CHAPTER I.

Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Bob Blair, and Project

Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. X, NO. LVIII--AUGUST, 1862

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

THE NEW GYMNASTICS.

Physical culture is on the top of the wave. But the movement is as yet

in the talk stage. Millions praise the gymnasium; hundreds seek its

blessings. Similar incongruities make up the story of human life. But

in this case inconsistency is consistent.

Evidences of physical deterioration crowd upon us. Fathers and mothers

regard their children with painful solicitude. Not even parental

partiality can close the eye to decaying teeth, distorted forms,

pallid faces, and the unseemly gait. The husband would gladly give his

fortune to purchase roses for the cheeks of the loved one, while

thousands dare not venture upon marriage, for they see in it only

protracted invalidism. Brothers look into the languishing eyes of

sisters with sad forebodings, and sisters tenderly watch for the

return of brothers, once the strength and hope of the fatherless

group, now waiting for death. The evil is immense. _What can be

done?_ Few questions have been repeated with such intense anxiety.

My object is to submit, for the consideration of the readers of the

"Atlantic," a new system of physical training, adapted to both sexes,

and to persons of all ages and degrees of strength. I have an ardent

faith that in it many will find an answer to the important question.

The common remark, that parents are too much absorbed in the

_accomplishments_ of their daughters to give any attention to

their health, is absurd. Mothers know that the happiness of their

girls, as well as the character of their settlement in life, turns

more upon health and exuberance of spirits than upon French and

music. To suppose, that, while thousands are freely given for

accomplishments, hundreds would be refused for bodily health and

bloom, is to doubt the parents' sanity. If the father were fully

satisfied that Miss Mary could exchange her stooping form, pale face,

and lassitude for erectness, freshness, and elasticity, does anybody

suppose he would hesitate? Fathers give their daughters Italian and

drawing, not because they regard these as the best of the good things

of life, but because they form a part of the established course of

education. Only let the means for a complete physical development be

organized, and announced as an integral part of our system of

education, and parents would be filled with grateful satisfaction. The

people are ready and waiting. No want is so universal, none so deeply

felt. But how shall symmetry and vigor be reached? What are the

means? Where is the school? During the heat of the summer our

city-girls go into the country, perhaps to the mountains: this is

good. When in town, they skate or walk or visit the riding-school:

all good. But still they are stooping and weak. The father, conscious

that their bodies, like their minds, are susceptible of indefinite

development, in his anxiety takes them to the gymnasium. They find a

large room furnished with bars, ladders, and swings. They witness the

wonderful performances of accomplished gymnasts and acrobates, admire

the brilliant feats; but the girls see no opportunity for themselves.

They are nearly right. The ordinary gymnasium offers little chance for

_girls_, none for _old_ people, but little for _fat_ people of any age,

and very little for small children of either sex.

Are not these the classes which most require artificial training? It

is claimed that the common gymnasium is admirable for young men. I

think there are other modes of training far more fascinating and

profitable; but suppose it were true that for young men it is the best

of all possible modes. These young men we need in the gymnasium where

young women exercise. If young women are left by themselves, they will

soon lose interest. A gymnasium with either sex alone is like a

ball-room with one sex excluded. To earn a living, men and women will

labor when separated; but in the department of recreation, if there be

lack of social stimulus, they will soon fall off. No gymnasium,

however well managed, with either sex excluded, has ever achieved a

large and enduring success. I know some of them have long lists of

subscribers; but the daily attendance is very small. Indeed, the only

gymnasium which never lacks patronage is the ball-room. Dancing is

undeniably one of the most fascinating exercises; but the places where

even this is practised would soon be forsaken, were the sexes

separated.

Some lady-reader suggests that ladies of delicate sensibilities would

scarcely be willing to join gentlemen in climbing about on ladders. I

presume not; but are such exercises the best, even for men?

I do not doubt that walking with the hands, on a ladder, or upon the

floor, head down, is a good exercise; but I think the common prejudice

in favor of the feet as a means of locomotion is well founded. Man's

anatomy contemplates the use of the legs in supporting the weight of

the body. His physical powers are most naturally and advantageously

brought into play while using the feet as the point of support. It is

around and from this centre of support that the upper part of the body

achieves its free and vigorous performances.

The deformities of gymnasts, to which Dr. Dixon and many others have

called attention, are produced in great part by substituting arms for

legs. I need scarcely say that ring, dumb-bell, club, and many other

similar exercises, with cane and sword practice, boxing, etc., are all

infinitely superior to the ladder and bar performances. In the new

system there is opportunity for all the strength, flexibility, and

skill which the most advanced gymnasts possess, with the priceless

advantage that the two sexes may mingle in the scene with equal

pleasure and profit.

I can but regard the common gymnasium as an institution of organized

selfishness. In its very structure it practically ignores woman. As I

have intimated, it provides for young men alone, who of all classes

least need a gymnasium. They have most out-door life; the active

games and sports are theirs; the instinct for motion compels them to a

great variety of active exercises, which no other class enjoys. Is it

not a strange mistake to provide a gymnasium for these alone?

But it is said, if you introduce women into the gymnasium, men will

have no opportunity for those difficult, daring feats which constitute

the charm of the place. If by this is meant that there can be no

competition between the sexes in lifting heavy weights, or turning

somersets, the objection holds good. But are not games of skill as

attractive as lifting kegs of nails? Women need not fall behind men in

those exercises which require grace, flexibility, and skill. In the

Normal Institute for Physical Education, where we are preparing

teachers of the new gymnastics, females succeed better than

males. Although not so strong, they are more flexible. There are in my

gymnasium at this time a good many ladies with whom the most ambitious

young man need not be ashamed to compete, unless the shame come from

his being defeated. Gentlemen will sacrifice nothing by joining their

lady-friends in the gymnasium. But suppose it costs them something; I

greatly mistake the meaning of their protestations of devotion, if

they are not quite willing to make the sacrifice.

Before proceeding farther, I desire to answer a question which wise

educators have asked:--"Do children require special gymnastic

training?" An eminent writer has recently declared his conviction that

boys need no studied muscle-culture. "Give them," he says, "the

unrestrained use of the grove, the field, the yard, the street, with

the various sorts of apparatus for boys' games and sports, and they

can well dispense with the scientific gymnasium."

With all our lectures, conversations, newspapers, and other similar

means of mental culture, we are not willing to trust the intellect

without scientific training. The poorest man in the State demands for

his children the culture of the organized school; and he is right. An

education left to chance and the street would be but a disjointed

product. To insure strength, patience, and consistency, there must be

methodical cultivation and symmetrical growth. But there is no need of

argument on this point. In regard to mental training, there is,

fortunately, among Americans, no difference of opinion.

Discriminating, systematic, scientific culture is our demand. No man

doubts that chess and the newspaper furnish exercise and growth; but

we hold that exercise and growth without qualification are not our

desire. We require that the growth shall be of a peculiar kind,--what

we call scientific and symmetrical. This is vital. The education of

chance would prove unbalanced, morbid, profitless.

_Is not this equally true of the body?_ Is the body one single

organ, which, if exercised, is sure to grow in the right way? On the

contrary, is it not an exceedingly complicated machine, the

symmetrical development of which requires discriminating, studied

management? With the thoughtful mind, argument and illustration are

scarcely necessary; but I may perhaps be excused by the intelligent

reader for one simple illustration. A boy has round or stooping

shoulders: hereby the organs of the chest and abdomen are all

displaced. Give him the freedom of the yard and street,--give him

marbles, a ball, the skates! Does anybody suppose he will become

erect? Must he not, for this, and a hundred other defects, have

special training?

Before our system of education can claim an approach to perfection, we

must have attached to each school a professor who thoroughly

comprehends the wants of the body, and knows practically the means by

which it may be made symmetrical, flexible, vigorous, and enduring.

Since we have, unhappily, become a military people, the soldier's

special training has been much considered as a means of general

physical culture. Numberless schools, public and private, have already

introduced the drill, and make it a part of each day's exercises.

But this mode of exercise can never furnish the muscle-culture which

we Americans so much need. Nearly all our exercise is of the lower

half of the body: we walk, we run up and down stairs, and thus

cultivate hips and legs, which, as compared with the upper half of the

body, are muscular. But our arms, shoulders, and chests are ill-formed

and weak. Whatever artificial muscular training is employed should be

specially adapted to the development of the upper half of the body.

Need I say that the military drill fails to bring into varied and

vigorous play the chest and shoulders? Indeed, in almost the entire

drill, are not these parts held immovably in one constrained position?

In all but the cultivation of erectness, the military drill is

singularly deficient in the requisites of a system of muscle-training

adapted to a weak-chested people.

Dancing, to say nothing of its almost inevitably mischievous

concomitants, brings into play chiefly that part of the body which is

already in comparative vigor, and which, besides, has little to do

directly with the size, position, and vigor of the vital organs.

Horseback exercise is admirable, and has many peculiar advantages

which can be claimed for no other training; but may it not be much

indulged while the chest and shoulders are left drooping and weak?

Skating is graceful and exhilarating; but, to say nothing of the

injury which not unfrequently attends the sudden change from the

stagnant heat of our furnaced dwellings to the bleak winds of the icy

lake, is it not true that the chest-muscles are so little moved that

the finest skating may be done with the arms folded?

I should be sorry to have any of these exercises abandoned. While some

of them demand reform, they are all, on the whole, exceedingly useful.

What I would urge is this: As bodily _symmetry_ is vital to the

highest physiological conditions, and as departure from symmetry is

the rule among all classes, but especially with Young America, we

must, to secure this symmetry, introduce into our system of physical

education a variety of special, studied means.

The new gymnastics are all adapted to music. A party may dance without

music. I have seen it done. But the exercise is a little dull.

Exercises with the upper extremities are as much improved by music as

those with the lower extremities. Indeed, with the former there is

much more need of music, as the arms make no noise, such as might

secure concert in exercises with the lower extremities.

A small drum, costing perhaps five dollars, which may be used as a

bass-drum, with one beating-stick, with which any one may keep time,

is, I suppose, the sort of music most classes in gymnastics will use

at first. And it has advantages. While it is less pleasing than some

other instruments, it secures more perfect concert than any other. The

violin and piano are excellent, but on some accounts the hand-organ is

the best of all.

Feeble and apathetic people, who have little courage to undertake

gymnastic training, accomplish wonders under the inspiration of

music. I believe three times as much muscle can be coaxed out, with

this delightful stimulus, as without it.

DUMB-BELL EXERCISES.

I have selected the dumb-bell as perhaps the happiest means by which

to illustrate the mischievous consequences of "heavy weights."

Thoughtful physiologists deeply regret the _lifting_ mania. In

every possible case, _lifting_ is an inferior means of physical

training, and for women and children, in short for nine-tenths of the

people, it is positively mischievous. I introduce the dumb-bell

exercises to illustrate and enforce this doctrine.

Heretofore dumb-bells have been made of metal. The weight in this

country has usually been considerable. The general policy at present

is to employ those as heavy as the health-seeker can "put up." In the

great German gymnastic institutes dumb-bells were formerly employed

weighing from fifty to one hundred pounds; but now Kloss and other

distinguished authors condemn such weights, and advocate those

weighing from two to five pounds. I think those weighing two pounds

are heavy enough for any man; and as it is important that they be of

considerable size, I introduced, some years ago, dumb-bells made of

wood. Every year my faith grows stronger in their superiority.

Some years since, before I had seen the work of Professor Kloss on the

Dumb-Bell, I published a paper upon the use of this piece of

apparatus, in which I stated the best weight for men as from two to

five pounds, and gave at length the reasons for the employment of such

light weights, and the objections to heavy ones. I was filled, not

with pride, but with profound satisfaction, while engaged in

translating Kloss's work recently, to find, as fundamental with this

great author, identically the same weights and reasons.

In my early experience as a teacher of gymnastics I advocated the use

of heavy dumb-bells, prescribing those weighing one hundred pounds for

persons who could put up that weight. As my success had always been

with heavy weights, pride led me to continue their use long after I

had begun to doubt the wisdom of such a course.

I know it will be said that dumb-bells of two pounds' weight will do

for women and children, but cannot answer the requirements of strong

men.

The weight of the dumb-bell is to be determined entirely by the manner

in which it is used. If only lifted over the head, one or two pounds

would be absurdly light; but if used as we employ them, then one

weighing ten pounds is beyond the strength of the strongest. No man

can enter one of my classes of little girls even, and go through the

exercises with dumb-bells weighing ten pounds each.

We had a good opportunity to laugh at a class of young men, last year,

who, upon entering the gymnasium, organized an insurrection against

the wooden dumb-bells, and through a committee asked me to procure

iron ones; I ordered a quantity, weighing three pounds each; they used

them part of one evening, and when asked the following evening which

they would have, replied, "The wooden ones will do."

A just statement of the issue is this: If you only lift the dumb-bell

from the floor, put it up, and then put it down again, of course it

should be heavy, or there is no exercise; but if you would use it in a

great variety of ways, assuming a hundred graceful attitudes, and

bringing the muscles into exercise in every direction, requiring skill

and followed by an harmonious development, the dumb-bell must be

light.

There need be no controversy between the light-weight and the

heavy-weight party on this point. We of the light-weight party agree,

that, if the dumb-bell is to be used as the heavy-weight party uses

it, it must be heavy; but if as we use it, then it must be light. If

they of the heavy-weight party think not, we ask them to try it.

The only remaining question is that which lies between all heavy and

light gymnastics, namely, whether strength or flexibility is to be

preferred. Without entering upon a discussion of the physiological

principles underlying this subject, I will simply say that I prefer

the latter. The Hanlon brothers and Heenan are, physiologically

considered, greatly superior to heavy-lifters.

But here I ought to say that no man can be flexible without a good

degree of strength. It is not, however, the kind of strength involved

in heavy-lifting. Heenan is a very strong man, can strike a blow

twice as hard as Windship, but cannot lift seven hundred pounds nor

put up a ninety-pound dumb-bell. William Hanlon, who is probably the

finest gymnast, with the exception of Blondin, ever seen on this

continent, cannot lift six hundred pounds. Such men have a great fear

of lifting. They know, almost by instinct, that it spoils the muscles.

One of the finest gymnasts in the country told me that in several

attempts to lift five hundred pounds he failed, and that he should

never try it again. This same gymnast owns a fine horse. Ask him to

lend that horse to draw before a cart and he will refuse, because such

labor would make the animal stiff, and unfit him for light, graceful

movements before the carriage.

The same physiological law holds true of man: lifting great weights

affects him as drawing heavy loads affects the horse. So far from

man's body being an exception to this law, it bears with peculiar

force upon him. Moving great weights through small spaces produces a

slow, inelastic, inflexible man. No matter how flexible a young man

may be, let him join a circus-company, and lift the cannon twice a day

for two or three years, and he will become as inflexible as a

cart-horse. No matter how elastic the colt is when first harnessed to

the cart, he will soon become so inelastic as to be unfit to serve

before the carriage.

If it be suspected that I have any personal feeling against

Dr. Windship or other heavy-lifters, I will say that I regard all

personal motives in a work of such magnitude and beneficence as simply

contemptible. On the contrary, I am exceedingly grateful to this class

of gymnasts for their noble illustration of the possibilities in one

department of physical development.

Men, women, and children should be strong, but it should be the

strength of grace, flexibility, agility, and endurance; it should not

be the strength of a great lifter. I have alluded to the gymnastics of

the circus. Let all who are curious in regard to the point I am

discussing visit it. Permit me to call special attention to three

performers,--to the man who lifts the cannon, to the India-rubber man,

and to the general performer. The lifter and the India-rubber man

constitute the two mischievous extremes. It is impossible that in

either there should be the highest physiological conditions; but in

the persons of the Hanlon brothers, who are general performers, are

found the model gymnasts. They can neither lift great weights nor tie

themselves into knots, but they occupy a position between these two

extremes. They possess both strength and flexibility, and resemble

fine, active, agile, vigorous carriage-horses, which stand

intermediate between the slow cart-horse and the long-legged,

loose-jointed animal.

"Strength is health" has become a favorite phrase. But, like many

common saws, it is an error. Visit the first half-dozen circuses that

may come to town, and ask the managers whether the cannon-lifter or

the general performer has the better health. You will find in every

case it is the latter. Ask the doctors whether the cartmen, who are

the strongest men in the city, have better health than other classes,

who, like them, work in the open air, but with light and varied

labor. You will not find that the measure of strength is the measure

of health. Flexibility has far more to do with it.

Suppose we undertake the training of two persons, of average

condition. They have equal strength,--can lift four hundred

pounds. Each has the usual stiff shoulders, back, and limbs. One lifts

heavy weights until he can raise eight hundred pounds. Inevitably he

has become still more inflexible. The other engages in such exercises

as will remove all stiffness from every part of the body, attaining

not only the greatest flexibility, but the most complete

activity. Does any intelligent physiologist doubt that the latter will

have done most for the promotion of his health? that he will have

secured the most equable and complete circulation of the fluids, which

is essentially what we mean by health, and have added most to the

beauty and effectiveness of his physical action?

With heavy dumb-bells the extent of motion is very limited, and of

course the range and freedom of action will be correspondingly

so. This is a point of great importance. The limbs, and indeed the

entire body, should have the widest and freest range of motion. It is

only thus that our performances in the business or pleasures of life

become most effective.

A complete, equable circulation of the blood is thereby most perfectly

secured. And this, I may remark, is in one aspect the physiological

purpose of all exercise. The race-horse has a much more vigorous

circulation than the cart-horse. It is a fact not unfamiliar to

horsemen, that, when a horse is transferred from slow, heavy work to

the carriage, the surface-veins about the neck and legs begin at once

to enlarge; when the change is made from the carriage to the cart, the

reverse is the result.

And when we consider that the principal object of all physical

training is an elastic, vigorous condition of the nervous system, the

superiority of light gymnastics becomes still more obvious. The

nervous system is the fundamental fact of our earthly life. All other

parts of the organism exist and work for it. It controls all, and is

the seat of pain and pleasure. The impressions upon the stomach, for

example, resulting in a better or worse digestion, must be made

through the nerves. This supreme control of the nervous system is

forcibly illustrated in the change made by joyful or sad tidings. The

overdue ship is believed to have gone down with her valuable,

uninsured cargo. Her owner paces the wharf, sallow and wan,--appetite

and digestion gone. She heaves in sight! She lies at the wharf! The

happy man goes aboard, hears all is safe, and, taking the officers to

a hotel, devours with them a dozen monstrous compounds, with the

keenest appetite, and without a subsequent pang.

I am confident that the loyal people of this country have eaten and

digested, since Roanoke and Donelson, as they had not before since

Sumter.

Could we have an unbroken succession of good news, we should all have

good digestion without a gymnasium. But in a world of vexation and

disappointment, we are driven to the necessity of studied and unusual

muscle-culture, and other hygienic expedients, to give the nervous

system that support and vitality which our fitful surroundings deny.

If we would make our muscle-training contributive in the highest

degree to the healthful elasticity of our nerves, the exercises must

be such as will bring into varied combinations and play all our

muscles and nerves. Those exercises which require great accuracy,

skill, and dash are just those which secure this happy and complete

intermarriage of nerve and muscle. If any one doubts that boxing and

small-sword will do more to give elasticity and tone to the nervous

system than lifting kegs of nails, then I will give him over to the

heavy-lifters.

Another point I take the liberty to urge. Without _accuracy_ in

the performance of the feats, the interest must be transient. This

principle is strikingly exemplified in military training. Those who

have studied our infantry drill have been struck with its simplicity,

and have wondered that men could go through with its details every day

for years without disgust. If the drill-master permit carelessness,

then, authority alone can force the men through the evolutions; but if

he insist on the greatest precision, they return to their task every

morning, for twenty years, with fresh and increasing interest.

What precision, permit me to ask, is possible in "putting up" a heavy

dumb-bell? But in the new dumb-bell exercises there is opportunity

and necessity for all the accuracy and skill which are found in the

most elaborate military drills.

I have had experience in boxing and fencing, and I say with

confidence, that in neither nor both is there such a field for fine

posturing, wide, graceful action, and studied accuracy, as is to be

found in the new series of dumb-bell exercises.

But, it is said, if you use dumb-bells weighing only two pounds, you

must work an hour to obtain the exercise which the heavy ones would

furnish in five minutes. I need not inform those who have practised

the new series with the light dumb-bells that this objection is made

in ignorance. If you simply "put up" the light implement, it is true;

but if you use it as in the new system, it is not true. On the

contrary, in less than five minutes, legs, hips, back, arms,

shoulders, neck, lungs, and heart will each and all make the most

emphatic remonstrance against even a quarter of an hour's practice of

such feats.

At this point it may be urged that those exercises which quicken the

action of the thoracic viscera, to any considerable degree, are simply

exhaustive. This is another blunder of the "big-muscle" men. They seem

to think you can determine every man's constitution and health by the

tape-line; and that all exercises whose results are not determinable

by measurement are worthless.

I need scarcely say, there are certain conditions of brain, muscle,

and every other tissue, far more important than size; but what I

desire to urge more particularly in this connection is the importance,

the great physiological advantages, of just those exercises in which

the lungs and heart are brought into active play. These organs are no

exceptions to the law that exercise is the principal condition of

development. Their vigorous training adds more to the stock of

vitality than that of other organs. A man may stand still and lift

kegs of nails and heavy dumb-bells until his shoulders and arms are

Samsonian, it will contribute far less to his health and longevity

than a daily run of a mile or two.

Speaking in a general way, those exercises in which the lungs and

heart are made to go at a vigorous pace are to be ranked among the

most useful. The "double-quick" of the soldier contributes more in

five minutes to his digestion and endurance than the ordinary drill in

two hours.

I have said an elastic tone of the nervous system is the physiological

purpose of all physical training. If one may be allowed such an

analysis, I would add that we exercise our muscles to invigorate the

thoracic and abdominal viscera. These in their turn support and

invigorate the nervous system. All exercises which operate more

directly upon these internal organs--as, for example, laughing, deep

breathing, and running--contribute most effectively to the stamina of

the brain and nerves. It is only the popular mania for monstrous arms

and shoulders that could have misled the intelligent gymnast on this

point.

But finally, it is said, you certainly cannot deny that rapid motions

with great sweep exhaust more than slow motions through limited

spaces. A great lifter said to me the other day,--

"Do you pretend to deny that a locomotive with a light train, flying

at the rate of forty miles an hour, consumes more fuel than one with a

heavy train, moving at the rate of five miles?"

I did not attempt to deny it.

"Well, then," he added, with an air of triumph, "what have you to say

now about these great sweeping feats with your light dumb-bells, as

compared with the slow putting up of heavy ones?"

I replied by asking him another question.

"Do you pretend to deny, that, when you drive your horse ten miles

within an hour, before a light carriage, he is more exhausted than by

drawing a load two miles an hour?"

"That's my doctrine exactly," he said.

Then I asked,--

"Why don't you always drive two miles an hour?"

"But my patients would all die," replied my friend.

I did not say aloud what was passing in my mind,--that the danger to

his patients might be less than he imagined; but I suggested, that

most men, as well as most horses, had duties in this life which

involved the necessity of rapid and vigorous motions,--and that, were

this slow movement generally adopted, every phase of human life would

be stripped of progress, success, and glory.

As our artificial training is designed to fit us for the more

successful performance of the duties of life, I suggest that the

training should be, in character, somewhat assimilated to those

duties. If you would train a horse for the carriage, you would not

prepare him for this work by driving at a slow pace before a heavy

load. If you did, the first fast drive would go hard with him. Just so

with a man. If he is to lift hogsheads of sugar, or kegs of nails, as

a business, he may be trained by heavy-lifting; but if his business

requires the average activity and free motions of human occupations,

then, upon the basis of his heavy, slow training, he will find himself

in actual life in the condition of the dray-horse who is pushed before

the light carriage at a high speed.

Perhaps it is not improper to add that all this talk about expenditure

of vitality is full of sophistry. Lecturers and writers speak of our

stock of vitality as if it were a vault of gold, upon which you cannot

draw without lessening the quantity. Whereas, it is rather like the

mind or heart, enlarging by action, gaining by expenditure.

When Daniel Boone was living alone in Kentucky, his intellectual

exercises were doubtless of the quiet, slow, heavy character. Other

white men joined him. Under the social stimulus, his thinking became

more sprightly. Suppose that in time he had come to write vigorously,

and to speak in the most eloquent, brilliant manner, does any one

imagine that he would have lost in mental vigor by the process? Would

not the brain, which had only slow exercise in his isolated life,

become bold, brilliant, and dashing, by bold, brilliant, and dashing

efforts?

A farm-boy has slow, heavy muscles. He has been accustomed to heavy

exercises. He is transferred to the circus, and performs, after a few

years' training, a hundred beautiful, splendid feats. He at length

reaches the matchless Zampillacrostation of William Hanlon. Does any

one think that his body has lost power in this brilliant education?

Is it true, either in intellectual or physical training, that great

exertions, under proper conditions and limitations, exhaust the powers

of life? On the contrary, is it not true that we find in vigorous,

bold, dashing, brilliant efforts the only source of vigorous, bold,

dashing, and brilliant powers?

In this discussion I have not considered the treatment of

invalids. The principles presented are applicable to the training of

children and adults of average vitality.

I will rest upon the general statement, that all persons, of both

sexes, and of every age, who are possessed of average vitality,

should, in the department of physical education, employ light

apparatus, and execute a great variety of feats which require skill,

accuracy, courage, presence of mind, quickness of eye and hand,--in

brief, which demand a vigorous and complete exercise of all the powers

and faculties with which the Creator has endowed us; while deformed

and diseased persons should be treated in consonance with the

philosophy of the _Swedish Movement-Cure_, in which the movements

are slow and limited.

It is but justice to the following series of exercises with dumb-bells

to state that not only are they, with two or three exceptions, the

writer's own invention, but the wisdom of the precise arrangement

given, as well as the balance of exercise in all the muscles of the

body and limbs, has been well proved by an extensive use during

several years.

By way of illustrating the new system of dumb-bell exercises, I

subjoin a few cuts. The entire series contains more than fifty

exercises.

The pupil, assuming these five positions, in the order presented,

twists the arms. In each twisting, the ends of the dumb-bells should,

if possible, be exactly reversed. Great precision will sustain the

interest through a thousand repetitions of this or any other

exercise. The object in these twisting exercises is to break up all

rigidity of the muscles and ligaments about the shoulder-joint. To

remove this should be the primary object in gymnastic training. No one

can have examined the muscles of the upper half of the body without

being struck with the fact that nearly all of them diverge from the

shoulder like a fan. Exercise of the muscles of the upper part of the

back and chest is dependent upon the shoulder. It is the centre from

which their motions are derived. As every one not in full training has

inflexibility of the parts about the shoulder-joint, this should be

the first object of attack. These twistings are well calculated to

effect the desired result. While practising them, the position should

be a good one,--head, shoulders, and hips drawn far back.

In our attempts to correct stooping shoulders, one good series of

exercises is found in thrusting the dumb-bells directly upwards. While

performing this the positions must be varied. A few illustrations are

offered.

As effective means by which to call into vigorous play neck,

shoulders, back, hips, arms, and legs, I submit the following

exercises.

THE GYMNASTIC CROWN.

Bearing burdens on the head results in an erect spine and

well-balanced gait. Observing persons, who have visited Switzerland,

Italy, or the Gulf States, have noticed a thousand verifications of

this physiological law.

Cognizant of the value of this feature of gymnastic training, I have

employed, within the last twelve years, various sorts of weights, but

have recently invented an iron crown, which I think completely

satisfactory. I have it made to weigh from five to thirty pounds. It

is so padded within that it rests pleasantly on the head, and yet so

arranged that it requires skill to balance it.

The skull-cap, which is fitted to the top of the head, must have an

opening of two inches in diameter at the crown, so that that part of

the head shall receive no pressure. If this be neglected, many persons

will suffer headache. The skull-cap should be made of strong cotton,

and supported with a sliding cord about the centre. With such an

arrangement, a feeble girl can easily carry a crown, weighing ten or

fifteen pounds, sufficiently long, morning and evening, to secure an

erect spine in a few months.

The crown which I employ is so constructed as to admit within itself

two others, whereby it may be made to weigh nine, eighteen, or

twenty-seven pounds, at the pleasure of the wearer. This is a

profitable arrangement, as in the first use nine pounds might be as

heavy as could be well borne, while twenty-seven pounds could be as

easily borne after a few weeks.

The crown may be used at home. It has been introduced into schools

with excellent results.

Instead of this iron crown, a simple board, with an oblong rim on one

side so padded with hair that the crown of the head entirely escapes

pressure, may prove a very good substitute. The upholsterer should so

fill the pad that the wearer will have difficulty in balancing it. It

may be loaded with bags of beans.

RULES FOR WEARING THE CROWN OR OTHER WEIGHT ON THE HEAD.

Wear it five to fifteen minutes morning and evening. Hold the body

erect, hips and shoulders thrown far back, and the crown rather on the

front of the head.

Walk up and down stairs, keeping the body very erect. While walking

through the hall or parlors, first turn the toes inward as far as

possible; second, outward; third, walk on the tips of the toes;

fourth, on the heels; fifth, on the right heel and left toe; sixth, on

the left heel and right toe; seventh, walk without bending the knees;

eighth, bend the knees, so that you are nearly sitting on the heels

while walking; ninth, walk with the right leg bent at the knee, rising

at each step on the straight left leg; tenth, walk with the left leg

bent, rising at each step on the straight right leg.

With these ten different modes of walking, the various muscles of the

back will receive the most invigorating exercise.

Wearing the crown is the most valuable of all exercises for young

people. If perseveringly practised, it would make them quite erect,

give them a noble carriage of the head, and save them from those

maladies of the chest which so frequently take their rise in drooping

shoulders.

EXERCISES WITH RINGS.

After the exercises with the crown, those with the new gymnastic ring

are the best ever devised. Physiologists and gymnasts have everywhere

bestowed upon them the most unqualified commendation. Indeed, it is

difficult to conceive any other series so complete in a physiological

point of view, and so happily adapted to family, school, and general

use.

If a man were as strong as Samson, he would find in the use of these

rings, with another man of equal muscle, the fullest opportunity to

exert his utmost strength; while the frailest child, engaged with one

of equal strength, would never be injured.

There is not a muscle in the entire body which may not be brought into

direct play through the medium of the rings. And if one particular

muscle or set of muscles is especially deficient or weak, the exercise

may be concentrated upon that muscle or set of muscles.

Wherever these rings are introduced, they will obtain favor and awaken

enthusiasm.

The rings are made of three pieces of wood, glued together with the

grain running in opposite directions. They are round, six inches in

diameter with body one inch thick, and finished with a hard, smooth

polish.

The first series with the rings consists of a number of twisting

exercises with the arms. Not only are these valuable in producing

freedom about the shoulder-joint, which, as has been explained, is a

great desideratum, but twisting motions of the limbs contribute more

to a rounded, symmetrical development than any other exercises. If the

flexors and extensors are exercised in simple, direct lines, the

muscular outlines will be too marked.

In twisting with the rings, the arms may be drawn into twenty

positions, thus producing an almost infinite variety of action in the

arm and shoulder.

Two of the positions assumed in this series are shown in the cuts.

It is our policy in these exercises to pull with a force of from five

to fifty pounds, and thus add indefinitely to the effectiveness of the

movements.

To illustrate a few of the many hundred exercises possible with rings,

the subjoined cuts are introduced.

In this exercise, the rings are made to touch the floor, as shown, in

alternation with the highest point they can be made to reach, all

without bending the knees or elbows.

The hands are thrust upward, outward, and downward with force.

The hands are thrust forward and drawn backward in alternation as far

as the performers can reach.

It will be understood that in none of these exercises are the

performers to maintain the illustrated positions for a single

moment. As in dancing, there is constant motion and change, while the

music secures concert. When, by marks on the floor, the performers are

kept in linear rank and file, the scene is most exhilarating to

participants and spectators.

The above are specimens of the many _charges_ with the

rings. Shoulders, arms, back, and legs receive an incomparable

training. In constant alternation with the charges, the pupils rise to

the upright position; and when the company move simultaneously to the

music, few scenes are so brilliant.

_In most exercises there must be some resistance. How much better

that this should be another human being, rather than a pole, ladder,

or bar! It is social, and constantly changing._

EXERCISES WITH WANDS.

A straight, smooth stick, four feet long, (three feet for children,)

is known in the gymnasium as a _wand_. It is employed to

cultivate flexibility, and is useful to persons of all ages and

degrees of strength.

Of this series there are sixty-eight exercises in the new system, but

I have space only for a few illustrations.

EXERCISES WITH BEAN-BAGS.

The use of small bags filled with beans, for gymnastic exercise, was

suggested to my mind some years since, while attempting to devise a

series of games with large rubber-balls. Throwing and catching objects

in certain ways, requiring skill and presence of mind, not only

affords good exercise of the muscles of the arms and upper half of the

body, but cultivates a quickness of eye and coolness of nerve very

desirable. Appreciating this, I employed large rubber-balls, but was

constantly annoyed at the irregularities resulting from the difficulty

of catching them. When the balls were but partially inflated, it was

observed that the hand could better seize them. This at length

suggested the bean-bags. Six years' use of these bags has resulted in

the adoption of those weighing from two to five pounds, as the best

for young people. The bags should be very strong, and filled

three-quarters full with clean beans. The beans must be frequently

removed and the bags washed, so that the hands and dress may not be

soiled, nor the lungs troubled with dust.

Forty games have been devised. If managers of schools are unwilling to

_study_ these games, and organize their practice, it is hoped

they will reject them altogether. If well managed, a school of young

ladies will use the bags half an hour every day for years, and their

interest keep pace with their skill; but mismanaged, as they generally

have been, it is a marvel, if the interest continues through a single

quarter.

The following cuts may serve to illustrate some of the

bag-exercises. It will be observed that the players appear to be

looking and throwing somewhat upward. Most of the exercises

illustrated are performed by couples,--the bags being thrown to and

fro. It has been found advantageous, where it is convenient, to

suspend a series of hoops between the players, and require them to

throw the bags through these hoops, which, being elevated several

feet, compel the players to assume the positions seen in the figures.

With the bean-bags there are numberless possible games, requiring eye

and hand so quick, nerves so cool, skill and endurance so great, that

the most accomplished has ever before him difficulties to be

surmounted.

In a country where pulmonary maladies figure so largely in the bills

of mortality, a complete system of physical training must embrace

special means for the development of the respiratory apparatus. The

new system is particularly full and satisfactory in this

department. Its spirometers and other kindred agencies leave nothing

to be desired.

Physiologists and teachers believe that the new system of gymnastics

is destined to establish a new era in physical education. It is

ardently hoped that events may justify their confidence.

MR. AXTELL.

PART I.

I cannot tell who built it. It is a queer piece of architecture, a

fragment, that has been thrown off in the revolutions of the wheel

mechanical, this tower of mine. It doesn't seem to belong to the

parsonage. It isn't a part of the church now, if ever it has been. No

one comes to service in it, and the only voiced worshipper who sends

up little winding eddies through its else currentless air is I.

My sister said "I will" one day, (naughty words for little children,)

and so it came to pass that she paid the penalty by coming to live in

the parsonage with a very grave man. And he preaches every Sunday out

of the little square pulpit, overhung by a great, tremulous

sounding-board, to the congregation, sitting silently listening below,

within the church.

I come every year to the parsonage, and in my visiting-time I occupy

this tower. It is quite deserted when I am away, for I carry the key,

and keep it with me wherever I go. I hang it at night where I can see

the great shadow wavering on the ceiling above my head, when the jet

of gas, trembling in the night-wind below, sends a shimmer of light

into my room.

It is a skeleton-key. It wouldn't open ordinary homes. There's a

something about it that seems to say, as plainly as words _can_

say, "There are prisoners within"; and as oft as my eyes see it

hanging there, I say, "I am your jailer."

On the first day of March, in the year one thousand eight hundred and

sixty, I arrived at the parsonage. It was early morning when I saw the

little wooden church-"steeple," in the distance, and the sun was not

risen when she who said the "naughty words" and the grave minister

came out to welcome me.

Ere the noontide came, I had learned who had gone from the village,

all unattended, on the mysterious journey, since last I had been

there. There were new souls within the town. And a few, that had been

two, were called one. These things I heard whilst the minister sat in

his study up-stairs, and held his head upon his hands, thinking over

the theology of the schools; his wife, meanwhile, in the room below,

working out a strange elective predestination, free-will gifts to be,

for some little ones that had strayed into the fold to be warmed and

clothed and fed. At length the village "news" having all been imparted

to me, I gave a thought to my tower.

"How is the old place?" asked I, as my sister paused a moment in the

cutting out of a formula for a coat, destined for a growing boy.

"Don't get excited about the tower yet, Sister Anna," she said; "let

it alone one day."

"Oh, I can't, Sophie!" I said; "it's such a length of days since I sat

in the grated window!"--and I looked out as I spoke.

Square and small and high stood the tower, as high as the church's

eaves.

"What could it have been built for?"

I knew not that I had spoken my thought, until Sophie answered,--

"We have found out recently that the tower was here when the first

church was built. It may have been here, for aught we know, before

white men came."

"Perhaps the church was built near to it for safety," I suggested.

"It has been very useful," said Sophie. "Not long ago, the first

night in January, I think, Mr. Bronson came to see my husband. He

lived here when he was a boy, and remembers stories told by his father

of escapes, from the church to the tower, of women and children, at

the approach of Indians. One stroke of the bell during service, and

all obeyed the signal. Deserted was the church, and peopled the

tower, when the foes came up to meet the defenders outside."

"I knew my darling old structure had a history," said I. "Is there

time for me to take one little look before dinner?"

"No," somewhat hastily said Sophie; "and I don't wish you to go up

there alone."

"Don't wish me to go alone, Sophie? Why, I have spent hours there,

and never a word said you."

"I--believe--the--place--is--haunted," slowly replied she, "by living,

human beings."

"Never! Why, Sophie, think how absurd! Here's the key,--a great,

strong, honest key; where could another be found to open the heavy

door? Such broad, true wards it has,--look, and believe!"

As if unhearing, Sophie went on,--

"I certainly heard a voice in there one day. Old Mother Hudson died,

and was buried in the corner, close beside the church. My husband went

away as soon as the burial was over, and I came across the graveyard

alone. It was a bright winter's day, with the ground all asnow, and no

footstep had broken the fleecy white that lay on my way. As I passed

under the tower I heard a voice, and the words, too, Anna, as plainly

as ever spoken words were heard."

"What were they, Sophie?"

"'But hope will not die; it has a root of life that goes down into the

granite formation; human hand cannot reach it.'"

"Who said it?" I asked.

"That is the mystery, Anna. The words were plainly spoken; the voice

was that of one who has sailed out into the region of great storms,

and found that heavy calms are more oppressive."

"Was it voice of man?"

"Yes, deep and earnest."

"Where did it come from?"

"From the high window up there, I thought."

"And there were no footsteps near?"

"I told you, none; my own were the first that had crossed the

church-yard that day."

"You know, Sophie, we voice our own thoughts sometimes all

unknowingly; and knowing the thought only, we might dissever the

voice, and call it another's."

Sophie looked up from the table upon which she had been so

industriously cutting, and holding in one hand an oddly shapen sleeve,

she gave a demonstrative wave at me, and said,--

"Anna, your distinctions are too absurd for reason to examine

even. Have I a voice that _could command an army_, or shout out

orders in a storm at sea? Have I the voice of a man?"

Sophie had a depth of azure in her eyes that looked ocean-deep into an

interior soul; she had softly purplish windings of hair around a low,

cool brow, that said, "There are no torrid thoughts in me." And yet I

always felt that there was an equator in Sophie's soul, only no mortal

could find it. Looking at her, as thus she stood, I forgot that she

Lad questioned me.

"Why do you look at me so?" she asked. "Answer me! Have I the voice of

a man? Listen now! Hear Aaron up-stairs: he's preaching to himself, to

convince himself that some thorn in theology grows naturally: could I

do that?"

"Your voice, I fancy, can do wonders: but about the theology, I don't

believe you like thorns in it; I think you would break one off at

once, and cast it out";--and I looked again at the rough tower, and

ran my fingers over the strong protective key in my hands.

"Don't look that way, Anna,--please don't!--for your footsteps have an

ugly way of following some will-o'-the-wisp that goes out of your

eyes. I know it,--I've seen it all your life," Sophie urged, as I

shook my head in negation.

"Will you lend me this hood?" I asked, as I took up one lying near.

"If you are determined to go; but do wait. Aaron shall go with you

after dinner; he will have settled the thorn by that time."

"What for should I take Aaron up the winding stairs? There is no

parishioner in want or dying up there."

And I tied the hood about my head, and in a wrapping-shawl, closely

drawn,--for cold and cannon-like came the bursts of wind down through

the mountain valleys,--I went out. Through the path, hedged with

leafless lilac-shrubs, just athrob with the mist of life sent up from

the roots below, I went, and crossed the church-yard fence. Winding in

and out among the graves,--for upon a heart, living and joyous, or

still and dead, I cannot step,--I took my way. "Dear old tower, I have

thee at last!" I said; for I talk to unanswering things all over the

world. In crowded streets I speak, and murmur softly to highest

heights.

But I quite forgot to tell what my tower was built like, and of what

it was made. A few miles away, a mountain, neither very large nor very

high, has met with some sad disaster that cleaved its stony shell, and

so, time out of memory, the years have stolen into its being, and

winter frosts have sadly cut it up, and all along its rocky ridges,

and thickly at its base, lie beds of shaly fragments, as various in

form and size as the autumn-leaves that November brings.

I've traced these bits of broken stone all the way from yonder

mountain hither; and that once my tower stood firm and fast in the

hill's heart, I know.

There are sides and curves, concaves and convexities, and angles of

every degree, in the stones that make up my tower. The vexing question

is, What conglomerated the mass?

No known form of cement is here, and so the simple village-people say,

"It was not built by the present race of men."

On the northern side of the tower leaves of ungathered snow still lay.

In the key-hole all winter must have been dead, crispy, last-year

leaves, mingled with needles of the pine-tree that stands in the

church-yard corner; for I drew out fragment after fragment, before I

could find room for my key. At last the opening was free, and my

precious bit of old iron had given intimation of doing duty and

letting me in, when a touch upon my shoulder startled me.

'T was true the wind was as rude as possible, but I knew it never

could grasp me in that way. It was Aaron.

"What is the matter?" I asked; for he had come without his hat.

My brother-in-law, rejoicing in the authoritative name of Aaron,

looked decidedly foolish, as I turned my clear brown eyes upon him,

standing flushed and anxious, with only March wind enveloping his hair

all astir with breezes of Theology and Nature.

"Sophie sent me," he said, with all the meekness belonging to a former

family that had an Aaron in it.

"What does Sophie wish?" I asked.

"She says it's dinner-time."

"And did she send you out in such a hurry to tell me that?"

"No, Anna,"--and the importance of his mission grew upon him, for he

spoke quite firmly,--"Sophie is troubled and anxious about your visit

to this tower; please turn the key and come away."

"I will, if you give me good reason," I said.

"Why do you wish to go up, just now?"

"Simply because I like it."

"To gratify a passing fancy?"

"Nothing more, I do assure you; but why shouldn't I?"--and I grasped

the key with a small attempt at firmness of purpose.

"Because Sophie dislikes it. She called to me to come and keep you

from going in; there was distress in her manner. Won't you come away,

for now?"

He had given me a reason. I rejoice in being reasonable. I lent him a

bit of knitting-work that I happened to have brought with me, with

which he kept down his locks, else astray, and walked back with him.

"You are not offended?" he asked, as we drew near to the door.

"Oh, no!"

Sophie hid something that had been very close to her eyes, as we went

in.

My brother-in-law gave me back my strip of knitting-work, and went

upstairs.

"You think I'm selfish, Anna," spoke Sophie, when he was gone.

"I don't."

"You can't help it, I think."

"But I can. I recognize a law of equilibrium that forbids me to think

so."

"How? What is the law like?"

"Did you ever go upon the top of a great height, whether of building

or earth?"

"Oh, yes,--and I'm not afraid at all. I can go out to the farthest

edge, where other heads would feel the motion of the earth, perhaps,

and I stand firm as though the north-pole were my support."

"That is just it," replied I. "Now it puts all my fear in action, and

imagination works indescribable horrors in my mind, to stand even upon

a moderate elevation, or to see a little child take the first steps at

the head of a staircase; and I think it would be the height of cruelty

for you to go and stand where it gave me such pain."

"I wouldn't do it knowingly,"--and the blue in Sophie's eyes was misty

as she spoke.

"How did you feel about my going into the tower a few moments ago?"

"As you would, if you saw me on a jutting rock over the age-chiselled

chasm at Niagara."

"Thus I felt that it would be wrong to go in, though I had no

fear. But you will go with me, perhaps, this afternoon; I can't quite

give up my devotion."

"If Aaron can't, I will," she said; but a bit of pallor whitened her

face as she promised.

I thoroughly hate ghosts. There is an antagonism between mystery and

me. My organs of hearing have been defended by the willingest of

fingers, from my childhood, against the slightest approach of the

appearance or the actions of one, as pictured in description. I think

I'm afraid. But in the mid-day flood of sunlight, and the great sweep

of air that enveloped my tower, standing very near to the church,

where good words only were spoken, and where prayers were prayed by

true-hearted people, _why_ should my cool-browed sister Sophie

deter me from a pleasure simple and true, one that I had grown to

like, weaving fancies where I best pleased? I asked myself this

question, with a current of impatience flowing beneath it, as I waited

for Sophie to finish the "sewing-society work," which must go to

Deacon Downs's before two of the clock.

I know she did not hasten. I know she wished for an interruption; but

none came. The work-basket was duly sent off, whither Sophie soon must

follow; for her hands, and her good, true heart, were both in the work

she had taken up to do. Sophie won't lay it down discouraged; she

sees plains of verdure away on,--a sort of _mirage_ of the

mind. I cannot. It is not given unto me.

I had prepared the way to open the door of the tower when Aaron

interrupted me in the morning. I didn't keep Sophie standing long in

the wind, but she was trembling when I said,--

"Help me a little; my door has grown heavy this winter."

It creaked on its hinges, rusted with the not-far-away sea-air; and a

good strong pull, from four not very strong hands, was necessary to

admittance. Darkness was inside, except the light that we let in. We

stood a little, to accustom our eyes to the glimmer of rays that came

down from the high-up window, and those that went up from the open

door. At length they met, and mingled in a half-way gloom. There were

broad winding stairs, with every inch of standing-room well used; for

wherever within a mortal might be, there was fixed a foundation.

"What's the use of going up, Anna? It's only a few minutes that we

can stay."

Sophie looked pale and weary.

"You shall not," I said; "stay here; let me reconnoitre: I'll come

down directly."

I left her standing outside,--or rather, I felt her going out, as I

ran lightly on, up the rude stairway. Past a few of the landings, (how

short the way seemed this day!) and I was beside the window. I looked

across into the belfry of the church, lying scarce a hundred feet

away. I thought it was bird-time; but no,--deserted were the beamy

rafters and the spaces between.

What is this upon the window-bar? A scrap, a shred of colored

fabric. "It has been of woman's wear," thought I, as I took the little

bit from off its fastening-hook; "but how came it here? It isn't

anything that I have worn, nor Sophie. A grave, brown, plaid morsel of

a woman's dress, up here in my tower, locked all the winter, and the

key never away from me!"

Ah! what is that? A paper, on the floor. I got down from the high

window-ledge, where I had climbed to get the piece of cloth, and

picked up an envelope, or as much of one as the mysterious visitor had

left. The name, once upon it, was so severed that I could not link the

fragments.

I heard a voice away down the winding stair. It was Sophie, calling,

because I stayed so long. I hid the trophies of my victory, for I

considered my coming to be a style of conquering, and relieved her

waiting by my presence.

"Perhaps you were afraid to come up?" I asked, as I joined her.

"I was, and I was not," she said; "but please hurry, Anna, and lock

the door, for we shall be late at 'Society.'"

"No one knows that I am here as yet," I pleaded, "and I feel a little

weary with having been last night on the steamboat. Suppose you let

me stay quietly at home. I don't feel like talking, and you know I'm

not of much assistance in deeds of finger-charity."

"And will you not get lonely?"

"Not a bit of it,--or if I do, there's Aaron up-stairs; he doesn't

mind my pulling his sermons in pieces, for want of better amusement."

Thus good sister Sophie let me escape scrutiny and observation on the

first day of March, 1860. How recent it is, scarcely a week old, the

time!

Sophie went her way to Deacon Downs's farm-house up the hill, to tire

her fingers out with stitches put in, to hear the village grievances

told over, and to speak her words of womanly kindness. I walked a

little of the way with her; then, in turning back, I remembered that

Aaron would think me gone with Sophie; so I had the time, four full

hours, to dream my dreams and weave my fancies in.

I took out my envelope, and tried to find a name to fit it among the

good people whose names were known to me. The wind was blowing in my

face. A person came up and passed me by, as I, with head bent over the

paper, walked slowly. I only noticed that he turned to see what I was

doing. At the paper bit he cast only the slightest glance.

The church-door was open. This was the day for sweeping out the Sunday

dust. "Is there any record here, any old, forgotten list of deeds

done by the early church?" I questioning thought. "There's a new

sexton, I heard Aaron say,--a man who used, years ago, to fulfil the

duties; perhaps he'll know something of the tower. I'll ask him this

very afternoon."

In the vestibule lay the brooms and brushes used in renovating the

place, the windows were open, but no soul was inside. I walked up the

central aisle, and read the mortuary tablets on either pulpit-side. We

sometimes like to read that which we best know, and the words on these

were written in the air wherever I went, still I chose the

marble-reading that day.

A little church-mouse ran along the rail, and stopped a moment at the

baptismal basin, but, finding no water left by careless sexton there,

it continued its journey up the pulpit-stairs, and I saw the hungry

little thing go gnawing at the corner of the Book wherein is the Bread

of Life. I threw a pine-tree cone that I had gathered in my walk up at

the little Vandal, and went out.

"I'll wait for the sexton in my tower," thought I; "he'll not be long

away, and I can see him as he comes."

I looked cautiously up at the study-windows ere I went into the

tower. I took out the key, for it fastened only on the outside, and

closed myself tightly in. A moment of utter darkness, then the thread

of light was let down to me from above. I caught at it, and, groping

up the stairs, gained my high window-seat. Without the tower, I saw

the deep-sea line, crested with short white waves, the far-away

mountain, and all the valley that lay between, while just below me,

surging close to the tower's base, were the graves of those who had

gone down into the deeper, farther-away Sea of Death, the terrible

sea! What _must_ its storms be to evolve such marble foam as that

which the shore of our earth receives?

"O Death, Death! what art thou?" my spirit cried out in words, and

only the dream of Life answered me. In the midst of it, I saw the

person who had passed me as I examined the envelope coming up the

street churchward. Not a sound of life or of motion came from the

building, and I must have heard the slightest movement, for my window

was only of iron bars. Losing sight of this face new to me, I lost the

memory of it in my dream. Still, this figure coming up the silent

village-street on that afternoon I found had unwoven the heavier part

of my vision; and to restore it, I took from my pocket, for the second

time, my two treasures.

Oh, how I did glory in those two wisps of material! The fragment of

envelope had come from a foreign land. What contained it once? joy or

sorrow? Was the recipient worthy, or the gift true? And I went on

with the imaginary story woven out of the shreds of fabric before me

until it filled all my vision, when suddenly fancy was hushed to

repose,--for, as sure as I sat there, living souls had come into the

tower below.

How?

All was darkness down there; not one ray of light since I shut the

door. Why did I do it?

It was the fear that Aaron in his study would see me.

Voices, confused and indistinct, I heard, sending bubbling words up

through the sea of darkness down below. At first I did not try to

hear; I listened only to the great throbbings of my own heart, until

there came the sound of a woman's voice. It was eager, anxious, and

pained. It asked,--

"Did he see you?"

A man's voice, deep and earnest, answered,--

"No, no; hush, child!"

"This is dreadful!"

"But I know I was not seen. And here you are sure no one ever comes?"

--and I heard a hand going over the great door down there, to find the

latch.

"Yes, no one ever comes but the minister's wife's sister. She takes a

fancy to the dreariness, and always carries the key with her. She's

away, and no one can get in."

"Shall we go up higher, nearer to the window?"

"No. I must wait but a moment; I have something yet to do."

I heard the deep voice say,--

"Oh, woman's moments, how much there is in one of them! Will you sit

on this step? But you won't heed what I have to say, I know."

"I always heed you, Herbert. What have you to say? Speak quickly."

"Sit here, upon this step."

A moment's rustling pause in the darkness down below, and then the

far-out-at-sea voice spoke again.

"Do you send me away?"

"Indeed you must go; it is terrible to have you here. Think, what if

you had been seen!"

"I know, I know; but you won't go with me?"

"Why are you cruel, uselessly?" said the pleading voice of woman.

"Cruel? Who? I cruel?"

"What is it that keeps me? Answer me that!"

"Your will is all."

Silence one moment,--two,--and an answer came.

"Herbert! Herbert! is it _you_ speaking to _me_? My will

keeping me? Who hath sinned?"

The sound of a soul in torture came eddying up in confused words; all

that came to the mortal ear, listening unseen, were, "Forgive--I--I

only"----

A few murmurous sounds, and then the voice that had uttered its

confession in that deep confessional of a gloomy soul said, and there

was almost woman's pleadingness in it,--

"When can I come again?"

"I will write to you."

"When will you write?"

"When one more soul is gone."

"Oh, it's wicked to shorten life by wishes even! but when one has done

one terrible wrong, little wickednesses gather fast."

Woman has a pathos, when she pleads for God, deeper than when she

pleads for anything on earth. That pleading,--I can't make you hear

it,--the words were,--

"Herbert! Herbert! don't you see, _won't you see_, that, if you

leave the one great sin all uncovered, open to the continual attrition

of a life of goodness, God _will_ let it wear away? It will

lessen and lessen, until at the last, when the Ocean of Eternity beats

against it, it shall go down, down into the deeps of love that no

mortal line can fathom. Oh, Herbert, come out with me!--come out into

this Infinity of Love!"

"With you? yes, anywhere!"

"Oh, oh! this is it!--_this is man!_ It isn't _my_ love that

you want; it isn't the little one-grained thing that the Angel of Life

takes from out of Heaven's granary and scatters into the human soul;

it is the great Everlasting, a sempiternity of love, that _you_

want, Herbert!"

"And you can't give it to me?"

"No, I will ask it for you; and you will ask it for yourself?"

"Only tell me how."

"You know how to ask for human love."

"Yours, yes; but then I haven't sinned against you."

"Have you not, Herbert?"

"Well,--but not in the same way. I haven't gone beyond the measure of

your affection, I feel that it is larger than my sin, or I could not

be here."

"Tell me how you know this. What is the feeling like?"

"What is it like? Why, when I come to you, I don't forever feel it

rising up with a thousand speary heads that shut you out; it drowns in

your presence; the surface is cool and clear, and I can look down,

down, into the very heart of my sin, like that strange lake we looked

into one day,--do you remember it?--the huge branches and leafless

trunks of gigantic pines coming up stirless and distinct almost to the

surface; and do you remember the little island there, and the old

tradition that it was the feasting-place of a tribe of red men, who

displeased the Great Spirit by their crimes, and in direful

punishment, one day, when they were assembled on their mountain, it

suddenly gave way beneath them, and all were drowned in the flood of

waters that rushed up, except one good old squaw who occupied one of

the peaks that is now the island?"

"And so I am the good old squaw?" said the lady.

"For all that I can see in the darkness."

"But that makes me better than the many who lie below;--the squaw was

good, you remember. But how did she get off of the island? Pity

tradition didn't tell us. Loon's Island, in Lake Mashapaug in

Killingly, wasn't it?"

A little silence came, broken by the words,--

"It's so long since I have been with you!"

"Yes, and it's time that I was gone."

"Not a few moments more?--not even to go back to the old subject?"

"No,--it's wrong,--it perils you. You put away your sin when you come

to the little drop of my love; go and hide it forever in the sea that

every hour washes at your feet."

"You'll write?"

"I will."

I heard a sound below, like the drawing of a match across a stone;

then a faint bit of glimmer flickered a moment. I couldn't see where

they were. I bent forward a little, in vain.

"My last match," said the lady. "What shall we do? We can't go

through in the darkness."

"We must. I will go first. Give me your hand. Now, three steps down,

then on; come,--fear nothing."

A heavy sound, as of some ponderous weight let fall, and I knew that

the only living soul in there was hers who sat with hands fast hold of

frosty bars, high up in the window of the tower.

I left fragments of the skin of my fingers upon the cold iron, in pay

for the woollen bit I had taken thence.

I ventured down a step or two. Beyond was inky darkness. If only a

speck of light were down below! Why did I shut the door? Go on I could

not. I turned my face upward, where the friendly light, packing up

its robes of every hue for the journey of a night, looked kindly

in. And so I went back, and sat in my usual seat, and watched the

going day, as, one by one, she took down from forest-pegs and

mountain-hooks breadths of silver, skirts of gold, folding silently

the sheeny vestments, pressing down each shining fold, gathering from

the bureau of the sea, with scarcely time enough for me to note, waves

of whitely flowing things, snowy caps, crimpled crests, and crispy

laces, made by hands that never tire, in the humid ocean-cellar. A

wardrobe fit for fair Pre-Evites to wear lay rolled away, and still I,

poor prisoner in my tower, watched in vain the dying day. It sent no

kind jailer to let me free. No footstep crossed the church-yard. The

sexton had put the windows down before my visitors went away. He must

have gone home an unusual way, for I waited in vain to hear him go.

I saw, when just enough of light was left to see, my sister Sophie

coming down the hill. Strange fancy,--she went as far from the tower

as if it were a ghostly quarantine. She did not hear me call in a very

human voice, but went right on; and I heard the parsonage door-latch

sharply close her in.

Would they look for me, now I was not there? I waited, and a strange,

unearthly tremor shook both blood and nerves, until tears were wrought

out, and came dropping down, and in the stillness I heard one fall

upon a stone below.

A forsaken, forgotten, uncared-for feeling crept up to me, half from

the words of woful meaning that I that afternoon had heard, and half

the prisoned state, with fear, weak and absurd, jailing me in.

The reverberations from my fallen tear scarce were dead in my ears

when I heard footsteps coming. I called,--

"Aaron!"

Aaron's own true voice answered me,--

"Where are you, Anna?"

"In the tower. Open the door, please."

"Give me the lantern," Sophie said, "whilst you open the door."

I, thoughtlessly taking the key, had left nothing by which to draw it

out. Aaron worked away at it, right vigorously, but it would not

yield.

"Can't you come down and push?" timidly asked Sophie, creeping round

the corner, in view of tombstones.

"It's very dark inside; I can't," I said; and so Aaron went on,

pulling and prying, but not one inch did the determined door yield.

Out of the darkness came an idea. I came in with the key,--why not

they? and, calling loudly, I bade them watch whilst I threw it from

the window. In the lantern's circle of light it went rushing down; and

I'm sorry to tell that in its fall it grazed an angel's wing of

marble, striking off one feather from its protecting mission above a

sleeping child.

The door was opened at last; at last a circle of light came into this

inverted well, and arose to me. Can you imagine, any one, I ask, who

is of mortal hue and mould,--can you imagine yourself deep down in a

well, such a one as those living on high lands draw their water from,

holding on with weary fingers to the slimy mosses, fearing each new

energy of grasping muscle is the last that Nature holds in its store

for you; and then, weary almost unto death, you look up and see two

human faces peering above the curbstone, see the rope curling down to

you, swinging right before your grasp, and a doubt comes,--have you

life enough to touch it?

So, could I get down to them, to the two friendly, anxious faces that

peered up at me? You who have no imaginary fears, who never press the

weight of all your will to weigh down eyelids that something tells

you, if uplifted, would let in on the sight a something nameless, come

from where you know not, made visible in midnight darkness, can never

know with what a throbbing of heart I went weakly down. If I did not

know that the great public opinion becomes adamant after a slight

stratum of weakness, I would say what befell me when Sophie's fingers,

tired with stitching, clasped mine.

Aaron and Sophie were not of the questioning order of humanity, and I

was left a few moments to my own way of expressing relief, and then

Aaron locked the tower as usual, and we went away. He, I noticed, put

the key in his pocket, instead of delivering it to me, self-constituted

its rightful owner.

"Will you give me my key?" I said, with a timid tenacity in the

direction of my right.

"Not enough of the dreary, ghoul-like place yet, Anna? And to give us

such an alarm upon your arrival-day!"

The key came to me, for Aaron would not keep it without good reason.

It was around the bright, cheerful tea-table that Sophie asked,--

"Why did you not come down, Anna? Did you choose staying up so late?"

"No, Sophie,"--and I looked with my clear brown eyes as fearlessly at

them both as when I had listened to reason in the morning,--"I shut

the door when I went up, and afterwards, when I would have come down,

I felt afraid invisible hands were weaving in the blackness to seize

me. I believe it would have killed me to come out, after I had been an

hour up there."

"And you don't mind confessing to such cowardice?" asked Sophie,

evidently slightly ashamed of me.

"I never did mind telling the truth, when it was needful to speak at

all. I don't cultivate this fear,--I urge reason to conquer it; but

when I have most rejoiced in going on, despite the ache of nerve and

brain, after it I feel as if I had lost a part of my life, my nature

doesn't unfold to sunny joys for a long time."

"'Tis a sorry victory, then!" said Aaron.

"You won't mind my telling you what it is like?"

"Certainly not."

"It's like that ugly point in theology that hurt you so, last autumn;

and when you had said a cruel _Credo_, you found sweet flowers

lost out of your religion. I know you missed them."

"Oh, Anna!"

"Don't interrupt me; let me finish. It's like making maple-sugar: one

eats the sugar, calling it monstrous sweet, and all through the

burning sun of summer sits under thin-leaved trees, to pay for the

condensation. The point is, it doesn't pay,--the truest bit of

sentiment the last winter has brought to me."

"Is this Anna?" asked the minister.

"Yes, Aaron, it is I, Anna."

"You're not what you were when last here."

"Quite a different person, Sir. But what is your new sexton's name?"

"That is more sensible. His name is Abraham Axtell."

"What sort of person is he?"

"The strangest man in all my parish. I cannot make him out. Have you

seen him?"

"No. Is there any harm in my making his acquaintance?"

"What an absurd question!" said Sophie.

"You are quite at liberty to get as many words out of him as he will

give, which I warn you will be very few," said the sexton's friendly

pastor.

"Is he in need of the small salary your church must give its sexton?"

I asked.

"The strangest part of the whole is that he won't take anything for

his services; and the motive that induces him to fight the spiders

away is past my comprehension. He avoids Sophie and me."

So much for my thread of discovery: a very small fibre, it is true,--a

church-sexton performing the office without any reward of gold,--but I

twisted it and twirled it round in all the ideal contortions plausible

in idealic regions, and fell asleep, with the tower-key under my

pillow, and the rising moon shining into my room.

I awoke with my secret safely mine,--quite an achievement for one in

no wise heroic; but I _do delight_ in sole possessions.

There is the sun, a great round bulb of liquid electricity, open to

all the eyes that look into the sky; but do you fancy any one owns

that sun but I? Not a bit of it! There is no record of deed that

matches mine, no words that can describe what conferences sun and I do

hold. The cloudy tent-door was closed, the sun was not "at home" to

me, as I went down to life on the second day of March, 1860.

Sophie seemed stupid and commonplace that morning. Aaron had a

headache, (that theologic thorn, I know,) and Sophie must go and sit

beside him, and hold the thread of his Sunday's discourse to paper,

whilst with wrapped brow and vision-seeing eyes he told her what his

people ought to do.

Good Sophie! I forgave her, when she put sermons away, and came down

to talk a little to me. It is easy to forgive people for goodness to

others, when they are good to one's self _just afterwards_.

"Do you know any Herbert in Redleaf?" I ventured to ask, with as

careless a tone as I knew.

"No, Anna;--let me think;--I thought I knew,--but no, it is not

here. Why?"

"It doesn't matter. I thought there might be a person with that

name.--Don't you get very tired of this hum-drum life?"

"But it isn't hum-drum in the least, except in bee-time, and on

General-Training days."

"Oh, Sophie! you know what I mean."

"Well, I confess to liking a higher development of intellectual nature

than I find in Redleaf, but I feel that I belong to it, I ought to be

here; and feeling atones for much lack of mind,--it gets up higher,

nearer into the soul. You know, Anna, we ought to love Redleaf. Look

across that maple-grove."

"What is there?"

"Chimneys."

"Well, what of them?"

"There was smoke in them once,--smoke rising from our father's fires,

you know, Anna."

"But so long ago, one scarcely feels it."

"Only sixteen years; we remember, you and I, the day the fires were

put out."

"Yes, I remember."

"Don't you think we ought to love the place where our lives began,

because our father lived here too?"

"It's a sorry sort of obligation, to ought to love anything."

"Even the graves, out there, in the church-yard?"

"Yes, even them. I would rather love them through knowing something

that some one tenant of them loved and suffered and achieved than to

love them merely because they hold the mortal temples that once were

columns in 'our family.' The world says we ought to love so much, and

our hearts tell us we ought to love foolishly sometimes, and I say one

oughtn't to love at all."

"Anna! Anna!"

"I haven't got any Aaron, Sophie, to teach me the 'ought-tos.'"

There was a morsel of pity outgleaming from Sophie's eyes, as she went

to obey a somewhat peremptory call. She needn't have bestowed it on

me; I learned not to need it, yesterday.

Satisfied that the tower wouldn't give me any more information, and

that the visit of "the two" was the last for some time to come, I

closed down my horizon of curiosity over the church-steeple, a little

round, shingly spire with a vane,--too vain to tell which way the wind

might chance to go.

Ere Sophie came back to me, there was a bell-stroke from the

belfry. She hurried down at the sound of it.

"Will you come with me, Anna? Aaron wants to know who is dead."

"Who rings the bell?"

"The sexton, of course."

We were within the vestibule before he had begun to toll the years.

A little timidly, Sophie spoke,--

"Mr. Wilton wishes to know who has died."

The uncivil fellow never turned an inch; he only started, when Sophie

began to speak. I couldn't see his face.

"Tell Mr. Wilton that my mother is dead, if he wishes to know."

Sophie pulled my sleeve, and whispered, "Come away!"--and the man,

standing there, began to toll the years of his mother's life.

"Don't go," I said, outside; "_don't_ leave him without saying,

'I am sorry': you didn't even ask a question."

"You wouldn't, if you knew the man."

"Which I mean to do. You go on. I'll wait upon the step till he is

done, and then I'll talk to him."

"I wouldn't, Anna. But I must hurry. Aaron will go up at once."

Dutiful little wife! She went to send her headaching husband half a

mile away, to offer consolation, unto whom?

I sat upon the step until he had done. The years were not many,--half

a score less than the appointed lot.

Would he come out? He did. I heard him coming; but I would not move.

I knew that I was in his way, and wanted him to have to speak to me. I

sat just where he must stand to lock the door.

"Are you waiting to see me?" he asked. "Is there anything for the

sexton to do?"

I arose, and turned my face toward him.

"I am waiting to see if I can do anything for you. I am your

minister's wife's sister."

What could have made him shake so? And such a queer, incongruous

answer he gave!

"Isn't it enough to have a voice, without a face's coming to torment

me too?"

It was _not_ the voice that spoke in the tower yesterday. It was

of the kind that has a lining of sentiment that it never was meant by

the Good Spirit should be turned out for the world to breathe against,

making life with mortals a mental pleurisy.

"I hope I don't torment you."

"You do."

"When did your mother die?"

"There! I knew! _Will_ you take away your sympathy? I haven't

anything to do with it."

"You'll tell me, please, if I can do anything for you, or up at your

house. Do you live near here?"

"It's a long way. You can't go."

"Oh, yes, I can. I like walking."

He locked the door, and dropped the key when he was done. I picked it

up, before he could get it.

A melodious "Thank you," coming as from another being, rewarded me.

"Let me stop and tell my sister, and I'll go with you," I said,

believing that he had consented.

The old voice again was used as he said,--

"No, you had better not"; and he quickly walked on his way.

Completely baffled in my expectation of touching this strange being by

proffers of kindness, I turned toward the parsonage. Aaron was

already gone on his ministerial mission.

"What strange people one does find in this world!" said Sophie, as I

gave her the history of my defeat. "Now this Axtell family are past my

comprehension."

"Ah! a family. I didn't think him a married man."

"Neither is he."

"Then what is the family?"

"The mother, a sister, and himself."

"Do you know the sister?"

"Just a little. She is the finest person in mind we have here, but

wills to live alone, except she can do deeds of charity. I met her

once in a poor farmer's house. The man had lost his wife. Such a

soft, sweet glamour of comfort as she was winding in and out over his

sorrow, until she actually had the poor fellow looking up with an

expression that said he was grateful for the good gift Heaven had

gained! She stopped as soon as I went in. I wish she would come out in

Redleaf."

"And the mother?"

"A proud old lady, sick these many years, and, ever since we've been

here, confined to her room. I've only seen her twice."

"And now she's dead?"

Sophie was silent.

"Who'll dig her grave?"

One of my bits of mental foam that strike the shore of sound.

"Anna, how queer you are growing! What made you think of such a

thing?"

"I don't think my thoughts, Sophie."

But I did watch the church-yard that

day. No one came near it, and my knitting-work

grew, and my mystery in the

tower was as dark as ever, when at set

of sun Aaron came home.

"There is a sorry time up there," he said. "The old lady died in the

night, and Miss Lettie is quite beside herself. Doctor Eaton was

there when I came away, and says she will have brain-fever."

"Oh, I hope not!" said Sophie.

"Who is there?" I asked.

"No one but Abraham. I offered to let Sophie come, but he said no."

"That will never do, Aaron: one dead, and one sick in the house, and

only one other."

"Of course it will not, Sophie,--I will go and stay to-night," said I.

"You, Anna? What do you know of taking care of sick people?"

"I? Why, here, let me take this,"--and I picked up Miss Nightingale's

new thoughts thereon. "Thus armed and fortified, do you think they'll

ask other reference of their nurse?"

"It's better for her than going up to stay in the tower; and they

_are_ in need, though they won't say it. Let it be, Sophie."

And so my second night in March came on. A neighbor's boy walked the

way with me, and left me at the door.

"I guess you'll repent your job," he said, as I bade him good-night.

"Mr. Axtell will not send me back alone," I thought; and I waited just

a little, that my escort might get beyond call before I knocked.

It was a solemn, great house under whose entrance-porch I

stood. Generation after generation might have come, stayed, and gone,

like the last soul: here last night,--to-night, oh! where?

I looked up at the sombre roof, dropping a little way earthward from

the sides. Mosses hung from the eaves. Not one sound of life came to

me as I stood until the neighbor's boy was out of sight. I knocked

then, a timid, tremulous knock,--for last night's fear was creeping

over me. The noise startled a dog; he came bounding around the corner

with a sharp, quick bark.

I am afraid of dogs, as well as of several other things. Before he

reached me the door opened.

A little maid stood within it. Fear of the dog, scarce a yard away,

impelled me in.

"Away, Kino! Away, I say! Leave the lady alone!"

Kino went back to his own abode, and I was closed into the hall of

this large, melancholy house. The little maid waited for some words

from me. Before I found any to bestow, the second door along the hall

opened, and the voice that had been so uncivil to me in the morning

said,--

"What aroused Kino, Kate?"

"This lady, Sir."

The little Kate held a candle in her hand, but Mr. Axtell had not seen

me. Strange that I should take a wicked pleasure in making this man

ache!--but I know that I did, and that I would have owned it then, as

now, if I had been accused of it.

"What does the lady want?"

"It is I, who have come to stay with your sister. Mr. Wilton says

she's sick."

"She's sick, that's true; but I can take care of her."

"And you won't let me stay?"

"_Won't let you_? Pray tell me if young ladies like you like

taking care of sick people."

"Young ladies just like me do, if brothers don't send them away."

Did he say, "Brothers ar'n't Gibraltars"? I thought so; but

immediately thereafter, in that other voice, out of that other self

that revolved only in a long, long period, came,--

"Will you come in?"

He had not moved one inch from the door of the room out of which he

had come; but I had walked a little nearer, that my voice might not

disturb the sick. The one lying dead, never more to be disturbed,

where was she? Kate, the little maid, said,--

"It is in there he wants you to go."

Abraham Axtell stood aside to let me enter. There was no woman there,

no one to say to me, in sweet country wise,--"I'm glad you're

come,--it's very kind of you; let me take your things."

I did not wait, but threw aside my hood, the very one Sophie had lent

me to go into the tower, and, taking off my shawl and furs, I laid

them as quietly away in the depths of a huge sofa's corner as though

they had hidden there a hundred times before.

"I think I scarcely needed this," I said, putting upon the

centre-table, under the light of the lamp, Miss Nightingale's good

book,--and I looked around at a library, tempting to me even, as it

spread over two sides of the room.

He turned at my speaking; for the ungrateful man had, I do believe,

forgotten that I was there.

He took up the book, looked at its title, smiled a little--scornfully,

was it?--at me, and said of her who wrote the book,--

"She is sensible; she bears the result of her own theories before

imposing their practice upon others; but," and he went back to the

thorn-apple voice, "do you expect to take care of my sister by the aid

of this to-night?"

"It may give me assistance."

"It will not. What does Miss Nightingale know of Lettie?"

Well, what does she? I don't know, and so I had to answer,--

"Nothing."

"That doctor is here," said Kate, at the door.

"Are you coming up, too?" he asked, as he turned suddenly upon me,

half-way out of the room.

"Certainly!"--and I went out with him.

Up the wide staircase walked the little maid, lighting the way,

followed by the doctor, Mr. Axtell, and Anna Percival.

Kate opened the door of a room just over the library, where we had

been.

The doctor went in, quietly moving on toward the fireplace, in which

burned a cheery wood-fire. In front of it, in one of those large

comfort-giving, chintz-covered, cushioned chairs, sat Miss Axtell; but

the comfort of the chair was nothing to her, for she sat leaning

forward, with her chin resting upon the palm of her right hand, and

her eyes were gone away, were burning into the heart of the amber

flame that fled into darkness up the chimney. Hers was the style of

face which one might expect to find under Dead-Sea waves, if diver

_could_ go down,--a face anxious to escape from Sodom, and held

fast there, under heavy, heavy waters, yet still with its eyes turned

toward Zoar.

Now a feverous heat flushed her face, white a moment before, when we

came in; but she did not turn away her eyes,--they seemed fixed, out

of her control. The doctor laid his hand upon her forehead. It broke

the spell that bound her gaze. She spoke quite calmly. I almost smiled

to think any one could imagine danger of brain-fever from that calm

creature who said,--

"Please don't give me anything, Doctor Eaton; believe me, I shall do

better without."

"And then we shall have you sick on our hands, Abraham and I. What

should we do with you?"

"I'll try not to trouble you," she said,--"but I would rather you left

me to myself to-night"; but even as she spoke, a quick convulsion of

muscles about her face told of pain.

Doctor Eaton had not seen me, for I stood in the shadow of the bed

behind him.

"Who will stay with your sister tonight?" he asked Mr. Axtell.

Mr. Axtell looked around at me, as if expecting that I would answer;

and I presented myself for the office.

"You look scarcely fit," was the village-physician's somewhat

ungracious comment; and his eyes said, what his lips dared not,--"Who

are you?"

"I think you'll find me so, if you try me."

Miss Axtell had gone away again, and neither saw nor heeded me.

"Will you come below?"--and the doctor looked at me as he went out.

I followed him. In the library he shut the door, sat down near the

table, took from his pocket a small phial containing a light brown

powder, and, dividing a piece of paper into the minute scraps needful,

made a deposit in each from the phial, and then, folding over the bits

of paper, handed them to me.

"Are you accustomed to take care of sick persons?" he asked.

"Not much; but I am a physician's daughter. I have a little

experience."

"Are you a visitor here?"

"No,--at the parsonage."

A pair of quick gray eyes danced out at me from under browy cliffs

clothed with a ledge of lashes, in an actually startling manner. I

didn't think the man had so much of life in him.

"You're Mrs. Wilton's sister, perhaps."

"I am."

"Give her one of these every half-hour, till she falls asleep."

"Yes, Sir."

"Don't let her talk; but she won't, though. If she gets

incoherent,--says wild things,--talks of what you can't

understand,--send for me; I live next door."

"Is this all for her?"

"Enough. Do you know her?"

"I never saw her until to-night."

"The brother? Monstrous fellow."

"Until to-day."

"Look up there."

"Where?"

"On the wall."

"At what?"

There were several paintings hanging there.

"The face, of course."

"I can't see it very well."

Shadows were upon it, and the lampshade was on.

"Then I'll take this off"; and Doctor Eaton removed the shade, letting

the light up to the wall.

"A young girl's face," I said.

The doctor was looking at me, and not at the painting there. A little

bit of confusion came,--I don't know why.

"Do you like it?" I ventured.

"I like it? I'm not the one to like it."

"Somebody does, then?"

"Of course. What did he paint it for, if he didn't like it?"

"I do not know of whom you are talking, at all," I said, a little

vexed at this information-no-information style.

"You don't?" in a voice of the utmost astonishment.

"No. Is this all, for the sick lady? I think I ought to go to her."

"Of course you ought. It's a sad thing, this death in the house"; and

Doctor Eaton picked up his hat, and opened the door.

Kate was waiting in the hall.

"Mr. Abraham thinks you'd better look in and see if it's well to have

any watchers in there, before you go," she said.

"Well, light me in, then, Katie. You wait in there, if you please,

Miss," to me; and I saw the two go to the front-room on the right.

A waft of something, it may have been the air that came out of that

room, sent me back from the hall, and I shut the door behind me. It

was several minutes before they came back. In the interim I had taken

a long look at the face on the wall. It seemed too young to be very

beautiful, and I couldn't help wishing that the artist had waited a

year or two, until a little more of the outline of life had come to

it; yet it was a sweet, loving face, with a brow as low and cool as

Sophie's own, only it hadn't any shadow of an Aaron on it. I didn't

hear the door open, I hadn't heard the sound of living thing, when

some one said, close to me, as I was standing looking up at the face

I've spoken of,--

"What are you doing?"

It was Mr. Axtell, and the voice was a prickly one.

"Is there any harm?" I said. "I'm only looking here,"--pointing to

where my eyes had been before. "Who painted it?"

"An unknown, poor painter."

"Was he poor in spirit?"

"He is now, I trust."

A man that has variant voices is a cruel thing in this world, because

one cannot help their coming in at some one of the gates of the heart,

which cannot all be guarded at the same moment. "Poor in spirit?" "He

is now, I trust." I felt decidedly vexed at this man before me for

having such tones in his voice.

"Can I go up to Miss Axtell now?" I asked.

"In a moment, when Kate has shown Doctor Eaton out."

I picked up my powders and my illustrious book, and waited.

Kate came.

"The doctor says there's no need," she said, in her laconic way.

Kate, I afterwards learned, was the daughter of the farmer that Sophie

heard Miss Axtell consoling for the loss of his wife, one day.

MY DAPHNE.

My budding Daphne wanted scope

To bourgeon all her flowers of hope.

She felt a cramp around her root

That crippled every outmost shoot.

I set me to the kindly task;

I found a trim and tidy cask,

Shapely and painted; straightway seized

The timely waif; and, quick released

From earthen bound and sordid thrall,

My Daphne sat there, proud and tall.

Stately and tall, like any queen,

She spread her farthingale of green;

Nor stinted aught with larger fate,

For that she was innately great.

I learned, in accidental way,

A secret, on an after-day,--

A chance that marked the simple change

As something ominous and strange.

And so, therefrom, with anxious care,

Almost with underthought of prayer,

As, day by day, my listening soul

Waited to catch the coming roll

Of pealing victory, that should bear

My country's triumph on the air,--

I tended gently all the more

The plant whose life a portent bore.

The weary winter wore away,

And still we waited, day by day;

And still, in full and leafy pride,

My Daphne strengthened at my side,

Till her fair buds outburst their bars,

And whitened gloriously to stars!

Above each stalwart, loyal stem

Rested their heavenly diadem,

And flooded forth their incense rare,

A breathing Joy, upon the air!

Well might my backward thought recall

The cramp, the hindrance, and the thrall,

The strange release to larger space,

The issue into growth and grace,

And joyous hail the homely sign

That so had spelled a hope divine!

For all this life, and light, and bloom,

This breath of Peace that blessed the room,

Was born from out the banded rim,

Once crowded close, and black, and grim,

With grains that feed the Cannon's breath,

And boom his sentences of death!

CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE.

"On the whole, it was very disagreeable," wrote a certain great

traveller and hunter, summing up an account of his position, as he

composed himself to rest upon a certain evening after a hard day's

work. And no doubt it must have been very disagreeable. The night was

cold and dark; and the intrepid traveller had to lie down to sleep in

the open air, without even a tree to shelter him. A heavy shower of

hail was falling,--each hailstone about the size of an egg. The dark

air was occasionally illuminated by forked lightning, of the most

appalling aspect; and the thunder was deafening. By various sounds,

heard in the intervals of the peals, it seemed evident that the

vicinity was pervaded by wolves, tigers, elephants, wild-boars, and

serpents. A peculiar motion, perceptible under horse-cloth which was

wrapped up to serve as a pillow, appeared to indicate that a snake was

wriggling about underneath it. The hunter had some ground for thinking

that it was a very venomous one, as indeed in the morning it proved to

be; but he was too tired to look. And speaking of the general

condition of matters upon that evening, the hunter stated, with great

mildness of language, that "it was very disagreeable."

Most readers would be disposed to say that _disagreeable_ was

hardly the right word. No doubt, all things that are perilous,

horrible, awful, ghastly, deadly, and the like, are disagreeable

too. But when we use the word disagreeable by itself, our meaning is

understood to be, that in calling the thing disagreeable we have said

the worst of it. A long and tiresome sermon is disagreeable; but a

venomous snake under your pillow passes beyond being disagreeable. To

have a tooth stopped is disagreeable; to be broken on the wheel

(though nobody could like it) transcends _that_. If a thing be

horrible and awful, you would not say it was disagreeable. The

greater includes the less: as when a human being becomes entitled to

write D.D. after his name, he drops all mention of the M.A. borne in

preceding years.

Let this truth be remembered, by such as shall read the following

pages. We are to think about disagreeable people. Let it be

understood that (speaking generally) we are to think of people who are

no worse than disagreeable. It cannot be denied, even by the most

prejudiced, that murderers, pirates, slave-drivers, and burglars, are

disagreeable. The cut-throat, the poisoner, the sneaking black-guard

who shoots his landlord from behind a hedge, are no doubt disagreeable

people,--so very disagreeable that in this country the common consent

of mankind removes them from human society by the instrumentality of a

halter. But disagreeable is too mild a word. Such people are all that,

and a great deal more. And accordingly they stand beyond the range of

this dissertation. We are to treat of folk who are disagreeable, and

not worse than disagreeable. We may sometimes, indeed, overstep the

boundary-line. But it is to be remembered that there are people who

in the main are good people, who yet are extremely disagreeable. And

a further complication is introduced into the subject by the fact,

that some people who are far from good are yet unquestionably

agreeable. You disapprove them; but you cannot help liking

them. Others, again, are substantially good; yet you are angry with

yourself to find that you cannot like them.

I take for granted that all observant human beings will admit that in

this world there are disagreeable people. Probably the distinction

which presses itself most strongly upon our attention, as we mingle in

the society of our fellow-men, is the distinction between agreeable

people and disagreeable. There are various tests, more or less

important, which put all mankind to right and left. A familiar

division is into rich and poor. Thomas Paine, with great vehemence,

denied the propriety of that classification, and declared that the

only true and essential classification of mankind is into male and

female. I have read a story whose author maintained, that, to his

mind, by far the most interesting and thorough division of our race is

into such as have been hanged and such as have not been hanged: he

himself belonging to the former class. But we all, more or less,

recognize and act upon the great classification of all human beings

into the agreeable and the disagreeable. And we begin very early to

recognize and act upon it. Very early in life, the little child

understands and feels the vast difference between people who are nice

and people who are not nice. In school-boy days, the first thing

settled as to any new acquaintance, man or boy, is on which side he

stands of the great boundary-line. It is not genius, not scholarship,

not wisdom, not strength nor speed, that fixes the man's place. None

of these things is chiefly looked to: the question is, Is he agreeable

or disagreeable? And according as that question is decided, the man is

described, in the forcible language of youth, as "a brick," or as "a

beast."

Yet it is to be remembered that the division between the agreeable and

disagreeable of mankind is one which may be transcended. It is a

scratch on the earth,--not a ten-foot wall. And you will find men who

pass from one side of it to the other, and back again,--probably

several times in a week, or even in a day. There are people whom you

never know where to have. They are constantly skipping from side to

side of that line of demarcation; or they even walk along with a foot

on each side of it. There are people who are always disagreeable, and

disagreeable to all men. There are people who are agreeable at some

times, and disagreeable at others. There are people who are agreeable

to some men, and disagreeable to other men. I do not intend by the

last-named class people who intentionally make themselves agreeable to

a certain portion of the race, to which they think it worth while to

make themselves agreeable, and who do not take that trouble in the

case of the remainder of humankind. What I mean is this: that there

are people who have such an affinity and sympathy with certain other

people, who so _suit_ certain other people, that they are

agreeable to these other people, though perhaps not particularly so to

the race at large. And exceptional tastes and likings are often the

strongest. The thing you like enthusiastically another man absolutely

loathes. The thing which all men like is for the most part liked with

a mild and subdued liking. Everybody likes good and well-made bread;

but nobody goes into raptures over it. Few persons like caviare; but

those who do like it are very fond of it. I never knew but one being

who liked mustard with apple-pie; but that solitary man ate it with

avidity, and praised the flavor with enthusiasm.

But it is impossible to legislate for every individual case. Every

rule must have exceptions from it; but it would be foolish to resolve

to lay down no more rules. There may be, somewhere, the man who likes

Mr. Snarling; and to that man Mr. Snarling would doubtless be

agreeable. But for practical purposes Mr. Snarling may justly be

described as a disagreeable man, if he be disagreeable to nine hundred

and ninety-nine mortals out of every thousand. And with precision

sufficient for the ordinary business of life we may say that there are

people who are essentially disagreeable.

There are people who go through life, leaving an unpleasant influence

on all whom they come near. You are not at your ease in their

society. You feel awkward and constrained while with them. _That_

is probably the mildest degree in the scale of unpleasantness. There

are people who disseminate a much worse influence. As the upas-tree

was said to blight all the country round it, so do these disagreeable

folk prejudicially affect the whole surrounding moral atmosphere.

They chill all warmth of heart in those near them; they put down

anything generous or magnanimous; they suggest unpleasant thoughts and

associations; they excite a diverse and numerous array of bad

tempers. The great evil of disagreeable people lies in this: that they

tend powerfully to make other people disagreeable too. And these

people are not necessarily bad people, though they produce a bad

effect. It is not certain that they design to be disagreeable. There

are those who do entertain that design; and they always succeed in

carrying it out. Nobody ever tried diligently to be disagreeable, and

failed. Such persons may, indeed, inflict much less annoyance than

they wished; they may even fail of inflicting any pain whatever on

others; but they make themselves as disgusting as they could desire.

And in many cases they succeed in inflicting a good deal of pain. A

very low, vulgar, petty, and uncultivated nature may cause much

suffering to a lofty, noble, and refined one,--particularly if the

latter be in a position of dependence or subjection. A wretched hornet

may madden a noble horse; a contemptible mosquito may destroy the

night's rest which would have recruited a noble brain. But without any

evil intention, sometimes with the very kindest intention, there are

those who worry and torment you. It is through want of perception,

--want of tact,--coarseness of nature,--utter lack of power

to understand you. Were you ever sitting in a considerable company, a

good deal saddened by something you did not choose to tell to any one,

and probably looking dull and dispirited enough,--and did a fussy host

or hostess draw the attention of the entire party upon you, by

earnestly and repeatedly asking if you were ill, if you had a

headache, because you seemed so dull and so unlike yourself? And did

that person time after time return to the charge, till you would have

liked to poison him? There is nothing more disagreeable, and few

things more mischievous, than a well-meaning, meddling fool. And

where there was no special intention, good or bad, towards yourself,

you have known people make you uncomfortable through the simple

exhibition to you, and pressure upon you, of their own inherent

disagreeableness. You have known people after talking to whom for a

while you felt disgusted with everything, and above all, with those

people themselves. Talking to them, you felt your moral nature being

rubbed against the grain, being stung all over with nettles. You

showed your new house and furniture to such a man, and with eagle eye

he traced out and pointed out every scratch on your fine fresh paint,

and every flaw in your oak and walnut; he showed you that there were

corners of your big mirrors that distorted your face,--that there were

bits of your grand marble mantel-pieces that might be expected soon to

scale away. Or you have known a man who, with no evil intention, made

it his practice to talk of you before your face as your other friends

are accustomed to talk of you behind your back. It need not be said

that the result is anything but pleasant. "What a fool you were,

Smith, in saying _that_ at Snooks's last night!" your friend

exclaims, when you meet him next morning. You were quite aware, by

this time, that what you said was foolish; but there is something

grating in hearing your name connected with the unpleasant epithet. I

would strongly advise any man, who does not wish to be set down as

disagreeable, entirely to break off the habit (if he has such a habit)

of addressing to even his best friends any sentence beginning with

"What a fool you were." Let me offer the like advice as to sentences

which set out as follows:--"I say, Smith, I think your brother is the

greatest fool on the face of the earth." Stop that kind of thing, my

friend; or you may come to be classed with Mr. Snarling. You are

probably a manly fellow, and a sincere friend; and for the sake of

your substantial good qualities, one would stand a great deal. But

over-frankness is disagreeable; and if you make over-frankness your

leading characteristic, of course your entire character will come to

be disagreeable, and you will be a disagreeable person.

Besides the people who are disagreeable through malignant intention,

and through deficiency of sensitiveness, there are other people who

are disagreeable through pure ill-luck. It is quite certain that there

are people whom evil fortune dogs through all their life, who are

thoroughly and hopelessly unlucky. And in no respect have we beheld a

man's ill-luck so persecute him as in the matter of making him

(without the slightest evil purpose, and even when he is most anxious

to render himself agreeable) render himself extremely disagreeable. Of

course there must be some measure of thoughtlessness and

forgetfulness,--some lack of that social caution, so indispensable in

the complication of modern society, which teaches a man (so to speak)

to try if the ice will bear him before venturing his entire weight

upon it,--about people who are unlucky in the way of which I am

speaking. But doubtless you have known persons who were always saying

disagreeable things, or putting disagreeable questions,--either

through forgetfulness of things which they ought to have remembered,

or through unhappily chancing on forbidden ground. You will find a

man, a thoughtless, but quite good-natured man, begin at a

dinner-table to relate a succession of stories very much to the

prejudice of somebody, while somebody's daughter is sitting opposite

him. And you will find the man quite obtuse to all the hints by which

the host or hostess tries to stop him, and going on to particulars

worse and worse, till, in terror of what all this might grow to, the

hostess has to exclaim, "Mr. Smith, you won't take a hint: _that_

is Mr. Somebody's daughter sitting opposite you." It is quite

essential that any man, whose conversation consists mainly of

observations not at all to the advantage of some absent acquaintance,

should carefully feel his way before giving full scope to his malice

and his invention, in the presence of any general company. And before

making any playful reference to halters, you should be clear that you

are not talking to a man whose grandfather was hanged. Nor should you

venture any depreciatory remarks upon men who have risen from the

ranks, unless you are tolerably versed in the family-history of those

to whom you are talking. You may have heard a man very jocular upon

lunatic-asylums, to another who had several brothers and sisters in

one. And though in some cases human beings may render themselves

disagreeable through a combination of circumstances which really

absolves them from all blame, yet, as a general rule, the man who is

disagreeable through ill-luck is at least guilty of culpable

carelessness.

* * * * *

You have probably, my reader, known people who had the faculty of

making themselves extremely agreeable. You have known one or two men

who, whenever you met them, conveyed to you, by a remarkably frank and

genial manner, an impression that they esteemed you as one of their

best and dearest friends. A vague idea took possession of your mind

that they had been longing to see you ever since they saw you

last,--which in all probability was six or twelve months

previously. And during all that period it may be regarded as quite

certain that the thought of you had never once entered their

mind. Such a manner has a vast effect upon young and inexperienced

folk. The inexperienced man fancies that this manner, so wonderfully

frank and friendly, is reserved specially for himself, and is a

recognition of his own special excellences. But the man of greater

experience has come to suspect this manner, and to see through it. He

has discovered that it is the same to everybody,--at least, to

everybody to whom it is thought worth while to put it on. And he no

more thinks of arguing the existence of any particular liking for

himself, or of any particular merit in himself, from that friendly

manner, than he thinks of believing, on a warm summer day, that the

sun has a special liking for himself, and is looking so beautiful and

bright all for himself. It is perhaps unjust to accuse the man, always

overflowing in geniality upon everybody he meets, of being an impostor

or humbug. Perhaps he does feel an irrepressible gush of love to all

his race: but why convey to each individual of the race that he loves

_him_ more than all the others?

Yet it is to be admitted that it is always well that a man should be

agreeable. Pleasantness is always a pleasing thing. And a sensible

man, seeking by honest means to make himself agreeable, will generally

succeed in making himself agreeable to sensible men. But although

there is an implied compliment, to your power, if not to your

personality, in the fact of a man's taking pains to make himself

agreeable to you, it is certain that he may try to make himself so by

means of which the upshot will be to make him intensely

disagreeable. You know the fawning, sneaking manner which an

occasional shopkeeper adopts. It is most disagreeable to

right-thinking people. Let him remember that he is also a man; and

let his manner be manly as well as civil. It is an awful and

humiliating sight, a man who is always squeezing himself together like

a whipped dog, whenever you speak to him,--grinning and bowing, and

(in a moral sense) wriggling about before you on the earth, and

begging you to wipe your feet on his head. You cannot help thinking

that the sneak would be a tyrant, if he had the opportunity. It is

pleasant to find people, in the humblest position, blending a manly

independence of demeanor with the regard justly due to those placed by

Providence farther up the social scale. Yet doubtless there are

persons to whom the sneakiest manner is agreeable,--who enjoy the

flattery and the humiliation of the wretched toady who is always ready

to tell them that they are the most beautiful, graceful, witty,

well-informed, aristocratic-looking, and generally-beloved of the

human race. You must remember that it depends very much upon the

nature of a man himself whether any particular demeanor shall be

agreeable to him or not. And you know well that a cringing, toadying

manner, which would be thoroughly disgusting to a person of sense, may

be extremely agreeable and delightful to a self-conceited idiot. Was

there not an idiotic monarch who was greatly pleased, when his

courtiers, in speaking to him, affected to veil their eyes with their

hands, as unable to bear the insufferable effulgence of his

countenance? And would not a monarch of sense have been ready to kick

the people who thus treated him like a fool? And every one has

observed that there are silly women who are much gratified by coarse

and fulsome compliments upon their personal appearance, which would be

regarded as grossly insulting by a woman of sense. You may have heard

of country-gentlemen, of Radical politics, who had seldom wandered

beyond their paternal acres, (by their paternal acres I mean the acres

they had recently bought,) and who had there grown into a fixed belief

that they were among the noblest and mightiest of the earth, who

thought their parish-clergyman an agreeable man, if he voted at the

county-election for the candidate they supported, though that

candidate's politics were directly opposed to those of the

parson. These individuals, of course, would hold their clergyman as a

disagreeable man, if he held by his own principles, and quite declined

to take their wishes into account in exercising the trust of the

franchise. Now, of course, a nobleman or gentleman of right feeling

would regard the parson as a turncoat and sneak, who should thus deny

his convictions. Yes, there is no doubt that you may make yourself

agreeable to unworthy folk by unworthy means. A late marquis declared

on his dying bed, that a two-legged animal, of human pretensions, who

had acted as his valet, and had aided that hoary reprobate in the

gratification of his peculiar tastes, was "an excellent man." And you

may remember how Burke said, that, as we learn that a certain

Mr. Russell made himself very agreeable to Henry VIII., we may

reasonably suppose that Mr. Russell was himself (in a humble degree)

something like his master. Probably, to most right-minded men, the

fact that a man was agreeable to Henry VIII., or to the marquis in

question, or to Belial, Beelzebub, or Apollyon, would tend to make

that man remarkably disagreeable. And let the reader remember the

guarded way in which the writer laid down his general principle as to

pleasantness of character and demeanor. I said that a sensible man,

seeking by honest means to make himself agreeable, will generally

succeed in making himself agreeable to sensible men. I exclude from

the class of men to be esteemed agreeable those who would disgust all

but fools or blackguards. I exclude parsons who express heretical

views in theology in the presence of a patron known to be a

freethinker. I exclude men who do great folk's dirty work. I exclude

all toad-eaters, sneaks, flatterers, and fawning impostors,--from the

school-boy who thinks to gain his master's favor by voluntarily

bearing tales of his companions, up to the bishop who declared that he

regarded it not merely as a constitutional principle, but as an

ethical fact, that the king could do no wrong, and the other bishop

who declared that the reason why George II. died was that this world

was not good enough for him, and it was necessary to transfer him to

heaven that he might be the right man in the right place. Such persons

may succeed in making themselves agreeable to the man with whom they

desire to ingratiate themselves, provided that man be a fool or a

knave; but they assuredly render themselves disagreeable, not to say

revolting, to all human beings whose good opinion is worth the

possessing. And though any one who is not a fool will generally make

himself agreeable to people of ordinary temper and nervous system, if

he wishes to do so, it is to be remembered that too intrusive attempts

to be agreeable often make a man very disagreeable; and likewise, that

a man is the reverse of agreeable, if you see that he is trying, by

managing and humoring you, to make himself agreeable to you,--I mean,

if you can see that he is smoothing you down, and agreeing with you,

and trying to get you on your blind side, as if he thought you a baby

or a lunatic. And there is all the difference in the world between the

frank, hearty wish in man or woman to be agreeable, and this

diplomatic and indirect way. No man likes to think that he is being

managed as Mr. Rarey might manage an unbroken colt. And though many

human beings must in fact be thus managed,--though a person of wrong

head, or of outrageous vanity, or of invincible prejudices, must be

managed very much as you would manage a lunatic, (being, in fact,

removed from perfect sanity upon these points,) still, they must never

be allowed to discern that they are being managed, or the charm will

fail at once. I confess, for myself, that I am no believer in the

efficacy of diplomacy and indirect ways in dealing with one's

fellow-creatures. I believe that a manly, candid, straight-forward

course is always the best. Treat people in a perfectly frank

manner,--you will be agreeable to most of those to whom you will

desire to be so.

My reader, I am now about to tell you of certain sorts of human beings

who appear to me as worthy of being ranked among disagreeable

people. I do not pretend to give you an exhaustive catalogue of

such. Doubtless you have your own black beasts, your own special

aversions, which have for you a disagreeableness beyond the

understanding or sympathy of others. Nor do I make quite sure that you

will agree with me in all the views which I am going to set forth. It

is not impossible that you may regard as very nice people or even as

quite fascinating and inthralling people, certain people whom I regard

as intensely disagreeable. Let me begin with an order of human beings,

as to which I do not expect every one who reads this page to go along

with me, though I do not know any opinion which I hold more resolutely

than that which I am about to express.

We all understand the kind of thing which is meant by people who talk

of _Muscular Christianity_. It is certainly a noble and excellent

thing to make people discern that a good Christian need not be a muff

(pardon the slang term: there is no other that would bring out my

meaning). It is a fine thing to make it plain that manliness and dash

may co-exist with pure morality and sincere piety. It is a fine thing

to make young fellows comprehend that there is nothing fine and manly

in being bad and nothing unmanly in being good. And in this view it is

impossible to value too highly such characters and such biographies as

those of Hodson of Hodson's Horse and Captain Hedley Vicars. It is a

splendid combination, pluck and daring in their highest degree, with

an unaffected and earnest regard to religion and religious duties,--in

short, muscularity with Christianity. A man consists of body and soul;

and both would be in their ideal perfection, if the soul were

decidedly Christian, and the body decidedly muscular.

But there are folk whose admiration of the muscularity is very great,

but whose regard for the Christianity is very small. They are

captivated by the dash and glitter of physical pluck; they are quite

content to accept it without any Christianity, and even without the

most ordinary morality and decency. They appear, indeed, to think that

the grandeur of the character is increased by the combination of

thorough blackguardism with high physical qualifications: their

gospel, in short, may be said to be that of _Unchristian

Muscularity_. And you will find various books in which the hero is

such a man: and while the writer of the book frankly admits that he is

in strict morality an extremely bad man, the writer still recalls his

doings with such manifest gusto and sympathy, and takes such pains to

make him agreeable on the whole, and relates with such approval the

admiration which empty-headed idiots express for him when he has

jumped his horse over some very perilous fence or thrashed some

insolent farmer, that it is painfully apparent what is the writer's

ideal of a grand and imposing character. You know the kind of man who

is the hero of some novels,--the muscular blackguard,--and you

remember what are his unfailing characteristics. He has a deep

chest. He has huge arms and limbs,--the muscles being knotted. He has

an immense moustache. He has (God knows why) a serene contempt for

ordinary mortals. He is always growing black with fury, and bullying

weak men. On such occasions, his lips may be observed to be twisted

into an evil sneer. He is a seducer and liar: he has ruined various

women, and had special facilities for becoming acquainted with the

rottenness of society: and occasionally he expresses, in language of

the most profane, not to say blasphemous character, a momentary regret

for having done so much harm,--such as the Devil might sentimentally

have expressed, when he had succeeded in misleading our first

parents. Of course, he never pays tradesmen for the things with which

they supply him. He can drink an enormous quantity of wine without his

head becoming affected. He looks down with entire disregard on the

laws of God and man, as made for inferior beings. As for any worthy

moral quality,--as for anything beyond a certain picturesque brutality

and bull-dog disregard of danger, not a trace of such a thing can be

found about him.

We all know, of course, that such a person, though not uncommon in

novels, very rarely occurs in real life; and if he occur at all, it is

with his ideal perfections very much toned down. In actual life, such

a hero would become known in the Insolvent Court, and would frequently

appear before the police magistrates. He would eventually become a

billiard-marker; and might ultimately be hanged, with general

approval. If the man, in his unclipped proportions, did actually

exist, it would be right that a combination should be formed to wipe

him out of creation. He should be put down,--as you would put down a

tiger or a rattlesnake, if found at liberty somewhere in the Midland

Counties. A more hateful character, to all who possess a grain of

moral discernment, could not even be imagined. And it need not be

shown that the conception of such a character is worthy only of a

baby. However many years the man who deliberately and admiringly

delineates such a person may have lived in this world, intellectually

he cannot be more than about seven years old. And none but calves the

most immature can possibly sympathize with him. Yet, if there were

not many silly persons to whom such a character is agreeable, such a

character would not be portrayed. And it seems certain that a single

exhibition of strength or daring will to some minds be the compendium

of all good qualities, or (more accurately speaking) the equivalent

for them. A muscular blackguard clears a high fence: he does precisely

that,--neither more nor less. And upon the strength of that single

achievement, the servants at the house where he is visiting declare

that they would follow him over the world. And you may find various

young women, and various women who wish to pass for young, who would

profess, and perhaps actually feel, a like enthusiasm for the muscular

blackguard. I confess that I cannot find words strong enough to

express my contempt and abhorrence for the theory of life and

character which is assumed by the writers who describe such

blackguards, and by the fools who admire them. And though very far

from saying or thinking that the kind of human being who has been

described is no worse than disagreeable, I assert with entire

confidence that to all right-thinking men he is more disagreeable than

almost any other kind of human being. And I do not know any single

lesson you could instil into a youthful mind which would be so

mischievous as the lesson that the muscular blackguard should be

regarded with any other feeling than that of pure loathing and

disgust. But let us have done with him. I cannot think of the books

which delineate him and ask you to admire him without indignation more

bitter than I wish to feel in writing such a page.

And passing to the consideration of human beings who, though

disagreeable, are good in the main, it may be laid down as a general

principle, that any person, however good, is disagreeable from whom

you feel it a relief to get away. We have all known people, thoroughly

estimable, and whom you could not but respect, in whose presence it

was impossible to feel at ease, and whose absence was felt as the

withdrawal of a sense of constraint of the most oppressive kind. And

this vague, uncomfortable influence, which breathes from some men, is

produced in various ways. Sometimes it is the result of mere stiffness

and awkwardness of manner: and there are men whose stiffness and

awkwardness of manner are such as would freeze the most genial and

silence the frankest. Sometimes it arises from ignorance of social

rules and proprieties; sometimes from incapacity to take, or even to

comprehend, a joke. Sometimes it proceeds from a pettedness of nature,

which keeps you ever in fear that offence may be taken at the most

innocent word or act. Sometimes it comes of a preposterous sense of

his own standing and importance, existing in a man whose standing and

importance are very small. It is quite wonderful what very great folk

very little folk will sometimes fancy themselves to be. The present

writer has had little opportunity of conversing with men of great rank

and power; yet he has conversed with certain men of the very greatest:

and he can say sincerely that he has found head-stewards to be much

more dignified men than dukes; and parsons of no earthly reputation,

and of very limited means, to be infinitely more stuck-up than

archbishops. And though at first the airs of stuck-up small men are

amazingly ridiculous, and so rather amusing, they speedily become so

irritating that the men who exhibit them cannot be classed otherwise

than with the disagreeable of the earth.

Few people are more disagreeable than the man who, while you are

conversing with him, is (you know) taking a mental estimate of you,

more particularly of the soundness of your doctrinal views,--with the

intention of showing you up, if you be wrong, and of inventing or

misrepresenting something to your prejudice, if you be right. Whenever

you find any man trying (in a moral sense) to trot you out, and

examine your paces, and pronounce upon your general soundness, there

are two courses you may follow. The one is, severely to shut him up,

and sternly make him understand that you don't choose to be inspected

by him. Show him that you will not exhibit for his approval your

particular views about the Papacy, or about Moral Inability, or about

Pelagianism or the Patripassian heresy. Indicate that you will not be

pumped: and you may convey, in a kindly and polite way, that you

really don't care a rush what he thinks of you. The other course is,

with deep solemnity and an unchanged countenance, to horrify your

inspector by avowing the most fearful views. Tell him, that, on long

reflection, you are prepared to advocate the revival of Cannibalism.

Say that probably something may be said for Polygamy. Defend the

Thugs, and say something for Mumbo Jumbo. End by saying that no doubt

black is white, and twice ten are fifty. Or a third way of meeting

such a man is suddenly to turn upon him, and ask him to give you a

brief and lucid account of the views he is condemning. Ask him to tell

you what are the theological peculiarities of Bunsen; and what is the

exact teaching of Mr. Maurice. He does not know, you may be tolerably

sure. In the case of the latter eminent man, I never met anybody who

did know: and I have the firmest belief that he does not know himself.

I was told, lately, of an eminent foreigner who came to Britain to

promote a certain public end. For its promotion, the eminent man

wished to conciliate the sympathies of a certain small class of

religionists. He procured an introduction to a leading man among

them,--a good, but very stupid and self-conceited man. This man

entered into talk with the eminent foreigner, and ranged over a

multitude of topics, political and religious. And at an hour's end

the foreigner was astonished by the good, but stupid man suddenly

exclaiming,--"Now, Sir, I have been reckoning you up: you won't do:

you are a"--no matter what. It was something that had nothing earthly

to do with the end to be promoted. The religious demagogue had been

trotting out the foreigner; and he had found him unsound. The

religious demagogue belonged to a petty dissenting sect, no doubt; and

he was trying for his wretched little Shibboleth. But you may have

seen the like, even with leading men in National Churches. And I have

seen a pert little whipper-snapper ask a venerable clergyman what he

thought of a certain outrageous lay-preacher, and receive the

clergyman's reply, that he thought most unfavorably of many of the

lay-preacher's doings, with a self-conceited smirk that seemed to say

to the venerable clergyman, "I have been reckoning _you_ up: you

won't do."

People whom you cannot get to attend to you when you talk to them are

disagreeable. There are men whom you feel it is vain to speak

to,--whether you are mentioning facts or stating arguments. All the

while you are speaking, they are thinking of what they are themselves

to say next. There is a strong current, as it were, setting outward

from their minds; and it prevents what you say from getting in. You

know, if a pipe be full of water, running strongly one way, it is vain

to think to push in a stream running the other way. You cannot get at

their attention. You cannot get at the quick of their mental

sensorium. It is not the dull of hearing whom it is hardest to get to

hear; it is rather the man who is roaring out himself, and so who

cannot attend to anything else. Now this is provoking. It is a

mortifying indication of the little importance that is attached to

what we are saying; and there is something of the irritation that is

produced in the living being by contending with the passive resistance

of inert matter. And there is something provoking even in the outward

signs that the mind is in a non-receptive state. You remember the eye

that is looking beyond you,--the grin that is not at anything funny in

what you say,--the occasional inarticulate sounds that are put in at

the close of your sentences, as if to delude you with a show of

attention. The non-receptive mind is occasionally found in clever

men; but the men who exhibit it are invariably very conceited: they

can think of nothing but themselves. And you may find the last-named

characteristic strongly developed even in men with gray hair, who

ought to have learned better through the experience of a pretty long

life. There are other minds which are very receptive. They seem to

have a strong power of suction. They take in, very decidedly, all

that is said to them. The best mind, of course, is that which combines

both characteristics,--which is strongly receptive when it ought to be

receiving, and which gives out strongly when it ought to be giving

out. The power of receptivity is greatly increased by habit. I

remember feeling awe-stricken by the intense attention with which a

very great judge was wont, in ordinary conversation, to listen to all

that was said to him. It was the habit of the judgment-seat, acquired

through many years of listening, with every faculty awake, to the

arguments addressed to him. But when you began to make some statement

to him, it was positively alarming to see him look you full in the

face, and listen with inconceivable fixedness of attention to all you

said. You could not help feeling that really the small remark you had

to make was not worth that great mind's grasping it so intently, as he

might have grasped an argument by Follett. The mind was intensely

receptive, when it was receiving at all. But I remember, too, that,

when the great judge began to speak, then his mind was (so to speak)

streaming out; and he was particularly impatient of inattention or

interruption, and particularly non-receptive of anything that might be

suggested to him.

It is extremely disagreeable, when a vulgar fellow, whom you hardly

know, addresses you by your surname with great familiarity of

manner. And such a person will take no hint that he is disagreeable,

--however stiff, and however formally polite, you may take

pains to be to him. It is disagreeable, when persons, with whom

you have no desire to be on terms of intimacy, persist in putting many

questions to you as to your private concerns,--such as your annual

income and expenditure, and the like. No doubt, it is both pleasant

and profitable for people who are not rich to compare notes on these

matters with some frank and hearty friend whose means and outgoings

are much the same as their own. I do not think of such a case,--but of

the prying curiosity of persons who have no right to pry, and who,

very generally, while diligently prying into your affairs, take

special care not to take you into their confidence. Such people, too,

while making a pretence of revealing to you all their secrets, will

often tell a very small portion of them, and make various statements

which you at the time are quite aware are not true. There are not many

things more disagreeable than a very stupid and ill-set old woman,

who, quite unaware what her opinion is worth, expresses it with entire

confidence upon many subjects of which she knows nothing whatever, and

as to which she is wholly incapable of judging. And the self-satisfied

and confident air with which she settles the most difficult questions,

and pronounces unfavorable judgment upon people ten thousand times

wiser and better than herself, is an insufferably irritating

phenomenon. It is a singular fact, that the people I have in view

invariably combine extreme ugliness with spitefulness and

self-conceit. Such a person will make particular inquiries of you as

to some near relative of your own,--and will add, with a malicious and

horribly ugly expression of face, that she is glad to hear how _very

much improved_ your relative now is. She will repeat the sentence

several times, laying great emphasis and significance upon the _very

much improved_. Of course, the notion conveyed to any stranger who

may be present is that your relative must in former days have been an

extremely bad fellow. The fact probably is, that he has always, man

and boy, been particularly well-behaved, and that really you were not

aware that he needed any special improvement,--save, indeed, in the

sense that every human being might be and ought to be a great deal

better than he is.

People who are always vaporing about their own importance, and the

value of their own possessions, are disagreeable. We all know such

people: and they are made more irritating by the fact, that their

boasting is almost invariably absurd and false. I do not mean

ethically false, but logically false. For doubtless, in many cases,

human beings honestly think themselves and their possessions as much

better than other men and their possessions as they say they do. If

thirty families compose the best society of a little country-town, you

may be sure that each of the thirty families in its secret soul looks

down upon the other twenty-nine, and fancies that it stands on a

totally different level. And it is a kind arrangement of Providence,

that a man's own children, horses, house, and other possessions, are

so much more interesting to himself than are the children, horses, and

houses of other men, that he can readily persuade himself that they

are as much better in fact as they are more interesting to his

personal feeling. But it is provoking, when a man is always obtruding

on you how highly he estimates his own belongings, and how much better

than yours he thinks them, even when this is done in all honesty and

simplicity; and it is infuriating, when a man keeps constantly telling

you things which he knows are not true, as to the preciousness and

excellence of the gifts with which fortune has endowed him. You feel

angry, when a man who has lately bought a house, one in a square

containing fifty, all as nearly as possible alike, tells you with an

air of confidence that he has got the finest house in Scotland, or in

England, as the case may be. You are irritated by the man who on all

occasions tells you that he drives in his mail-phaeton "five hundred

pounds' worth of horse-flesh." You are well aware that he did not pay

a quarter of that sum for the animals in question: and you assume as

certain that the dealer did not give him that pair of horses for less

than they were worth. It is somewhat irritating, when a man, not

remarkable in any way, begins to tell you that he can hardly go to any

part of the world without being recognized by some one who remembers

his striking aspect or is familiar with his famous name. "It costs me

three hundred a year, having that picture to look at," said

Mr. Windbag, pointing to a picture hanging on a wall in his

library. He goes on to explain that he refused six thousand pounds for

that picture; which at five per cent. would yield the annual income

named. You repeat Windbag's statement to an eminent artist. The

artist knows the picture. He looks at you fixedly, and for all

comment on Windbag's story says, (he is a Scotchman,) "HOOT TOOT!" But

the disposition to vapor is deep-set in human nature. There are not

very many men or women whom I would trust to give an accurate account

of their family, dwelling, influence, and general position, to people

a thousand miles from home, who were not likely ever to be able to

verify the picture drawn.

It is hardly necessary to mention among disagreeable people those

individuals who take pleasure in telling you that you are looking

ill,--that you are falling off physically or mentally. "Surely you

have lost some of your teeth since I saw you last," said a good man to

a man of seventy-five years: "I cannot make out a word you say, you

speak so indistinctly." And so obtuse, and so thoroughly devoid of

gentlemanly feeling, was that good man, that, when admonished that he

ought not to speak in that fashion to a man in advanced years, he

could not for his life see that he had done anything unkind or

unmannerly. "I dare say you are wearied wi' preachin' to-day: you see

you're gettin' frail noo," said a Scotch elder, in my hearing, to a

worthy clergyman. Seldom has it cost me a greater effort than it did

to refrain from turning to the elder, and saying with candor, "What a

boor and what a fool you _must_ be, to say _that!_" It was

as well I did not: the boor would not have known what I meant. He

would not have known the provocation which led me to give him my true

opinion of him. "How very bald you are getting!" said a really

good-natured man to a friend he was meeting for the first time in

several years. Such remarks are for the most part made by men who, in

good faith, have not the least idea that they are making themselves

disagreeable. There is no malicious intention. It is a matter of pure

obtuseness, stupidity, selfishness, and vulgarity. But an obtuse,

stupid, selfish, and vulgar person is disagreeable. And your right

course will be to carefully avoid all intercourse with such a person.

But besides people who blunder into saying unpleasant things, there

are a few who do so of set intention. And such people ought to be

cracked. They can do a great deal of harm,--inflict a great deal of

suffering. I believe that human beings in general are more miserable

than you think. They are very anxious,--very careworn,--stung by a

host of worries,--a good deal disappointed, in many ways. And in the

case of many people, worthy and able, there is a very low estimate of

themselves and their abilities, and a sad tendency to depressed

spirits and gloomy views. And while a kind word said to such is a real

benefit, and a great lightener of the heart, an ingenious malignant

may suggest to such things which are as a stunning blow, and as an

added load on the weary frame and mind. I have seen, with burning

indignation, a malignant beast (I mean man) playing upon that tendency

to a terrible apprehensiveness which is born with many men. I have

seen the beast vaguely suggest evil to the nervous and apprehensive

man. "This cannot end here": "I shall take my own measures now": "A

higher authority shall decide between us": I have heard the beast say,

and then go away. Of course I knew well that the beast could and

would do nothing, and I hastened to say so to the apprehensive

man. But I knew that the poor fellow would go away home, and brood

over the beast's ominous threats, and imagine a hundred terrible

contingencies, and work himself into a fever of anxiety and alarm. And

it is because I know that the vague threatener counted on all that,

and wished it, and enjoyed the thought of the slow torment he was

causing, that I choose to call him a beast rather than a man. Indeed,

there is an order of beings, worse than beasts, to which that being

should rather be referred. You have said or done something which has

given offence to certain of your neighbors. Mr. Snarling comes and

gives you a full and particular account of the indignation they feel,

and of their plans for vengeance. Mr. Snarling is happy to see you

look somewhat annoyed, and he kindly says, "Oh, never mind: this will

blow over, as _other things you have said and done have blown

over."_ Thus he vaguely suggests that you have given great offence

on many occasions, and made many bitter enemies. He adds, in a musing

voice, "Yes, as MANY other things have blown over." Turn the

individual out, and cut his acquaintance. It would be better to have

a upas-tree in your neighborhood. Of all disagreeable men, a man with

his tendencies is the most disagreeable. The bitterest and

longest-lasting east-wind acts less perniciously on body and soul than

does the society of Mr. Snarling.

Suspicious people are disagreeable; also people who are always taking

the pet. Indeed, suspiciousness and pettedness generally go

together. There are many men and women who are always imagining that

some insult is designed by the most innocent words and doings of those

around them, and always suspecting that some evil intention against

their peace is cherished by some one or other. It is most irritating

to have anything to do with such impracticable and silly mortals. But

it is a delightful thing to work along with a man who never takes

offence,--a frank, manly man, who gives credit to others for the same

generosity of nature which he feels within himself, and who, if he

thinks he has reason to complain, speaks out his mind and has things

cleared up at once. A disagreeable person is he who frequently sends

letters to you without paying the postage,--leaving you to pay

twopence for each penny which he has thus saved. The loss of twopence

is no great matter; but there is something irritating in the feeling

that your correspondent has deliberately resolved that he would save

his penny at the cost of your twopence. There is a man, describing

himself as a clergyman of the Church of England, (I cannot think he is

one,) who occasionally sends me an abusive anonymous letter, and who

invariably sends his letters unpaid. I do not mind about the man's

abuse; but I confess I grudge my twopence. I have observed, too, that

the people who send letters unpaid do so habitually. I have known the

same individual send six successive letters unpaid. And it is

probably within the experience of most of my readers, that, out of

(say) a hundred correspondents, ninety-nine invariably pay their

letters properly, while time after time the hundredth sends his with

the abominable big 2 stamped upon it, and your servant walks in and

worries you by the old statement that the postman is waiting. Let me

advise every reader to do what I intend doing for the future: to wit,

to refuse to receive any unpaid letter. You may be quite sure that by

so doing you will not lose any letter that is worth having. A class of

people, very closely analogous to that of the people who do not pay

their letters, is that of such as are constantly borrowing small sums

from their friends, which they never restore. If you should ever be

thrown into the society of such, your right course will be to take

care to have no money in your pocket. People are disagreeable who are

given to talking of the badness of their servants, the undutifulness

of their children, the smokiness of their chimneys, and the deficiency

of their digestive organs. And though, with a true and close friend,

it is a great relief, and a special tie, to have spoken out your heart

about your burdens and sorrows, it is expedient, in conversation with

ordinary acquaintances, to keep these to yourself.

It must be admitted, with great regret, that people who make a

considerable profession of religion have succeeded in making

themselves more thoroughly disagreeable than almost any other human

beings have ever made themselves. You will find people, who claim not

merely to be pious and Christian people, but to be very much more

pious and Christian than others, who are extremely uncharitable,

unamiable, repulsive, stupid, and narrow-minded, and intensely

opinionated and self-satisfied. We know, from a very high authority,

that a Christian ought to be an epistle in commendation of the blessed

faith he holds. But it is beyond question that many people who profess

to be Christians are like grim Gorgons' heads, warning people off from

having anything to do with Christianity. Why should a middle-aged

clergyman walk about the streets with a sullen and malignant scowl

always on his face, which at the best would be a very ugly one? Why

should another walk with his nose in the air, and his eyes rolled up

till they seem likely to roll out? And why should a third be always

dabbled over with a clammy perspiration, and prolong all his vowels to

twice the usual length? It is, indeed, a most woful thing, that people

who evince a spirit in every respect the direct contrary of that of

our Blessed Redeemer should fancy that they are Christians of singular

attainments; and it is more woful still, that many young people should

be scared away into irreligion or unbelief by the wretched delusion,

that these creatures, wickedly caricaturing Christianity, are fairly

representing it. I have beheld more deliberate malice, more lying and

cheating, more backbiting and slandering, denser stupidity, and

greater self-sufficiency, among bad-hearted and wrong-headed

religionists, than among any other order of human beings. I have known

more malignity and slander conveyed in the form of a prayer than

should have consigned any ordinary libeller to the pillory. I have

known a person who made evening prayer a means of infuriating and

stabbing the servants, under the pretext of confessing their

sins. "Thou knowest, Lord, how my servants have been occupied this

day": with these words did the blasphemous mockery of prayer begin one

Sunday evening in a house I could easily indicate: and then the man,

under the pretext of addressing the Almighty, raked up all the

misdoings of the servants (they being present, of course) in a

fashion, which, if he had ventured on it at any other time, would

probably have led some of them to assault him. "I went to Edinburgh,"

said a Highland elder, "and was there a Sabbath. It was an awfu'

sight! There, on the Sabbath-day, you would see people walking along

the street, smiling AS IF THEY WERE PERFECTLY HAPPY!" There was the

_gravamen_ of the poor Highlander's charge. To think of people

being or looking happy on the Lord's day! And, indeed, to think of a

Christian man ever venturing to be happy at all! "Yes, this parish was

highly favored in the days of Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown," said a

spiteful and venomous old woman,--with a glance of deadly malice at a

young lad who was present. That young lad was the son of the clergyman

of the parish,--one of the most diligent and exemplary clergymen in

Britain. Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown were the clergymen who preceded

him. And the spiteful old woman adopted this means of sticking a pin

into the young lad,--conveying the idea that there was a sad falling

off now. I saw and heard her, my reader. Now, when an ordinary

spiteful person says a malicious thing, being quite aware that she is

saying a malicious thing, and that her motive is pure malice, you are

disgusted. But when a spiteful person says a malicious thing, all the

while fancying herself a very pious person, and fancying that in

gratifying her spite she is acting from Christian principle,--I say

the sight is to me one of the most disgusting, perplexing, and

miserable, that ever human eye beheld. I have no fear of the attacks

of enemies on the blessed faith in which I live, and hope to die; but

it is dismal to see how our holy religion is misrepresented before the

world by the vile impostors who pretend to be its friends.

Among the disagreeable people who make a profession of religion,

probably many are purely hypocrites. But we willingly believe that

there are people, in whom Christianity appears in a wretchedly stunted

and distorted form, who yet are right at the root. It does not follow

that a man is a Christian, because he turns up his eyes and drawls out

his words, and, when asked to say grace, offers a prayer of twenty

minutes' duration. But, again, it does not follow that he is

_not_ a Christian, though he may do all these things. The bitter

sectary, who distinctly says that a humble, pious man, just dead, has

"gone to hell," because he died in the bosom of the National Church,

however abhorrent that sectary may be in some respects, may be, in the

main, within the Good Shepherd's fold, wherein he fancies there are

very few but himself. The dissenting teacher, who declared from his

pulpit that the parish clergyman (newly come, and an entire stranger

to him) was "a servant of Satan," may possibly have been a good man,

after all. Grievous defects and errors may exist in a Christian

character, which is a Christian character still. And the Christian,

horribly disagreeable and repulsive now, will some day, we trust, have

all _that_ purged away. But I do not hesitate to say, that any

Christian, by so far as he is disagreeable and repulsive, deviates

from the right thing. Oh, my reader, when my heart is sometimes sore

through what I see of disagreeable traits in Christian character, what

a blessed relief there is in turning to the simple pages, and seeing

for the thousandth time The True Christian Character,--so different!

Yes, thank God, we know where to look, to find what every pious man

should be humbly aiming to be: and when we see That Face, and hear

That Voice, there is something that soothes and cheers among the

wretched imperfections (in one's self as in others) of the

present,--something that warms the heart, and that brings a man to his

knees!

The present writer has a relative who is Professor of Theology in a

certain famous University. With that theologian I recently had a

conversation on the matter of which we have just been thinking. The

Professor lamented bitterly the unchristian features of character

which may be found in many people making a great parade of their

Christianity. He mentioned various facts, which had recently come to

his own knowledge, which would sustain stronger expressions of opinion

than any which I have given. But he went on to say, that it would be a

sad thing, if no fools could get to heaven,--nor any unamiable,

narrow-minded, sour, and stupid people. Now, said he, with great

force of reason, religion does not alter idiosyncrasy. When a fool

becomes a Christian, he will be a foolish Christian; a narrow-minded

man will be a narrow-minded Christian; a stupid man, a stupid

Christian. And though a malignant man will have his malignity much

diminished, it by no means follows that it will be completely rooted

out. "When I would do good, evil is present with me." "I find a law in

my members, warring against the law of my mind, and enslaving me to

the law of sin." But you are not to blame Christianity for the

stupidity and unamiability of Christians. If they be disagreeable, it

is not the measure of true religion they have got that makes them

so. In so far as they are disagreeable, they depart from the

standard. You know, you may make water sweet or sour,--you may make it

red, blue, black; and it will be water still, though its purity and

pleasantness are much interfered with. In like manner, Christianity

may coexist with a good deal of acid,--with a great many features of

character very inconsistent with itself. The cup of fair water may

have a bottle of ink emptied into it, or a little verjuice, or even a

little strychnine. And yet, though sadly deteriorated, though

hopelessly disguised, the fair water is there, and not entirely

neutralized.

And it is worth remarking, that you will find many persons who are

very charitable to blackguards, but who have no charity for the

weaknesses of really good people. They will hunt out the act of

thoughtless liberality done by the scapegrace who broke his mother's

heart and squandered his poor sisters' little portions; they will make

much of that liberal act,--such an act as tossing to some poor

Magdalen a purse filled with money which was probably not his own; and

they will insist that there is hope for the blackguard yet. But these

persons will tightly shut their eyes against a great many

substantially good deeds done by a man who thinks Prelacy the

abomination of desolation, or who thinks that stained glass and an

organ are sinful. I grant you that there is a certain fairness in

trying the blackguard and the religionist by different standards.

Where the pretension is higher, the test may justly be more

severe. But I say it is unfair to puzzle out with diligence the one or

two good things in the character of a reckless scamp, and to refuse

moderate attention to the many good points about a weak,

narrow-minded, and uncharitable good person. I ask for charity in the

estimating of all human characters,--even in estimating the character

of the man who would show no charity to another. I confess freely

that in the last-named case the exercise of charity is extremely

difficult.

THE SAM ADAMS REGIMENTS IN THE TOWN OF BOSTON.

THE QUESTION OF REMOVAL.

"God be praised! the troops are landed, and critically too," Commodore

Hood said, after he had received from Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple an

account of his entrance into Boston. The Commodore reflected, with

infinite satisfaction, he wrote, that, in anticipation of a great

emergency, he collected the squadron; that he was enabled to act the

moment he received the first application for aid; and that he was

prepared to throw forward additional force until informed that no more

was wanted: and now, with an officer's pride, he advised George

Grenville, that on the twenty-seventh day from the date at New York of

the order of General Gage for troops, the detachment was landed at

Boston. The two commanders were well satisfied with each other. Hood

characterized Dalrymple as a very excellent officer, quite the

gentleman, knowing the world, having a good address, and with all the

fire, judgment, coolness, integrity, and firmness that a man could

possess. Dalrymple wrote to Hood,--"My good Sir, you may rest

satisfied that the arrival of the squadron was the most seasonable

thing ever known, and that I am in possession of the town; and

therefore nothing can be apprehended. Had we not arrived so

critically, the worst that could be apprehended must have happened."

Both were good officers and honorable men, who believed and acted on

the fabulous relations of the Boston crown officials.

"Our town is now a perfect garrison," the Patriots said, after the

troops were posted, and the rough experiment on their well-ordered

municipal life had fairly begun. It galled them to see a powerful

fleet and a standing army watching all the inlets to the town,--to see

a guard at the only land-avenue leading into the country, companies

patrolling at the ferry-ways, the Common alive with troops and dotted

with tents, marchings and countermarchings through the streets to

relieve the guards, and armed men occupying the halls of justice and

freedom, with sentinels at their doors. Quiet observers of this

strange spectacle, like Andrew Eliot, wondered at the infatuation of

the Ministry, and what the troops were sent to do; while the popular

leaders and the body of the Patriots regarded their presence as

insulting. The crown officials and Loyalist leaders, however, exulted

in this show of force, and ascribed to it a conservative influence and

a benumbing effect. "Our harbor is full of ships, and our town full of

troops," Hutchinson said. "The red-coats make a formidable

appearance, and there is a profound silence among the Sons of

Liberty." The Sons chose to labor and to wait; and the troops could

not attack the liberty of silence.

The House of Representatives, on reviewing the period of the stay of

the troops in Boston, declared that there resulted from their

introduction "a scene of confusion and distress, for the space of

seventeen months, which ended in the blood and slaughter of His

Majesty's good subjects." The popular leaders, who repelled, as

calumny, the Loyalist charge that they were engaged in a scheme of

rebellion, said that to quarter among them in time of peace a standing

army, without the consent of the General Court, was as harrowing to

the feelings of the people, and as contrary to the constitution of

Massachusetts, as it would be harrowing to the people of England, and

contrary to the Bill of Eights and of every principle of civil

government, if soldiers were posted in London without the consent of

Parliament; in a word, that it was as violative of their local

self-government as the Stamp Act or the Revenue Act, and was also an

impeachment of their loyalty. They, therefore, as a matter of right,

were opposed to a continuance of the troops in the town.

The question of removal now became an issue of the gravest political

character, and of the deepest personal interest; and a steady pursuit

of this object, from October, 1768, to March, 1770, gave unity,

directness, and an ever-painful foreboding to the local politics,

until the flow of blood created a delicate and dangerous crisis.

The crown officials and over-zealous Loyalists, during this period,

resisted this demand for a removal of the troops. The officers urged

that a military force was needed to support the King's authority; the

Loyalists said that it was necessary to protect their lives and

property; and the Ministry viewed it as vital to the success of their

measures. Lord Hillsborough,--who was an exponent of the school that

placed little account on public opinion as the basis of law, but

relied on physical force,--in an elaborate confidential letter

addressed to Governor Bernard, urged as a justification of this

policy, that the authority of the civil power was too weak to enforce

obedience to the laws, and preserve that peace and good order which

are essential to the happiness of every State; and he directed the

Governor punctually to observe former instructions, especially those

of the preceding July, and gave now the additional instruction, to

institute inquiries into such unconstitutional acts as had been

committed since, in order that the perpetrators of them might, if

possible, be brought to justice. It is worthy of remark, that there is

nothing more definite in this letter as to what the Ministry

considered to be unconstitutional acts.

As American affairs were pondered, at this period, (October, 1768,) by

Under-Secretary Pownall, a brother of Ex-Governor Pownall, Lord

Barrington, and Lord Hillsborough, in the deep shading of the

misrepresentations of the local officials of Boston, they appeared to

be in a very critical condition. These officials had, however, the

utmost confidence in the exhibition of British power, and in the

wisdom of Francis Bernard. The letters which the Governor now

received, both private and official, from these friends, were, as to

his personal affairs, of the most gratifying character; and their

congratulations on the landing of the troops were as though a crisis

had been fortunately passed. Lord Hillsborough congratulated him,

officially, "on the happy and quiet landing of the troops, and the

unusual approbation which his steady and able conduct had obtained."

Lord Barrington, in a private letter, said,--"There is only one

comfortable circumstance, which is, that the troops are quietly lodged

in Boston. This will for a time preserve the public peace, and secure

the persons of the few who are well affected to the mother-country."

Both these leading politicians--there were none at this time more

powerful in England--expressed similar sentiments in Parliament from

the Ministerial benches: Lord Hillsborough sounding fully the praise

of the Governor, and Lord Barrington, in an imperial strain, terming

the Americans "worse than traitors against the Crown, traitors against

the legislature of Great Britain," and saying that "the use of troops

was to bring rioters to justice."

The sentiment expressed as to the future was equally gratifying to the

Governor. Lord Hillsborough, (November 15, 1768,) in an official

letter, said,--"It will, I apprehend, be a great support and

consolation for you to know that the King places much confidence in

your prudence and caution on the one hand, and entertains no

diffidence in your spirit and resolution on the other, and that His

Majesty will not suffer these sentiments to receive any alterations

from private misrepresentations, if any should come"; and in a private

letter, by the same mail, the Secretary said,--"If I am listened to,

the measure you think the most necessary will be adopted." It is not

easy to see how a Government could express greater confidence in an

agent than the Secretary expressed in Francis Bernard; and the talk in

Ministerial circles now was, as it was confidentially reported to the

Governor, that, as he had nothing to arrange with the faction, and

nothing to fear from the people, he could fully restore the King's

authority.

The tone of the Governor's letters and the object of his official

action, by a thorough repudiation of the democratic principle, and a

jealous regard for British dominion, were well calculated to inspire

this confidence; for they came up to the ideal, not merely of the

leaders of the Tory party, or of the Whig party, but of the England of

that day. There was then great confusion in the British factions.

Ex-Governor Pownall, after comparing this confusion to Des Cartes's

chaos of vortices, remarked, (1768,) in a letter addressed to

Dr. Cooper,--"We have but one word,--I will not call it an

idea,--that is, our sovereignty; and it is like some word to a madman,

which, whenever mentioned, throws him into his ravings, and brings on

a paroxysm." The Massachusetts crown officials were continually

pronouncing this word to the Ministry. They constantly set forth the

principle of local self-government, which was tenaciously and

religiously clung to by the Patriots as being the foundation of all

true liberty, as a principle of independence; and they represented the

jealous adherence to the local usages and laws, which faithfully

embodied the popular instincts and doctrine, to be proofs of a decay

of the national authority, and the cloak of long-cherished schemes of

rebellion. And this view was accepted by the leading political men of

England. They held, all of them but a little band of republican-

grounded sympathizers with the Patriots, that the principles

announced by the Patriots went too far, and that, in clinging

to them the Americans were endangering the British empire; and

the only question among the public men of England was, whether the

Crown or the Parliament was the proper instrumentality, as the phrase

was, for reducing the Colonies to obedience. Lord Barrington, in his

speech above cited, laid most stress on the denial of the authority of

Parliament: all who questioned any part of this authority were

regarded as disloyal; and hence Lord Hillsborough's instructions to

Governor Bernard ran,--"If any man or set of men have been daring

enough to declare openly that they will not submit to the authority of

Parliament, it is of great consequence that His Majesty's servants

should know who and what they are."

Another class of British observers, already referred to, of the school

of Sidney and Milton, lovers of civil and religious liberty, saw in

Boston and Massachusetts a state of things far removed from rebellion

and anarchy. They looked upon the spectacle of a people in general

raised by mental and moral culture into fitness for self-government

and an appreciation of the higher aims of life, as a result at which

good men the world over ought to rejoice, a result honorable to the

common humanity. They pronounced the late Parliamentary acts affecting

such a people to be grievances, the course of the Ministry towards

them to be oppressive, and the claims set forth in their proceedings

to be reasonable; they even went so far as to say that the equity was

wholly on the side of the North-Americans. Thus this class, as they

rose above a selfish jealousy of political power, fairly anticipated

the verdict of posterity. Thomas Hollis, the worthy benefactor of

Harvard College, was a type of this republican school. "The people of

Boston and of Massachusetts Bay," he wrote in 1768, "are, I suppose,

take them as a body, the soberest, most knowing, virtuous people, at

this time, upon earth. All of them hold Revolution principles, and

were to a man, till disgusted by the Stamp Act, the stanchest friends

to the House of Hanover and subjects of King George III."

The representations made to the Ministry, at this time, (October,

1768,) by Bernard, Hutchinson, and Gage, were similar in tone. There

was very little government in Boston, according to Gage; there was

nothing able to resist a mob, according to Hutchinson; so much

wickedness and folly were never before combined as in the men who

lately ruled here, according to Bernard. The Commander-in-Chief and

the Governor sent despatches to Lord Hillsborough on the same day

(October 31, 1768). Gage informed the Secretary that the constitution

of the Province leaned so much to the side of democracy that the

Governor had not the power to remedy the disorders that happened in

it; Bernard informed him that indulgence towards the Province, whence

all the mischief had arisen, would ever have the same effect that it

had had hitherto, led on from claim to claim till the King had left

only the name of the government and the Parliament but the shadow of

authority. There was nothing whatever to justify this strain of

remark, but the idea which the people had grasped, that they had a

right to an equal measure of freedom with Englishmen; but such a claim

was counted rebellious. "I told Cushing, the Speaker, some months

ago," the Governor says in this letter, "that they were got to the

edge of rebellion, and advised them not to step over the line." The

reply of the Speaker is not given, but he was constantly disclaiming,

in his letters, any purpose of rebellion. Now that Bernard saw, what

he had desired to see for years, troops in Boston, he was as ill at

ease as before; and at the close of the letter just cited he says,--"I

am now at sea again in the old weather-beaten boat, with the wind

blowing as hard as ever."

The political winds, however, do not seem to have been damaging any

body or thing but the Governor and his cause. During the month of

October the crown officials urged the local authorities to billet the

troops in the town; but this demand was quietly and admirably met by

setting against it the law of the land as interpreted by just men. The

press was now of signal service; and all through this period of

seventeen months, though it severely arraigned the advocates of

arbitrary power, yet it ever urged submission to the law. "It is

always safe to adhere to the law," are the grand words of the "Boston

Gazette," October 17, 1768, "and to keep every man of every

denomination and character within its bounds. Not to do this would be

in the highest degree imprudent. What will it be but to depart from

the straight line, to give up the law and the Constitution, which is

fixed and stable, and is the collected and long-digested sentiment of

the whole, and to substitute in its place the opinion of individuals,

than which nothing can be more uncertain?" These words were penned by

Samuel Adams, and freedom never had a more unselfish advocate; they

fell upon a community that was discussing in every home the gravest of

political questions; and they were responded to with a prudence and

order that were warmly eulogized both in America and England. This

respect for Law, when Liberty was as a live coal from a divine altar,

adhered to so faithfully for years, in spite, too, of goadings by

those who wielded British power, but forgot American right, must be

regarded as remarkable. Until the close of Bernard's administration,

the town, to use contemporary words, was surprisingly quiet; but

during the remainder of the period of the seventeen months, when

selfish importers broke their agreement and set themselves against

what was considered to be the public safety, they provoked

disturbances and even mobs. Still, in an age when, to use Hutchinson's

words, "mobs of a certain sort were constitutional," the wonder is,

not that there were any, but that there were not more of them in

Boston. Besides, the concern of the popular leaders to preserve order

was so deep and their action so prompt, that disturbances were checked

and suppressed without the use of the military on a single occasion;

and hence the injury done both to persons and property was so small,

when compared with the bloodshed and destruction by contemporary

British mobs, that what Colonel Barré said of the June riots in Boston

was true of the outbreaks at the close of this period, namely, that

they but mimicked the mobs of the mother-country.

The patience of the people was severely tried on the evening of the

landing of the troops, as they filed into Faneuil Hall; and it was

still more severely tried, as, on the next day, Sunday, they filed

into the Town-House. The latter building was thus occupied under an

order from Governor Bernard, who, it was said in the journals, had no

authority to give such an order. The legislature and the courts of law

held their sessions here, and, what was not known then elsewhere in

the world, the General Court was public,--that is, the people were

admitted to hear the debates, while in England the public was

excluded; it was an offence to report the debates in Parliament, and a

breach of privilege for a member to print even his own speech. In

consequence of the political advance that had been made here, the

galleries of the Hall of the House of Representatives, in December,

1767, for eighteen days in succession, were thronged with people, who

listened to the discussion when the most remarkable state-paper of the

time was under consideration, namely, the letter which the House

addressed to their agent, Mr. De Berdt. It now provoked the people to

see these halls, all except the chamber in which the Council held its

sessions, occupied by armed men, and the field-pieces of the train

placed in the street, pointing towards the building. The lower floor

was used as an Exchange by the merchants, who were annoyed by being

obliged daily to brush by the red-coats. All this was excessively

irritating, and needed no exaggeration from abroad. Still it is but

just to the men of that day to present all the circumstances under

which they maintained their dignity. "Asiatic despotism," so says a

contemporary London eulogy on their conduct, which was printed in the

Boston journals, "does not present a picture more odious to the eye of

humanity than the sanctuary of justice and law turned into a main

guard." And on comparing the moderation in this town under such an

infliction with a late effusion of blood in St. George's Fields, the

writer says,--"By this wise and excellent conduct you have

disappointed your enemies, and convinced your friends that an entire

reliance is to be placed on the supporters of freedom at Boston, in

every occurrence, however delicate or dangerous."

While the indignation of the Sons of Liberty, under such provocations,

was as deep as Hutchinson says their silence was profound, there was,

in the local press, the severest denunciation of this use of their

forum. The building is called in print this year, (1768,) the

Town-House, the State-House, the Court-House, and the Parliament-

House. It may be properly termed the political focus of the Province,

and it then bore to Massachusetts a similar relation to that

which Faneuil Hall now bears to Boston. The goodly and venerable

structure that still looks down on State Street and the Merchants'

Exchange has little in it to attract the common eye, much less a

classic taste; but there is not on the face of the earth, it has been

said, a temple, however magnificent, about which circles a more

glorious halo. There is much to relieve the remark of Mayor Otis from

exaggeration. Its humble halls, for over a generation, had echoed to

the appeals for the Good Old Cause made by men of whom it was said

Milton was their great forerunner. Here popular leaders with such root

in them had struggled long and well against the encroachments of

Prerogative. Here the state-papers were matured that first

intelligently reconciled the claims of local self-government with what

is due to a protective nationality. Here intrepid representatives of

the people, on the gravest occasion that had arisen in an American

assembly, justly refused to comply with an arbitrary royal

command. Here first in modern times was recognized the vital principle

of publicity in legislation. Here James Otis, as a pioneer patriot,

poured forth his soul when his tongue was as a flame of fire,--John

Adams, on the side of freedom, first showed himself to be a Colossus

in debate,--Joseph Hawley first publicly denied that Parliament had

the right to rule in all cases whatsoever,--and the unequalled

leadership of Samuel Adams culminated, when he felt obliged to strive

for the independence of his country; and, in the fulness of time, the

imperishable scroll of the Declaration, from this balcony, and in a

scene of unsurpassed moral sublimity, was first officially unrolled

before the people of the State of Massachusetts. Thus this relic of a

hero age is fragrant with the renown of

"The men that glorious law who taught,

Unshrinking liberty of thought,

And roused the nations with the truth sublime."

On the 15th of October, General Gage, with a distinguished staff, came

to Boston to provide quarters for the troops, and was received at a

review on the Common with a salute of seventeen guns by the train of

artillery, when, preceded by a brilliant corps of officers, he passed

in a chariot before the column. The same journals (October 20) which

contained a notice of this review had extracts from London papers, by

a fresh arrival, in which it was said,--"The town of Boston meant to

render themselves as independent of the English nation as the crown of

England is of that of Spain"; and that "the nation was treated by them

in terms of stronger menace and insult than sovereign princes ever use

to each other."

The journals now announced that two regiments, augmented to seven

hundred and fifty men each, were to embark at Cork for Boston; and

General Gage informed the local authorities that he expected their

arrival, and asked quarters for them, when the subject was considered

in the Council. This body now complied so far as, in the words printed

at the time, to "advise the Governor to give immediate orders to have

the Manufactory House in Boston, which is the property of the

Province, cleared of those persons who are in the present possession

of it, so that it might be ready to receive those of said regiments

who could not be conveniently accommodated at Castle William." This

building, as already remarked, stood in what is now Hamilton Place,

near the Common, and for twelve years had been hired by Mr. John

Brown, a weaver, who not only carried on his business here, but lived

here with his family; and hence it was his legal habitation, his

castle, "which the wind and the rain might enter, but which the King

could not enter."

Mr. Brown, having before declined to let the troops already in town

occupy the building, now, acting under legal advice, declined to

comply with the present request to leave it; whereupon it was

determined to take forcible possession. Accordingly, on the 17th of

October, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Sheriff Greenleaf,

accompanied by Chief-Justice Hutchinson, went to the Manufactory House

for this purpose, but was denied entrance by Mr. Brown, who had

fastened all the doors. He appeared, however, at a window, when the

Sheriff presented the Governor's order; but Mr. Brown replied, that he

never had had any lawful warning to leave the house, and did not look

upon the power of the Governor and Council as sufficient to dispossess

him; and finally told the Sheriff that he would not surrender his

possession to any till required by the General Court, under whom he

held, or till he was obliged to do it by the law of the Province, or

compelled by force: whereupon the Sheriff and the Chief-Justice

retired.

On the nest morning, at ten o'clock, Sheriff Greenleaf, attended by

his deputies, again appeared before the house, and again found the

doors shut. They, however, entered the cellar by a window, that was

partly opened, it is said to let out an inmate,--when, after a

scuffle, Mr. Brown declared that the Sheriff was his prisoner; upon

which the Sheriff informed the commanding officer of the regiment on

the Common of his situation, who sent a guard for his protection.

Sentinels were now placed at the doors, two at the gate of

the yard, and a guard of ten in the cellar; and as the people gathered

fast about the gate, an additional company was ordered from the

Common. Any one was allowed to come out of the house, but no one was

allowed to go in. The press now harped upon the cries of Mr. Brown's

children for bread.

This strange proceeding caused great excitement, and at this stage

there was (October 22) a meeting of the Council to consider the

subject, when seven of the members waited on the Governor to assure

him that nothing could be farther from their intention, when they gave

their advice, than to sanction this use of force; and about seven

o'clock that evening most of the troops were taken away, leaving only

one or two soldiers at a window and a small guard in the cellar. In a

few days afterwards all the guards were removed, and finally Mr. Brown

was left in quiet possession. The whole affair lasted seventeen

days. Shortly after, Mr. Brown prosecuted the Sheriff for trespass,

when the Council declined to be accountable for these official

doings. He soon announced to the public in a card a resumption of his

business. His tombstone bears a eulogy on the bravery which thus long

and successfully resisted an attempt to force a citizen from his legal

habitation. "Happy citizen," the stone reads, "when called singly to

be a barrier to the liberties of a continent!"

Soon after this affair, fifteen members of the Council, and among them

several decided Loyalists, signed an address which was adopted at a

meeting held without a summons from the Governor, and which was

presented (October 27, 1768) directly to General Gage, as "from

members of His Majesty's Council." This address is a candid, truthful,

and strong exposition of the whole series of proceedings connected

with the introduction of the troops. "Your own observation," it says,

"will give you the fullest evidence that the town and the Province are

in a peaceful state; your own inquiry will satisfy you, that, though

there have been disorders in the town of Boston, some of them did not

merit notice, and that such as did have been magnified beyond the

truth." The events of the eighteenth of March and of the tenth of

June were reviewed: the former were pronounced trivial, and such as

could not have been noticed to the disadvantage of the town but by

persons inimical to it; the latter were conceded to be criminal, and

the actors in them guilty of a riot; but, in justice to the town, it

was urged that this riot had its origin in the threats and the armed

force used in the seizure of the sloop Liberty. The General was

informed that the people thought themselves injured, and by men to

whom they had done no injury, and thus was "most unjustly brought into

question the loyalty of as loyal a people as any in His Majesty's

dominions"; and he was assured that it would be a great ease and

satisfaction to the inhabitants, if be would please to order the

troops to Castle William.

In a brief reply to this elaborate address, the next day, General Gage

said that the riots and the resolves of the town had induced His

Majesty to order four regiments to protect his loyal subjects in their

persons and properties, and to assist the civil magistrates in the

execution of the laws; that he trusted the discipline and order of the

troops would render their stay in no shape distressful to His

Majesty's dutiful subjects; and that he hoped the future behavior of

the people would justify the best construction of past actions, and

afford him a sufficient foundation to represent to His Majesty the

propriety of withdrawing the most part of the troops. This was very

paternal, haughty, and very English. However, the activity of the

commander, in bargaining for stores, houses, and other places to be

used as barracks for the soldiers, indicated better behavior in the

future on the part of crown officials than the browbeating of the

local authorities, from the Council down to the Justices, in the vain

attempt to make them do what the law did not require them to do, and

what their feelings, as well as their sense of right, forbade their

doing. In a short time the good people had the satisfaction of seeing

the redcoats move out of Fanueil Hall and the Town-House into quarters

provided by those who sent them into the town, and of reflecting on

the moral victory which their idolized leaders had won in standing

firmly by the law.

It was now in the mouths, not only of the Patriots, but of Loyalists

of the candid type of those who signed the recent address to General

Gage, that, as it was evident things had been grossly misrepresented

to the Ministers, when truth and time should set matters fairly right

before the Government there would be a change of policy; and so Hope,

in her usual bright way, lifted a little the burden from heavy hearts

in the cheering words through the press (October, 1768),--"The pacific

and prudent measures of the town of Boston must evince to the world

that Americans, though represented by their enemies to be in a state

of insurrection, mean nothing more than to support those

constitutional rights to which the laws of God and Nature entitle

them; and when the measure of oppression and mi..st...al iniquity is

full, and the dutiful supplications of an injured people shall have

reached the gracious ear of their sovereign, may at length terminate

in a glorious display of liberty."

The journals, a few days after these events, announced that "the

worshipful the Commissioners of the Customs, having of their own free

will retreated in June to the Castle, designed to make their

re-entrance to the metropolis, so that the town would be again blessed

with the fruits of the benevolence of the Board, as well as an example

of true politeness and breeding"; and soon afterwards this Board again

held its sessions in Boston. It was further announced, that the troops

that had been quartered in the Town-House had moved into a house

lately possessed by James Murray, which was near the church in Brattle

Street, (hence the origin of "Murray's Barracks," which became

historic from their connection with the Boston Massacre,)--that James

Otis, at the session of the Superior Court, in the Town-House, moved

that the Court adjourn to Faneuil Hall, because of the cannon that

remained pointed at the building, as it was derogatory to the honor of

the Court to administer justice at the mouth of the cannon and the

point of the bayonet,--that the Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments

had arrived from Cork, and were quartered in the large and commodious

stores on Wheelwright's Wharf,--and that Commodore Hood, the commander

of His Majesty's ships in America, had arrived (November 13) in

town. It is stated that there were now about four thousand troops

here, under the command of General Pomeroy, who was an excellent

officer and became very popular with the citizens.

The town, meanwhile, continued remarkably quiet. There was no call for

popular demonstrations during the winter; and the Patriots confined

their labors to severe animadversions on public measures, and efforts

to tone the people up to a rigid observance of the non-importation

scheme. The crown officials endeavored to enliven the season with

balls and concerts, and at first were mortified that few of the ladles

would attend them; but they persevered, and were more successful.

"Now," Richard Carey writes, (February 7, 1769,) "it is mortifying

to many of the inhabitants that they have obtained their wishes,

and that such numbers of ladies attend. It is a bad thing for

Boston to have so many gay, idle people in it." There is much comment,

in the letters and journals, upon these balls and concerts, and some

of it not very flattering to the ladies who countenanced them.

Meantime there appeared (January 10, 1769) an extra "Boston Post-Boy

and Advertiser," a broadside or half-sheet, printed in pica type, but

only on one side, which, under the heading of "Important Advices,"

spread before the community the King's speech to Parliament. This

state-paper, which was read the world over, represented the people of

Boston as being "in a state of disobedience to all law and government,

and to have proceeded to measures subversive of the Constitution, and

attended with circumstances that might manifest a disposition to throw

off their dependence upon Great Britain"; and it contained a pledge

"to defeat the mischievous designs of those turbulent and seditious

persons who, under false pretences, had but too successfully deluded

numbers," and whose designs, if not defeated, could not fail to

produce the most serious consequences, not only to the Colonies

immediately, but, in the end, to all the dominions of the Crown.

The Patriots remarked, (January 14, 1769,) that the countenances of a

few, who seemed to enjoy a triumph, were now very jocund; but that His

Majesty's loyal subjects were distressed that he had conceived such an

unfavorable sentiment of the temper of the people, who, far from the

remotest disposition to faction or rebellion, were struggling, as they

apprehended, for a constitution which supported the Crown, and for the

rights devised to them by their Charter and confirmed to them by the

declaration of His Majesty's glorious ancestors, William and Mary, at

that important era, the Revolution. These words are from an article

entitled "Journal of the Times," of which notice will be taken

presently; and they came out of what Bernard used to term the cabinet

of the faction. Other words, from Thomas Cushing, who was not an ultra

Whig, run, as to His Majesty,--"He must have been egregiously

misinformed. Nothing could have been farther from the truth than such

advices. I hope time, which scatters and dispels the mists of error

and falsehood, will place us in our true light, and convince the

Administration how much they have been abused by false and malicious

misrepresentations." Official falsehood and malice did their

appointed work, doubtless, in inflaming the British mind; but the root

of the difficulty was the feeling, so general at that time in England,

that every man there had a right to govern every man in America. The

King represented this imperialism.

The King's speech, threatening resolves adopted in Parliament,

startling avowals in the direction of arbitrary power uttered in the

debates, gave fresh significance to the quartering of troops in

Boston, and forced upon the Patriots the conviction that these troops

were not here merely to aid in maintaining a public peace that was not

disturbed, or in collecting revenue that was regularly paid, but were

indicative of a purpose in the Ministry to change their local

government, and subjugate them, as to their domestic affairs, to

foreign-imposed law. "My daily reflections for two years," says John

Adams, who lived near Murray's Barracks, "at the sight of those

soldiers before my door, were serious enough. Their very appearance in

Boston was a strong proof to me that the determination in Great

Britain to subjugate us was too deep and inveterate ever to be altered

by us; for everything we could do was misrepresented, and nothing we

could say was credited." This statement is abundantly confirmed by

contemporary facts. Nothing that the Patriots could say availed to

diminish the alarm which was felt by the British aristocracy at the

obvious tendency of the democratic principle. The progress of events

but revealed new grandeur in the ideas of freedom and equality that

had been here so intelligently grasped, and new capacities in the

republican forms in which they had found expression. This was

growth. The mode prescribed to check this growth was a change in the

local Constitution, and this would be "the introduction of absolute

rule" in Massachusetts.

The voluminous correspondence, at this period, between the members of

the British Cabinet and Governor Bernard shows that this purpose of

changing the Constitution was entertained by the Ministers and was

warmly urged by the local crown officials. Thus, John Pownall, the

Under-Secretary, avowed in a letter addressed to the Governor, that

such a measure was necessary, and that such "had been long his firm

and unalterable opinion upon the fullest consideration of what had

passed in America"; and in the same letter be says that the Government

had under consideration "the forfeiture of the Charter and measures of

local regulation and reform."

The Governor, for years, had urged this in general, and of late had

named the specific measure of so altering the constitution of the

Council, that, instead of being chosen by the Representatives, it

should be appointed by the Crown; and he was vexed because his

superiors did not consider the Charter as at their mercy. "I have

just now heard," he wrote, October 22, 1768, to Lord Barrington, "that

the Charter of this government is still considered as sacred. For,

most assuredly, if the Charter is not so far altered as to put the

appointment of the Council in the King, this government will never

recover itself. When order is restored, it will be at best but a

republic, of which the Governor will be no more than President." A

month later (November 22, 1768) he wrote to John Pownall,--"If the

Convention and the proceedings of the Council about the same time

shall give the Crown a legal right or induce the Parliament to

exercise a legislative power over the Charter, it will be most

indulgently exercised, if it is extended no farther than to make an

alteration in the form of the government, which has always been found

wanting, is now become quite necessary, and will really, by making it

more constitutional, render it more permanent. With this alteration,

I do believe that all the disorders of this government will be

remedied, and the authority of it fully restored. Without it, there

will be a perpetual occasion to resort to expedients, the continual

inefficiency of which will speak in the words of Scripture,--'You are

careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful.'"

As week after week passed and no orders came from the Secretary of

State to make arrests of certain individuals who had been conspicuous

in the late town-meetings, and no legislation was entered upon as to

the Charter, the crown officials were greatly agitated; and Bernard

says (December, 1768) that they were "under the apprehension that the

Government of Great Britain might not take the full advantage of what

the late mad and wicked proceedings of The Sons of Liberty [faction]

had put in their hands. They say that the late wild attempt to create

a revolt and take the government of the Province out of the King's

into their own hands affords so fair an opportunity for the supreme

power to reform the constitution of this subordinate government, to

dispel the faction which has harassed this Province for three years

past, and to inflict a proper and not a severe censure upon some of

the heads of it, that, if it is now neglected, they say, it is not

like soon, perhaps ever, to happen again." And the Governor said that

he heard much of this from all the sensible men with whom he

conversed. What a testimonial is this record in favor of republican

Boston and Massachusetts! So complete was the quiet of the town, so

forbearing were the people under the severest provocations, that this

set of politicians were out of all patience, and feared they never

would see another riot out of which to make a case for abolishing the

cherished local government. The Patriots, Bernard says in this letter,

did not experience this agitation. "Those persons," he writes, "who

have reason to expect a severe censure from Great Britain do not

appear to be so anxious for the event as the friends and well-wishers

to the authority of the Government." The Patriots intended no

rebellion, and they experienced no apprehension. They put forth no

absurd claims to meddle with things that were common and national, and

they asked simply to be let alone as to things peculiar and local.

Meantime Governor Bernard was fairly importuned by Government

officials for advice; and again and again he was assured that his

judgment was regarded as valuable. "Mr. Pownall and I," Lord

Hillsborough says, in a private letter, (November 15, 1768,) "have

spent some days in considering with the utmost attention your

correspondence." John Pownall, the Under-Secretary here referred to,

wrote (December 24, 1768,) to Bernard,--"I want to know very much your

real sentiments on the present very critical situation of American

affairs, and the more fully the greater will be the obligations

conferred." There are curious coincidences in history, and one

occurred on the day on which this letter was dated; for Governor

Bernard, with a letter of this same date addressed to Pownall, sent

him a remarkable communication developing the measures which the

Boston crown officials considered to be necessary to maintain the

King's authority.

At this time (December, 1768) there appears to have been but little

difference of opinion among the prominent Loyalists as to the

necessity of an extraordinary exercise of authority in some way, both

as a point of honor and as a measure of precaution for the future. On

this point Hutchinson was as decided as Bernard, though he was

reticent as to the precise shape it ought to take. It would not do, he

said, to leave the Colonies to the loose principle, espoused by so

many, that they were subject to laws that appeared to them equitable,

and no other; nor would it do to drive the Colonies to despair; but if

nothing were done but to pass declaratory acts and resolves, it would

soon be all over with the friends of Government; and so he wrote,

"This is most certainly a crisis."

The remarkable paper just referred to is recorded in Governor

Bernard's Letter-Books, without either address or signature, but in

the form of a letter, dated December 23, 1768, and marked,

"Confidential." It is elaborate and able, but too long for citation

here in full. In it the Governor professes to speak for others as well

as for himself, and to present the reasonings used in Boston on an

important and critical occasion.

The second paragraph embodies the propositions which were recommended

by the Loyalists, and is as follows:--"It is said that the

Town-Meeting, the Convention, and the refusal of the Justices to

billet the soldiers, severally, point out and justify the means

whereby, First, the disturbers of the peace of the government may be

properly censured, Second, the magistracy of the town reformed, and,

Third, the constitution of the government amended: all of them most

desirable ends, and some of them quite necessary to the restoration of

the King's authority. I will consider these separately."

The Governor represented the town-meeting which called the September

Convention as undoubtedly intending to bring about a rebellion,--and

the precise way designed is said to have been, to seize the two

highest officials and the treasury, and then to set up a standard; and

after remarking on the circumstances that defeated this scheme, he

inquires why so notorious an attempt should go unpunished because it

was unsuccessful. He recommends the passage of an Act of Parliament

disqualifying the principal persons engaged in this from holding any

office or sitting in the Assembly; and this was urged as being much

talked of, and as likely in its tendency to have a good influence in

other governments. He presented, as proper to be censured, the

Moderator of the town-meeting, Otis,--the Selectmen, Jackson, Ruddock,

Hancock, Rowe, and Pemberton,--the Town-Clerk, Cooper,--the Speaker of

the Convention, Gushing,--and its Clerk, Adams. "The giving these men

a check," he said, "would make them less capable of doing more

mischief,--would really be salutary to themselves, as well as

advantageous to the Government."

The Governor represented that to reform the magistracy of the town

would be of great service, for there were among the Justices several

of the supporters of the Sons of Liberty; and their refusal, under

their own hands, to quarter the soldiers in town would justify a

removal. He recommended that this reform should be by Act of

Parliament, and that by beginning in the County of Suffolk a precedent

might be established for a like exercise of authority as to other

places. Such an act, with a royal instruction to the Governor as to

appointments, was looked upon as of such value for the restoration of

authority, that "some were for carrying this remedial measure to all

the commissions of all kinds in the Government"

The Governor represented the fundamental change proposed as to the

Council to be a most desirable object,--"If one was to say," his words

were, "quite necessary to the restoration and firm establishment of

the authority of the Crown, it would not be saying too much." The

justification for this was alleged to be, the sitting of the

Convention and certain proceedings of the Council, which, it was

argued at some length, broke the condition on which the Charter was

granted, and thereby made it liable to forfeiture. It was alleged

that the Council had met separately as a Council without being

assembled by the Governor, that the people had chosen Representatives

also without being summoned by the Governor, and that these

Representatives had met and transacted business, as in an Assembly,

even after they had been required in the King's name to break up their

meeting. Thus both the Council and the people had committed

usurpations on the King's rights; and it would surely be great grace

and favor in the King, if he took no other advantage than to correct

the errors in the original formation of the government and make it

more congenial to the Constitution of the mother-country.

The concluding portion of the paper urges general considerations why

the local government ought to be changed. "It requires no arguments to

show," are its words, "that the inferior governments of a free State

should be as similar to that of the supreme State as can well be. And

it is self-evident that the excellency of the British Constitution

consists in the equal balance of the regal and popular powers. If so,

where the royal scale kicks the beam and the people know their own

superior strength, the authority of Government can never be steady and

durable: it must either be perpetually distracted by disputes with the

Crown, or be quieted by giving up all real power to the demagogues of

the people." And, after other considerations, the paper closes as

follows:--"It is therefore not to be wondered at that the most

sensible men of this Province see how necessary it is for the peace

and good order of this government that the royal scale should have its

own constitutional weights restored to it, and thereby be made much

more equilibrial with the popular one. How this is to be done, whether

by the Parliament or the King's Bench, or by both, is a question for

the Administration to determine; the expedience of the measure is out

of doubt; and if the late proceedings of the Convention, etc., amount

to a forfeiture, a reformation of the constitution of the government,

if it is insisted upon, must and will be assented to."

The Governor, in a letter addressed to John Pownall, which is marked

"Private and Confidential," explains the origin and intention of this

paper,--a paper which has not been referred to by historians:--

FRANCIS BERNARD TO JOHN POWNALL.

"_Boston, Dec. 24, 1768._

"Dear Sir,--The enclosed letter is the result of divers conferences I

have had with some of the chief members of the Government and the

principal gentlemen of the town, in the course of which I have scarce

ever met with a difference to the opinions there laid down. I have

been frequently importuned to write to the Minister upon these

subjects, that the fair opportunity which offers to crush the faction,

reform the government, and restore peace and order may not be lost, I

have, however, declined it, not thinking it decent in me to appear to

dictate to the Minister so far as to prescribe a set of

measures. Besides, I have thought the subject and manner of dictating

it too delicate for a public letter. However, as it appears to me that

the welfare of this Province, the honor of the British Government, and

the future connection between them both depend upon the right

improvement of the time present, I have put the thoughts to writing in

a letter, in which I have avoided all personalities which may discover

the writer, and even the signing and addressing it. If these hints are

like to be of use, communicate them in such a manner that the writer

may not be known, unless it is in confidence. If they come too late,

or disagree with the present system, destroy the paper. All I can say

for them is that they are fully considered and are well intended.

"I am," etc.

This relation shows that the popular leaders were right in their

judgment, that they had broader work before them than to deal with the

special matter of taxation, and that the presence of the troops meant

the beginning of arbitrary government. The duty of the hour was not

shirked. The Patriots could not know the extent of the Governor's

misrepresentations; but they knew from the tone of the Parliamentary

debates, that they were regarded as children, with a valid claim,

perhaps, to be well governed, but not as Englishmen, with coequal

rights to govern themselves, and that the British aristocracy meant to

cover them with its cold shade. And when the Loyalists arraigned the

Charter and town-meetings and juries as difficulties in the way of

good order, Shippen, in the "Gazette," (January 25, 1769,) said,--"The

Province has been, and may be again, quietly and happily governed,

while these terrible difficulties have subsisted in their full

force. They are, indeed, wise checks upon power in favor of the

people. But power vested in some rulers can brook no check. To assert

the most undoubted rights of human nature, and of the British

Constitution, they term faction; and having embarrassed a free

government by their own impolitic measures, they fly to military

power."

It may be asked, What came of the recommendations of Bernard? "I

know," Hutchinson wrote, (May 6, 1769,) "the Ministry, when I wrote

you last, had determined to push it [the alteration of the

Constitution] in Parliament. They laid aside the thought a little

while. The latter end of February they took it up again. I have reason

to think it is laid aside a second time." There was a third time also.

The Patriots for six years endured a steady aggression on their

constitutional rights, which had the single object in view of checking

the republican idea, when the scheme was taken up and pressed to a

consummation. The Parliamentary acts of 1774, as to town-meetings,

trial by jury, and the Council of Massachusetts, aimed a deadly blow

at the local self-government. It was the subjugation that John Adams

judged was symbolized by the military rule of 1768. Not until they saw

this, did the generation of that day feel justified in invoking the

terrible arbiter of war. Nor did they draw the awful sword until the

Thirteen Colonies, in Congress assembled, (1774,) solemnly pledged

each other to stand as one people in defence of the old local

government. This was in the majesty of revolution. It is profanation

to compare with this patience and glory the insurrection begun by

South Carolina. She--the first time such an organization ever did

it--assumed to be a nation; and then madly led off in a suicidal war

on the National Government, although the three branches of it,

Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary, recognized every constitutional

obligation, and had not attempted an invasion of any local right.

A month after the Governor transmitted his plan for an alteration of

the Constitution, he renewed, in an elaborate letter to Lord

Hillsborough, (January 24, 1769,) his old allegation, that the popular

leaders designed by their September town-meeting to inaugurate

insurrection, and by the Convention to make their proposed

insurrection general,--and that the plan was, to remove the King's

Governor and resume the old Charter. "A chief of the faction"

--this was a sample of the evidence--"said that he was always

for gentle measures; for he was only for driving the Governor and

Lieutenant-Governor out of the Province, and taking the government

into their own hands. Judge, my Lord, what must be the measures

proposed by others, when this is called a gentle measure." And he

advised the Minister, that, to aid him in the execution of the orders

he had received, he had formed a Cabinet Council of three principal

officers of the Crown, whose zeal, ability, and fidelity could not be

suspected. On the next day (January 25) the Governor devoted a

despatch to Lord Hillsborough to remarks upon the press, and

especially the "Boston Gazette" and Edes and Gill--"They may be said

to be no more than mercenary printers," are the Governor's

words,--"but they have been and still are the trumpeters of sedition,

and have been made the apparent instruments of raising that flame in

America which has given so much trouble and is still likely to give

more to Great Britain and her Colonies"; and it seemed to the Governor

that "the first step for calling the chiefs of the faction to account

would be by seizing their printers, together with their papers, if it

could be." He would not pronounce any particular piece absolutely

treason, but he sent to his Lordship a complete file of this journal

from the 14th of August, 1767, "when the present troubles began."

The next official action on the Patriot side was taken by the

Selectmen, who, in a touching as well as searching address to the

Governor, (February 18, 1769,) requested him to communicate to them

such representations of facts only as he had judged proper to make to

the Ministry during the past year relative to the town, in order that,

by knowing precisely what had been alleged against its proceedings or

character, the town might have an opportunity to vindicate itself.

After characterizing as truly alarming to a free people the array of

ships of war around it and the troops within it, the address

proceeds,--"Your Excellency can witness for the town that no such aid

is necessary; loyalty to the sovereign, and an inflexible zeal for the

support of His Majesty's authority and the happy Constitution, is its

just character; and we may appeal to an impartial world, that peace

and order were better maintained in the town before it was even

rumored that His Majesty's troops were to be quartered among us than

they have been since"; and the judgment is expressed, that the opinion

entertained abroad as to the condition of things in Boston could have

arisen only from a great misapprehension, by His Majesty's Ministers,

as to the behavior of individuals or the public transactions of the

town.

To this rather troublesome request the Governor returned a very brief

and curt answer,--that he had no reason to think that the public

transactions had been misapprehended by the Government, "or that their

opinions thereon were founded upon any other accounts than those

published by the town itself"; and he coolly added,--"If, therefore,

you can vindicate yourselves from such charges as may arise from your

own publications, you will, in my opinion, have nothing further to

apprehend."

A week later, the Selectmen waited on the Governor with another

address, which assumed that his reply to the former address had

substantially vindicated the town as a corporation, as it had

published nothing but its own transactions in town-meeting legally

assembled. And now the Selectmen averred, that, if the town had

suffered from the disorders of the eighteenth of March and the tenth

of June, "the only disorders that had taken place in the town within

the year past," the Governor's words were full testimony to the point,

that it must be in consequence of some partial or false

representations of those disorders to His Majesty's Ministers; and the

address entreated the Governor to condescend to point out wherein the

town, in its public transactions, had militated with any law or the

British constitution of government, so that either the town might be

made sensible of the illegality of its proceedings, or its innocence

might appear in a still clearer light.

The following sentence constituted the whole of the reply of the royal

representative: for what else could such a double-dealer say?

"Gentlemen,--As in my answer to your former address I confined myself

to you as Selectmen and the town as a Body, I did not mean to refer to

the disorders on the eighteenth of March or of the tenth of June, but

to the transactions in the town-meetings and the proceedings of the

Selectmen in consequence thereof.

"FRA: BERNARD.

"Feb. 24, 1769."

The town next, at the annual March meeting, petitioned the King to

remove the troops. This petition is certainly a striking paper, and

places in a strong light the earnest desire of the popular leaders to

steer clear of everything that might tend to wound British pride or in

any way to inflame the public mind of the mother-country, and to

impress on the Government their deep concern at the twin charges

brought against the town of disorder and disloyalty. While lamenting

the June riot, they averred that it was discountenanced by the body of

the inhabitants and immediately repressed; but with a confidence, they

said, which will ever accompany innocence and truth, they declared

that the courts had never been interrupted, not even that of a single

magistrate,--that not an instance could be produced of so much as an

attempt to rescue any criminal out of the hands of justice,--that

duties required by Acts of Parliament held to be grievous had been

regularly paid,--and that all His Majesty's subjects were disposed

orderly and dutifully to wait for that relief which they hoped from

His Majesty's wisdom and clemency and the justice of Parliament. After

reviewing elaborately the representations that had been made of the

condition of the town, with "the warmest declarations of their

attachment to their constitutional rights," they pronounced those

accounts to be ill-grounded which represented them as held to their

"allegiance and duty to the best of sovereigns only by the bond of

terror and the force of arms." The petition then most earnestly

supplicates His Majesty to remove from the town a military power which

the strictest truth warranted them in declaring unnecessary for the

support of the civil authority among them, and which they could not

but consider as unfavorable to commerce, destructive to morals,

dangerous to law, and tending to overthrow the civil constitution.

"Your Majesty," was the utterance of Boston, and in one of

those town-meetings that were heralded even from the Throne and

Parliament as instrumentalities of rebellion, "possesses a glory

superior to that of any monarch on earth,--the glory of being at the

head of the happiest civil constitution in the world, and under which

human nature appears with the greatest advantage and dignity,--the

glory of reigning over a free people, and of being enthroned in the

hearts of your subjects. Your Majesty, therefore, we are sure, will

frown, not upon those who have the warmest attachment to this

constitution and to their sovereign, but upon such as shall be found

to have attempted by their misrepresentations to diminish the

blessings of your Majesty's reign, in the remotest parts of your

dominions."

This is not the language of party-adroitness or of a low cunning, but

the calm utterance of truth by American manhood. There is no

indication of the authorship of the petition, but a strong committee

was chosen at the meeting which adopted it, consisting of James Otis,

Samuel Adams, Thomas Cushing, Richard Dana, Joseph Warren, John Adams,

and Samuel Quincy, to consider the subject of vindicating the town

from the misrepresentations to which it had been subjected. This

petition, accompanied by a letter penned by Samuel Adams, was

transmitted (April 8, 1769) to Colonel Barré, with the request that he

would present it, by his own hand, to His Majesty. Both the letter

and the petition requested the transmission to Boston of all Bernard's

letters, a specimen only of which had now been received. "Conscious,"

the letter said, "of their own innocence, it is the earnest desire of

the town that you would employ your great influence to remove from the

mind of our Sovereign, his Ministers, and Parliament, the unfavorable

sentiments that have been formed of their conduct, or at least obtain

from them the knowledge of their accusers and the matters alleged

against them, and an opportunity offered of vindicating themselves."

The letters just referred to as having been received from England

were six in number, five written by Governor Bernard and one by

General Gage, which contained specimens of the characteristic

misrepresentations of political affairs by the crown officials; and,

having been transmitted to the Council, this body felt called upon to

act in the matter, which they did (April 15, 1769) in a spirited

letter addressed to Lord Hillsborough. This letter is occupied mainly

with the various questions touching the introduction and the

quartering of the troops. Again were the disorders of the eighteenth

of March and the tenth of June reviewed and explained; the charge made

by the Governor, that the Council refused to provide quarters for the

troops out of servility to the populace, was pronounced to be without

foundation or coloring of truth; and the Council boldly charged upon

Bernard, that his great aim was the destruction of the constitution to

which, as Englishmen and by the Charter, they were entitled,--"a

constitution," they remark, "dearly purchased by our ancestors and

dear to us, and which we persuade ourselves will be continued to us."

Then, also, they charged that no Council had borne what the present

Council had borne from Bernard; that his whole conduct with regard to

the troops was arbitrary and unbecoming the dignity of his station;

and that his common practice, in case the Council did not come into

his measures, of threatening to lay their conduct before His Majesty,

was absurd and insulting.

The troops, during the progress of the events which have been related,

did not redeem the promise, as to discipline and order, which General

Gage made for them to the Council. After the arrival of the

Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments, General Pomeroy continued the

commander through the winter, and down to the month of May; and he

made himself popular with the inhabitants. Still, the four regiments

consisted, to a great degree, of such rough material, that they could

not, in the idleness in which they were kept, be controlled. "The

soldiers," Andrew Eliot writes, January 29, 1769, "were in raptures at

the cheapness of spirituous liquors among us, and in some of their

drunken hours have been insolent to some of the inhabitants"; and he

further remarks that "the officers are the most troublesome, who, many

of them, are as intemperate as the men." Thus, while the temptation

to excess was strong, the restraint of individual position was weak,

and both privates and officers became subjects of legal proceedings as

disturbers of the public peace.

The routine of military discipline grated rudely on old customs.

Citizens who, like their ancestors for a century and a half, had

walked the streets with perfect freedom, were annoyed at being obliged

to answer the challenge of sentinels who were posted at the

Custom-House and other public places, and at the doors of the

officers' lodgings. Then the usual quiet of Sunday was disturbed by

the changes of the guards, with the sounds of fife and drum, and the

tunes of "Nancy Dawson" and "Yankee Doodle"; church-goers were annoyed

by parties of soldiers in the streets, and the whole community

outraged by horse-racing on the Common. Applications for redress had

been ineffectual; and General Pomeroy was excused for not checking

some of these things, on the ground that he was controlled by a

superior officer. His successor, General Mackay, gave great

satisfaction by prohibiting, in general orders, (June 15, 1769,)

horse-racing on the Common on the Lord's day by any under his command,

and also by forbidding soldiers to be in the streets during divine

service, a practice that had been long disagreeable to the people.

In one way and another the troops became sources of irritation. The

Patriots, mainly William Cooper, the town clerk, prepared a chronicle

of this perpetual fret, which contains much curious matter obtained

through access to authentic sources of information, private and

official. This diary was first printed in New York, and reprinted in

the newspapers of Boston and London, under the title of "Journal of

Occurrences." The numbers, continued until after the close of

Bernard's administration, usually occupied three columns of the

"Boston Evening Post," and constituted a piquant record of the matters

connected with the troops and general politics. It attracted much

attention, and the authors of it formed the subject of a standing

toast at the Liberty celebrations. Hutchinson averred that it was

composed with great art and little truth. After this weekly "Journal

of the Times," as it was now called, had been published four months,

Governor Bernard devoted to it an entire official letter addressed to

Lord Hillsborough. He said that this publication was intended "to

raise a general clamor against His Majesty's government in England and

throughout America, as well as in Massachusetts"; and that in this way

the Patriots "flattered themselves that they should get the navy and

army removed, and again have the government and Custom-House in their

own hands." The idea of such disloyal purposes excited the Governor to

the most acrimonious criticism. "It is composed," he informed Lord

Hillsborough, "by Adams and his associates, among which there must be

some one at least of the Council; as everything that is said or done

in Council, which can be made use of, is constantly perverted,

misrepresented, and falsified in this paper. But if the Devil himself

was of the party, as he virtually is, there could not have been got

together a greater collection of impudent, virulent, and seditious

lies, perversions of truth, and misrepresentations, than are to be

found in this publication. Some are entirely invented, and first heard

of from the printed papers; others are founded in fact, but so

perverted as to be the direct contrary of the truth; other part of the

whole consists of reflections of the writer, which pretend to no other

authority but his own word. To set about answering these falsities

would be a work like that of cleansing Augeas's stable, which is to be

done only by bringing in a stream strong enough to sweep away the dirt

and collectors of it all together." Doubtless there were exaggerations

in this journal. It would be strange, if there were not. If

the perversions of truth were greater than the Governor's

misrepresentations of the proceedings of the inhabitants on the

eighteenth of March, or on the tenth of June, or of what was termed

"the September Rebellion," they deserved more than this severe

criticism. But, in the main, the general allegations, as to grievances

suffered by the people from the troops, are borne out by private

letters and official documents; and a plain statement of the course of

Francis Bernard shows that they did not exceed the truth as to him.

The troops continued under the command of General Pomeroy until the

arrival (April 30, 1769) of Hon. Alexander Mackay, Colonel of the

Sixty-Fifth Regiment, a Major-General on the American establishment,

and a member of the British Parliament, when the command of the

troops, so it was announced, in the Eastern District of America,

devolved on him. When General Pomeroy left the town, the press, of

all parties, and even the "Journal of the Times," highly complimented

his conduct both as an officer and a gentleman.

The crown officials found themselves, at this period, in an awkward

situation as to arrests of the popular leaders. They had recommended

to the Government what they termed the slight punishment of

disqualification, by Act of Parliament, from engaging in civil

service; but the Ministry and their supporters determined on the

summary proceeding of prosecutions under existing law for treason,

thinking that few cases would be necessary,--and all agreed that these

should be selected from Boston. On this point of singling out Boston

for punishment, whatever other measures might be proposed, there was

entire unanimity of sentiment. Thus, Lord Camden, on being applied to

by the Prime-Minister for advice, suggested a repeal of the Revenue

Act in favor of other Provinces, but the execution of it with rigor in

Massachusetts, saying,--"There is no pretence for violence anywhere

but at Boston; that is the ringleading Province; and if any country is

to be chastised, the punishment ought to be levelled there." As to the

policy of arrests, in Lord Barrington's judgment, five or six examples

would be sufficient for all the Colonies, and he thought that it was

right they should be made in Boston, the only place where there had

been actual crime; for "they," his words are, "would be enough to

carry terror to the wicked and factious spirits all over the

continent, and would show that the subjects of Great Britain must not

rebel with impunity anywhere." The King and Parliament stood pledged

to make arrests; Lord Hillsborough, in his instructions, had urged

them again and again; the private letters of the officials addressed

to Bernard were refreshingly full and positive as to the advantage

which such exercise of the national authority would be to the King's

cause; the British press continually announced that they were to be

made; and all England was looking to see representative men of

America, who had dared to deny any portion of the authority of

Parliament, occupy lodgings in London Tower. And yet, though it had

been announced in Parliament that the object in sending troops was to

bring rioters to justice, not a man had been put under arrest; and the

only requisition that had been made for eight months upon a military

power which was considered to be invincible was that which produced

the inglorious demonstration at the Manufactory House occupied by John

Brown the weaver. So ridiculous was the figure which the British Lion

cut on the public stage of Boston!

Governor Bernard not unlikely felt more keenly the awkwardness of all

this from having received, as a reward for service, the honor of a

Baronetcy of Great Britain. The "Gazette," in announcing this, (May 1,

1769,) has an ironical article addressing the new Baronet thus:--"Your

promotion, Sir, reflects an honor on the Province itself,--an honor

which has never been conferred upon it since the thrice happy

administration of Sir Edmund Andres, of precious memory, who was also

a Baronet"; and in a candid British judgment to-day, (that of Lord

Mahon,) the honor was "a most ill-timed favor surely, when he had so

grievously failed in gaining the affections or confidence of any order

or rank of men within his Province." The subject occupies a large

space in the private correspondence, and the title was the more

flattering and acceptable to the Governor from being exempted from the

usual concomitant of heavy expense as fees. But whatever other service

he had rendered, he had not rendered what was looked upon as most

vital, the service of making arrests.

At this period the Governor held a consultation with distinguished

political leaders, consisting of the Secretary, Andrew Oliver, who had

been Stamp-Officer, the Judge of Admiralty, Robert Auchmuty, who was

an eminent lawyer, and the Chief Justice, Hutchinson, who was counted

the ablest man of the party, all ultra Loyalists, to consider the

future policy as to arrests,--all doubtless feeling that the

non-action course needed explanation. The details of this consultation

are given at such length, and with such minuteness, by Bernard, in a

letter addressed to Lord Hillsborough, that these learned political

doctors can almost be seen making a diagnosis of the prevalent

treason-disease and discussing proposed prescriptions. They carefully

considered what had been done at the great public meetings, and what

had been printed in the "Boston Gazette," which had been all collected

and duly certified, and had been faithfully transmitted to

Westminster, where distinctions of law were better known than they

were in Boston. But, after legal scrutiny there, no specifications of

acts amounting to treason had been made out as proper bases for

proceedings, and it could not be expected that the local authorities

would be wiser than their superiors; and thus this class of offences

was set aside. To deal with other matters of treason, and especially

with "the Rebellion of September," was found to be involved in

difficulties. The members of the faction were now behaving "very

cautiously and inoffensively," and so nothing could be made out of the

present; and as they would not bear witness against each other as to

the past, it was not easy from old affairs to make out cases of

treason. Former private consultations of a treasonable character, it

was said, lacked connection with overt acts, and the overt acts of a

treasonable character lacked connection with the prior consultations:

as, for instance, they said, the consultation to seize the Castle was

treasonable, but it was not followed by an overt act,--and the overt

act of the tar-barrel signal on the beacon-pole was treasonable, but

it could not be traced to a prior consultation so as to evidence the

intent. So these acute crown officials went on in their deliberations,

and came to the conclusion, which Bernard officially communicated (May

25, 1769) to Lord Hillsborough, in the long letter above referred to,

that they could not fix upon any acts "that amounted to actual

treason, though many of them approached very near to it."

The Governor, meantime, had issued precepts to the towns to return

members of the General Court; this made each locality (May, 1769)

alive with politics; and he stated to Lord Hillsborough, as a further

reason for not polling inquiry into treasonable practices, that he was

anxious not to irritate the people more than he felt obliged to. The

question of the removal of the troops was now discussed in the little

country forums, and the resolves and instructions to the

Representatives, printed in the journals, reëcho, in a spirited manner

and with great ability, the political sentiment which had been

embodied in official papers. They contain earnest protestations of a

determination to maintain His Most Sacred Majesty George the Third,

their rightful sovereign, his crown, dignity, and family; to maintain

their Charter immunities, with all their rights derived from God and

Nature, and to transmit them inviolable to their latest posterity; and

they charge the Representatives not to allow, by vote or resolution, a

right in any power on earth to tax the people to raise a revenue

except in the General Assembly of the Province. All urged action

relative to the troops, and several put this as the earliest duty of

the Assembly, as the presence of the troops tended to awe or control

freedom of debate. These utterances of the towns, which the journals

of May contain, make a glowing record of the spirit of the time.

The Selectmen of Boston, on issuing the usual warrants for an election

of Representatives, requested General Mackay to order the troops out

of town on the day (May 8, 1769) of the town-meeting; but though he

felt obliged to decline to do this, yet, in the spirit in which he

acted during his entire residence here, he kept the troops, on this

day, confined to their barracks. The town, after choosing Otis,

Cushing, Adams, and Hancock as Representatives, adopted a noble letter

of instructions, not only rehearsing the grievances, but asserting

ideas of freedom and equality, as to political rights, that had been

firmly grasped. They arraigned the Act of Parliament of 4th Geo. III.,

extending admiralty jurisdiction and depriving the colonists of native

juries, as a distinction staring them in the face which was made

between the subject in Great Britain and the subject in America,--the

Parliament in one section guarding the people of the realm, and

securing to them trial by jury and the law of the land, and in the

next section depriving Americans of those important rights; and this

distinction was pronounced a brand of disgrace upon every American, a

degradation below the rank of an Englishman. While the instructions

claimed for each subject in America equality of political right with

each subject in England, they claimed also for the General Court the

dignity of a free assembly, and declared the first object of their

labors to be a removal of "those cannon and guards and that clamorous

parade that had been daily about the Court-House since the arrival of

His Majesty's troops."

The country towns, which now responded so nobly to the demand of the

hour, were controlled by freemen. Among these it was rare to find any

who could not read and write; they were mostly independent

freeholders, with person and property guarded, as it used to be said

in the Boston journals of the time, not by one law for the peasant and

another law for the prince, but by equal law for all; they exercised

liberty of thought and political action, and their proceedings, as

they appeared in the public prints, gave great alarm to the Governor.

He now informed Lord Hillsborough that the Sons of Liberty had got as

high as ever; and that out of a party which used to keep the

opposition to Government under, there were reckoned to be not above

ten members returned in a House of above one hundred and twenty.

After giving an account of a meeting of "the factious chiefs" in

Boston, held a few days before the General Court assembled, he

says,--"To see that faction which has occasioned all the troubles in

this Province, and I may add in America too, has quite overturned this

government, now triumphant and driving over every one who has loyalty

and resolution to stand up in defence of the rights of the King and

Parliament, gives me great concern."

This result of the elections, which the crown officials ascribed to a

talent for mischief in the popular leaders, naturally flowed from the

exhibition of arbitrary power. The introduction of the troops was a

suicidal measure to the Loyalists, and in urging their continuance in

the Province the crown officials had been carrying an exhaustive

burden; while, even in every failure to effect their removal, the

Whigs had won a fresh moral victory. There was, in consequence, a more

perfect union of the people than ever. The members returned to the

General Court constituted a line representation of the character,

ability, and patriotism of the Province; many of the names were then

obscure which subsequent large service to country was to make famous

as the names of heroes and sages; and such a body of men was now to

act on the question of a removal of the troops.

It would be travelling a beaten path to relate the proceedings of this

session of the General Court; and only a glance will be necessary to

show its connection with the issue that had so long stirred the public

mind. Immediately on taking the oath of office, at nine o'clock, the

House, through a committee, presented an elaborate and strong protest

to the Governor against the presence of the troops. They averred that

they meant to be loyal; that no law, however grievous, had in the

execution of it been opposed in the Province; but, they said, as they

came as of right to their old Parliament-House, to exercise, as of

right, perfect freedom of debate, they found a standing army in their

metropolis, and a military guard with cannon pointed at their very

doors; and, in the strong way of the old Commonwealth men, they

protested against this presence as "a breach of privilege, and

inconsistent with that dignity and freedom with which they had a right

to deliberate, consult, and determine." The Governor's laconic reply

was,--"I have no authority over His Majesty's ships in this port or

his troops within this town; nor can I give any orders for their

removal." The House, resolving that they proceeded to take part in

the elections of the day from necessity and to conform the Charter,

chose their Clerk, Speaker, and twenty-eight Councillors.

The Governor at ten o'clock received at the Province House a brilliant

array of officials, when an elegant collation was served; at twelve,

escorted by Captain Paddock's company, he repaired to the

Council-Chamber, whence, after approving the choice of Speaker, the

whole Government went in procession to the Old Brick Meeting-House,

where the election sermon was preached; then succeeded an elegant

dinner at Faneuil Hall, which was attended by the field-officers of

the four regiments, and the official dignitaries, including Commodore

Hood and General Mackay, which, as to the Governor, closed the

proceedings of the day.

The House in its choice of Councillors elected several decided

Loyalists, though it did not reelect four of this party who were of

that body the last year, namely, Messrs. Flucker, Ropes, Paine, and

Worthington. The Governor refused his consent to eleven on the

list. On the next day he thus wrote of these events:--

FRANCIS BERNARD TO JOHN POWNALL.

"_Boston, June 1,1769._

"Dear Sir,--There being a snow ready to sail for Glasgow, I take the

opportunity of sending you the printed account of the election and

other proceedings on yesterday and to-day; from which you will

perceive that everything goes as bad as could be expected. The Boston

faction has taken possession of the two Houses in such a manner that

there are not ten men in both who dare contradict them. They have

turned out of the Council four gentlemen of the very first reputation

in the country, and the only men remaining of disposition and ability

to serve the King's cause. I have negatived eleven, among which are

two old Councillors, Brattle and Bowdoin, the managers of all the late

opposition in the Council to the King's government. There is not now

one man in the Council who has either power or spirit to oppose the

faction; and the friends of Government are so thin in the House, that

they won't attempt to make any opposition; so that Otis, Adams, etc.,

are now in full possession of this government, and will treat it

accordingly. This is no more than was expected. I will write more

particularly in a few days.

"I am," etc.

The Governor could write thus of his political friends of the Council,

several of whom, six years later, when the attempt was made to change

the Constitution, were thought to have spirit enough to receive

appointments from the Crown,--such, for instance, as Danforth,

Russell, Royal, and Gray,--and hence were called _Mandamus_

Councillors.

A few days after (May 5, 1769) there was a holiday in Boston, the

celebration of the birth-day of the King, which the House, "out of

duty, loyalty, and affection to His Majesty," noticed formally, as

provided by a committee consisting of Otis, Hancock, and Adams. The

Governor received a brilliant party--at the Province House; the three

regiments in town, the Fourteenth, Twenty-Ninth, and Sixty-Fourth,

paraded on the Common; the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company--it

happened to be their anniversary--went through the customary routine,

including the sermon, the dinner at Faneuil Hall, and the exchange of

commissions on the Common; and in the evening there was a ball at

Concert Hall, where, it is said in the Tory paper, there was as

numerous and brilliant an appearance of gentlemen and ladies as was

ever known in town on any former occasion. The Patriot journals give

more space to the celebration, towards evening, in the Representatives'

Hall, where, besides the members, were a great number of merchants

and gentlemen of the first distinction, who, besides toasting, first

the King, Queen, and Royal Family, and second, North America,

drank to "The restoration of harmony between Great Britain

and the Colonies," "Prosperity and perpetuity to the British Empire in

all parts of the world," and "Liberty without licentiousness to all

parts of the world." The House thus testified their loyalty to

country; but, as the Governor refused to remove the troops, they--the

"Boston Gazette" of June 12th said--"had for thirteen days past made a

solemn and expressive pause in public business."

Meantime the Governor received in one day (June 10) communications

which surprised him half out of his wits and wholly out of his office,

and which must have made rather a blue day in his calendar.

The Ministry now vacillated in their high-handed policy, and gave to

General Gage discretionary power as to a continuance of the troops in

Boston; and this officer had come to the sensible conclusion that

troops were worse than needless, for they were an unnecessary

irritation and detrimental to a restoration of the harmony which the

representative men of both parties professed to desire. Accordingly

the Governor received advices that the Commander-in-Chief had ordered

the Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments, with the train of

artillery, to Halifax, and that he had directed General Mackay to

confer with his Excellency as to the disposition of the remainder of

the troops, whether His Majesty's service required that any should be

posted longer in Boston, and if so, what the number should be. The

Governor was further requested to give his opinion on this point in

writing.

As the Governor had received no intimation of such a change of policy

from his friends in England, he could hardly find words in which to

express his astonishment. He wrote, two days after, that nothing

could be more _mal-à-propos_ to the business of Government or

hard upon him; that it was cruel to have this forced upon him at such

a time and in such a manner; and as the question was put, it was

hardly less than whether he should abdicate government. "If the troops

are removed," he wrote, "the principal officers of the Crown, the

friends of Government, and the importers of goods from England in

defiance of the combination, who are considerable and numerous, must

remove also," which would have been quite an extensive removal. He

wrote to Lord Hillsborough,--"It is impossible to express my surprise

at this proposition, or my embarrassment on account of the requisition

of an answer."

The other communication was a right royal greeting. Up to this time

the letters to the Governor from the members of the Government,

private as well as official, had been to him of the most gratifying

character, to say nothing of the gift of the baronetcy. "I can give

you the pleasure of knowing," Lord Barrington wrote to him, (April 5,

1769,) "that last Sunday the King spoke with the highest approbation

of your conduct and services in his closet to me"; but in a postscript

to this letter were the ominous words,--"I understand you are directed

to come hither; but Lord Hillsborough authorizes me to say, you need

not be in any inconvenient haste to obey that instruction." This

order, in the manuscript, is indorsed, "Received June 10, 1769"; and

being unique, it is here copied from the original, which has

Hillsborough's autograph:--

"GEORGE R.

"Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. Whereas we have thought

fit by our royal license under our signet and sign-manual bearing date

the twenty-second day of June, 1768, in the eighth year of our reign,

to permit you to return into this our kingdom of Great Britain: Our

will and pleasure therefore is, that as soon as conveniently may be,

after the receipt hereof, you do repair to this our kingdom in order

to lay before us a state of our province of Massachusetts Bay. And so

we bid you farewell. Given at our court at St. James the twenty-third

day of March, 1769, in the ninth year of our reign.

"By His Majesty's command,

"HILLSBOROUGH."

It was now an active time with the Patriots. Before the Governor had a

chance to talk with General Mackay or to write to General Gage, the

news spread all over the town that the two regiments were ordered off;

and with this there was circulated the story, that Commissioner Temple

had received a letter from George Grenville containing the assurance

that the Governor would be immediately recalled with disgrace, that

three of the Commissioners of the Customs would be turned off

directly, and that next winter the Board would be dissolved; and

Bernard, who tells these incidents, says that the reports exalted the

Sons of Liberty as though the bells had rung for a triumph, while

there was consternation among the crown officials, the importers, and

the friends of Government. Here was thrust upon Bernard, over again,

the question of the introduction of the troops.

The Governor was as much embarrassed by the requisition for an answer

in writing as to the two regiments that were not ordered off as he was

astonished at the order that had been given; and on getting a note

from General Mackay, he gave the verbal answer, that he would write to

General Gage. Meantime, while Bernard was hesitating, the Patriots

were acting, and immediately applied themselves to counteract the

influence which they knew was making to retain the two regiments. One

hundred and forty-two of the citizens petitioned the Selectmen for a

town-meeting, at which it was declared, that the law of the land made

ample provision for the security of life and property, and that the

presence of the troops was an insult. After a week's hesitation, the

Governor wrote to General Gage, who had promised inviolable secrecy,

that to remove a portion of the two regiments would be detrimental to

His Majesty's service; to remove all of these troops would be quite

ruinous to the cause of the Crown; but that one regiment in the town

and one at the Castle might be sufficient. Of course, General Gage, if

he paid any respect to the Governor's advice, could do no less than

order both regiments to remain. Thus was it that the two Sam Adams

Regiments continued in town, designed for evil, but working for the

good of the common cause.

Governor Bernard, during the month of June, and down to the middle of

July, was greatly disturbed by the manly stand of the General Court;

and, because of its refusal to enter upon the public business under

the mouths of British cannon, adjourned it to Cambridge. On the night

after this adjournment, the cannon were removed. These irritating

proceedings made this body still more high-toned. While in this mood,

it received from the Governor two messages, (July 6 and 12,) asking an

appropriation of money to meet the expenses which had been incurred by

the crown officers in quartering troops in Boston. The members nobly

met this demand by returning to the Governor (July 15, 1769) a grandly

worded state-paper, in which, claiming the rights of freeborn

Englishmen, as confirmed by Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, and

as settled by the Revolution and the British Charter, they expressly

declared that they never would make provision for the purposes

mentioned in the two messages. On the same day, it was represented in

the House that armed soldiers had rescued a prisoner from the hands of

justice, when two constables were ordered to attend on the floor who

were heard on the matter, and a committee was then appointed to

consider it. But Secretary Oliver now appeared with a message from

the Governor to the effect that he was at the Court-House and directed

the immediate attendance of the members. They accordingly, with

Speaker Cushing at their head, repaired to the Governor, who, after a

haughty speech charging them with proclaiming ideas lacking in dignity

to the Crown and inconsistent with the Province continuing a part of

the British Empire, prorogued the Court until the 10th of January.

The press arraigned the arbitrary proceedings of the Governor with

great boldness and a just severity; while it declared that the action

taken by the intrepid House of Representatives, with rare unanimity,

was supported by the almost universal sentiments of the people. The

last act of the Governor, the prorogation of the General Court for six

months, was especially criticized; and after averring that such long

prorogations, in such critical times, could never promote the true

service of His Majesty or the tranquility of his good subjects, it

predicted that impartial history would hang up Governor Bernard as a

warning to his successors who had any sense of character, and perhaps

his future fortune might be such as to teach even the most selfish of

them not to tread in his steps.

On the day this prediction was written, (August 1, 1769,) Sir Francis

Bernard, in the Rippon, was on his way to England. Congratulations

among the people, exultation on the part of the press, the Union Flag

on Liberty Tree, salutes from Hancock's Wharf, and bonfires, in the

evening, on the hills, expressed the general joy. And yet Francis

Bernard was hardly a faithful representative of the proud imperial

power for which he acted. He was a bad Governor, but he was not so bad

as the cause he was obliged to uphold. He was arbitrary, but he was

not so arbitrary as his instructions. He was vacillating, but he was

not so vacillating as the Ministers. When he gave the conciliatory

reply to the June town-meeting, it was judged that he lowered the

national standard, and it seriously damaged him at Court; when he

spoke in the imperial tone that characterized the British rule of that

day, he was rewarded with a baronetcy. The Governor after months of

reflection, in England, on reviewing in an elaborate letter the

political path he had travelled, indicated both his deep chagrin and

his increase of wisdom in the significant words,--"I was obliged to

give up, a victim to the bad policy and irresolution of the supreme

Government."

The execution of a bad policy as directed by an irresolute Ministry

was now the lot of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson. It was embodied in

the question of the removal of the troops; and this question was not

decided, until, after months of confusion and distress, the blood and

slaughter of His Majesty's good subjects compelled an indignant

American public opinion to command their departure from the town of

Boston.

LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "CECIL DREEME" AND "JOHN BRENT."

KATAHDIN AND THE PENOBSCOT.

CHAPTER I.

OFF.

At five, P. M., we found ourselves--Iglesias, a party of friends, and

myself--on board the Isaac Newton, a great, ugly, three-tiered box

that walks the North River, like a laboratory of greasy odors.

In this stately cinder-mill were American citizens. Not to

discuss spitting, which is for spittoons, not literature, our

fellow-travellers on the deck of the "floating palace" were

passably endurable people, in looks, style, and language. I dodge

discrimination, and characterize them _en masse_ by negations.

The passengers of the Isaac Newton, on a certain evening of

July, 18--, were not so intrusively green and so gasping as Britons,

not so ill-dressed and pretentious as Gauls, not so ardently futile

and so lubberly as Germans. Such were the negative virtues of our

fellow-citizen travellers; and base would it be to exhibit their

positive vices.

And so no more of passengers or passage. I will not describe our

evening on the river. Alas for the duty of straight-forwardness and

dramatic unity! Episodes seem so often sweeter than plots! The

way-side joys are better than the final successes. The flowers along

the vista, brighter than the victor-wreaths at its close. I may not

dally on my way, turning to the right and the left for beauty and

caricature. I will balance on the strict edge of my narrative, as a

seventh-heavenward Mahometan with wine-forbidden steadiness of poise

treads Al Seràt, his bridge of a sword-blade.

Next morning, at Albany, divergent trains cleft our party into a

better and a worser half. The beautiful girls, our better half, fled

westward to ripen their pallid roses with richer summer-hues in

mosquitoless inland dells. Iglesias and I were still northward bound.

At the Saratoga station we sipped a dreary, faded reminiscence of

former joys and sparkling brilliancy long dead, in cups of

Congress-water, brought by unattractive Ganymedes and sold in the

train,--draughts flat, flabby, and utterly bubbleless, lukewarm

heel-taps with a flavor of savorless salt.

Still northward journeying, and feeling the sea-side moisture

evaporate from our blood under inland suns and sultry inland breezes,

we came to Lake Champlain.

As before banquets, to excite appetite, one takes the gentle oyster,

so we, before the serious pleasure of our journey, tasted the

Adirondack region, paradise of Cockney sportsmen. There through the

forest, the stag of ten trots, coquetting with greenhorns. He likes

the excitement of being shot at and missed. He enjoys the smell of

powder in a battle where he is always safe. He hears Greenhorn

blundering through the woods, stopping to growl at briers, stopping to

revive his courage with the Dutch supplement. The stag of ten awaits

his foe in a glade. The foe arrives, sees the antlered monarch, and

is panic-struck. He watches him prance and strike the ground with his

hoofs. He slowly recovers heart, takes a pull at his flask, rests his

gun upon a log, and begins to study his mark. The stag will not stand

still. Greenhorn is baffled. At last his target turns and carefully

exposes that region of his body where Greenhorn has read lies the

heart. Just about to fire, he catches the eye of the stag winking

futility into his elaborate aim. His blunderbuss jerks upward. A

shower of cut leaves floats through the smoke, from a tree thirty feet

overhead. Then, with a mild-eyed melancholy look of reproachful

contempt, the stag turns away, and wanders off to sleep in quiet

coverts far within the wood. He has fled, while for Greenhorn no

trophy remains. Antlers have nodded to the sportsman; a short tail

has disappeared before his eyes;--he has seen something, but has

nothing to show. Whereupon he buys a couple of pairs of ancient

weather-bleached horns from some colonist, and, nailing them

up at impossible angles on the wall of his city-den, humbugs

brother-Cockneys with tales of _vénerie_, and has for life his

special legend, "How I shot my first deer in the Adirondacks."

The Adirondacks provide a compact, convenient, accessible little

wilderness,--an excellent field for the experiments of tyros. When the

tyro, whether shot, fisherman, or forester, has proved himself fully

there, let him dislodge into some vaster wilderness, away from guides

by the day and superintending hunters, away from the incursions of the

Cockney tribe, and let out the caged savage within him for a tough

struggle with Nature. It needs a struggle tough and resolute to force

that Protean lady to observe at all her challenger.

It is well to go to the Adirondacks. They are shaggy, and shagginess

is a valuable trait. The lakes are very well,--very well indeed. The

objection to the region is not the mountains, which are reasonably

shaggy,--not the lakes and rivers, which are water, a capital element.

The real difficulty is the society: not the autochthonous

society,--they are worthy people, and it is hardly to be mentioned as

a fault that they are not a discriminating race, and will asseverate

that all fish are trout, and the most arrant mutton is venison,--but

the immigrant, colonizing society. Cockneys are to be found at every

turn, flaunting their banners of the awkward squad, proclaiming to the

world with protuberant pride that they are the veritable

backwoodsmen,--rather doing it, rather astonishing the natives, they

think. And so they are. One squad of such neophytes might be

entertaining; but when every square mile echoes with their hails,

lost, poor babes, within a furlong of their camps, and when the woods

become dim and the air civic with their cooking-smokes, and the subtle

odor of fried pork overpowers methylic fragrance among the trees, then

he who loves forests for their solitude leaves these brethren to their

clumsy joys, and wanders elsewhere deeper into sylvan scenes.

Our visit to the Adirondacks was episodic; and as I have forsworn

episodes, I turn away from them with this mild slander, and strike

again our Maine track. With lips impurpled by the earliest

huckleberries, we came out again upon Champlain. We crossed that

water-logged valley in a steamboat, and hastened on, through a

pleasant interlude of our rough journey, across Vermont and New

Hampshire, two States not without interest to their residents, but of

none to this narrative.

By coach and wagon, by highway and by-way, by horse-power and

steam-power, we proceeded, until it chanced, one August afternoon,

that we left railways and their regions at a way-side station, and let

our lingering feet march us along the Valley of the Upper

Connecticut. This lovely river, baptizer of Iglesias's childhood, was

here shallow and musical, half river, half brook; it had passed the

tinkling period, and plashed and rumbled voicefully over rock and

shallow.

It was a fair and verdant valley where we walked, overlooked by hills

of pleasant pastoral slope. All the land was gay and ripe with yellow

harvest. Strolling along, as if the business of travel were forgotten,

we placidly identified ourselves with the placid scenery. We became

Arcadians both. Such is Arcadia, if I have read aright: a realm where

sunshine never scorches, and yet shade is sweet; where simple

pleasures please; where the blue sky and the bright water and the

green fields satisfy forever.

We were in lightest marching-trim. Iglesias bore an umbrella, our

armor against what heaven could do with assault of sun or shower. I

was weaponed with a staff, should brute or biped uncourteous dispute

our way. We had no impediments of "great trunk, little trunk, bandbox,

and bundle." A thoughtful man hardly feels honest in his life except

as a pedestrian traveller. _"La propriété c'est le vol"_--which

the West more briefly expresses by calling baggage "plunder." What

little plunder our indifferent honesty had packed for this journey we

had left with a certain stage-coachman, perhaps to follow us, perhaps

to become his plunder. We were thus disconnected from any depressing

influence; we had no character to sustain; we were heroes in disguise,

and could make our observations on life and manners, without being

invited to a public hand-shaking, or to exhibit feats in jugglery, for

either of which a traveller with plenteous portmanteaus, hair or

leather, must be prepared in villages thereabouts. Totally

unembarrassed, we lounged along or leaped along, light-hearted. When

the river neared us, or winsome brooklet from the hill-side thwarted

our path, we stooped and lapped from their pools of coolness, or

tasted that most ethereal tipple, the mingled air and water of

electric bubbles, as they slid brightly toward our lips.

The angle of the sun's rays grew less and less, the wheat-fields were

tinged more golden by the clinging beams, our shadows lengthened, as

if exercise of an afternoon were stimulating to such unreal

essences. Finally the blue dells and gorges of a wooded mountain, for

two hours our landmark, rose between us and the sun. But the sun's

Parthian arrows gave him a splendid triumph, more signal for its

evanescence. A storm was inevitable, and sunset prepared a reconciling

pageant.

Now, as may be supposed, Iglesias has an eye for a sunset. That

summer's crop had been very short, and he had been some time on

starvation-allowance of cloudy magnificence. We therefore halted by

the road-side, and while I committed the glory to memory, Iglesias

entrusted his distincter memorial to a sketch-book.

We were both busy, he repeating forms, noting shades and tints, and I

studying without pictorial intent, when we heard a hail in the road

below our bank. It was New Hampshire, near the Maine line, and near

the spot where nasal organs are fabricated that twang the roughest.

"Say!" shrieked up to us a freckled native, holding fast to the tail

of a calf, the last of a gambolling family he was driving,--"Say!

whodger doon up thurr? Layn aoot taoonshup lains naoou, aancher?

Cauds ur suvvares raoond. Spekkleayshn goan on, ur guess."

We allowed this unmelodious vocalist to respect us by permitting him

to believe us surveyors in another sense than as we were. One would

not be despised as an unpractical citizen, a mere looker at Nature

with no immediate view to profit, even by a freckled calf-driver of

the Upper Connecticut. While we parleyed, the sketch was done, and the

pageant had faded quick before the storm.

Splendor had departed; the world in our neighborhood had fallen into

the unillumined dumps. An ominous mournfulness, far sadder than the

pensiveness of twilight, drew over the sky. Clouds, that donned

brilliancy for the fond parting of mountain-tops and the sun, now grew

cheerless and gray; their gay robes were taken from them, and with

bended heads they fled away from the sorrowful wind. In western glooms

beyond the world a dreary gale had been born, and now came wailing

like one that for all his weariness may not rest, but must go on

harmful journeys and bear evil tidings. With the vanguard gusts came

volleys of rain, malicious assaults, giving themselves the trouble to

tell us in an offensive way what we could discover for ourselves, that

a wetting impended and umbrellas would soon be nought.

While the storm was thus nibbling before it bit, we lengthened our

strides to escape. Water, concentrated in flow of stream or pause of

lake, is charming; not so to the shelterless is water diffused in dash

of deluge. Water, when we choose our method of contact, is a friend;

when it masters us, it is a foe; when it drowns us or ducks us, a very

exasperating foe. Proud pedestrians become very humble personages,

when thoroughly vanquished by a ducking deluge. A wetting takes out

the starch not only from garments, but the wearers of them. Iglesias

and I did not wish to stand all the evening steaming before a

kitchen-fire, inspecting meanwhile culinary details: Phillis in the

kitchen is not always as fresh as Phillis in the field. We therefore

shook ourselves into full speed and bolted into our inn at Colebrook;

and the rain, like a portcullis, dropped solid behind us.

In town, the landlord is utterly merged in his hotel. He is a

sovereign rarely apparent. In the country, the landlord is a

personality. He is greater than the house he keeps. Men arriving

inspect the master of the inn narrowly. If his first glance is at the

pocket, cheer will be bad; if at the eyes or the lips, you need not

take a cigar before supper to keep down your appetite.

Our landlord was of the latter type. He surged out of the little box

where he was dispensing not too fragrant rummers to a circle of

village-politicians, and congratulated us on our arrival before the

storm. He was a discriminating person. He detected us at once, saw we

were not tramps or footpads, and led us to the parlor, a room

attractively furnished with a map of the United States and an oblong

music-book open at "Old Hundred." Our host further felicitated us

that we had not stopped at a certain tavern below, where, as he

said,--

"They cut a chunk er beef and drop 't into a pot to bile, and bile her

three days, and then don't have noth'n' else for three weeks."

He put his head out of the door and called,--

"George, go aoot and split up that 'ere wood as fine as chaowder:

these men 'll want their supper right off."

Drawing in his head, he continued to us confidentially,--

"That 'ere George is jes' like a bird: he goes off at one snappin'."

Our host then rolled out toward the bar-room, to discuss with his

cronies who we might be. From the window we perceived the birdlike

George fly and alight near the specified wood, which he proceeded to

bechowder. He brought in the result of his handiwork, as smiling as a

basket of chips. Neat-handed Phillis at the door received the chowder,

and by its aid excited a sound and a smell, both prophetic of

supper. And we, willing to repose after a sixteen-mile afternoon-walk,

lounged upon sofa or tilted in rocking-chair, taking the available

mental food, namely, "Godey's Lady's Book" and the Almanac.