"No," said Doome, "I never forget a soul."

"Do you remember the poor sailor-boy Daniel?"

"I never saw him," said Doome. "No, friend sailor, you need not

squeeze my hand,--I never did see him."

"Well, he has grown a man, and has come home."

"Then," said Jodoque, "I suppose _I_ may go home."

"Come home?--where _is_ he?--Still, my sailor friend, I can't tell

why you should tremble."

"Yes, he has come home; and if he will have me, I will marry him."

"And he'll have a good wife, Bertha," said the sailor, and he made a

movement as though about to run to the girl; but little Doome, too

impulsive to think about the Fräulein Grundei, enthusiastically

clasped the arms of her friend's eulogizer.

"Yes,--marry him!--and at this moment he is in that room! And now any

one of you may open the door."

"Open the door?--I'll smash the door!" said the sailor, roughly

pushing the girl away from him. "So, Daniel is there, is he? Well,

let him come!"

He ran up to the door, threw it open, and there, standing just within,

was the young French prisoner of war.

"Good morning, all!" he said.

"You are Daniel, are you?" said the sailor, drawing the other

forward to the light. "You are Daniel, are you?"

He dragged him near the window and looked quickly at him. Then he

turned pale himself, and wrung his hand.

"Yes!" said he, "yes!--it _is_ Daniel himself,--the very Daniel!"

"Ah! so much the better!" said Doome.

"Daniel? the _very_ Daniel?" said Bertha, faintly, and turned paler

yet.

"I know you, comrade," said the sailor, aside,--"I know you. You are

the French officer who has escaped, but I'm down in your log for a

lump of gratitude; and so, you are Daniel. When a fellow saves you

from a shark, perhaps you'll be as willing to give him your name."

"And why am I to take your name?"

"To give it to Bertha, there!"

"Give it to Bertha?"

"Yes! Sign the contract, which the burgomaster has in his pocket;

sign it as Daniel;--'tis your only chance. And when you are gone, I

have paid my debt. And don't let us cross each other again. You gave

me my life, but that is no reason you should rob me of my wife!"

"Rob you of your wife?"

"Yes, of Bertha, who loved me six years ago!"

"Why, she has barely known me six hours!"

"True, but she loves you six times as much as she does the memory of

Daniel!"

"But I do not care for her, beyond gratitude for sheltering me from

pursuit."

"Oh, she has enough love for two of you!"

"Well, to me, one wife or another,--and she is a nice girl,--and,

friend Daniel, where shall we go?"

"We?--who?"

"My wife and I," said the other, laughing

"You, comrade? I will manage for you; but your wife will stop here."

"Stop here?"

"Why, you don't suppose I can give up the good girl I have loved for

the six years I've been rolling over the seas! 'Tis true, she

doesn't remember me, and thinks me dead; but when she learns the

truth, all the old love will come back; and she will like me none

the less for aiding you. The burgomaster, who shall be in the plot,

shall marry you to _my wife_,--and when you are gone, God speed you!

The burgomaster will set all that right, as he can; and Bertha and I

will often talk, in our seaside cot, of the French officer that we

saved."

Here Doome interrupted the dialogue; for she could not conquer her

curiosity farther. So she came up, and complimented the French

officer (who was to be called Daniel) on his marriage. "To be sure,

he had almost forgotten German; for, as Bertha said, he had left

home almost before he could speak like a man, and had been in the

French service,--and so there it was! No doubt, now he had come back

to Germany, he would soon learn German again, and speak it like a

native;--eh, friend sailor?" "What, little one? I didn't hear you."

The "little one," not dissatisfied at that term, flounced round, and

then gave a little scream,--for all the neighbors, with the

burgomaster at their head, were approaching the little house. When

they arrived, and the change of husbands was announced, not a

neighbor but framed a little mental history,--and, indeed, Jodoque

cut rather a ridiculous figure. As for the burgomaster,--who knew the

real Daniel, having discoursed with him about the French fleet

riding off the island, that very morning,--his dignity prevented him

from suddenly spoiling matters. Before he could sufficiently recover

himself from the blow which his dignity had received, Daniel came up

to him and said these two words,--"Your neck!"

"What do you mean, young man?"

"Suppose the French took Rügen?"

"Well, suppose they did?"

"And suppose you had caused the recapture of a French officer?"

"I haven't the least idea that I have caused a recapture; but

suppose so?"

"Well, and if he was hung, and if the French took the place, you'd

be hung too."

"What do you mean, young man?"

"That man over there is the French officer who has escaped."

"Good gracious me!"

"Yes, and you must suppose him to be me. Marry him to Bertha, and

help him to escape to the French fleet."

"No!--on the faith of a burgomaster, no!--on the word of a German, no!"

"But your neck?"

"I don't care. The French may not take the place."

"And the French may. Who'll be the wiser, burgomaster?"

"My conscience, young sailor."

"And you'll save a man."

"Oh, dear! dear! dear!"

"Here! the best table for the burgomaster! The handsomest chair for

the burgomaster! Make a good pen for the burgomaster!"

"Oh, dear! dear! dear!"

The burgomaster then, in the homely German fashion, asked the usual

questions, filled up the marriage-contract, and then handed the pen

to the bride. She trembled rather as she put her name to the paper,

but not so much as the young sailor.

As for the Frenchman, he hesitated before he put his name down,--and

when he had done so, he flung the pen away, as though he had done

wrong. One hour after that, these two young people were married in

the village church.

The little village festivities which followed need not be dwelt upon;

but imagine the summer-evening come, and Daniel and the French

officer stealing down to the rocky beach. The young sailor showed a

deal of doubtful feeling as he saw the tearful energy with which

little Bertha parted with her make-believe husband; and when little

Doome, who had been let into all the secrets, except the one that

Daniel kept to himself--namely, that he was Daniel,--when little

Doome crept up to condole with him on the hard case of the

newly-married pair, it must be said that he pushed her away quite

roughly.

Soon the two men reached the shore. Daniel instinctively went to a

little cove where he knew of old a boat would be,--and as darkness

came on, the plashing of a couple of oars sounded near the little

cove where the boat had been.

"Mind, comrade, I have paid my debt! You may be taken, and you run

your chance; though if you get to your ship, you know, one gun,

_as you promised your wife_, fired eastward."

"All right, Daniel. You will like me as well as ever, Daniel, in a

few days."

"No, comrade, there's a woman between us."

So the French officer went on his venturesome pull of a couple of

miles to the French fleet, and the sailor returned to the little

cottage, where were sitting Bertha and Doome. The latter, for his

cleverness and perhaps good looks, had begun to consider the sailor

as worth far more than those sixty youths who had caused her to laugh

when he referred to only one of them. But it is a deplorable fact,

that, while Doome welcomed Daniel back with a great deal of heartiness,

Fräulein Bertha rather looked upon him as cruel; for what need was

there that her husband should have gone? He could have hidden till the

French took the place, and then he would have been free. For love

conflicts with patriotism woefully, and, though nobody could be more

grateful than Bertha for the good service Daniel had done her, yet

somehow she could not be over-pleased with him. She thanked him,

however, very warmly; but it was Doome who set the chair for him,

and Doome who got the beer for him, and Doome who proposed the sailor's

solace of a pipe. As the pipe was lit by that young woman, Bertha got

up to leave the room.

"Where are you going, Bertha?"

"Into the garden. My head aches."

And she went out.

"I think, Doome,--they call you Doome, don't they? and a tidy name,

too,--I think, Doome, Bertha doesn't like pipes."

"_I_ think the smell of a pipe delicious."

"And what do you think of this pipe?"

"Oh! _I_ think it a beautiful pipe!"

"Hum,--so you've lots of lovers?"

"Well,--I have a few."

"Ah!--do _they_ smoke?"

"Yes,--some of them."

"You queer little Doome!--Are any of them rich?"

"Oh, I don't care a bit for money!"

"And what are they?--farmers?"

"I shouldn't like to marry a farmer."

"I suppose Bertha has sat down. I don't hear her step."

"No,--I shouldn't like to marry a farmer,--farmers are such quiet

people."

"Don't you marry a sailor!"

"Law, sailor-friend, (_I_ don't know your name,) why?"

"Why? Because, if he went away for six years, you would forget him;

and that's what Fritz says."

"No, Mr. Fritz, I should _not_ forget him,--but I should not let him

go away for six years."

"But suppose the king ordered him?"

"Then the king don't deserve to have a wife."

"And yet he has."

"So much the worse!"

"Bertha must have sat down."

"You know I don't think I care for one of my lovers. I think I could

give them all up,--yes, every one,--if I met with anybody that I

could love."

"Yes, and then suppose he didn't care for you?"

As Doome had never considered the probability of any such situation,

its suggestion rather startled her. She held her tongue, while

Daniel puffed gravely.

Soon Bertha came slowly into the room. "I think he ought to have got

there by this time; don't you, Sir?"

"He's named Fritz, Bertha,--call him Fritz."

"Don't you think he ought to be there by this time, Mr. Fritz?"

"Surely, Mistress! You will soon hear the cannon;--'tis not more

than two miles, and he left the shore a good hour ago."

So she went up to the window.

"I suppose, Mistress, if he did not come back for six years, you

would forget him,--wouldn't you?"

She was so lost in thought, that she didn't answer; so Doome took

the answer upon herself. "You are very hard upon us women, Fritz,--Mr.

Fritz. No, of course she would not forget him; no wife ever forgets

her husband. Why, do you think I should forget you, Fritz,--Mr.

Fritz,--if you were my husband, and if you went away for six years?"

"There are women and women, Doome, Fräulein Doome,"--

"Ah!--hark!"

At this moment the sound of a cannon-shot swept over the little

cottage, and Daniel, running to the window, and putting his hand out

to feel the breeze, declared that it was fired east-ward.

Now Bertha was at the window, and, as the sailor spoke, he looked

into her face. She quickly put her arm round his neck in the German

fashion, kissed him gratefully, and said, "You good, good man!"

He kissed her in turn, and looked eagerly at her,--but she didn't

recognize him, though he kissed her in precisely the manner of six

years ago.

He sat down again, and again smoked,--and as, in the most heroic

poem, people eat and drink, and as Anne Boleyn would have thought it

hard to starve while her trial was going on, surely, as this is only

the chronicle of people such as you may meet any day, and not at all

heroic, it may not be wrong to state, that plain-spoken, every-day,

love-making little Doome got supper ready.

Bertha had saved a prisoner, Daniel had assisted, and little Doome

rather liked Daniel, yet nobody ate much; and when Daniel (at the

suggestion of Doome) was furnished with a mattress and blanket on

the floor, he did not make use of it, but sat smoking,--smoking for

hours after the two women had gone off to Bertha's room.

But when the tobacco-pouch was empty, and the pipe was cold, the

sailor fell asleep in his chair; and though he had done a good act

the preceding day, he did not sleep well, but sighed heavily as he

slumbered on.

And now it was that Jodoque, the Discomfited, again came upon the

stage. Having been laughed at by every soul in the village, that

poor bachelor went to his lonely house, took a small mug of

consolatory weak beer, felt convinced that all women were deceivers,

vowed that from that time forth he would think no more of matrimony,

and went to bed in the dark,--prompted thereto by the power of

economy in candles. He had fallen asleep, and slept soundly, when

thrift prompted him to remember that one piece of cloth, several

balls of wool, and one white rabbit,--his property,--were at that

moment at the deceiver Bertha's. Why should he, the deceived, make

the married pair happy, with one piece of cloth, several balls of

wool, and a white rabbit? And Jodoque woke up to the terrible truth

in a cold sweat. The articles in question were at the deceiver

Bertha's. At the first break of day he would go and demand his

property. Being unable to sleep through the remainder of the dark

hours, he presented but a disreputable appearance when he clapped to

the little door of his house.

It was barely light, and it was not an overpowering distance for

Jodoque to walk from his house to Bertha's. He knew the household

would not be up, but he determined to sit down before it,--besiege

it, in fact,--and carry off the cloth, the wool, and the white rabbit,

when the enemy should first be moving.

And this is what he saw, as he came up to the cottage:--A young

officer in the French uniform was getting in at Bertha's

kitchen-window. Jodoque seized the idea, as though it were the white

rabbit,--this was the French officer who had escaped yesterday,

endeavoring to hide himself in Bertha's house.

Jodoque did not instantly rush forward to re-arrest this prisoner;

but it struck him there must be a reward for the recapture; so,

determining upon taking the prisoner and the basket at one fell swoop,

he tore away to the burgomaster's to inform him of the discovery. He

reached the official residence, and drew the pompous little

burgomaster to his bedroom-window in a moment. The burgomaster was

rather scandalized that such a respectable man as Jodoque should be

out at such an hour; but when he heard the information, he grew

considerably cold, and rather wished the French fleet would

successfully challenge the place at once, and relieve him of his

admirable chance of the halter.

Was ever burgomaster in such a fix? He wished his ardent longing for

that position had been strangled at his birth. No,--he had saved his

neck from the French, he thought to himself, by conniving at the escape

of a French officer the day previous, and now his neck was in danger

for having very properly tried to save it on that previous day.

But action, action! Whatever came of it, he must appear a patriotic

burgomaster; so he took his night-cap off, and, in spite of the

energetic remonstrances of the burgomaster's lady, was soon down in

the street, surrounded by half a dozen men, and making for Bertha's

eventful little mansion--

Within which was passing a terrible scene.

The fact is, that, when the false Daniel arrived at the fleet and

reported himself, he found that he had escaped with only part of

himself, and rather wanted the rest; and as at that time the French

navy was allowed a liberty which it has not now, the young officer

laid a statement of the whole case before his commander. That daring

personage thus recommended:--A French boat to start away for shore

with this young officer, and several more in her; that it should

touch near Bertha's house; that Bertha should receive the merest hint,

and then take passage for the French fleet herself.

The French officer, attended by half-a-dozen more youths, came back

to the shore, and, just as day was peeping, came up to the little

right-hand window; and as no one answered his tap, he raised the

sash and jumped lightly in.

This Jodoque saw and reported to the burgomaster; but he could not

tell the remainder.

For Daniel, waked by the tapping on the window-pane, saw who it was,

and believing that he had come to steal his wife from him, he

clenched his fists, and, as the slim young man jumped down into the

room, crushed him almost dead in his strong arms.

"Not a word, or I'll stifle you!"

"Daniel! Daniel!"

"Not a word,--and don't Daniel me, you thief!"

"Thief?"

"Don't speak loud."

"How thief?"

"You would steal my wife from me."

"How your wife?"

"Why, Bertha;--she promised to marry me six long years ago, and she

would have married me, if _you_ had not come and stolen her heart."

"Why, you yourself gave her to me!"

"Ah! I owed you a debt I had to pay. 'Tis paid now. I thought you

gone, and the marriage knocked on the head; but now, you've come back,

and won't go again!"

"But, Daniel"--

"Don't Daniel _me_, I say, and don't speak loud; at least, _she_

sha'n't see you taken off. Lie quiet for her sake, and show your

love for her that way."

"And so you'll give me up, old friend, whose life _I_ saved?"

"Saved!--you saved it once, and I saved yours. You took away my hope

when you robbed me of my wife;--now I give you a like return."

"And you yourself, Daniel, who harbored me yesterday"--

"That's nothing to you.--Lie still till some one passes."

For the strong sailor had tipped the officer on to the mattress.

There he lay,--not from want of courage, but because he did not know

what to do.

The sailor felt for his pipe, but he remembered that all the tobacco

was smoked up; so he set the pipe down again and bit his nails.

He had not waited a quarter of an hour when a voice said,--"This way,

Herr Burgomaster!--this way!"

The sailor and his prisoner both started to their feet; and the

burgomaster, coming to the open window, lost the last faint hopes he

had had that this said French officer might not, after all, be the

French officer at whose escape he, the respected burgomaster and

butcher, had assisted.

"Mr. Burgomaster, here is a French prisoner,--and I hand him to you

as the fit personage to place him in the hands of the commander."

Thus spoke Daniel, and, as he spoke, Bertha appeared at the door of

her room, and with her Doome, who hearing this little speech, all her

liking for the sailor vanished on the instant. She was ready to

utterly exterminate him, and more than ready to cry, which she did,

straightway.

As this is only a little comedy, and by no means tragical, we pass

over the next scene, and simply state, that Bertha, before all those

neighbors, forgot everybody but her husband,--if he may be called so,

--and the church had said so; that Daniel felt great remorse at what

he had done; that he told Doome again that he wished the shark had

finished him; that Doome didn't or wouldn't hear, for her idol was

broken,--and so was Doome's heart, nearly.

The authorities took away the prisoner, and left Bertha and Doome

wretched and alone. As for Daniel, he went out wandering by himself,

--for he rather felt ashamed to look upon anybody.

At this time, a little boat with a white flag at its prow put off

from the French fleet, and bravely approached the bristling fort of

Rügen. Nearer and nearer it comes,--nearer and nearer; and in half an

hour there is great cheering over the island of Rügen, for peace

between Prussia and France is declared.

'Tis true, the peace did not last very long; but it lasted long

enough to save the French officer. He was set at liberty at once,

and an hour afterwards Daniel could look people in the face again,

--all except Doome, who would not cease to be incensed.

"But then," said Daniel, "you know I'd been waiting six years."

"How?" exclaimed Bertha.

"Yes, Bertha,--I'm the real Daniel. Look here!"--and half a little

silver cross came forward.

"And you didn't say it when you came!--and you actually gave her to

him!--and you saved his life!--and oh! you, you CAPTAIN of a man!"

Thus Doome spoke and was comforted.

And Bertha went up to her old sweetheart and kissed him, saying, she

thought she knew of a better wife for him than she could ever have

made,--for, now that Ernest (the French officer) had suffered so

much for her sake, she had no right to leave him. And, indeed, they

were re-married that day.

It was after Bertha had said she knew of a better wife for him, that

Daniel looked at Doome, who, picking up that pipe of his, handed it

to him.

"Will you take care of it, Doome?"

"Save when you want it."

"Oh! I mean to come with it."

"'Tis the handsomest pipe in all Germany,--and--and I won't part

with it till I part with you."

Hence, you see, there were two marriages that morning. Doome parted

with the pipe a good deal,--for Daniel loved the sea as heartily as

he had loved Bertha and grew to love Doome, who assured him many

times that she was a far better wife for him than Bertha would have

made. Whereupon Daniel would kiss her,--so you can draw your own

conclusion as to his motive. For my part, I say first love is only

heart-love,--and you see the heart is not so wise as the head.

By the time the long war was over,--with Waterloo for the last act,

--Ernest had made not a little money; so he and Bertha--now a grand

lady--came to Rügen. Ernest learned German, perfectly, from his own

children and Doome's, and turned his sword into a ploughshare.

As for Daniel,--he gave up the sea and took a wine-shop.

Those four people are now still alive; and if Bertha and Daniel did

not marry, their children have,--though it was rather lowering to

those grand young ladies and gentlemen, Bertha's children.

Those four, when they meet and clapper their friendly old tongues,

can hardly believe that once upon a time they were all at sixes and

sevens,--and that Ernest himself was once in that very place a

Prisoner of War.

THE "WASHING OF THE FEET," ON HOLY THURSDAY, IN ST. PETER'S.

Once more the temple-gates lie open wide:

Onward, once more,

Advance the Faithful, mounting like a tide

That climbs the shore.

What seek they? Blank the altars stand today,

As tombstones bare:

Christ of his raiment was despoiled; and they

His livery wear.

Today the puissant and the proud have heard

The "mandate new":[1]

That which He did, their Master and their Lord,

They also do.

Today the mitred foreheads, and the crowned,

In meekness bend:

New tasks today the sceptred hands have found;

The poor they tend.

Today those feet which tread in lowliest ways,

Yet follow Christ,

Are by the secular lords of power and praise

Both washed and kissed.

Hail, ordinance sage of hoar antiquity,

Which She retains,

That Church who teaches man how meek should be

The head that reigns!

[Footnote 1: _Mandatum Novum_:--hence the name of "Maundy Thursday."]

* * * * *

PHYSICAL COURAGE.

The Romans had a military machine, called a _balista_, a sort of

vast crossbow, which discharged huge stones. It is said, that, when

the first one was exhibited, an athlete exclaimed, "Farewell

henceforth to all courage!" Montaigne relates, that the old knights,

in his youth, were accustomed to deplore the introduction of

fencing-schools, from a similar apprehension. Pacific King James

predicted, but with rejoicing, the same result from iron armor.

"It was an excellent thing," he said,--"one could get no harm in it,

nor do any." And, similarly, there exists an opinion now, that the

combined powers of gunpowder and peace are banishing physical courage,

and the need of it, from the world.

Peace is good, but this result of it would be sad indeed. Life is

sweet, but it would not be sweet enough without the occasional relish

of peril and the luxury of daring deeds. Amid the changes of time,

the monotony of events, and the injustice of mankind, there is always

accessible to the poorest this one draught of enjoyment,--danger.

"In boyhood," said the Norwegian enthusiast, Ole Bull, "I loved to be

far out on the ocean in my little boat, for it was dangerous, and in

danger one draws near to God." Perhaps every man sometimes feels this

longing, has his moment of ardor, when he would fain leave politics

and personalities, even endearments and successes, behind, and would

exchange the best year of his life for one hour at Balaklava with

the "Six Hundred." It is the bounding of the Berserker blood in us,

--the murmuring echo of the old death-song of Regnar Lodbrog, as he

lay amid vipers in his dungeon:--"What is the fate of a brave man,

but to fall amid the foremost? He who is never wounded has a weary

lot."

This makes the fascination of war, which is in itself, of course,

brutal and disgusting. Dr. Johnson says, truly, that the naval and

military professions have the dignity of danger, since mankind

reverence those who have overcome fear, which is so general a

weakness. The error usually lies in exaggerating the difference, in

this respect, between war and peace. Madame de Sévigné writes to her

cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, after a campaign, "I cannot understand how

one can expose himself a thousand times, as you have done, and not

be killed a thousand times also." To which the Count answers, that

she overrates the danger; a soldier may often make several campaigns

without drawing a sword, and be in a battle without seeing an enemy,

--as, for example, where one is in the second line, or rear guard,

and the first line decides the contest. He finally quotes Turenne,

and Maurice, Prince of Orange, to the same effect, that a military

life is less perilous than civilians suppose.

It is, therefore, a foolish delusion to suppose, that, as the world

grows more pacific, the demand for physical courage passes away. It

is only that its applications become nobler. In barbarous ages, men

fight against men and animals, and need, like Achilles, to be fed on

the marrow of wild beasts. As time elapses, the savage animals are

extirpated, the savage men are civilized; but Nature, acting through

science, commerce, society, is still creating new exigencies of peril,

and evoking new types of courage to meet them. Grace Darling at her

oars, Kane in his open boat, Stephenson testing his safety-lamp in

the terrible pit,--what were the trophies of Miltiades to these? The

ancient Agamemnon faced no danger so memorable as that ocean-storm

which beset his modern namesake, bearing across the waters a more

priceless treasure than Helen, pride of Greece. And, indeed, setting

aside these sublimities of purpose, and looking simply at the

quantity and quality of peril, it is doubtful whether any tale of

the sea-kings thrills the blood more worthily than the plain

newspaper narrative of Captain Thomas Bailey, in the Newburyport

schooner, "Atlas," beating out of the Gut of Canso, in a gale of wind,

with his crew of two men and a boy, up to their waists in the water.

It is easy to test the matter. Let any one, who believes that the

day of daring is past, beg or buy a ride on the locomotive of the

earliest express-train, some cold winter-morning. One wave of the

conductor's hand, and the live engine springs snorting beneath you,

as no Arab steed ever rushed over the desert. It is not like being

bound to an arrow, for that motion would be smoother; it is not like

being hurled upon an ocean crest, for that would be slower. You are

rushing onward, and you are powerless; that is all. The frosty air

gives such a brittle and slippery look to the two iron lines which

lie between you and destruction, that you appreciate the Mohammedan

fable of the Bridge Herat, thinner than a hair, sharper than a

scimitar, which stretches over hell and leads to paradise. Nothing

has passed over that perilous track for many hours; the cliffs may

have fallen and buried it, the frail bridges may have sunk beneath it,

or diabolical malice put obstructions on it, no matter how trivial,

equally fatal to you; each curving embankment may hide unknown horrors,

from which, though all others escape, you, on the engine, cannot;

and yet, still the surging locomotive bounds onward, beneath your

mad career. You draw a long breath, as you dismount at last, a hundred

miles away, as if you had been riding with Mazeppa or Brunechilde,

and yet escaped alive. And there, by your side, stands the quiet,

grimy engineer, turning already to his tobacco and his newspaper,

and unconscious, while he reads of the charge at Balaklava, that

his life is Balaklava every day.

Physical courage is not, therefore, a thing to be so easily set aside.

Nor is it, as our reformers appear sometimes to assume, a mere

corollary from moral courage, and, ultimately, to be merged in that.

Moral courage is rare enough, no doubt,--probably the rarer quality

of the two, as it is the nobler; but they are things diverse, and

not necessarily united. There have been men, and still are such,

leaders of their age in moral courage, and yet physically timid. This

is not as it should be. God placed man at the head of the visible

universe, and if he is to be thrown from his control, daunted by a

bullet, or a wild horse, or a flash of lightning, or a lee shore,

then man is dishonored, and the order of the universe deranged. No

matter what the occasion of the terror is, a mouse or a martyrdom,

fear dethrones us. "He that lives in fear of death," said Cæsar,

"at every moment feels its tortures. I will die but once."

Having claimed thus much, we can still readily admit that we cannot

yet estimate the precise effect upon physical courage of a state of

permanent national peace, since indeed we are not yet within sight

of that desirable consummation. Meanwhile, let us attempt some

slight sketch and classification of the different types of physical

courage, as already existing, among which are to be enumerated the

spontaneous courage of the blood,--the courage of habit,--magnetic

or transmitted courage,--and the courage inspired by self-devotion.

There is a certain innate fire of the blood, which does not dare

perils for the sake of principle, nor grow indifferent to them from

familiarity, nor confront them under support of a stronger will,--but

loves them for their own sake, without reference to any ulterior

object. There is no special merit in it, for it is a matter of

temperament. Yet it often conceals itself under the finer names of

self-devotion and high purpose,--as George Borrow convinced himself

that he was actuated by evangelical zeal to spread the Bible in Spain,

though one sees, through every line of his narrative, that it was

chiefly the adventure which allured him, and that he would as

willingly have distributed the Koran in London, had it been equally

contraband. No surplices, no libraries, no counting-house desks can

eradicate this natural instinct. Achilles, disguised among the

maidens, was detected by the wily Ulysses, because he chose arms,

not jewels, from the travelling merchant's stores. In the most

placid life, a man may pant for danger; and we know quiet,

unobtrusive men who have confessed to us that they never step into a

railroad-car without the secret hope of a collision.

This is the courage of heroic races, as Highlanders, Circassians,

Montenegrins, Afghans, and those Arabs among whom Urquhart finely

said that peace could not be purchased by victory. Where destined to

appear at all, it is likely to be developed in extreme youth, which

explains such instances as the _gamins de Paris_, and that of Sir

Cloudesley Shovel, who in boyhood conveyed a dispatch during a naval

engagement, swimming through double lines of fire. Indeed, among

heroic races, young soldiers are preferable for daring; such, at

least, is the testimony of the highest authorities, as Ney and

Wellington. "I have found," said the Duke, "that raw troops, however

inferior to the old ones in manoeuvring, may be superior to them in

downright hard fighting with the enemy. At Waterloo, the young ensigns

and lieutenants, who had never before seen an enemy, rushed to meet

death, as if they were playing at cricket."

But though youth is good for an onset, it needs habit and discipline

to give steadiness. A boy will risk his life where a veteran will be

too circumspect to follow him; but to perform a difficult manoeuvre

in face of an enemy requires Sicinius with forty-five scars on his

breast. "The very apprehension of a wound," said Seneca, "startles a

man when he first bears arms; but an old soldier bleeds boldly, for

he knows that a man may lose blood and yet win the day." Before the

battle of Preston Pans, Mr. Ker of Graden, "an experienced officer,"

mounted on a gray pony, coolly reconnoitred all the difficult ground

between the two armies, crossed it in several directions,

deliberately alighted more than once to lead his horse through gaps

made for that purpose in the stone walls,--under a constant shower

of musket-balls. He finally returned unhurt to Charles Edward, and

dissuaded him from crossing. Undoubtedly, any raw Highlander in the

army would have incurred the same risk, with or without a sufficient

object; but not one of them would have brought back so clear a report,

--if, indeed, he had brought himself back.

The most common evidence of this dependence of many persons' courage

on habit is in the comparative timidity of brave men against novel

dangers,--as of sailors on horseback, and mountaineers at sea. Nay,

the same effect is sometimes produced merely by different forms of

danger within the same sphere. Sea-captains often attach an

exaggerated sense of peril to small boats; Condé confessed himself a

coward in a street-fight; and William the Conqueror is said to have

trembled exceedingly (_rehementer tremens_) during the disturbance

which interrupted his coronation. It was probably from the same cause,

that Mrs. Inchbald, the most fearless of actresses, was once

entirely overcome by timidity on assuming a character in a masquerade.

On a larger scale, the mere want of habitual exposure to danger will

often cause a whole population to be charged with greater cowardice

than really belongs to them. Thus, after the coronation of the

Chevalier, in the Scottish insurrection of 1745, although the

populace of Edinburgh crowded around him, kissing his very garments

when he walked abroad, yet scarcely a man could be enlisted, in view

of the certainty of an approaching battle with General Cope. And

before this, when the Highlanders were marching on the city, out of a

volunteer corps of four hundred raised to meet them, all but

forty-five deserted before the gate was passed.[1] Yet there is no

reason to doubt that these frightened citizens, after having once

stood fire, might have been as brave as the average. It was a saying

in Kansas, that the New England men needed to be shot at once or

twice, after which they became the bravest of the brave.

This habitual courage mingles itself, doubtless, with the third

species, the magnetic, or transmitted. No mental philosopher has yet

done justice to the wondrous power of leadership, the "art Napoleon."

The ancients stated it best in their proverb, that an army of stags

led by a lion is more formidable than an army of lions led by a

stag. It was for this reason that the Greeks used to send to Sparta,

not for soldiers, but for a general. When Crillon, _l'homme sans peur_,

defended Quilleboeuf with a handful of men against Marshal Villars,

the latter represented to him, that it was madness to resist such

superiority of numbers, to which the answer was simply,--"_Crillon

est dedans, et Villars est dehors_." The event proved that the hero

inside was stronger than the army outside.

Every one knows that there is a certain magnetic power in courage,

apart from all physical strength. In a family of lone women, there is

usually some one whose presence is held to confer safety on the house;

she may be a delicate invalid, but she is not afraid. The same

quality explains the difference in the demeanor of different

companies of men and women, in great emergencies of danger. Read one

narrative of shipwreck, and human nature seems all sublime; read

another, and, under circumstances equally desperate, it appears base,

selfish, grovelling. The difference lies simply in the influence of

a few leading spirits. Ordinarily, as is the captain, so are the

officers, so are the passengers, so are the sailors. Bonaparte said,

that at the beginning of almost every battle there was a moment when

the bravest troops were liable to sudden panic; let the personal

control of the general once lead them past that, and the field was

half won.

The courage of self-devotion, lastly, is the faculty evoked by

special exigencies, in persons who have before given no peculiar

evidence of courage. It belongs especially to the race of martyrs

and enthusiasts, whose personal terrors vanish in the greatness of

the object, so that Joan of Arc, listening to the songs of the angels,

does not feel the flames. This, indeed, is the accustomed form in

which woman's courage proclaims itself at last, unsuspected until

the crisis comes. This has given us the deeds of Flora Macdonald,

Jane Lane, and the Countess of Derby; the rescue of Lord Nithisdale

by his wife, and that planned for Montrose by Lady Margaret Durham;

the heroism of Catherine Douglas, thrusting her arm within the

stanchions of the doorway to protect James I. of Scotland, till his

murderers shattered the frail barrier; and that sublimest narrative

of woman's devotion, Gertrude Van der Wart at her husband's execution.

It is possible that all these women may have been timid and shrinking,

before the hour of trial; and every emergency, in peace or war,

brings out some such instances. At the close of the troubles of 1856,

in Kansas, a traveller chanced to be visiting a lady in Lawrence, who,

in opening her work-basket, accidentally let fall a small pistol. She

smiled and blushed, and presently acknowledged, that, when she had

first pulled the trigger experimentally, six months before, she had

shut her eyes and screamed, although there was only a percussion-cap

to explode. Yet it afterwards appeared that she was one of the few

women who remained in their houses, to protect them by their presence,

when the town was entered by the Missourians,--and also one of the

still smaller number who brought their rifles to aid their husbands

in the redoubt, when two hundred were all that could be rallied

against three thousand, in September of that eventful year. Thus

easily is the transition effected!

This is the courage, also, of Africans, as manifested among ourselves,

--the courage created by desperate emergencies. Suppled by long

slavery, softened by mixture of blood, the black man seems to pass

at one bound, as women do, from cowering pusillanimity to the topmost

height of daring. The giddy laugh vanishes, the idle chatter is

hushed, and the buffoon becomes a hero. Nothing in history surpasses

the bravery of the Maroons of Surinam, as described by Stedman, or

of those of Jamaica, as delineated by Dallas. Agents of the

"Underground Railroad" report that the incidents which daily come to

their knowledge are beyond all Greek, all Roman fame. These men and

women, who have tested their courage in the lonely swamp against the

alligator and the bloodhound, who have starved on prairies, hidden

in holds, clung to locomotives, ridden hundreds of miles cramped in

boxes, head downward, equally near to death if discovered or deserted,

--and who have then, after enduring all this, gone voluntarily back

to risk it over again, for the sake of wife or child,--what are we

pale faces, that we should claim a rival capacity with theirs for

heroic deeds? What matter, if none, below the throne of God, can now

identify that nameless negro in the Tennessee iron-works, who, during

the last insurrection, said "he knew all about the plot, but would

die before he would tell? He _received seven hundred and fifty

lashes and died_." Yet where, amid the mausoleums of the world,

is there carved an epitaph like that?

The courage of blood, of habit, or of imitation is not necessarily a

very exalted thing. But the courage of self-devotion cannot be

otherwise than noble, however wasted on fanaticism or delusion. It

enters the domain of conscience. Yet, although the sublimest, it is

not necessarily the most undaunted form of courage. It is vain to

measure merit by martyrdom, without reference to the temperament,

the occasion, and the aim. There is no passion in the mind of man so

weak, said Lord Bacon, but it mates and masters the fear of death.

Sinner, as well as saint, may be guillotined or lynched, and endure

it well. A red Indian or a Chinese robber will dare the stake as

composedly as an early Christian or an abolitionist. One of the

bravest of all death-scenes was the execution of Simon, Lord Lovat,

who was unquestionably one of the greatest scoundrels that ever

burdened the earth. We must look deeper. The test of a man is not in

the amount of his endurance, but in its motive; does he love the

right, he may die in glory on a bed of down; is he false and base,

these things thrust discord into his hymn of dying anguish, and no

crown of thorns can sanctify his drooping head. Physical courage is,

after all, but a secondary quality, and needs a sublime motive to

make it thoroughly sublime.

Among all these different forms of courage it is almost equally true

that it is the hardest of all qualities to predict or identify, in

an individual case, before the actual trial. Many a man has been

unable to discover, till the critical moment, whether he himself

possessed it or not. It is often denied to the healthy and strong,

and given to the weak. The pugilist may be a poltroon, and the

bookworm a hero. We have seen the most purely ideal philosopher in

this country face the black muzzles of a dozen loaded revolvers with

his usual serene composure. And on the other hand, we have known a

black-bearded backwoodsman, whose mere voice and presence would

quell any riot among the lumberers,--yet this man, nicknamed by his

_employees_ "the black devil," confessed himself to be in secret

the most timid of lambs.

One reason of this difficulty of estimate lies in the fact, that

courage and cowardice often complicate themselves with other

qualifies, and so show false colors. For instance, the presence or

absence of modesty may disguise the genuine character. The

unpretending are not always timid, nor always brave. The boaster is

not always, but only commonly, a coward. Were it otherwise, how

could we explain the existence of courage in Frenchmen or Indians?

Barking dogs sometimes bite, as many a small boy, too trustful of the

proverb, has found to his cost. "If that be a friend of yours," says

Brantême's brave Spanish Cavalier, "pray for his soul, for he has

quarrelled with me." Indeed, the Gascons, whose name is identified

with boasting, (gasconade,) were always among the bravest races in

Europe.

Again, the mere quality of caution is often mistaken for cowardice,

while heedlessness passes for daring. A late eminent American

sculptor, a man of undoubted courage, is said to have always taken

the rear car in a railroad train. Such a spirit of prudence, where

well-directed, is to be viewed with respect. We ought not to

reverence the blind recklessness which sits on the safety-valve

during a steamboat-race, but the cool composure which neither

underrates a danger nor shrinks from it. The best encomium is that

of Malcolm M'Leod upon Charles Edward:--"He was the most cautious man,

not to be a coward, and the bravest man, not to be rash, that I ever

saw"; or that of Charles VII. of France upon Pierre d'Aubusson:--"Never

did I see united so much fire and so much wisdom."

Still again, men vary as to the form of danger which tests them most

severely. The Irish are undoubtedly a brave nation, but their

courage is apt to vanish in presence of sickness. They are not,

however, alone in this, if we may judge from the newspaper statements,

that, after the recent quarantine riots in New York, a small-pox

patient lay all day untended in the Park, because no one dared to go

near him. It is said of Dr. Johnson, that he was a hero against pain,

but a coward against death. Probably the contrary emotion is quite

as common. To a believer in immortality, death, even when premature,

can scarcely be regarded as an unmitigated evil, but pain enforces

its own recognition. We can hardly agree with the frightened recruit

in the farce, who thinks "Victory or Death" a forbidding war-cry,

but "Victory or Wooden Legs" a more appetizing alternative.

Beside these complications, there are those arising from the share

which conscience has in the matter. "Thrice is he armed that hath

his quarrel just," and the most resolute courage will sometimes

quail in a bad cause, and even die in its armor, like Bois-Guilbert.

It was generally admitted, on both sides, in Kansas, that the

"Border Ruffians" seldom dared face an equal number; yet nobody

asserted that these men were intrinsically deficient in daring; it

was only conscience which made cowards of them all.

But it is, after all, the faculty of imagination which, more than

all else, confuses the phenomena of courage and cowardice. A very

imaginative child is almost sure to be reproached with timidity,

while mere stolidity takes rank as courage. The bravest boy may

sometimes be most afraid of the dark, or of ghosts, or of the great

mysteries of storms and the sea. Even the mighty Charlemagne

shuddered when the professed enchanter brought before him the vast

forms of Dietrich and his Northern companions, on horseback. We once

saw a party of boys tested by an alarm which appealed solely to the

imagination. The only one among them who stood the test was the most

cowardly of the group, who escaped the contagion through sheer lack

of this faculty. Any imaginative person can occasionally test this

on himself by sleeping in a large lonely house, or by bathing alone

in some solitary place by the great ocean; there comes a thrill

which is not born of terror, and the mere presence of a child breaks

the spell,--though it would only enhance the actual danger, if danger

there were.

This explains the effect of darkness on danger. "Let Ajax perish in

the face of day." Who has not shuddered over the description of

that Arkansas duel, fought by two naked combatants, with pistol and

bowie-knife, in a dark room? One thrills to think of those first

few moments of breathless, sightless, hopeless, hushed expectation,

--then the confused encounter, the slippery floor, the invisible,

ghastly terrors of that horrible chamber. Many a man would shrink

from that, who would march coolly up to the cannon's mouth by

daylight.

It is probably this mingling of imaginative excitement which makes

the approach of peril often more terrible than its actual contact.

"A true knight," said Sir Philip Sidney, "is fuller of gay bravery

in the midst than at the beginning of danger." The boy Condé was

reproached with trembling, in his first campaign. "My body trembles,"

said the hero, "with the actions my soul meditates." And it is said

of Charles V., that he often trembled when arming for battle, but in

the conflict was as cool as if it were impossible for an emperor to

be killed.

These stray glimpses into the autobiography of heroism are of

inestimable value, and they are scanty at best. It is said of Turenne,

that he was once asked by M. de Lamoignon, at the dinner-table of

the latter, if his courage was never shaken at the commencement of a

battle? "Yes," said Turenne, "I sometimes undergo great nervous

excitement; but there are in the army a great multitude of subaltern

officers and soldiers who experience none whatever." This goes to

illustrate the same point.

To give to any form of courage an available or working value, it is

essential that it have two qualities, promptness and persistency.

What Napoleon called "two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage" is rare.

It requires great enthusiasm or great discipline to be proof against

a surprise. It is said that Suwarrow, even in peace, always slept

fully armed, boots and all. "When I was lazy," he said, "and wanted

to enjoy a comfortable sleep, I usually took off one spur." In

regard to persistency, history is full of instances of unexpected

reverses and eleventh-hour triumphs. The battle of Marengo was

considered hopeless, for the first half of the day, and a retreat was

generally expected, on the part of the French; when Desaix,

consulted by Bonaparte, looked at his watch and said,--"The battle

is completely lost, but it is only two o'clock, and we shall have

time to gain another." He then made his famous and fatal

cavalry-charge, and won the field. It was from a noble appreciation

of this quality of persistency, that, when the battle of Cannæ was

lost, and Hannibal was measuring by bushels the rings of the fallen

Roman knights, the Senate of Rome voted thanks to the defeated

general, Consul Terentius Varro, for not having despaired of the

republic.

Thus armed at all points, incapable of being either surprised or

exhausted, courage achieves results which seem miraculous. It is an

element of inspiration, something superadded and incalculable, when

all the other forces are exhausted. When we consider how really

formidable becomes the humblest of quadrupeds, cat or rat, when it

grows mad and desperate and throws all personal fear behind, it is

clear that there must be a reserved power in human daring which

defies computation and equalizes the most fearful odds. Take one man,

mad with excitement or intoxication, place him with his back to the

wall, a knife in his hand, and the fire of utter frenzy in his

eyes,--and who, among the thousand bystanders, dares make the first

attempt to disarm him? Desperate courage makes one a majority. Baron

Trenck nearly escaped from the fortress of Glatz at noonday,

snatching a sword from an officer, passing all the sentinels with a

sudden rush, and almost effecting his retreat to the mountains;

"which incident will prove," he says, "that adventurous and even

rash daring will render the most improbable undertakings successful,

and that desperate attempts may often make a general more fortunate

and famous than the wisest and best-concerted plans."

It is this miraculous quality which helps to explain the

extraordinary victories of history: as where the army of Lucullus at

Tigranocerta slew one hundred thousand barbarians with the loss of

only a hundred men,--or where Cortés conquered Mexico with six

hundred foot and sixteen horse. The astounding narratives in the

chivalry romances, where the historian risks his Palmerin or Amadis

as readily against twenty giants as one, secure of bringing him

safely through,--or the corresponding modern marvels of Alexandre

Dumas,--seem scarcely exaggerations of actual events. A Portuguese,

at the siege of Goa, inserted a burning match in a cask of gunpowder,

then grasped it in his arms, and, crying to his companions,

"Stand aside, I bear my own and many men's lives," threw it among

the enemy, of whom a hundred were killed by the explosion, the bearer

being left unhurt. John Haring, on a Flemish dyke, held a thousand

men at bay, saved his army, and finally escaped uninjured. And the

motto of Bayard, _Vires agrainis unus habet_, was given him after

singly defending a bridge against two hundred Spaniards. Such men

appear to bear charmed lives, and to be identical with the laws of

Fate. "What a soldier, what a Roman, was thy father, my young bride!

How could they who never saw him have discoursed so rightly upon

virtue?"

From popular want of faith in these infinite resources of daring, it

is a common thing for persons of eminent courage to be stigmatized

as rash. This has been strikingly the case, for instance, in modern

times, with the Marquis of Wellesley and Sir Charles Napier. When the

Duke of Wellington was in the Peninsula in 1810, the City of London

addressed the throne, protesting against the bestowal of "honorable

distinctions upon a general who had thus far exhibited, with equal

rashness and ostentation, nothing but an useless valor."

But if bravery is liable to exist in excess, on the one side, it is

a comfort to think that it is capable of cultivation, where deficient.

There may be a few persons born absolutely without the power of

courage, as without the susceptibility to music,--but very few; and,

no doubt, the elements of daring, like those of musical perception,

can be developed in almost all. Once rouse the enthusiasm of the will,

and courage can be systematically disciplined. Emerson's maxim gives

the best regimen: "Always do what you are afraid to do." If your lot

is laid amid scenes of peace, then carry the maxim into the arts of

peace. Are you afraid to swim that river? then swim it. Are you

afraid to leap that fence? then leap it. Do you shrink from the

dizzy height of yonder magnificent pine? then climb it, and

"throw down the top," as they do in the forests of Maine. Goethe

cured himself of dizziness by ascending the lofty stagings of the

Frankfort carpenters. Nothing is insignificant that is great enough

to alarm you. If you cannot think of a grizzly bear without a shudder,

then it is almost worth your while to travel to the Rocky Mountains

in order to encounter the reality. It is said that Van Amburgh

attributed all his power over animals to the similar rule given him

by his mother in his boyhood: "If anything frightens you, walk up

and face it." Applying this maxim boldly, he soon satisfied himself

that man possessed a natural power of control over all animals, if

he dared to exercise it. He said that every animal divined by

unerring instinct the existence of fear in his ruler, and a moment's

indecision might cost one's life. On being asked, what he should do,

if he found himself in the desert, face to face with a lion, he

answered, "If I wished for certain death, I should turn and run away."

Physical courage may be educated; but it must be trained for its own

sake. We say again, it must not be left to moral courage to include

it, for the two faculties have different elements,--and what God has

joined, human inconsistency may put asunder. The disjunction is easy

to explain. Many men, when committed on the right side of any

question, get credit for a "moral courage," which is, in their case,

only an intense egotism, isolating them from all demand for human

sympathy. In the best cause, they prefer to belong to a party

conveniently small, and, on the slightest indications of popular

approbation, begin to suspect themselves of compromise. The abstract

martyrdom of unpopularity is therefore clear gain to them; but when

it comes to the rack and the thumbscrew, the revolver and the

bowie-knife, the same habitual egotism makes them cowards. These men

are annoying in themselves, and still worse because they throw

discredit on the noble and unselfish reformers with whom they are

identified in position. But even among this higher class there are

differences of temperament, and it costs one man an effort to face

the brute argument of the slung-shot, while another's fortitude is

not seriously tested till it comes to facing the newspaper editors.

We have given but a few aspects of a rich and endless theme, and

have depicted these more by examples than analysis, mindful of the

saying of Sidney, that Alexander received more bravery of mind by

the example of Achilles than by hearing the definition of fortitude.

If we have seemed to draw illustrations too profusely from the

records of battles, it is to be remembered, that, even if war be not

the best nurse of heroisms, it is their best historian. The chase,

for instance, though perhaps as prolific in deeds of daring as the

camp, has found few Cummings and Gerards for annalists, and the more

trivial aim of the pursuit diminishes the permanence of its records.

The sublime fortitude of hospitals, the bravery shown in infected

cities, the fearlessness of firemen and of sailors, these belong to

those times of peace which have as yet few historians. But we have

sought to exhibit the deep foundations and instincts of courage, and

it matters little whence the illustrations come. Doubtless, for every

great deed ever narrated, there were a hundred greater ones untold;

and the noblest valor of the world may sleep unrecorded, like the

heroes before Homer.

But there are things which, once written, the world does not

willingly let die; embalmed in enthusiasm, borne down on the

unconquerable instincts of childhood, they become imperishable and

eternal. We need not travel to visit the graves of the heroes: they

are become a part of the common air; their line is gone out to all

generations. Shakspeares are but their servants; no change of time

or degradation of circumstance can debar us from their lesson. The

fascination which every one finds in the simplest narrative of

daring is the sufficient testimony to its priceless and permanent

worth. Human existence finds its range expanded, when Demosthenes

describes Philip of Macedon, his enemy: "I saw this Philip, with

whom we disputed for empire. I saw him, though covered with wounds,

his eye struck out, his collar-bone broken, maimed in his hands,

maimed in his feet, still resolutely rush into the midst of dangers,

ready to deliver up to Fortune any part of his body she might require,

provided he might live honorably and gloriously with the rest."

Would it not be shameful, that war should leave us such memories as

these, and peace bequeathe us only money and repose? True, "peace

hath her victories, no less renowned than war." No less! but they

should be infinitely greater. _Esto miles pacificus_, "Be the

soldier of peace," was the priestly benediction of mediaeval knights;

and the aspirations of humaner ages should lead us into heroisms such

as Plutarch never portrayed, and even Bayard and Sidney only

prophesied, but died without the sight of.

[Footnote 1: It is worth mentioning, that among the deserters was

one valorous writing-master, who had previously prepared a

breastplate of two quires of his-own foolscap, inscribing thereon,

in his best penmanship,--"This is the body of J.M.; pray, give it

Christian burial."]

* * * * *

NOVEMBER.

Much have I spoken of the faded leaf;

Long have I listened to the wailing wind,

And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds;

For autumn charms my melancholy mind.

When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge:

The year must perish; all the flowers are dead;

The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail

Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!

Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer,

The holly-berries and the ivy-tree:

They weave a chaplet for the Old Year's heir;

These waiting mourners do not sing for me!

I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods,

Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;

The naked, silent trees have taught me this,--

The loss of beauty is not always loss!

A VISIT TO THE AUTOCRAT'S LANDLADY.

_By the Special Reporter of the "Oceanic Miscellany"_.

The door was opened by a stout, red-armed lump of a woman, who, in

reply to my question, said her name was Bridget, but Biddy they

calls her mostly. There was a rickety hat-stand in the entry, upon

which, by the side of a schoolboy's cap, there hung a broad-brimmed

white hat, somewhat fatigued by use, but looking gentle and kindly,

as I have often noticed good old gentlemen's hats do, after they

have worn them for a time. The door of the dining-room was standing

wide open, and I went in. A long table, covered with an oil-cloth,

ran up and down the length of the room, and yellow wooden chairs were

ranged about it. She showed me where the Gentleman used to sit, and,

at the last part of the time, the Schoolmistress next to him. The

chairs were like the rest, but it was odd enough to notice that they

stood close together, touching each other, while all the rest were

straggling and separate. I observed that peculiar atmospheric flavor

which has been described by Mr. Balzac, (the French story-teller who

borrows so many things from some of our American loading writers,)

under the name of _odeur de pension_. It is, as one may say, an

olfactory perspective of an endless vista of departed breakfasts,

dinners, and suppers. It is similar, if not identical, in all

temperate climates; a kind of neutral tint, which forms the

perpetual background upon which the banquet of today strikes out

its keener but more transitory aroma. I don't think it necessary to

go into any further particulars, because this atmospheric character

has the effect of making the dining-rooms of all boarding-houses

seem very much alike; and the accident of a hair-cloth sofa, cold,

shiny, slippery, prickly,--or a veneered sideboard, with a scale off

here and there, and a knob or two missing,--or a portrait, with one

hand half under its coat, the other resting on a pious-looking book,

--these accidents, and such as these, make no great difference.

The landlady soon presented herself, and I followed her into the

parlor, which was a decent apartment, with a smart centre-table, on

which lay an accordion, a recent number of the "Pactolian," a

gilt-edged, illustrated book or two, and a copy of the works of that

distinguished native author, to whom I feel very spiteful, on

account of his having, some years ago, attacked _a near friend of

mine_, and whom, on Christian principles, I do not mention,--though

I have noticed, that, where there is an accordion on the table, his

books are apt to be lying near it.

The landlady was a "wilted," (not exactly withered,) sad-eyed woman,

of the thin-blooded sort, but firm-fibred, and sharpened and made

shrewd by her calling, so that the look with which she ran me over,

in the light of a possible boarder, was so searching, that I was

half put down by it. I informed her of my errand, which was to make

some inquiries concerning two former boarders of hers, in whom a

portion of the public had expressed some interest, and of whom I

should be glad to know certain personal details,--as to their habits,

appearance, and so on. Any information she might furnish would be

looked upon in the light of a literary contribution to the pages of

the "Oceanic Miscellany," and be compensated with the well-known

liberality of the publishers of that spirited, enterprising, and

very popular periodical.

Up to this point, the landlady's countenance had kept that worried,

watchful look, which poor women, who have to fight the world

single-handed, sooner or later grow into. But now her features

relaxed a little. The blow which had crushed her life had shattered

her smile, and, as the web of shivered expression shot off its rays

across her features, I fancied that Grief had written her face all

over with 'Ws', to mark her as one of his forlorn flock of Widows.

The report here given is partly from the conversation held with the

landlady at that time, and partly from written notes which she

furnished me; for, finding that she was to be a contributor to the

"Oceanic Miscellany," and that in that capacity she would be

entitled to the ample compensation offered by the liberal

proprietors of that admirably conducted periodical,--which we are

pleased to learn has been growing in general favor, and which, the

public may be assured, no pains will be spared to render superior in

every respect,--I say, finding that she was to be handsomely

remunerated, she entered into the subject with great zeal, both

verbally and by letter. The reader will see that I sometimes follow

her orthography, and sometimes her pronunciation, as I may have

taken it from writing or from speech.

THE LANDLADY'S ACCOUNT.

There is two vacant places at my table, which I should be pleased to

fill with two gentlemen, or with a gentleman and his wife, or any

respectable people, be they merried or single. It is about the

gentleman and the lady that used to set in them places, that

inquiries is bein' made. Some has wrote, and some has spoke, and a

good many folks, that was unbeknown to me, has come in and wanted to

see the place where they used to set, and some days it's been

nothin' but ring, ring, ring, from mornin' till night.

Folks will be curious about them that has wrote in the papers.

There's my daughter couldn't be easy no way till she'd got a profeel

of one of them authors, to hang up right over the head of her bed.

That's the gentleman that writes stories in the papers, some in the

same way this gentleman did, I expect, that inquiries is made about.

I'm a poor woman, that tries to get an honest livin', and works hard

enough for it;--lost my husband, and buried five children, and have

two livin' ones to support. It's a great loss to me, losin' them two

boarders; and if there's anything in them papers he left in that

desk that will fetch anything at any of the shops where they buy

such things, I'm sure I wish you'd ask the printer to step round

here and stop in and see what any of 'em is worth. I'll let you have

one or two of 'em, and then you can see whether you don't know

anybody that would take the lot. I suppose you'll put what I tell you

into shape, for, like as not, I sha'n't write it out nor talk jest

as folks that make books do.

This gentleman warn't no great of a gentleman to look at. Being of a

very moderate dimension,--five foot five _he_ said, but five foot

four more likely, and I've heerd him say he didn't weigh much over a

hundred and twenty pound. He was light-complected rather than

darksome, and was one of them smooth-faced people that keep their

baird and wiskers cut close, jest as if they'd be very troublesome

if they let 'em grow,--instead of layin' out their face in grass, as

my poor husband that's dead and gone used to say. He was a

well-behaved gentleman at table, only talked a good deal, and pretty

loud sometimes, and had a way of turnin' up his nose when he didn't

like what folks said, that one of my boarders, who is a very smart

young man, said he couldn't stand, no how, and used to make faces

and poke fun at him whenever he see him do it.

He never said a word aginst any vittles that was set before him, but

I mistrusted that he was more partickerlar in his eatin' than he

wanted folks to know of, for I've know'd him make believe to eat,

and leave the vittles on his plate when he didn't seem to fancy 'em;

but he was very careful never to hurt my feelin's, and I don't

belief he'd have spoke, if he had found a tadpole in a dish of

chowder. But nothin' could hurry him when he was about his vittles.

Many's the time I've seen that gentleman keepin' two or three of 'em

settin' round the breakfast-table after the rest had swallered their

meal, and the things was cleared off, and Bridget was a-waitin' to

get the cloth away,--and there that little man would set, with a

tumbler of sugar and water,--what he used to call O Sukray,

--a-talkin' and a-talkin',--and sometimes he would laugh, and

sometimes the tears would come into his eyes,--which was a kind of

grayish blue eyes,--and there he'd set and set, and my boy Benjamin

Franklin hangin' round and gettin' late for school and wantin' an

excuse, and an old gentleman that's one of my boarders a-listenin'

as if he wa'n't no older than my Benj. Franklin, and that

schoolmistress settin' jest as if she'd been bewitched, and you

might stick pins into her without her hollerin'. He was a master

hand to talk when he got a-goin'. But he never would have no

disputes nor long argerments at my table, and I liked him all the

better for that; for I had a boarder once that never let nothin' go

by without disputin' of it, till nobody knowed what he believed and

what he didn't believe, only they was pretty sure he didn't believe

the side he was a-disputin' for, and some of 'em said, that, if you

wanted him to go any partickerlar way, you must do with him just as

folks do that drive--well, them obstinate creeturs that squeal so,--

for I don't like to name such creeturs in connexion with a gentleman

that paid his board regular, and was a very smart man, and knowed a

great deal, only his knowledge all laid crosswise, as one of 'em

used to say, after t'other one had shet him up till his mouth wa'n't

of no more use to him than if it had been a hole in the back of his

head. This wa'n't no sech gentleman. One of my boarders used to say

that he always said exactly what he was a mind to, and stuck his

idees out jest like them that sells pears outside their shop-winders,

--some is three cents, some is two cents, and some is only one cent,

and if you don't like, you needn't buy, but them's the articles and

them's the prices, and if you want 'em, take 'em, and if you don't,

go about your business, and don't stand mellerin' of 'em with your

thumbs all day till you've sp'ilt 'em for other folks.

He was a man that loved to stick round home as much as any cat you

ever see in your life. He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth

pulled as go away anywheres. Always got sick, he said, when he went

away, and never sick when he didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin'

about lecterin' two or three winters,--talkin' in cold country

lyceums,--as he used to say,--goin' home to cold parlors and bein'

treated to cold apples and cold water, and then goin' up into a cold

bed in a cold chamber, and comin' home next mornin' with a cold in

his head as bad as the horse-distemper. Then he'd look kind of sorry

for havin' said it, and tell how kind some of the good women was to

him,--how one spread an edder-down comforter for him, and another

fixed up somethin' hot for him after the lecter, and another one said,

--"There now, you smoke that cigar of yours after the lecter, jest

as if you was at home,"--and if they'd all been like that, he'd have

gone on lectering forever, but, as it was, he had got pooty nigh

enough of it, and preferred a nateral death to puttin' himself out

of the world by such violent means as lecterin'.

He used to say that he was always good company enough, if he wasn't

froze to death, and if he wasn't pinned in a corner so't he couldn't

clear out when he'd got as much as he wanted. But he was a dreadful

uneven creetur in his talk, and I've heerd a smart young man that's

one of my boarders say, he believed he had a lid to the top of his

head, and took his brains out and left 'em up-stairs sometimes when

he come down in the mornin'.--About his ways, he was spry and quick

and impatient, and, except in a good company,--he used to say,--where

he could get away at any minute, he didn't like to set still very

long to once, but wanted to be off walkin', or rowin' round

in one of them queer boats of his, and he was the solitariest

creetur in his goin's about (except when he could get that

schoolmistress to trail round with him) that ever you see in your

life. He used to say that usin' two eyes and two legs at once, and

keepin' one tongue a-goin', too, was too sharp practice for him; so

he had a way of dodgin' round all sorts of odd streets, I've heerd

say, where he wouldn't meet people that would stick to him.

It didn't take much to please him. Sometimes it would be a big book

he'd lug home, and sometimes it would be a mikerscope, and sometimes

it would be a dreadful old-lookin' fiddle that he'd picked up

somewhere, and kept a-screechin' on, sayin' all the while that it

was jest as smooth as a flute. Then ag'in I'd hear him laughin' out

all alone, and I'd go up and find him readin' some verses that he'd

been makin'. But jest as like as not I'd go in another time, and

find him cryin',--but he'd wipe his eyes and try not to show it,

--and it was all nothin' but some more verses he'd been a-writin'.

I've heerd him say that it was put down in one of them ancient books,

that a man must cry, himself, if he wants to make other folks cry;

but, says he, you can't make 'em neither laugh nor cry, if you don't

try on them feelin's yourself before you send your work to the

customers.

He was a temperate man, and always encouraged temperance by drinkin'

jest what he was a mind to, and that was generally water. You

couldn't scare him with names, though. I remember a young minister

that's go'n' to be, that boards at my house, askin' once what was

the safest strong drink for them that had to take somethin' for the

stomach's sake and thine awful infirmities. _Aqua fortis_, says he,

--because you know that'll eat your insides out, if you get it too

strong, and so you always mind how much you take. Next to that, says

he, rum's the safest for a wise man, and small beer for a fool.

I never mistrusted anything about him and that schoolmistress till I

heerd they was keepin' company and was go'n' to be merried. But I

might have knowed it well enough by his smartin' himself up the way

he did, and partin' the hair on the back of his head, and gettin' a

blue coat with brass buttons, and wearin' them dreadful tight little

French boots that used to stand outside his door to be blacked, and

stickin' round schoolma'am, and follerin' of her with his eyes; but

then he was always fond of ladies, and used to sing with my daughter,

and wrote his name out in a blank book she keeps,--them that has

daughters of their own will keep their eyes on 'em,--and I've often

heerd him say he was fond of music and picters,--and she worked a

beautiful pattern for a chair of his once, that he seemed to set a

good deal by; but I ha'n't no fault to find, and there is them that

my daughter likes and them that likes her.

As to schoolma'am, I ha'n't a word to say that a'n't favorable, and

don't harbor no unkind feelin' to her, and never knowed them that did.

When she first come to board at my house, I hadn't any idee she'd

live long. She was all dressed in black; and her face looked so

delicate, I expected before six months was over to see a plate of

glass over it, and a Bible and a bunch of flowers layin' on the lid

of the--well, I don't like to talk about it; for when she first come,

and said her mother was dead, and she was alone in the world, except

one sister out West, and unlocked her trunk and showed me her things,

and took out her little purse and showed me her money, and said that

was all the property she had in the world but her courage and her

education, and would I take her and keep her till she could get some

scholars,--I couldn't say not one word, but jest went up to her and

kissed her and bu'st out a-cryin' so as I never cried since I buried

the last of my five children that lays in the buryin'-ground with

their father, and a place for one more grown person betwixt him and

the shortest of them five graves, where my baby is waitin' for its

mother.

[The landlady stopped here and shed a few still tears, such as poor

women who have been wrung out almost dry by fierce griefs lose calmly,

without sobs or hysteric convulsions, when they show the scar of a

healed sorrow.]

--The schoolma'am had jest been killin' herself for a year and a

half with waitin' and tendin' and watchin' with that sick mother

that was dead now and she was in mournin' for. _She_ didn't say so,

but I got the story out of her, and then I knowed why she looked so

dreadful pale and poor. By-and-by she begun to get some scholars,

and then she would come home sometimes so weak and faint that I was

afraid she would drop. One day I handed her a bottle of camphire to

smell of, and she took a smell of it, and I thought she'd have

fainted right away.--Oh, says she, when she come to, I've breathed

that smell for a whole year and more, and it kills me to breathe it

again!

The fust thing that ever I see pass between the gentleman inquiries

is made about, and her, was on occasion of his makin' some very

searchin' remarks about griefs, sech as loss of friends and so on. I

see her fix her eye steady on him, and then she kind of trembled and

turned white, and the next thing I knew was she was all of a heap on

the floor. I remember he looked into her face then and seemed to be

seized as if it was with a start or spasm-like,--but I thought nothin'

more of it, supposin' it was because he felt so bad at makin' her

faint away.

Some has asked me what kind of a young woman she was to look at. Well,

folks differ as to what is likely and what is homely. I've seen them

that was as pretty as picters in my eyes: cheeks jest as rosy as

they could be, and hair all shiny and curly, and little mouths with

lips as red as sealin'-wax, and yet one of my boarders that had a

great name for makin' marble figgers would say such kind of good

looks warn't of no account. I knowed a young lady once that a man

drownded himself because she wouldn't marry him, and she might have

had her pick of a dozen, but I didn't call her anything great in the

way of looks.

All I can say is, that, whether she was pretty or not, she looked

like a young woman that knowed what was true and that loved what was

good, and she had about as clear an eye and about as pleasant a

smile as any man ought to want for every-day company. I've seen a

good many young ladies that could talk faster than she could; but if

you'd seen her or heerd her when our boardin'-house caught afire, or

when there was anything to be done besides speech-makin', I guess

you'd like to have stood still and looked on, jest to see that young

woman's way of goin' to work.--Dark, rather than light; and slim,

but strong in the arms,--perhaps from liftin' that old mother about;

for I've seen her heavin' one end of a big heavy chest round that I

shouldn't have thought of touchin',--and yet her hands was little

and white.--Dressed very plain, but neat, and wore her hair smooth. I

used to wonder sometimes she didn't wear some kind of ornaments,

bein' a likely young woman, and havin' her way to make in the world,

and seein' my daughter wearin' jewelry, which sets her off so much,

every day. She never would,--nothin' but a breastpin with her

mother's hair in it, and sometimes one little black cross. That made

me think she was a Roman Catholic, especially when she got a picter

of the Virgin Mary and hung it up in her room; so I asked her, and

she shook her head and said these very words,--that she never saw a

church-door so narrow she couldn't go in through it, nor so wide

that all the Creator's goodness and glory could enter it; and then

she dropped her eyes and went to work on a flannel petticoat she was

makin',--which I knowed, but she didn't tell me, was for a poor old

woman.

I've said enough about them two boarders, but I believe it's all true.

Their places is vacant, and I should be very glad to fill 'em with

two gentlemen, or with a gentleman and his wife, or any respectable

people, be they merried or single.

I've heerd some talk about a friend of that gentleman's comin' to

take his place.

That's the gentleman that he calls "the Professor," and I'm sure I

hope there is sech a man; only all I can say is, I never see him,

and none of my boarders ever see him, and that smart young man that

I was speakin' of says he don't believe there's no sech person as him,

nor that other one that he called "the Poet." I don't much care

whether folks professes or makes poems, if they makes themselves

agreeable and pays their board regular. I'm a poor woman, that tries

to get an honest livin', and works hard enough for it; lost my

husband, and buried five children.... ....

Excuse me, dear Madam, I said,--looking at my watch,--but you spoke

of certain papers which your boarder left, and which you were ready

to dispose of for the pages of the "Oceanic Miscellany."

The landlady's face splintered again into the wreck of the broken

dimples of better days.--She should be much obleeged, if I would

look at them, she said,--and went up stairs and got a small desk

containing loose papers. I looked them hastily over, and selected

one of the shortest pieces, handed the landlady a check which

astonished her, and send the following poem as an appendix to my

report. If I should find others adapted to the pages of the spirited

periodical which has done so much to develop and satisfy the

intellectual appetite of the American public, and to extend the name

of its enterprising publishers throughout the reading world, I shall

present them in future numbers of the "Oceanic Miscellany."

THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA.

A NIGHTMARE DREAM BY DAYLIGHT.

Do you know the Old Man of the Sea, of the Sea?

Have you met with that dreadful old man?

If you haven't been caught, you will be, you will be;

For catch you he must and he can.

He doesn't hold on by your throat, by your throat,

As of old in the terrible tale;

But he grapples you tight by the coat, by the coat,

Till its buttons and button-holes fail.

There's the charm of a snake in his eye, in his eye,

And a polypus-grip in his hands;

You cannot go back, nor get by, nor get by,

If you look at the spot where he stands.

Oh, you're grabbed! See his claw on your sleeve, on your sleeve!

It is Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea!

You're a Christian, no doubt you believe, you believe;--

You're a martyr, whatever you be!

--Is the breakfast-hour past? They must wait, they must wait,

While the coffee boils sullenly down,

While the Johnny-cake burns on the grate, on the grate,

And the toast is done frightfully brown.

--Yes, your dinner will keep; let it cool, let it cool.

And Madam may worry and fret,

And children half-starved go to school, go to school;--

He can't think of sparing you yet.

--Hark! the bell for the train! "Come along! Come along!

For there isn't a second to lose."

"ALL ABOARD!" (He holds on.) "Fsht! ding-dong! Fsht! ding-dong!"--

You can follow on foot, if you choose.

--There's a maid with a cheek like a peach, like a peach,

That is waiting for you in the church;--

But he clings to your side like a leech, like a leech,

And you leave your lost bride in the lurch.

--There's a babe in a fit,--hurry quick! hurry quick!

To the doctor's as fast as you can!

The baby is off, while you stick, while you stick,

In the grip of the dreadful Old Man!

--I have looked on the face of the Bore, of the Bore;

The voice of the Simple I know;

I have welcomed the Flat at my door, at my door;

I have sat by the side of the Slow;

I have walked like a lamb by the friend, by the friend,

That stuck to my skirts like a burr;

I have borne the stale talk without end, without end,

Of the sitter whom nothing could stir:

But my hamstrings grow loose, and I shake and I shake,

At the sight of the dreadful Old Man;

Yea, I quiver and quake, and I take, and I take,

To my legs with what vigor I can!

Oh, the dreadful Old Man of the Sea, of the Sea!

He's come back like the Wandering Jew!

He has had his cold claw upon me, upon me,--

And be sure that he'll have it on you!

* * * * *

THE GREAT EVENT OF THE CENTURY.

A LETTER FROM PAUL TOTTER, OF NEW YORK, TO THE DON ROBERTO WAGONERO,

COMMORANT OF WASHINGTON, IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

22,728 Five Hundred and Fifty-First St., New York, May 1, 1858.