which is inevitable

in every large town in the United States where the public-school system

is sufficiently perfected to be dangerous. It is simply the question,

whether children can bear more brain-work than men can. Physiology,

speaking through my humble voice, (the personification may remind you of

the days when men began poems with "Inoculation, heavenly maid!")

shrieks loudly for five hours as the utmost limit, and four hours as far

more reasonable than six. But even the comparatively moderate "friends

of education" still claim the contrary. Mr. Bishop, the worthy

Superintendent of Schools in Boston, says, (Report, 1855,) "The time

daily allotted to studies may very properly be extended to seven hours a

day for young persons over fifteen years of age"; and the Secretary of

the Massachusetts Board of Education, in his recent volume, seems to

think it a great concession to limit the period for younger pupils to

six.

And we must not forget, that, frame regulations as we may, the tendency

will always be to overrun them. In the report of the Boston

sub-committee to which I have referred, it was expressly admitted that

the restrictions recommended "would not alone remedy the evil, or do

much toward it; there would still be much, and with the ambitious too

much, studying out of school." They ascribed the real difficulty "to the

general arrangements of our schools, and to the strong pressure from

various causes urging the pupils to intense application and the masters

to encourage it," and said that this "could only be met by some general

changes introduced by general legislation." Some few of the masters had

previously admitted the same thing: "The pressure from without, the

expectations of the committee, the wishes of the parents, the ambition

of the pupils, and an exacting public sentiment, do tend to stimulate

many to excessive application, both in and out of school."

This admits the same fact, in a different form. If these children have

half their vitality taken out of them for life by premature and

excessive brain-work, it makes no difference whether it is done in the

form of direct taxation or of indirect,--whether they are compelled to

it by authority or allured into it by excitement and emulation. If a

horse breaks a blood-vessel by running too hard, it is no matter whether

he was goaded by whip and spur, or ingeniously coaxed by the Hibernian

method of a lock of hay tied six inches before his nose. The method is

nothing,--it is the pace which kills. Probably the fact is, that for

every extra hour directly required by the teacher, another is indirectly

extorted in addition by the general stimulus of the school. The best

scholars put on the added hour, because they are the best,--and the

inferior scholars, because they are not the best. In either case the

excess is destructive in its tendency, and the only refuge for

individuals is to be found in a combination of fortunate dulness with

happy indifference to shame. But is it desirable, my friend, to

construct our school-system on such a basis that safety and health shall

be monopolized by the stupid and the shameless?

Is this magnificent system of public instruction, the glory of the

world, to turn out merely a vast machine for grinding down Young

America, just as the system of middle-men, similarly organized, has

ground down the Irish peasantry? Look at it! as now arranged, committees

are responsible to the public, teachers to committees, pupils to

teachers,--all pledged to extract a maximum crop from childish brains.

Each is responsible to the authority next above him for a certain

amount, and must get it out of the victim next below him. Constant

improvements in machinery perfect and expedite the work; improved gauges

and metres (in the form of examinations) compute the comparative yield

to a nicety, and allow no evasion. The child cannot spare an hour, for

he must keep up with the other children; the teacher dares not relax,

for he must keep up with the other schools; the committees must only

stimulate, not check, for the eyes of the editors are upon them, and the

municipal glory is at stake: every one of these, from highest to lowest,

has his appointed place in the tread-mill and must keep step with the

rest; and only once a year, at the summer vacation, the vast machine

stops, and the poor remains of childish brain and body are taken out and

handed to anxious parents (like you, Dolorosus):--"Here, most worthy

tax-payer, is the dilapidated residue of your beloved Angelina; take her

to the sea-shore for a few weeks, and make the most of her."

Do not you know that foreigners, coming from the contemplation of races

less precociously intellectual, see the danger we are in, if we do not?

I was struck by the sudden disappointment of an enthusiastic English

teacher, (Mr. Calthrop,) who visited the New York schools the other day

and got a little behind the scenes. "If I wanted a stranger to believe

that the Millennium was not far off," he said, "I would take him to some

of those grand ward-schools in New York, where able heads are trained by

the thousand. I spent four or five days in doing little else than going

through these truly wonderful schools. I staid more than three hours in

one of them, wondering at all I saw, admiring the stately order, the

unbroken discipline of the whole arrangements, and the wonderful

quickness and intelligence of the scholars. That same evening I went to

see a friend, whose daughter, a child of thirteen, was at one of these

schools. I examined her, and found that the little girl could hold her

own with many of larger growth. 'Did she go to school to-day?' asked I.

'No,' was the answer, 'she has not been for some time, as she was

beginning to get quite a serious curvature of the spine; so now she goes

regularly to a gymnastic doctor!'"

I am sure that we have all had the same experience. How exciting it was,

last year, to be sure, to see Angelina at the grammar-school

examination, multiplying mentally 351,426 by 236,145, and announcing the

result in two minutes and thirteen seconds as 82,987,492,770! I

remember how you stood trembling as she staggered under the monstrous

load, and how your cheek hung out the red flag of parental exultation

when she can out safe. But when I looked at her colorless visage, sharp

features, and shiny consumptive skin, I groaned inwardly. It seemed as

if that crop of figures, like the innumerable florets of the whiteweed,

now overspreading your paternal farm, were exhausting the last vitality

from a shallow soil. What a pity it is that the Deity gave to these

children of ours bodies as well as brains! How it interferes with

thorough instruction in the languages and the sciences! You remember the

negro-trader in "Uncle Tom," who sighs for a lot of negroes specially

constructed for his convenience, with the souls left out? Could not some

of our school-committees take measures to secure the companion set,

possessing merely the brains, and with the troublesome bodies

conveniently omitted?

The truth is, that we Americans, having overcome all other obstacles to

universal education of the people, have thought to overcome even the

limitations imposed by the laws of Nature; and so we were going

triumphantly on, when the ruined health of our children suddenly brought

us to a stand. Now we suddenly discover, that, in the absence of

Inquisitions, and other unpleasant Old-World tortures, our school-houses

have taken their place. We have outgrown war, we think; and yet we have

not outgrown a form of contest which is undeniably more sanguinary,

since one-half the community actually die, under present arrangements,

before they are old enough to see a battle-field,--that is, before the

age of eighteen. It is an actual fact, that, if you can only keep

Angelina alive up to that birthday, even if she be an ignoramus, she

will at least have accomplished the feat of surviving half her

contemporaries. Can there be no Peace Society to check this terrific

carnage? Dolorosus, rather than have a child of mine die, as I have

recently heard of a child's dying, insane from sheer overwork, and

raving of algebra, I would have her come no nearer to the splendors of

science than the man in the French play, who brings away from school

only the general impression that two and two make five for a creditor

and three for a debtor.

De Quincey wrote a treatise on "Murder considered as one of the Fine

Arts," and it is certainly the fine art which receives most attention in

our schools. "So far as the body is concerned," said Horace Mann of

these institutions, "they provide for all the natural tendencies to

physical ease and inactivity as carefully as though paleness and

languor, muscular enervation and debility, were held to be constituent

elements in national beauty." With this denial of the body on one side,

with this tremendous stimulus of brain on the other, and with a delicate

and nervous national organization to begin with, the result is

inevitable. Boys hold out better than girls, partly because they are not

so docile in school, partly because they are allowed to be more active

out of it, and so have more recuperative power. But who has not seen

some delicate girl, after five consecutive hours spent over French and

Latin and Algebra, come home to swallow an indigestible dinner, and

straightway settle down again to spend literally every waking hour out

of the twenty-four in study, save those scanty meal-times,--protracting

the labor, it may be, far into the night, till the weary eyes close

unwillingly over the slate or the lexicon,--then to bed, to be vexed by

troubled dreams, instead of being wrapt in the sunny slumber of

childhood,--waking unrefreshed, to be reproached by parents and friends

with the nervous irritability which this detestable routine has created?

For I aver that parents are more exacting than even teachers. It is

outrageous to heap it all upon the pedagogues, as if they were the only

apostolical successors of him whom Charles Lamb lauded "the much

calumniated good King Herod." Indeed, teachers have no objection to

educating the bodies of their small subjects, if they can only be as

well paid for it as for educating their intellects. But, until recently,

they have never been allowed to put the bodies into the bill. And as

charity begins at home, even in a physiological sense,--and as their own

children's bodies required bread and butter,--they naturally postponed

all regard for the physical education of their pupils until the thing

acquired a marketable value. Now that the change is taking place, every

schoolmaster in the land gladly adapts himself to it, and hastens to

insert in his advertisement, "Especial attention given to physical

education." But what good does this do, so long as parents are not

willing that time enough should be deducted from the ordinary tasks to

make the athletic apparatus available,--so long as it is regarded as a

merit in pupils to take time from their plays and give it to extra

studies,--so long as we exult over an inactive and studious child, as

Dr. Beattie did over his, that "exploits of strength, dexterity, and

speed" "to him no vanity or joy could bring," and then almost die of

despair, like Dr. Beattie, because such a child dies before us? With

girls it is far worse. "Girls, during childhood, are liable to no

diseases distinct from those of boys," says Salzmann, "except the

disease of education." What mother in decent society, I ask you, who is

not delighted to have her little girl devote even Wednesday and Saturday

afternoons to additional tasks in drawing or music, rather than run the

risk of having her make a noise somewhere, or possibly even soil her

dress? Papa himself will far more readily appropriate ten dollars to

this additional confinement than five to the gymnasium or the

riding-school. And so, beset with snares on every hand, the poor little

well-educated thing can only pray the prayer recorded of a despairing

child, brought up in the best society,--that she might "die and go to

heaven and play with the Irish children on Saturday afternoons."

And the Sunday Schools coöperate with the week-day seminaries in the

pious work of destruction. Dolorosus, are all your small neighbors hard

at work in committing to memory Scripture texts for a wager,--I have an

impression, however, that they call it a prize,--consisting of one

Bible? In my circle of society the excitement runs high. At any

tea-drinking, you may hear the ladies discussing the comparative points

and prospects of their various little Ellens and Harriets, with shrill

eagerness; while their husbands, on the other side of the room, are

debating the merits of Ethan Allen and Flora Temple, the famous

trotting-horses, who are soon expected to try their speed on our

"Agricultural Ground." Each horse, and each girl, appears to have

enthusiastic backers, though the Sunday-School excitement has the

advantage of lasting longer. From inquiry, I find the state of the field

to be about as follows:--Fanny Hastings, who won the prize last year, is

not to be entered for it again; she damaged her memory by the process,

her teacher tells me, so that she can now scarcely fix the simplest

lesson in her mind. Carry Blake had got up to five thousand verses, but

had such terrible headaches that her mother compelled her to stop, some

weeks ago; the texts have all vanished from her brain, but the headache

unfortunately still lingers. Nelly Sanborn has reached six thousand,

although her anxious father long since tried to buy her off by offering

her a new Bible twice as handsome as the prize one: but what did she

care for that? she said; she had handsome Bibles already, but she had no

intention of being beaten by Ella Prentiss. Poor child, we see no chance

for her; for Ella has it all her own way; she has made up a score of

seven thousand one hundred texts, and it is only three days to the fatal

Sunday. Between ourselves, I think Nelly does her work more fairly; for

Ella has a marvellous ingenuity in picking out easy verses, like Jack

Horner's plums, and valuing every sacred sentence, not by its subject,

but by its shortness. Still, she is bound to win.

"How is her health this summer?" I asked her mother, the other day.

"Well, her verses weigh on her," said the good woman, solemnly.

And here I pledge you my word, Dolorosus, that to every one of these

statements I might append, as Miss Edgeworth does to every particularly

tough story,--"_N.B. This is a fact._" I will only add that our

Sunday-School Superintendent, who is a physician, told me that he had as

strong objections to the whole thing as I could have; but that it was no

use talking; all the other schools did it, and ours must; emulation was

the order of the day. "Besides," he added, with that sort of cheerful

hopelessness peculiar to his profession, "the boys are not trying for

the prize much, this year; and as for the girls, they would probably

lose their health very soon, at any rate, and may as well devote it to a

sacred cause."

Do not misunderstand me. The supposed object in this case is a good one,

just as the object in week-day schools is a good one,--to communicate

valuable knowledge and develop the powers of the mind. The defect in

policy, in both cases, appears to be, that it totally defeats its own

aim, renders the employments hateful that should be delightful, and

sacrifices the whole powers, so far as its influence goes, without any

equivalent. All excess defeats itself. As a grown man can work more in

ten hours than in fifteen, taking a series of days together, so a child

can make more substantial mental progress in five hours daily than in

ten. Your child's mind is not an earthen jar, to be filled by pouring

into it; it is a delicate plant, to be wisely and healthfully reared;

and your wife might as well attempt to enrich her mignonette-bed by

laying a Greek Lexicon upon it as try to cultivate that young nature by

a topdressing of Encyclopædias. I use the word on high authority.

"Courage, my boy!" wrote Lord Chatham to his son, "only the Encyclopædia

to learn!"--and the cruel diseases of a lifetime repaid Pitt for the

forcing. I do not object to the severest _quality_ of study for boys or

girls;--while their brains work, let them work in earnest. But I do

object to this immoderate and terrific _quantity_. Cut down every

school, public and private, to five hours' total work _per diem_ for the

oldest children, and four for the younger ones, and they will accomplish

more in the end than you ever saw them do in six or seven. Only give

little enough at a time, and some freshness to do it with, and you may,

if you like, send Angelina to any school, and put her through the whole

programme of the last educational prospectus sent to me,--"Philology,

Pantology, Orthology, Aristology, and Linguistics."

For what is the end to be desired? Is it to exhibit a prodigy, or to

rear a noble and symmetrical specimen of a human being? Because Socrates

taught that a boy who has learned to speak is not too small for the

sciences,--because Tiberius delivered his father's funeral oration at

the age of nine, and Marcus Aurelius put on the philosophic gown at

twelve, and Cicero wrote a treatise on the art of speaking at

thirteen,--because Lipsius is said to have composed a work the day he

was born, meaning, say the commentators, that he began a new life at the

age of ten,--because the learned Licetus, who was brought into the world

so feeble as to be baked up to maturity in an oven, sent forth from that

receptacle, like a loaf of bread, a treatise called

"Gonopsychanthropologia,"--is it, therefore, indispensably necessary,

Dolorosus, that all your pale little offspring shall imitate these?

Spare these innocents! it is not their fault that they are your

children,--so do not visit it upon them so severely. Turn, Angelina,

ever dear, and out of a little childish recreation we will yet extract a

great deal of maturer wisdom for you, if we can only bring this deluded

parent to his senses.

To change the sweet privilege of childhood into weary days and restless

nights,--to darken its pure associations, which for many are the sole

light that ever brings them back from sin and despair to the heaven of

their infancy,--to banish those reveries of innocent fancy which even

noisy boyhood knows, and which are the appointed guardians of its purity

before conscience wakes,--to abolish its moments of priceless idleness,

saturated with sunshine, blissful, aimless moments, when every angel is

near,--to bring insanity, once the terrible prerogative of maturer life,

down into the summer region of childhood, with blight and ruin;--all

this is the work of our folly, Dolorosus, of our miserable ambition to

have our unconscious little ones begin, in their very infancy, the race

of desperate ambition, which has, we admit, exhausted prematurely the

lives of their parents.

The worst danger of it is, that the moral is written at the end of the

fable, not the beginning. The organization in youth is so dangerously

elastic, that the result of these intellectual excesses is not seen

until years after. When some young girl incurs spinal disease for life

from some slight fall which she ought not to have felt for an hour, or

some businessman breaks down in the prime of his years from some

trifling over-anxiety which should have left no trace behind, the

popular verdict may be, "Mysterious Providence"; but the wiser observer

sees the retribution for the folly of those misspent days which

enfeebled the childish constitution, instead of ripening it. One of the

most admirable passages in the Report of Dr. Ray, already mentioned, is

that in which he explains, that, though hard study at school is rarely

the immediate cause of insanity, it is the most frequent of its ulterior

causes, except hereditary tendencies. "It diminishes the conservative

power of the animal economy to such a degree, that attacks of disease,

which otherwise would have passed off safely, destroy life almost before

danger is anticipated. Every intelligent physician understands, that,

other things being equal, the chances of recovery are far less in the

studious, highly intellectual child than in one of an opposite

description. The immediate mischief may have seemed slight, but the

brain is left in a condition of peculiar impressibility, which renders

it morbidly sensitive to every adverse influence."

Indeed, here is precisely the weakness of our whole national training

thus far,--brilliant immediate results, instead of wise delays. The life

of the average American is a very hasty breakfast, a magnificent

luncheon, a dyspeptic dinner, and no supper. Our masculine energy is

like our feminine beauty, bright and evanescent. As enthusiastic

travellers inform us that there are in every American village a dozen,

girls of sixteen who are prettier than any English hamlet of the same

size can produce, so the same village undoubtedly possesses a dozen very

young men who, tried by the same standard, are "smarter" than their

English peers. Come again fifteen years after, when the Englishmen and

Englishwomen are reported to be just in their prime, and, lo! those

lovely girls are sallow old women, and the boys are worn-out men,--with

fire left in them, it may be, but fuel gone,--retired from active

business, very likely, and just waiting for consumption to carry them

off, as one waits for the omnibus.

To say that this should be amended is to say little. Either it must be

amended, or the American race fails;--there is no middle ground. If we

fail, (which I do not expect, I assure you,) we fail disastrously. If we

succeed, if we bring up our vital and muscular developments into due

proportion with our nervous energy, we shall have a race of men and

women such as the world never saw. Dolorosus, when in the course of

human events you are next invited to give a Fourth-of-July Oration,

grasp at the opportunity, and take for your subject "Health." Tell your

audience, when you rise to the accustomed flowers of rhetoric as the day

wears on, that Health is the central luminary, of which all the stars

that spangle the proud flag of our common country are but satellites;

and close with a hint to the plumed emblem of our nation, (pointing to

the stuffed one which will probably be exhibited on the platform,) that

she should not henceforward confine her energies to the hatching of

short-lived eaglets, but endeavor rather to educate a few full-grown

birds.

As I take it, Nature said, some years since,--"Thus far the English is

my best race; but we have had Englishmen enough; now for another turning

of the globe, and a step farther. We need something with a little more

buoyancy than the Englishman; let us lighten the ship, even at the risk

of a little peril in the process. Put in one drop more of nervous fluid

and make the American." With that drop, a new range of promise opened on

the human race, and a lighter, finer, more highly organized type of

mankind was born. But the promise must be fulfilled through unequalled

dangers. With the new drop came new intoxication, new ardors, passions,

ambitions, hopes, reactions, and despairs,--more daring, more invention,

more disease, more insanity,--forgetfulness, at first, of the old,

wholesome traditions of living, recklessness of sin and saleratus, loss

of refreshing sleep and of the power of play. To surmount all this, we

have got to fight the good fight, I assure you, Dolorosus. Nature is yet

pledged to produce that finer type, and if we miss it, she will leave us

to decay, like our predecessors,--whirl the globe over once more, and

choose a new place for a new experiment.

MY DOUBLE; AND HOW HE UNDID ME.

It is not often that I trouble the readers of the "Atlantic Monthly." I

should not trouble them now, but for the importunities of my wife, who

"feels to insist" that a duty to society is unfulfilled, till I have

told why I had to have a double, and how he undid me. She is sure, she

says, that intelligent persons cannot understand that pressure upon

public servants which alone drives any man into the employment of a

double. And while I fear she thinks, at the bottom of her heart, that my

fortunes will never be remade, she has a faint hope, that, as another

Rasselas, I may teach a lesson to future publics, from which they may

profit, though we die. Owing to the behaviour of my double, or, if you

please, to that public pressure which compelled me to employ him, I have

plenty of leisure to write this communication.

I am, or rather was, a minister, of the Sandemanian connection. I was

settled in the active, wide-awake town of Naguadavick, on one of the

finest water-powers in Maine. We used to call it a Western town in the

heart of the civilization of New England. A charming place it was and

is. A spirited, brave young parish had I; and it seemed as if we might

have all "the joy of eventful living" to our hearts' content.

Alas! how little we knew on the day of my ordination, and in those

halcyon moments of our first housekeeping! To be the confidential friend

in a hundred families in the town,--cutting the social trifle, as my

friend Haliburton says, "from the top of the whipped-syllabub to the

bottom of the sponge-cake, which is the foundation,"--to keep abreast of

the thought of the age in one's study, and to do one's best on Sunday to

interweave that thought with the active life of an active town, and to

inspirit both and make both infinite by glimpses of the Eternal Glory,

seemed such an exquisite forelock into one's life! Enough to do, and all

so real and so grand! If this vision could only have lasted!

The truth is, that this vision was not in itself a delusion, nor,

indeed, half bright enough. If one could only have been left to do his

own business, the vision would have accomplished itself and brought out

new paraheliacal visions, each as bright as the original. The misery was

and is, as we found out, I and Polly, before long, that, besides the

vision, and besides the usual human and finite failures in life, (such

as breaking the old pitcher that came over in the "Mayflower," and

putting into the fire the Alpenstock with which her father climbed Mont

Blanc,)--besides these, I say, (imitating the style of Robinson Crusoe,)

there were pitch-forked in on us a great rowen-heap of humbugs, banded

down from some unknown seed-time, in which we were expected, and I

chiefly, to fulfil certain public functions before the community, of the

character of those fulfilled by the third row of supernumeraries who

stand behind the Sepoys in the spectacle of the "Cataract of the

Ganges." They were the duties, in a word, which one performs as member

of one or another social class or subdivision, wholly distinct from what

one does as A. by himself A. What invisible power put these functions on

me, it would be very hard to tell. But such power there was and is. And

I had not been at work a year before I found I was living two lives, one

real and one merely functional,--for two sets of people, one my parish,

whom I loved, and the other a vague public, for whom I did not care two

straws. All this was in a vague notion, which everybody had and has,

that this second life would eventually bring out some great results,

unknown at present, to somebody somewhere.

Crazed by this duality of life, I first read Dr. Wigan on the "Duality

of the Brain," hoping that I could train one side of my head to do these

outside jobs, and the other to do my intimate and real duties. For

Richard Greenough once told me, that, in studying for the statue of

Franklin, he found that the left side of the great man's face was

philosophic and reflective, and the right side funny and smiling. If you

will go and look at the bronze statue, you will find he has repeated

this observation there for posterity. The eastern profile is the

portrait of the statesman Franklin, the western of Poor Richard. But Dr.

Wigan does not go into these niceties of this subject, and I failed. It

was then, that, on my wife's suggestion, I resolved to look out for a

Double.

I was, at first, singularly successful. We happened to be recreating at

Stafford Springs that summer. We rode out one day, for one of the

relaxations of that watering-place, to the great Monsonpon House. We

were passing through one of the large halls, when my destiny was

fulfilled! I saw my man!

He was not shaven. He had on no spectacles. He was dressed in a green

baize roundabout and faded blue overalls, worn sadly at the knee. But I

saw at once that he was of my height, five feet four and a half. He had

black hair, worn off by his hat. So have and have not I. He stooped in

walking. So do I. His hands were large, and mine. And--choicest gift of

Fate in all--he had, not "a strawberry-mark on his left arm," but a cut

from a juvenile brickbat over his right eye, slightly affecting the play

of that eyebrow. Reader, so have I!--My fate was sealed!

A word with Mr. Holley, one of the inspectors, settled the whole thing.

It proved that this Dennis Shea was a harmless, amiable fellow, of the

class known as shiftless, who had scaled his fate by marrying a dumb

wife, who was at that moment ironing in the laundry. Before I left

Stafford, I had hired both for five years. We had applied to Judge

Pynchon, then the probate judge at Springfield, to change the name of

Dennis Shea to Frederic Ingham. We had explained to the Judge, what was

the precise truth, that an eccentric gentleman wished to adopt Dennis

under this new name into his family. It never occurred to him that

Dennis might be more than fourteen years old. And thus, to shorten this

preface, when we returned at night to my parsonage at Naguadavick, there

entered Mrs. Ingham, her new dumb laundress, myself, who am Mr. Frederic

Ingham, and my double, who was Mr. Frederic Ingham by as good right as

I.

Oh, the fun we had the next morning in shaving his beard to my pattern,

cutting his hair to match mine, and teaching him how to wear and how to

take off gold-bowed spectacles! Really, they were electro-plate, and the

glass was plain (for the poor fellow's eyes were excellent). Then in

four successive afternoons I taught, him four speeches. I had found

these would be quite enough for the supernumerary-Sepoy line of life,

and it was well for me they were. For though he was good-natured, he was

very shiftless, and it was, as our national proverb says, "like pulling

teeth" to teach him. But at the end of the next week he could say, with

quite my easy and frisky air,--

1. "Very well, thank you. And you?" This for an answer to casual

salutations.

2. "I am very glad you liked it."

3. "There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I

will not occupy the time."

4. "I agree, in general, with my friend the other side of the room."

At first I had a feeling that I was going to be at great cost for

clothing him. But it proved, of course, at once, that, whenever he was

out, I should be at home. And I went, during the bright period of his

success, to so few of those awful pageants which require a black

dress-coat and what the ungodly call, after Mr. Dickens, a white choker,

that in the happy retreat of my own dressing-gowns and jackets my days

went by as happily and cheaply as those of another Thalaba. And Polly

declares there was never a year when the tailoring cost so little. He

lived (Dennis, not Thalaba) in his wife's room over the kitchen. He had

orders never to show himself at that window. When he appeared in the

front of the house, I retired to my sanctissimum and my dressing-gown.

In short, the Dutchman and his wife, in the old weather-box, had not

less to do with each other than he and I. He made the furnace-fire and

split the wood before daylight; then he went to sleep again, and slept

late; then came for orders, with a red silk bandanna tied round his

head, with his overalls on, and his dress-coat and spectacles off. If we

happened to be interrupted, no one guessed that he was Frederic Ingham

as well as I; and, in the neighborhood, there grew up an impression that

the minister's Irishman worked day-times in the factory-village at New

Coventry. After I had given him his orders, I never saw him till the

next day.

I launched him by sending him to a meeting of the Enlightenment Board.

The Enlightenment Board consists of seventy-four members, of whom

sixty-seven are necessary to form a quorum. One becomes a member under

the regulations laid down in old Judge Dudley's will. I became one by

being ordained pastor of a church in Naguadavick. You see you cannot

help yourself, if you would. At this particular time we had had four

successive meetings, averaging four hours each,--wholly occupied in

whipping in a quorum. At the first only eleven men were present; at the

next, by force of three circulars, twenty-seven; at the third, thanks to

two days canvassing by Auchmuty and myself, begging men to come, we had

sixty. Half the others were In Europe. But without a quorum we could do

nothing. All the rest of us waited grimly for our four hours, and

adjourned without any action. At the fourth meeting we had flagged, and

only got fifty-nine together. But on the first appearance of my

double,--whom I sent on this fatal Monday to the fifth meeting,--he was

the sixty-seventh man who entered the room. He was greeted with a storm

of applause! The poor fellow had missed his way,--read the street signs

ill though his spectacles, (very ill, in fact, without them,)--and had

not dared to inquire. He entered the room,--finding the president and

secretary holding to their chairs two judges of the Supreme Court, who

were also members _ex officio_, and were begging leave to go away. On

his entrance all was changed. _Presto_, the by-laws were amended, and

the Western property was given away. Nobody stopped to converse with

him. He voted, as I had charged him to do, in every instance, with the

minority. I won new laurels as a man of sense, though a little

unpunctual,--and Dennis, _alias_ Ingham, returned to the parsonage,

astonished to see with how little wisdom the world is governed. He cut a

few of my parishioners in the street; but he had his glasses off, and I

am known to be near-sighted. Eventually he recognized them more readily

than I.

I "set him again" at the exhibition of the New Coventry Academy; and

here he undertook a "speaking part,"--as, in my boyish, worldly days, I

remember the bills used to say of Mlle. Céleste. We are all trustees of

the New Coventry Academy; and there has lately been "a good deal of

feeling" because the Sandemanian trustees did not regularly attend the

exhibitions. It has been intimated, indeed, that the Sandemanians are

leaning towards Free-Will, and that we have, therefore, neglected these

semi-annual exhibitions, while there is no doubt that Auchmuty last year

went to Commencement at Waterville. Now the head master at New Coventry

is a real good fellow, who knows a Sanskrit root when he sees it, and

often cracks etymologies with me,--so that, in strictness, I ought to go

to their exhibitions. But think, reader, of sitting through three long

July days in that Academy chapel, following the programme from

TUESDAY MORNING. _English Composition_.

"SUNSHINE." Miss Jones.

round to

Trio on Three Pianos. Duel from the Opera

of "Midshipman Easy." _Marryatt_.

coming in at nine, Thursday evening! Think of this, reader, for men who

know the world is trying to go backward, and who would give their lives

if they could help it on! Well! The double had succeeded so well at the

Board, that I sent him to the Academy. (Shade of Plato, pardon!) He

arrived early on Tuesday, when, indeed, few but mothers and clergymen

are generally expected, and returned in the evening to us, covered with

honors. He had dined at the right hand of the chairman, and he spoke in

high terms of the repast. The chairman had expressed his interest in the

French conversation. "I am very glad you liked it," said Dennis; and the

poor chairman, abashed, supposed the accent had been wrong. At the end

of the day, the gentlemen present had been called upon for

speeches,--the Rev. Frederic Ingham first, as it happened; upon which

Dennis had risen, and had said, "There has been so much said, and, on

the whole, so well said, that I will not occupy the time." The girls

were delighted, because Dr. Dabney, the year before, had given them at

this occasion a scolding on impropriety of behavior at lyceum lectures.

They all declared Mr. Ingham was a love,--and _so_ handsome! (Dennis is

good-looking.) Three of them, with arms behind the others' waists,

followed him up to the wagon he rode home in; and a little girl with a

blue sash had been sent to give him a rosebud. After this _début_ in

speaking, he went to the exhibition for two days more, to the mutual

satisfaction of all concerned. Indeed, Polly reported that he had

pronounced the trustees' dinners of a higher grade than those of the

parsonage. When the next term began, I found six of the Academy girls

had obtained permission to come across the river and attend our church.

But this arrangement did not long continue.

After this he went to several Commencements for me, and ate the dinners

provided; he sat through three of our Quarterly Conventions for

me,--always voting judiciously, by the simple rule mentioned above, of

siding with the minority. And I, meanwhile, who had before been losing

caste among my friends, as holding myself aloof from the associations of

the body, began to rise in everybody's favor. "Ingham's a good

fellow,--always on hand"; "never talks much,--but does the right thing

at the right time"; "is not as unpunctual as he used to be,--he comes

early, and sits through to the end." "He has got over his old talkative

habit, too. I spoke to a friend of his about it once; and I think Ingham

took it kindly," etc., etc.

This voting power of Dennis was particularly valuable at the quarterly

meetings of the Proprietors of the Naguadavick Ferry. My wife inherited

from her father some shares in that enterprise, which is not yet fully

developed, though it doubtless will become a very valuable property. The

law of Maine then forbade stockholders to appear by proxy at such

meetings. Polly disliked to go, not being, in fact, a "hens'-rights

hen," and transferred her stock to me. I, after going once, disliked it

more than she. But Dennis went to the next meeting, and liked it very

much. He said the armchairs were good, the collation good, and the free

rides to stockholders pleasant. He was a little frightened when they

first took him upon one of the ferry-boats, but after two or three

quarterly meetings he became quite brave.

Thus far I never had any difficulty with him. Indeed, being of that type

which is called shiftless, he was only too happy to be told daily what

to do, and to be charged not to be forthputting or in any way original

in his discharge of that duty. He learned, however, to discriminate

between the lines of his life, and very much preferred these

stockholders' meetings and trustees' dinners and Commencement collations

to another set of occasions, from which he used to beg off most

piteously. Our excellent brother, Dr. Fillmore, had taken a notion at

this time that our Sandemanian churches needed more expression of mutual

sympathy. He insisted upon it that we were remiss. He said, that, if the

Bishop came to preach at Naguadavick, all the Episcopal clergy of the

neighborhood were present; if Dr. Pond came, all the Congregational

clergymen turned out to hear him; if Dr. Nichols, all the Unitarians;

and he thought we owed it to each other, that, whenever there was an

occasional service at a Sandemanian church, the other brethren should

all, if possible, attend. "It looked well," if nothing more. Now this

really meant that I had not been to hear one of Dr. Fillmore's lectures

on the Ethnology of Religion. He forgot that he did not hear one of my

course on the "Sandemanianism of Anselm." But I felt badly when he said

it; and afterwards I always made Dennis go to hear all the brethren

preach, when I was not preaching myself. This was what he took

exceptions to,--the only thing, as I said, which he ever did except to.

Now came the advantage of his long morning-nap, and of the green tea

with which Polly supplied the kitchen. But he would plead, so humbly, to

be let off, only from one or two! I never excepted him, however. I knew

the lectures were of value, and I thought it best he should be able to

keep the connection.

Polly is more rash than I am, as the reader has observed in the outset

of this memoir. She risked Dennis one night under the eyes of her own

sex. Governor Gorges had always been very kind to us; and when he gave

his great annual party to the town, asked us. I confess I hated to go. I

was deep in the new volume of Pfeiffer's "Mystics," which Haliburton had

just sent me from Boston. "But how rude," said Polly, "not to return the

Governor's civility and Mrs. Gorges's, when they will be sure to ask why

you are away!" Still I demurred, and at last she, with the wit of Eve

and of Semiramis conjoined, let me off by saying, that, if I would go in

with her, and sustain the initial conversations with the Governor and

the ladies staying there, she would risk Dennis for the rest of the

evening. And that was just what we did. She took Dennis in training all

that afternoon, instructed him in fashionable conversation, cautioned

him against the temptations of the supper-table,--and at nine in the

evening he drove us all down in the carryall. I made the grand

star-_entrée_ with Polly and the pretty Walton girls, who were staying

with us. We had put Dennis into a great rough top-coat, without his

glasses,--and the girls never dreamed, in the darkness, of looking at

him. He sat in the carriage, at the door, while we entered. I did the

agreeable to Mrs. Gorges, was introduced to her niece, Miss Fernanda,--I

complimented Judge Jeffries on his decision in the great case of

D'Aulnay _vs_. Laconia Mining Co.,--I stepped into the dressing-room for

a moment,--stepped out for another,--walked home, after a nod with

Dennis, and tying the horse to a pump;--and while I walked home, Mr.

Frederic Ingham, my double, stepped in through the library into the

Gorges's grand saloon.

Oh! Polly died of laughing as she told me of it at midnight! And even

here, where I have to teach my hands to hew the beech for stakes to

fence our cave, she dies of laughing as she recalls it,--and says that

single occasion was worth all we have paid for it. Gallant Eve that she

is! She joined Dennis at the library-door, and in an instant presented

him to Dr. Ochterlong, from Baltimore, who was on a visit in town, and

was talking with her, as Dennis came in. "Mr. Ingham would like to hear

what you were telling us about your success among the German

population." And Dennis bowed and said, in spite of a scowl from Polly,

"I'm very glad you liked it." But Dr. Ochterlong did not observe, and

plunged into the tide of explanation, Dennis listening like a

prime-minister, and bowing like a mandarin,--which is, I suppose, the

same thing. Polly declared it was just like Haliburton's Latin

conversation with the Hungarian minister, of which he is very fond of

telling. "_Quæne sit historia Reformationis in Ungariâ_?" quoth

Haliburton, after some thought. And his _confrère_ replied gallantly,

"_In seculo decimo tertio_," etc., etc., etc.; and from _decimo

tertio_[8] to the nineteenth century and a half lasted till the oysters

came. So was it that before Dr. Ochterlong came to the "success," or

near it, Governor Gorges came to Dennis and asked him to hand Mrs.

Jeffries down to supper, a request which he heard with great joy.

Polly was skipping round the room, I guess, gay as a lark. Auchmuty came

to her "in pity for poor Ingham," who was so bored by the stupid

pundit,--and Auchmuty could not understand why I stood it so long. But

when Dennis took Mrs. Jeffries down, Polly could not resist standing

near them. He was a little flustered, till the sight of the eatables and

drinkables gave him the same Mercian courage which it gave Diggory. A

little excited then, he attempted one or two of his speeches to the

Judge's lady. But little he knew how hard it was to get in even a

_promptu_ there edgewise. "Very well, I thank you," said he, after the

eating elements were adjusted; "and you?" And then did not he have to

hear about the mumps, and the measles, and arnica, and belladonna, and

chamomile-flower, and dodecathem, till she changed oysters for

salad,--and then about the old practice and the new, and what her sister

said, and what her sister's friend said, and what the physician to her

sister's friend said, and then what was said by the brother of the

sister of the physician of the friend of her sister, exactly as if it

had been in Ollendorff? There was a moment's pause, as she declined

Champagne. "I am very glad you liked it," said Dennis again, which he

never should have said, but to one who complimented a sermon. "Oh! you

are so sharp, Mr. Ingham! No! I never drink any wine at all,--except

sometimes in summer a little currant spirits,--from our own currants,

you know. My own mother,--that is, I call her my own mother, because,

you know, I do not remember," etc., etc., etc.; till they came to the

candied orange at the end of the feast,--when Dennis, rather confused,

thought he must say something, and tried No. 4,--"I agree, in general,

with my friend the other side of the room,"--which he never should have

said but at a public meeting. But Mrs. Jeffries, who never listens

expecting to understand, caught him up instantly with, "Well, I'm sure

my husband returns the compliment; he always agrees with you,--though we

do worship with the Methodists;--but you know, Mr. Ingham," etc., etc.,

etc., till the move was made up-stairs;--and as Dennis led her through

the hall, he was scarcely understood by any but Polly, as he said,

"There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I

will not occupy the time."

His great resource the rest of the evening was, standing in the library,

carrying on animated conversations with one and another in much the same

way. Polly had initiated him in the mysteries of a discovery of mine,

that it is not necessary to finish your sentences in a crowd, but by a

sort of mumble, omitting sibilants and dentals. This, indeed, if your

words fail you, answers even in public extempore speech,--but better

where other talking is going on. Thus,--"We missed you at the Natural

History Society, Ingham." Ingham replies,--"I am very gligloglum, that

is, that you were mmmmm." By gradually dropping the voice, the

interlocutor is compelled to supply the answer. "Mrs. Ingham, I hope

your friend Augusta is better." Augusta has not been ill. Polly cannot

think of explaining, however, and answers,--"Thank you, Ma'am; she is

very rearason wewahwewoh," in lower and lower tones. And Mrs.

Throckmorton, who forgot the subject of which she spoke, as soon as she

asked the question, is quite satisfied. Dennis could see into the

card-room, and came to Polly to ask if he might not go and play

all-fours. But, of course, she sternly refused. At midnight they came

home delighted,--Polly, as I said, wild to tell me the story of victory;

only both the pretty Walton girls said,--"Cousin Frederic, you did not

come near me all the evening."

We always called him Dennis at home, for convenience, though his real

name was Frederic Ingham, as I have explained. When the election-day

came round, however, I found that by some accident there was only one

Frederic Ingham's name on the voting-list; and, as I was quite busy that

day in writing some foreign letters to Halle, I thought I would forego

my privilege of suffrage, and stay quietly at home, telling Dennis that

he might use the record on the voting-list and vote. I gave him a

ticket, which I told him he might use, if he liked to. That was that

very sharp election in Maine which the readers of the "Atlantic" so well

remember, and it had been intimated in public that the ministers would

do well not to appear at the polls. Of course, after that, we had to

appear by self or proxy. Still, Naguadavick was not then a city, and

this standing in a double queue at town-meeting several hours to vote

was a bore of the first water; and so, when I found that there was but

one Frederic Ingham on the list, and that one of us must give up, I

staid at home and finished the letters, (which, indeed, procured for

Fothergill his coveted appointment of Professor of Astronomy at

Leavenworth,) and I gave Dennis, as we called him, the chance. Something

in the matter gave a good deal of popularity to the Frederic Ingham

name; and at the adjourned election, next week, Frederic Ingham was

chosen to the legislature. Whether this was I or Dennis, I never really

knew. My friends seemed to think it was I; but I felt, that, as Dennis

had done the popular thing, he was entitled to the honor; so I sent him

to Augusta when the time came, and he took the oaths. And a very

valuable member he made. They appointed him on the Committee on

Parishes; but I wrote a letter for him, resigning, on the ground that he

took an interest in our claim to the stumpage in the minister's

sixteenths of Gore A, next No. 7, in the 10th Range. He never made any

speeches, and always voted with the minority, which was what he was sent

to do. He made me and himself a great many good friends, some of whom I

did not afterwards recognize as quickly as Dennis did my parishioners.

On one or two occasions, when there was wood to saw at home, I kept him

at home; but I took those occasions to go to Augusta myself. Finding

myself often in his vacant seat at these times, I watched the

proceedings with a good deal of care; and once was so much excited that

I delivered my somewhat celebrated speech on the Central School-District

question, a speech of which the "State of Maine" printed some extra

copies. I believe there is no formal rule permitting strangers to speak;

but no one objected.

Dennis himself, as I said, never spoke at all. But our experience this

session led me to think, that, if, by some such "general understanding"

as the reports speak of in legislation daily, every member of Congress

might leave a double to sit through those deadly sessions and answer to

roll-calls and do the legitimate party-voting, which appears stereotyped

in the regular list of Ashe, Bocock, Black, etc., we should gain

decidedly in working-power. As things stand, the saddest State prison I

ever visit is that Representatives' Chamber in Washington. If a man

leaves for an hour, twenty "correspondents" may be howling, "Where was

Mr. Pendergrast when the Oregon bill passed?" And if poor Pendergrast

stays there! Certainly, the worst use you can make of a man is to put

him in prison!

I know, indeed, that public men of the highest rank have resorted to

this expedient long ago. Dumas's novel of the "Iron Mask" turns on the

brutal imprisonment of Louis the Fourteenth's double. There seems little

doubt, in our own history, that it was the real General Pierce who shed

tears when the delegate from Lawrence explained to him the sufferings of

the people there,--and only General Pierce's double who had given the

orders for the assault on that town, which was invaded the next day. My

charming friend, George Withers, has, I am almost sure, a double, who

preaches his afternoon sermons for him. This is the reason that the

theology often varies so from that of the forenoon. But that double is

almost as charming as the original. Some of the most well-defined men,

who stand out most prominently on the background of history, are in this

way stereoscopic men, who owe their distinct relief to the slight

differences between the doubles. All this I know. My present suggestion

is simply the great extension of the system, so that all public

machine-work may be done by it.

But I see I loiter on my story, which is rushing to the plunge. Let me

stop an instant more, however, to recall, were it only to myself, that

charming year while all was yet well. After the double had become a

matter of course, for nearly twelve months before he undid me, what a

year it was! Full of active life, full of happy love, of the hardest

work, of the sweetest sleep, and the fulfilment of so many of the fresh

aspirations and dreams of boyhood! Dennis went to every school-committee

meeting, and sat through all those late wranglings which used to keep me

up till midnight and awake till morning. He attended all the lectures to

which foreign exiles sent me tickets begging me to come for the love of

Heaven and of Bohemia. He accepted and used all the tickets for charity

concerts which were sent to me. He appeared everywhere where it was

specially desirable that "our denomination," or "our party," or "our

class," or "our family," or "our street," or "our town," or "our

county," or "our State," should be fully represented. And I fell back to

that charming life which in boyhood one dreams of, when he supposes he

shall do his own duty and make his own sacrifices, without being tied up

with those of other people. My rusty Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek,

Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English began to take

polish. Heavens! how little I had done with them while I attended to my

_public_ duties! My calls on my parishioners became the friendly,

frequent, homelike sociabilities they were meant to be, instead of the

hard work of a man goaded to desperation by the sight of his lists of

arrears. And preaching! what a luxury preaching was when I had on

Sunday the whole result of an individual, personal week, from which to

speak to a people whom all that week I had been meeting as hand-to-hand

friend! I never tired on Sunday, and was in condition to leave the

sermon at home, if I chose, and preach it extempore, as all men should

do always. Indeed, I wonder, when I think that a sensible people, like

ours,--really more attached to their clergy than they were in the lost

days, when the Mathers and Nortons were noblemen,--should choose to

neutralize so much of their ministers' lives, and destroy so much of

their early training, by this undefined passion for seeing them in

public. It springs from our balancing of sects. If a spirited

Episcopalian takes an interest in the alms-house, and is put on the Poor

Board, every other denomination must have a minister there, lest the

poor-house be changed into St. Paul's Cathedral. If a Sandemanian is

chosen president of the Young Men's Library, there must be a Methodist

vice-president and a Baptist secretary. And if a Universalist

Sunday-School Convention collects five hundred delegates, the next

Congregationalist Sabbath-School Conference must be as large, "lest

'they'--whoever _they_ may be--should think 'we'--whoever _we_ may

be--are going down."

Freed from these necessities, that happy year, I began to know my wife

by sight. We saw each other sometimes. In those long mornings, when

Dennis was in the study explaining to map-peddlers that I had eleven

maps of Jerusalem already, and to school-book agents that I would see

them hanged before I would be bribed to introduce their textbooks into

the schools,--she and I were at work together, as in those old dreamy

days,--and in these of our log-cabin again. But all this could not

last,--and at length poor Dennis, my double, over-tasked in turn, undid

me.

It was thus it happened.--There is an excellent fellow,--once a

minister,--I will call him Isaacs,--who deserves well of the world till

he dies, and after,--because he once, in, a real exigency, did the right

thing, in the right way, at the right time, as no other man could do it.

In the world's great football match, the ball by chance found him

loitering on the outside of the field; he closed with it, "camped" it,

charged it home,--yes, right through the other side,--not disturbed, not

frightened by his own success,--and breathless found himself a great

man,--as the Great Delta rang applause. But he did not find himself a

rich man; and the football has never come in his way again. From that

moment to this moment he has been of no use, that one can see, at all.

Still, for that great act we speak of Isaacs gratefully and remember him

kindly; and he forges on, hoping to meet the football somewhere again.

In that vague hope, he had arranged a "movement" for a general

organization of the human family into Debating-Clubs, County Societies,

State Unions, etc., etc., with a view of inducing all children to take

hold of the handles of their knives and forks, instead of the metal.

Children have bad habits in that way. The movement, of course, was

absurd; but we all did our best to forward, not it, but him. It came

time for the annual county-meeting on this subject to be held at

Naguadavick. Isaacs came round, good fellow! to arrange for it,--got the

town-hall, got the Governor to preside, (the saint!--he ought to have

triplet doubles provided him by law,) and then came to get me to speak.

"No," I said, "I would not speak, if ten Governors presided. I do not

believe in the enterprise. If I spoke, it should be to say children

should take hold of the prongs of the forks and the blades of the

knives. I would subscribe ten dollars, but I would not speak a mill." So

poor Isaacs went his way, sadly, to coax Auchmuty to speak, and

Delafield. I went out. Not long after, he came back, and told Polly that

they had promised to speak,--the Governor would speak,--and he himself

would close with the quarterly report, and some interesting anecdotes

regarding Miss Biffin's way of handling her knife and Mr. Nellis's way

of footing his fork. "Now if Mr. Ingham will only come and sit on the

platform, he need not say one word; but it will show well in the

paper,--it will show that the Sandemanians take as much interest in the

movement as the Armenians or the Mesopotamians, and will be a great

favor to me." Polly, good soul! was tempted, and she promised. She knew

Mrs. Isaacs was starving, and the babies,--she knew Dennis was at

home,--and she promised! Night came, and I returned. I heard her story.

I was sorry. I doubted. But Polly had promised to beg me, and I dared

all! I told Dennis to hold his peace, under all circumstances, and sent

him down.

It was not half an hour more before he returned, wild with

excitement,--in a perfect Irish fury,--which it was long before I

understood. But I knew at once that he had undone me!

What happened was this.--The audience got together, attracted by

Governor Gorges's name. There were a thousand people. Poor Gorges was

late from Augusta. They became impatient. He came in direct from the

train at last, really ignorant of the object of the meeting. He opened

it in the fewest possible words, and said other gentlemen were present

who would entertain them better than he. The audience were disappointed,

but waited. The Governor, prompted by Isaacs, said, "The Honorable Mr.

Delafield will address you." Delafield had forgotten the knives and

forks, and was playing the Ruy Lopez opening at the chess-club. "The

Rev. Mr. Auchmuty will address you." Auchmuty had promised to speak

late, and was at the school-committee. "I see Dr. Stearns in the hall;

perhaps he will say a word." Dr. Stearns said he had come to listen and

not to speak. The Governor and Isaacs whispered. The Governor looked at

Dennis, who was resplendent on the platform; but Isaacs, to give him his

due, shook his head. But the look was enough. A miserable lad, ill-bred,

who had once been in Boston, thought it would sound well to call for me,

and peeped out, "Ingham!" A few more wretches cried, "Ingham! Ingham!"

Still Isaacs was firm; but the Governor, anxious, indeed, to prevent a

row, knew I would say something, and said, "Our friend Mr. Ingham is

always prepared,--and though we had not relied upon him, he will say a

word, perhaps." Applause followed, which turned Dennis's head. He rose,

fluttered, and tried No. 3: "There has been so much said, and, on the

whole, so well said, that I will not longer occupy the time!" and sat

down, looking for his hat; for things seemed squally. But the people

cried, "Go on! go on!" and some applauded. Dennis, still confused, but

flattered by the applause, to which neither he nor I are used, rose

again, and this time tried No. 2: "I am very glad you liked it!" in a

sonorous, clear delivery. My best friends stared. All the people who did

not know me personally yelled with delight at the aspect of the evening;

the Governor was beside himself, and poor Isaacs thought he was undone!

Alas, it was I! A boy in the gallery cried in a loud tone, "It's all an

infernal humbug," just as Dennis, waving his hand, commanded silence,

and tried No. 4: "I agree, in general, with my friend the other side of

the room." The poor Governor doubted his senses, and crossed to stop

him,--not in time, however. The same gallery-boy shouted, "How's your

mother?"--and Dennis, now completely lost, tried, as his last shot, No.

1, vainly: "Very well, thank you; and you?"

I think I must have been undone already. But Dennis, like another

Lockhard, chose "to make sicker." The audience rose in a whirl of

amazement, rage, and sorrow. Some other impertinence, aimed at Dennis,

broke all restraint, and, in pure Irish, he delivered himself of an

address to the gallery, inviting any person who wished to fight to come

down and do so,--stating, that they were all dogs and cowards and the

sons of dogs and cowards,--that he would take any five of them

single-handed. "Shure, I have said all his Riverence and the Misthress

bade me say," cried he, in defiance; and, seizing the Governor's cane

from his hand, brandished it, quarterstaff fashion, above his head. He

was, indeed, got from the hall only with the greatest difficulty by the

Governor, the City Marshal, who had been called in, and the

Superintendent of my Sunday-School.

The universal impression, of course, was, that the Rev. Frederic Ingham

had lost all command of himself in some of those haunts of intoxication

which for fifteen years I have been laboring to destroy. Till this

moment, indeed, that is the impression in Naguadavick. This number of

the "Atlantic" will relieve from it a hundred friends of mine who have

been sadly wounded by that notion now for years;--but I shall not be

likely ever to show my head there again.

No! My double has undone me.

We left town at seven the next morning. I came to No. 9, in the Third

Range, and settled on the Minister's Lot. In the new towns in Maine, the

first settled minister has a gift of a hundred acres of land. I am the

first settled minister in No. 9. My wife and little Paulina are my

parish. We raise corn enough to live on in summer. We kill bear's meat

enough to carbonize it in winter. I work on steadily on my "Traces of

Sandemanianism in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries," which I hope to

persuade Phillips, Sampson, & Co. to publish next year. We are very

happy, but the world thinks we are undone.

[8] Which means, "In the thirteenth century," my dear little

bell-and-coral reader. You have rightly guessed that the question means,

"What is the history of the Reformation in Hungary?"

THE SINGER.

A star into our twilight fell,

'Mong peasant homes in vales remote;

Men marvelled not till all the dell

Was waked as by a bugle-note.

They wondered at the wild-eyed boy,

And drank his song like draughts of wine;

And yet, amid their new-born joy,

They bade him tend the herds and swine.

But he knew neither swine nor herds,--

His shepherd soul was otherwhere;

The flocks he tended were the birds,

And stars that fill the folds of air.

To sweeter song the wind would melt

That fanned him with its perfumed wing;

Flowers thronged his path as if they felt

The warm and flashing feet of Spring.

The brooklet flung its ringlets wide,

And leapt to him, and kept his pace,--

Sang when he sang, and when he sighed,

Turned up to him its starry face.

Through many a dawn and noon and night,

The singing boy still kept his course;

For in his heart that meteor light

Still burned with all its natal force.

He sang,--nor cherished thought of care,--

As when, upon the garden-vine,

A blue-bird thrills the April air,

Regardless of the herds and swine.

The children in their May-time plays,

The maidens in their rosy hours,

And matrons in their autumn days,

All heard and flung him praise or flowers.

And Age, to chimney-nooks beguiled,

Caught the sweet music's tender closes,

And, gazing on the embers, smiled

As on a bed of summer roses.

And many a heart, by hope forsook,

Received his song through depths of pain,

As the dry channels of a brook

The freshness of a summer rain.

But when he looked for house or bread,

The stewards of earth's oil and wine

Shook sternly the reproving head,

And bade him tend the herds and swine!

He strayed into the harvest plains,

And 'mid the sultry windrows sung,

Till glowing girls and swarthy swains

Caught music from his charmed tongue,--

Caught music that from heart to brain

Went thrilling with delicious measure,

Till toil, which late had seemed a pain,

Became a sweet Arcadian pleasure.

The farmer, at the day's decline,

Sat listening till the eve was late;

Then, offering neither bread nor wine,

Arose, and barred the outer gate,--

And said, "Would you have where to sleep

On wholesome straw, good brother mine,

You need but plow, and sow, and reap,

And daily tend the herds and swine."

The poet's locks shook out reply;

He turned him gayly down the rill;

Yet left a light which shall not die,

A sunshine on the farmer's sill.

He strewed the vale with flowers of song;

He filled the homes with lighter grace,

Which round those hearth-stones lingered long,

And still makes beautiful the place.

The country, hamlet, and the town

Grew wiser, better, for his songs;--

The roaring city could not drown

The voice that to the world belongs.

To beds of pain, to rooms of death,

The soft and solemn music stole,

And soothed the dying with its breath,

And passed into the mourner's soul.

And yet what was the poet's meed?

Such, Bard of Alloway, was thine!

The soul that sings, the heart must bleed,

Or tend the common herds and swine.

The nation heard his patriot lays,

And rung them, like an anthem, round,

Till Freedom waved her branch of bays,

Wherewith the world shall yet be crowned.

His war-songs fired the battle-host,

His mottoes on their banners burned;

And when the foe had fled the coast,

Wild with his songs the troops returned.

Then at the feast's triumphal board,

His thrilling music cheered the wine;--

But when the singer asked reward,

They pointed to the herds and swine.

"What! he a bard? Then bid him go

And beg,--it is the poet's trade!

Dan Homer was the first to show

The rank for which the bards were made!

"A living bard! What's he to us?

A bard, to live, must first be dead!

And when he dies, we may discuss

To whom belongs the poet's head!"

'Neath suns that burn, through storms that drench,

He went, an outcast from his birth,

Still singing,--for they could not quench

The fire that was not born of earth.

At last, behind cold prison-bars,

By colder natures unforgiven,

His frail dust starved! but 'mid the stars

His spirit found its native heaven.

Now, when a meteor-spark, forlorn,

Descends upon its fiery wing,

I sigh to think a soul is born,

Perchance, to suffer and to sing:--

Its own heart a consuming pyre

Of flame, to brighten and refine:--

A singer, in the starry choir,

That will not tend the herds and swine.

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.

One of our boarders--perhaps more than one was concerned in it--sent in

some questions to me, the other day, which, trivial as some of them are,

I felt bound to answer.

1.--Whether a lady was ever known to write a letter covering only a

single page?

To this I answered, that there was a case on record where a lady had but

half a sheet of paper and no envelope; and being obliged to send through

the post-office, she _covered_ only one side of the paper (crosswise,

lengthwise, and diagonally).

2.--What constitutes a man a gentleman?

To this I gave several answers, adapted to particular classes of

questions.

a. Not trying to be a gentleman.

b. Self-respect underlying courtesy.

c. Knowledge and observance of the _fitness of things_ in social

intercourse.

d. £. _s.d._ (as many suppose.)

3.--Whether face or figure is most attractive in the female sex?

Answered in the following epigram, by a young man about town:--

Quoth Tom, "Though fair her features be,

it is her figure pleases me."

"What may her figure be?" I cried.

"_One hundred thousand_!" he replied.

When this was read to the boarders, the young man John said he should

like a chance to "step up" to a figger of that kind, if the girl was one

of the right sort.

The landlady said them that merried for money didn't deserve the

blessin' of a good wife. Money was a great thing when them that had it

made a good use of it. She had seen better days herself, and knew what

it was never to want for anything. One of her cousins merried a very

rich old gentleman, and she had heerd that he said he lived ten year

longer than if he'd staid by himself without anybody to take care of

him. There was nothin' like a wife for nussin' sick folks and them that

couldn't take care of themselves.

The young man John got off a little wink, and pointed slyly with his

thumb in the direction of our diminutive friend, for whom he seemed to

think this speech was intended.

If it was meant for him, he didn't appear to know that it was. Indeed,

he seems somewhat listless of late, except when the conversation falls

upon one of those larger topics that specially interest him, and then he

grows excited, speaks loud and fast, sometimes almost savagely,--and, I

have noticed once or twice, presses his left hand to his right side, as

if there were something that ached, or weighed, or throbbed in that

region.

While he speaks in this way, the general conversation is interrupted,

and we all listen to him. Iris looks steadily in his face, and then he

will turn as if magnetized and meet the amber eyes with his own

melancholy gaze. I do believe that they have some kind of understanding

together, that they meet elsewhere than at our table, and that there is

a mystery, which is going to break upon us all of a sudden, involving

the relations of these two persons. From the very first, they have taken

to each other. The one thing they have in common is the heroic will. In

him, it shows itself in thinking his way straightforward, in doing

battle for "free trade and no right of search" on the high seas of

religious controversy, and especially in fighting the battles of his

crooked old city. In her, it is standing up for her little friend with

the most queenly disregard of the code of boarding-house etiquette.

People may say or look what they like,--she will have her way about this

sentiment of hers.

The poor relation is in a dreadful fidget whenever the little gentleman

says anything that interferes with her own infallibility. She seems to

think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the

toothache,--and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter the wind

blows from, she will catch her "death o' cold."

The landlady herself came to him one day, as I have found out, and tried

to persuade him to hold his tongue.--The boarders was gettin'

uneasy,--she said,--and some of 'em would go, she mistrusted, if he

talked any more about things that belonged to the ministers to settle.

She was a poor woman, that had known better days, but all her livin'

depended on her boarders, and she was sure there wasn't any of 'em she

set so much by as she did by him; but there was them that never liked to

hear about such things, except on Sundays.

The little gentleman looked very smiling at the landlady, who smiled

even more cordially in return, and adjusted her cap-ribbon with an

unconscious movement,--a reminiscence of the long-past pairing-time,

when she had smoothed her locks and softened her voice, and won her mate

by these and other bird-like graces.--My dear Madam,--he said,--I will

remember your interests, and speak only of matters to which I am totally

indifferent.--I don't doubt he meant this; but a day or two after,

something stirred him up, and I heard his voice uttering itself aloud,

thus:--

--It must be done, Sir!--he was saying,--it must be done! Our religion

has been Judaized, it has been Romanized, it has been Orientalized, it

has been Anglicized, and the time is at hand when it must be

AMERICANIZED! Now, Sir, you see what Americanizing is in politics;--it

means that a man shall have a vote because he is a man,--and shall vote

for whom he pleases, without his neighbor's interference. If he chooses

to vote for the Devil, that is his lookout;--perhaps he thinks the Devil

is better than the other candidates; and I don't doubt he's often right,

Sir! Just so a man's soul has a vote in the spiritual community; and it

doesn't do, Sir, or it won't do long, to call him "schismatic" and

"heretic" and those other wicked names that the old murderous

Inquisitors have left us to help along "peace and good-will to men"!

As long as you could catch a man and drop him into an _oubliette_, or

pull him out a few inches longer by machinery, or put a hot iron through

his tongue, or make him climb up a ladder and sit on a board at the top

of a stake so that he should be slowly broiled by the fire kindled round

it, there was some sense in these words; they led to something. But

since we have done with those tools, we had better give up those words.

I should like to see a Yankee advertisement like this!--(the little

gentleman laughed fiercely as he uttered the words,--)

--Patent thumb-screws, warranted to crush the bone in three turns.

--The cast-iron boot, with wedge and mallet,--only five dollars!

--The celebrated extension-rack, warranted to stretch a man six inches

in twenty minutes,--money returned, if it proves unsatisfactory.