SCENE II.--_An Inn near the Château of Chalus._

Well, the whole thing is over, and here I sit

With one arm in a sling and a milk-score of gashes,

And this flagon of Cyprus must e'en warm my wit,

Since what's left of youth's flame is a head flecked with ashes.

I remember I sat in this very same inn,--

I was young then, and one young man thought I was handsome,--

I had found out what prison King Richard was in,

And was spurring for England to push on the ransom.

How I scorned the dull souls that sat guzzling around,

And knew not my secret nor recked my derision!

Let the world sink or swim, John or Richard be crowned,

All one, so the beer-tax got lenient revision.

How little I dreamed, as I tramped up and down,

That granting our wish one of Fate's saddest jokes is!

I had mine with a vengeance,--my king got his crown,

And made his whole business to break other folks's.

I might as well join in the safe old _tum_, _tum_:

A hero's an excellent loadstar,--but, bless ye,

What infinite odds 'twixt a hero to come

And your only too palpable hero _in esse_!

Precisely the odds (such examples are rife)

'Twixt the poem conceived and the rhyme we make show of,

'Twixt the boy's morning dream and the wake-up of life,

'Twixt the Blondel God meant and a Blondel I know of!

But the world's better off, I'm convinced of it now,

Than if heroes, like buns, could be bought for a penny,

To regard all mankind as their haltered milch-cow,

And just care for themselves. Well, God cares for the many;

And somehow the poor old Earth blunders along,

Each son of hers adding his mite of unfitness,

And, choosing the sure way of coming out wrong,

Gets to port, as the next generation will witness.

You think her old ribs have come all crashing through,

If a whisk of Fate's broom snap your cobweb asunder;

But her rivets were clinched by a wiser than you,

And our sins cannot push the Lord's right hand from under.

Better one honest man who can wait for God's mind,

In our poor shifting scene here, though heroes were plenty!

Better one bite, at forty, of truth's bitter rind

Than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty!

I see it all now: when I wanted a king,

'Twas the kingship that failed in myself I was seeking,--

'Tis so much less easy to do than to sing,

So much simpler to reign by a proxy than _be_ king!

Yes, I think I _do_ see: after all's said and sung,

Take this one rule of life and you never will rue it,--

'Tis but do your own duty and hold your own tongue,

And Blondel were royal himself, if he knew it!

* * * * *

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

Chancing to take a memorable walk by moonlight some years ago, I

resolved to take more such walks, and make acquaintance with another

side of Nature. I have done so.

According to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia called Selenites,

"wherein is a white, which increases and decreases with the moon." My

journal for the last year or two has been _selenitic_ in this sense.

Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not

tempted to explore it,--to penetrate to the shores of its Lake Tchad,

and discover the source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the

Moon? Who knows what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are there

to be found? In the Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa of the

night, there is where all Niles have their hidden heads. The expeditions

up the Nile as yet extend but to the Cataracts, or perchance to the

mouth of the White Nile; but it is the Black Nile that concerns us.

I shall be a benefactor, if I conquer some realms from the night,--if I

report to the gazettes anything transpiring about us at that season

worthy of their attention,--if I can show men that there is some beauty

awake while they are asleep,--if I add to the domains of poetry.

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day. I soon

discovered that I was acquainted only with its complexion; and as for

the moon, I had seen her only as it were through a crevice in a shutter,

occasionally. Why not walk a little way in her light?

Suppose you attend to the suggestions which the moon makes for one

month, commonly in vain, will it not be very different from anything in

literature or religion? But why not study this Sanscrit? What if one

moon has come and gone, with its world of poetry, its weird teachings,

its oracular suggestions,--so divine a creature freighted with hints for

me, and I have not used her,--one moon gone by unnoticed?

I think it was Dr. Chalmers who said, criticizing Coleridge, that for

his part he wanted ideas which he could see all round, and not such as

he must look at away up in the heavens. Such a man, one would say, would

never look at the moon, because she never turns her other side to us.

The light which comes from ideas which have their orbit as distant from

the earth, and which is no less cheering and enlightening to the

benighted traveller than that of the moon and stars, is naturally

reproached or nicknamed as moonshine by such. They are moonshine, are

they? Well, then, do your night-travelling when there is no moon to

light you; but I will be thankful for the light that reaches me from the

star of least magnitude. Stars are lesser or greater only as they appear

to us so. I will be thankful that I see so much as one side of a

celestial idea, one side of the rainbow and the sunset sky.

Men talk glibly enough about moonshine, as if they knew its qualities

very well, and despised them,--as owls might talk of sunshine. None of

your sunshine!--but this word commonly means merely something which they

do not understand, which they are abed and asleep to, however much it

may be worth their while to be up and awake to it.

It must be allowed that the light of the moon, sufficient though it is

for the pensive walker, and not disproportionate to the inner light we

have, is very inferior in quality and intensity to that of the sun. But

the moon is not to be judged alone by the quantity of light she sends to

us, but also by her influence on the earth and its inhabitants. "The

moon gravitates toward the earth, and the earth reciprocally toward the

moon." The poet who walks by moonlight is conscious of a tide in his

thought which is to be referred to lunar influence. I will endeavor to

separate the tide in my thoughts from the current distractions of the

day. I would warn my hearers that they must not try my thoughts by a

daylight standard, but endeavor to realize that I speak out of the

night. All depends on your point of view. In Drake's "Collection of

Voyages," Wafer says of some Albinos among the Indians of Darien,--"They

are quite white, but their whiteness is like that of a horse, quite

different from the fair or pale European, as they have not the least

tincture of a blush or sanguine complexion.... Their eyebrows are

milk-white, as is likewise the hair of their heads, which is very

fine.... They seldom go abroad in the daytime, the sun being

disagreeable to them, and causing their eyes, which are weak and poring,

to water, especially if it shines towards them; yet they see very well

by moonlight, from which we call them mooneyed."

Neither in our thoughts in these moonlight walks, methinks, is there

"the least tincture of a blush or sanguine complexion," but we are

intellectually and morally Albinos,--children of Endymion,--such is the

effect of conversing much with the moon.

I complain of Arctic voyages that they do not enough remind us of the

constant peculiar dreariness of the scenery, and the perpetual twilight

of the Arctic night. So he whose theme is moonlight, though he may find

it difficult, must, as it were, illustrate it with the light of the moon

alone.

Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season.

Take a July night, for instance. About ten o'clock,--when man is asleep,

and day fairly forgotten,--the beauty of moonlight is seen over lonely

pastures where cattle are silently feeding. On all sides novelties

present themselves. Instead of the sun, there are the moon and stars;

instead of the wood-thrush, there is the whippoorwill; instead of

butterflies in the meadows, fire-flies, winged sparks of fire!--who

would have believed it? What kind of cool, deliberate life dwells in

those dewy abodes associated with a spark of fire? So man has fire in

his eyes, or blood, or brain. Instead of singing-birds, the

half-throttled note of a cuckoo flying over, the croaking of frogs, and

the intenser dream of crickets,--but above all, the wonderful trump of

the bull-frog, ringing from Maine to Georgia. The potato-vines stand

upright, the corn grows apace, the bushes loom, the grain-fields are

boundless. On our open river-terraces, once cultivated by the Indian,

they appear to occupy the ground like an army,--their heads nodding in

the breeze. Small trees and shrubs are seen in the midst, overwhelmed as

by an inundation. The shadows of rocks and trees and shrubs and hills

are more conspicuous than the objects themselves. The slightest

irregularities in the ground are revealed by the shadows, and what the

feet find comparatively smooth appears rough and diversified in

consequence. For the same reason the whole landscape is more variegated

and picturesque than by day. The smallest recesses in the rocks are dim

and cavernous; the ferns in the wood appear of tropical size. The

sweet-fern and indigo in overgrown wood-paths wet you with dew up to

your middle. The leaves of the shrub-oak are shining as if a liquid were

flowing over them. The pools seen through the trees are as full of light

as the sky. "The light of the day takes refuge in their bosoms," as the

Purana says of the ocean. All white objects are more remarkable than by

day. A distant cliff looks like a phosphorescent space on a hill-side.

The woods are heavy and dark. Nature slumbers. You see the moonlight

reflected from particular stumps in the recesses of the forest, as if

she selected what to shine on. These small fractions of her light remind

one of the plant called moon-seed,--as if the moon were sowing it in

such places.

In the night the eyes are partly closed, or retire into the head. Other

senses take the lead. The walker is guided as well by the sense of

smell. Every plant and field and forest emits its odor now,--swamp-pink

in the meadow, and tansy in the road; and there is the peculiar dry

scent of corn which has begun to show its tassels. The senses both of

hearing and smelling are more alert. We hear the tinkling of rills which

we never detected before. From time to time, high up on the sides of

hills, you pass through a stratum of warm air: a blast which has come up

from the sultry plains of noon. It tells of the day, of sunny noon-tide

hours and banks, of the laborer wiping his brow and the bee humming amid

flowers. It is an air in which work has been done,--which men have

breathed. It circulates about from wood-side to hill-side, like a dog

that has lost its master, now that the sun is gone. The rocks retain all

night the warmth of the sun which they have absorbed. And so does the

sand: if you dig a few inches into it, you find a warm bed.

You lie on your back on a rock in a pasture on the top of some bare hill

at midnight, and speculate on the height of the starry canopy. The stars

are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day

has to show. A companion with whom I was sailing, one very windy, but

bright moonlight night, when the stars were few and faint, thought that

a man could get along with _them_, though he was considerably reduced in

his circumstances,--that they were a kind of bread and cheese that never

failed.

No wonder that there have been astrologers,--that some have conceived

that they were personally related to particular stars. Du Bartas, as

translated by Sylvester, says he'll

"not believe that the Great Architect

With all these fires the heavenly arches decked

Only for shew, and with these glistering shields,

'T awake poor shepherds, watching in the fields,"--

he'll

"not believe that the least flower which pranks

Our garden-borders or our common banks,

And the least stone that in her warming lap

Our Mother Earth doth covetously wrap,

Hath some peculiar virtue of its own,

And that the glorious stars of heaven have none."

And Sir Walter Raleigh well says, "The stars are instruments of far

greater use than to give an obscure light, and for men to gaze on after

sunset"; and he quotes Plotinus as affirming that they "are significant,

but not efficient"; and also Augustine as saying, "_Deus regit inferiora

corpora per superiora_": God rules the bodies below by those above. But

best of all is this, which another writer has expressed: "_Sapiens

adjuvabit opus astrorum quemadmodum agricola terræ naturam_": A wise man

assisteth the work of the stars as the husbandman helpeth the nature of

the soil.

It does not concern men who are asleep in their beds, but it is very

important to the traveller, whether the moon shines brightly or is

obscured. It is not easy to realize the serene joy of all the earth,

when she commences to shine unobstructedly, unless you have often been

abroad alone in moonlight nights. She seems to be waging continual war

with the clouds in your behalf. Yet we fancy the clouds to be _her_ foes

also. She comes on magnifying her dangers by her light, revealing,

displaying them in all their hugeness and blackness,--then suddenly

casts them behind into the light concealed, and goes her way triumphant

through a small space of clear sky.

In short, the moon traversing, or appearing to traverse, the small

clouds which lie in her way, now obscured by them, now easily

dissipating and shining through them, makes the drama of the moonlight

night to all watchers and night-travellers. Sailors speak of it as the

moon eating up the clouds. The traveller all alone, the moon all alone,

except for his sympathy, overcoming with incessant victory whole

squadrons of clouds above the forests and lakes and hills. When she is

obscured, he so sympathizes with her that he could whip a dog for her

relief, as Indians do. When she enters on a clear field of great extent

in the heavens, and shines unobstructedly, he is glad. And when she has

fought her way through all the squadron of her foes, and rides majestic

in a clear sky unscathed, and there are no more any obstructions in her

path, he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way, and rejoices in his

heart, and the cricket also seems to express joy in its song.

How insupportable would be the days, if the night, with its dews and

darkness, did not come to restore the drooping world! As the shades

begin to gather around us, our primeval instincts are aroused, and we

steal forth from our lairs, like the inhabitants of the jungle, in

search of those silent and brooding thoughts which are the natural prey

of the intellect.

Richter says, that "the earth is every day overspread with the veil of

night for the same reason as the cages of birds are darkened, namely,

that we may the more readily apprehend the higher harmonies of thought

in the hush and quiet of darkness. Thoughts which day turns into smoke

and mist stand about us in the night as light and flames; even as the

column which fluctuates above the crater of Vesuvius in the daytime

appears a pillar of cloud, but by night a pillar of fire."

There are nights in this climate of such serene and majestic beauty, so

medicinal and fertilizing to the spirit, that methinks a sensitive

nature would not devote them to oblivion, and perhaps there is no man

but would be better and wiser for spending them out of doors, though he

should sleep all the next day to pay for it, should sleep an Endymion

sleep, as the ancients expressed it,--nights which warrant the Grecian

epithet _ambrosial_, when, as in the land of Beulah, the atmosphere is

charged with dewy fragrance, and with music, and we take our repose and

have our dreams awake,--when the moon, not secondary to the sun,

"gives us his blaze again,

Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.

Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,

Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime."

Diana still hunts in the New-England sky.

"In heaven queen she is among the spheres;

She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure;

Eternity in her oft change she bears;

She Beauty is; by her the fair endure.

"Time wears her not; she doth his chariot guide;

Mortality below her orb is placed;

By her the virtues of the stars down slide;

By her is Virtue's perfect image cast."

The Hindoos compare the moon to a saintly being who has reached the last

stage of bodily existence.

Great restorer of antiquity, great enchanter! In a mild night, when the

harvest or hunter's moon shines unobstructedly, the houses in our

village, whatever architect they may have had by day, acknowledge only a

master. The village street is then as wild as the forest. New and old

things are confounded. I know not whether I am sitting on the ruins of a

wall, or on the material which is to compose a new one. Nature is an

instructed and impartial teacher, spreading no crude opinions, and

flattering none; she will be neither radical nor conservative. Consider

the moonlight, so civil, yet so savage!

The light is more proportionate to our knowledge than that of day. It is

no more dusky in ordinary nights than our mind's habitual atmosphere,

and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminated moments are.

"In such a night let me abroad remain

Till morning breaks, and all's confused again."

Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an

inward dawn?--to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the

morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.

When Ossian, in his address to the Sun, exclaims,--

"Where has darkness its dwelling?

Where is the cavernous home of the stars,

When thou quickly followest their steps,

Pursuing them like a hunter in the sky,--

Thou climbing the lofty hills,

They descending on barren mountains?"

who does not in his thought accompany the stars to their "cavernous

home," "descending" with them "on barren mountains"?

Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black; for we see

through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day,

where the sunbeams are revelling.

* * * * *

ANDANTE.

BEETHOVEN'S SIXTH SYMPHONY.

Sounding above the warring of the years,

Over their stretch of toils and pains and fears,

Comes the well-loved refrain,

That ancient voice again.

Sweeter than when beside the river's marge

We lay and watched, like Innocence at large,

The changeful waters flow,

Speaks this brave music now.

Tender as sunlight upon childhood's head,

Serene as moonlight upon childhood's bed,

Comes the remembered power

Of that forgotten hour.

The little brook with merry voice and low,

The gentle ripples rippling far below,

Talked with no idle voice,

Though idling were their choice.

Now through the tumult and the pride of life,

Gentler, yet firmly soothing all its strife,

Nature draws near once more,

And knocks at the world's door.

She walks within her wild, harmonious maze,

Evolving melodies from doubt and haze,

And leaves us freed from care,

Like children standing there.

* * * * *

THE BROTHERS.

Doctor Franck came in as I sat sewing up the rents in an old shirt, that

Tom might go tidily to his grave. New shirts were needed for the living,

and there was no wife or mother to "dress him handsome when he went to

meet the Lord," as one woman said, describing the fine funeral she had

pinched herself to give her son.

"Miss Dane, I'm in a quandary," began the Doctor, with that expression

of countenance which says as plainly as words, "I want to ask a favor,

but I wish you'd save me the trouble."

"Can I help you out of it?"

"Faith! I don't like to propose it, but you certainly can, if you

please."

"Then give it a name, I beg."

"You see a Reb has just been brought in crazy with typhoid; a bad case

every way; a drunken, rascally little captain somebody took the trouble

to capture, but whom nobody wants to take the trouble to cure. The wards

are full, the ladies worked to death, and willing to be for our own

boys, but rather slow to risk their lives for a Reb. Now you've had the

fever, you like queer patients, your mate will see to your ward for a

while, and I will find you a good attendant. The fellow won't last long,

I fancy; but he can't die without some sort of care, you know. I've put

him in the fourth story of the west wing, away from the rest. It is

airy, quiet, and comfortable there. I'm on that ward, and will do my

best for you in every way. Now, then, will you go?"

"Of course I will, out of perversity, if not common charity; for some of

these people think that because I'm an abolitionist I am also a heathen,

and I should rather like to show them, that, though I cannot quite love

my enemies, I am willing to take care of them."

"Very good; I thought you'd go; and speaking of abolition reminds me

that you can have a contraband for servant, if you like. It is that fine

mulatto fellow who was found burying his Rebel master after the fight,

and, being badly cut over the head, our boys brought him along. Will you

have him?"

"By all means,--for I'll stand to my guns on that point, as on the

other; these black boys are far more faithful and handy than some of the

white scamps given me to serve, instead of being served by. But is this

man well enough?"

"Yes, for that sort of work, and I think you'll like him. He must have

been a handsome fellow before he got his face slashed; not much darker

than myself; his master's son, I dare say, and the white blood makes him

rather high and haughty about some things. He was in a bad way when he

came in, but vowed he'd die in the street rather than turn in with the

black fellows below; so I put him up in the west wing, to be out of the

way, and he's seen to the captain all the morning. "When can you go up?"

"As soon as Tom is laid out, Skinner moved, Haywood washed, Marble

dressed, Charley rubbed, Downs taken up, Upham laid down, and the whole

forty fed."

We both laughed, though the Doctor was on his way to the dead-house and

I held a shroud on my lap. But in a hospital one learns that

cheerfulness is one's salvation; for, in an atmosphere of suffering and

death, heaviness of heart would soon paralyze usefulness of hand, if the

blessed gift of smiles had been denied us.

In an hour I took possession of my new charge, finding a

dissipated-looking boy of nineteen or twenty raving in the solitary

little room, with no one near him but the contraband in the room

adjoining. Feeling decidedly more interest in the black man than in the

white, yet remembering the Doctor's hint of his being "high and

haughty," I glanced furtively at him as I scattered chloride of lime

about the room to purify the air, and settled matters to suit myself. I

had seen many contrabands, but never one so attractive as this. All

colored men are called "boys," even if their heads are white; this boy

was five-and-twenty at least, strong-limbed and manly, and had the look

of one who never had been cowed by abuse or worn with oppressive labor.

He sat on his bed doing nothing; no book, no pipe, no pen or paper

anywhere appeared, yet anything less indolent or listless than his

attitude and expression I never saw. Erect he sat, with a hand on either

knee, and eyes fixed on the bare wall opposite, so rapt in some

absorbing thought as to be unconscious of my presence, though the door

stood wide open and my movements were by no means noiseless. His face

was half averted, but I instantly approved the Doctor's taste, for the

profile which I saw possessed all the attributes of comeliness belonging

to his mixed race. He was more quadroon than mulatto, with Saxon

features, Spanish complexion darkened by exposure, color in lips and

cheek, waving hair, and an eye full of the passionate melancholy which

in such men always seems to utter a mute protest against the broken law

that doomed them at their birth. What could he be thinking of? The sick

boy cursed and raved, I rustled to and fro, steps passed the door, bells

rang, and the steady rumble of army-wagons came up from the street,

still he never stirred. I had seen colored people in what they call "the

black sulks," when, for days, they neither smiled nor spoke, and

scarcely ate. But this was something more than that; for the man was not

dully brooding over some small grievance; he seemed to see an

all-absorbing fact or fancy recorded on the wall, which was a blank to

me. I wondered if it were some deep wrong or sorrow, kept alive by

memory and impotent regret; if he mourned for the dead master to whom he

had been faithful to the end; or if the liberty now his were robbed of

half its sweetness by the knowledge that some one near and dear to him

still languished in the hell from which he had escaped. My heart quite

warmed to him at that idea; I wanted to know and comfort him; and,

following the impulse of the moment, I went in and touched him on the

shoulder.

In an instant the man vanished and the slave appeared. Freedom was too

new a boon to have wrought its blessed changes yet, and as he started

up, with his hand at his temple and an obsequious "Yes, Ma'am," any

romance that had gathered round him fled away, leaving the saddest of

all sad facts in living guise before me. Not only did the manhood seem

to die out of him, but the comeliness that first attracted me; for, as

he turned, I saw the ghastly wound that had laid open cheek and

forehead. Being partly healed, it was no longer bandaged, but held

together with strips of that transparent plaster which I never see

without a shiver and swift recollections of the scenes with which it is

associated in my mind. Part of his black hair had been shorn away, and

one eye was nearly closed; pain so distorted, and the cruel sabre-cut so

marred that portion of his face, that, when I saw it, I felt as if a

fine medal had been suddenly reversed, showing me a far more striking

type of human suffering and wrong than Michel Angelo's bronze prisoner.

By one of those inexplicable processes that often teach us how little we

understand ourselves, my purpose was suddenly changed, and though I went

in to offer comfort as a friend, I merely gave an order as a mistress.

"Will you open these windows? this man needs more air."

He obeyed at once, and, as he slowly urged up the unruly sash, the

handsome profile was again turned toward me, and again I was possessed

by my first impression so strongly that I involuntarily said,--

"Thank you, Sir."

Perhaps it was fancy, but I thought that in the look of mingled surprise

and something like reproach which he gave me there was also a trace of

grateful pleasure. But he said, in that tone of spiritless humility

these poor souls learn so soon,--

"I a'n't a white man, Ma'am, I'm a contraband."

"Yes, I know it; but a contraband is a free man, and I heartily

congratulate you."

He liked that; his face shone, he squared his shoulders, lifted his

head, and looked me full in the eye with a brisk--

"Thank ye, Ma'am; anything more to do fer yer?"

"Doctor Franck thought you would help me with this man, as there are

many patients and few nurses or attendants. Have you had the fever?"

"No, Ma'am."

"They should have thought of that when they put him here; wounds and

fevers should not be together. I'll try to get you moved."

He laughed a sudden laugh,--if he had been a white man, I should have

called it scornful; as he was a few shades darker than myself, I suppose

it must be considered an insolent, or at least an unmannerly one.

"It don't matter, Ma'am. I'd rather be up here with the fever than down

with those niggers; and there a'n't no other place fer me."

Poor fellow! that was true. No ward in all the hospital would take him

in to lie side by side with the most miserable white wreck there. Like

the bat in Æsop's fable, he belonged to neither race; and the pride of

one, the helplessness of the other, kept him hovering alone in the

twilight a great sin has brought to overshadow the whole land.

"You shall stay, then; for I would far rather have you than my lazy

Jack. But are you well and strong enough?"

"I guess I'll do, Ma'am."

He spoke with a passive sort of acquiescence,--as if it did not much

matter, if he were not able, and no one would particularly rejoice, if

he were.

"Yes, I think you will. By what name shall I call you?"

"Bob, Ma'am."

Every woman has her pet whim; one of mine was to teach the men

self-respect by treating them respectfully. Tom, Dick, and Harry would

pass, when lads rejoiced in those familiar abbreviations; but to address

men often old enough to be my father in that style did not suit my

old-fashioned ideas of propriety. This "Bob" would never do; I should

have found it as easy to call the chaplain "Gus" as my tragical-looking

contraband by a title so strongly associated with the tail of a kite.

"What is your other name?" I asked. "I like to call my attendants by

their last names rather than by their first."

"I've got no other, Ma'am; we have our masters' names, or do without.

Mine's dead, and I won't have anything of his about me."

"Well, I'll call you Robert, then, and you may fill this pitcher for me,

if you will be so kind."

He went; but, through all the tame obedience years of servitude had

taught him, I could see that the proud spirit his father gave him was

not yet subdued, for the look and gesture with which he repudiated his

master's name were a more effective declaration of independence than any

Fourth-of-July orator could have prepared.

We spent a curious week together. Robert seldom left his room, except

upon my errands; and I was a prisoner all day, often all night, by the

bedside of the Rebel. The fever burned itself rapidly away, for there

seemed little vitality to feed it in the feeble frame of this old young

man, whose life had been none of the most righteous, judging from the

revelations made by his unconscious lips; since more than once Robert

authoritatively silenced him, when my gentler hushings were of no avail,

and blasphemous wanderings or ribald camp-songs made my cheeks burn and

Robert's face assume an aspect of disgust. The captain was a gentleman

in the world's eye, but the contraband was the gentleman in mine;--I was

a fanatic, and that accounts for such depravity of taste, I hope. I

never asked Robert of himself, feeling that somewhere there was a spot

still too sore to bear the lightest touch; but, from his language,

manner, and intelligence, I inferred that his color had procured for him

the few advantages within the reach of a quick-witted, kindly treated

slave. Silent, grave, and thoughtful, but most serviceable, was my

contraband; glad of the books I brought him, faithful in the performance

of the duties I assigned to him, grateful for the friendliness I could

not but feel and show toward him. Often I longed to ask what purpose was

so visibly altering his aspect with such daily deepening gloom. But I

never dared, and no one else had either time or desire to pry into the

past of this specimen of one branch of the chivalrous "F.F.Vs."

On the seventh night, Dr. Franck suggested that it would be well for

some one, besides the general watchman of the ward, to be with the

captain, as it might be his last. Although the greater part of the two

preceding nights had been spent there, of course I offered to

remain,--for there is a strange fascination in these scenes, which

renders one careless of fatigue and unconscious of fear until the crisis

is passed.

"Give him water as long as he can drink, and if he drops into a natural

sleep, it may save him. I'll look in at midnight, when some change will

probably take place. Nothing but sleep or a miracle will keep him now.

Good night."

Away went the Doctor; and, devouring a whole mouthful of gapes, I

lowered the lamp, wet the captain's head, and sat down on a hard stool

to begin my watch. The captain lay with his hot, haggard face turned

toward me, filling the air with his poisonous breath, and feebly

muttering, with lips and tongue so parched that the sanest speech would

have been difficult to understand. Robert was stretched on his bed in

the inner room, the door of which stood ajar, that a fresh draught from

his open window might carry the fever-fumes away through mine. I could

just see a long, dark figure, with the lighter outline of a face, and,

having little else to do just then, I fell to thinking of this curious

contraband, who evidently prized his freedom highly, yet seemed in no

haste to enjoy it. Doctor Franck had offered to send him on to safer

quarters, but he had said, "No, thank yer, Sir, not yet," and then had

gone away to fall into one of those black moods of his, which began to

disturb me, because I had no power to lighten them. As I sat listening

to the clocks from the steeples all about us, I amused myself with

planning Robert's future, as I often did my own, and had dealt out to

him a generous hand of trumps wherewith to play this game of life which

hitherto had gone so cruelly against him, when a harsh, choked voice

called,--

"Lucy!"

It was the captain, and some new terror seemed to have gifted him with

momentary strength.

"Yes, here's Lucy," I answered, hoping that by following the fancy I

might quiet him,--for his face was damp with the clammy moisture, and

his frame shaken with the nervous tremor that so often precedes death.

His dull eye fixed upon me, dilating with a bewildered look of

incredulity and wrath, till he broke out fiercely,--

"That's a lie! she's dead,--and so's Bob, damn him!"

Finding speech a failure, I began to sing the quiet tune that had often

soothed delirium like this; but hardly had the line,

"See gentle patience smile on pain,"

passed my lips, when he clutched me by the wrist, whispering like one in

mortal fear,--

"Hush! she used to sing that way to Bob, but she never would to me. I

swore I'd whip the Devil out of her, and I did; but you know before she

cut her throat she said she'd haunt me, and there she is!"

He pointed behind me with an aspect of such pale dismay, that I

involuntarily glanced over my shoulder and started as if I had seen a

veritable ghost; for, peering from the gloom of that inner room, I saw a

shadowy face, with dark hair all about it, and a glimpse of scarlet at

the throat. An instant showed me that it was only Robert leaning from

his bed's-foot, wrapped in a gray army-blanket, with his red shirt just

visible above it, and his long hair disordered by sleep. But what a

strange expression was on his face! The unmarred side was toward me,

fixed and motionless as when I first observed it,--less absorbed now,

but more intent. His eye glittered, his lips were apart like one who

listened with every sense, and his whole aspect reminded me of a hound

to which some wind had brought the scent of unsuspected prey.

"Do you know him, Robert? Does he mean you?"

"Lord, no, Ma'am; they all own half a dozen Bobs: but hearin' my name

woke me; that's all."

He spoke quite naturally, and lay down again, while I returned to my

charge, thinking that this paroxysm was probably his last. But by

another hour I perceived a hopeful change, for the tremor had subsided,

the cold dew was gone, his breathing was more regular, and Sleep, the

healer, had descended to save or take him gently away. Doctor Franck

looked in at midnight, bade me keep all cool and quiet, and not fail to

administer a certain draught as soon as the captain woke. Very much

relieved, I laid my head on my arms, uncomfortably folded on the little

table, and fancied I was about to perform one of the feats which

practice renders possible,--"sleeping with one eye open," as we say: a

half-and-half doze, for all senses sleep but that of hearing; the

faintest murmur, sigh, or motion will break it, and give one back one's

wits much brightened by the brief permission to "stand at ease." On this

night, the experiment was a failure, for previous vigils, confinement,

and much care had rendered naps a dangerous indulgence. Having roused

half a dozen times in an hour to find all quiet, I dropped my heavy head

on my arms, and, drowsily resolving to look up again in fifteen minutes,

fell fast asleep.

The striking of a deep-voiced clock woke me with a start. "That is one,"

thought I, but, to my dismay, two more strokes followed; and in

remorseful haste I sprang up to see what harm my long oblivion had done.

A strong hand put me back into my seat, and held me there. It was

Robert. The instant my eye met his my heart began to beat, and all along

my nerves tingled that electric flash which foretells a danger that we

cannot see. He was very pale, his mouth grim, and both eyes full of

sombre fire,--for even the wounded one was open now, all the more

sinister for the deep scar above and below. But his touch was steady,

his voice quiet, as he said,--

"Sit still, Ma'am; I won't hurt yer, nor even scare yer, if I can help

it, but yer waked too soon."

"Let me go, Robert,--the, captain is stirring,--I must give him

something."

"No, Ma'am, yer can't stir an inch. Look here!"

Holding me with one hand, with the other he took up the glass in which I

had left the draught, and showed me it was empty.

"Has he taken it?" I asked, more and more bewildered.

"I flung it out o' winder, Ma'am; he'll have to do without."

"But why, Robert? why did you do it?"

"Because I hate him!"

Impossible to doubt the truth of that; his whole face showed it, as he

spoke through his set teeth, and launched a fiery glance at the

unconscious captain. I could only hold my breath and stare blankly at

him, wondering what mad act was coming next. I suppose I shook and

turned white, as women have a foolish habit of doing when sudden danger

daunts them; for Robert released my arm, sat down upon the bedside just

in front of me, and said, with the ominous quietude that made me cold to

see and hear,--

"Don't yer be frightened, Ma'am: don't try to run away, fer the door's

locked an' the key in my pocket; don't yer cry out, fer yer'd have to

scream a long while, with my hand on yer mouth, before yer was heard.

Be still, an' I'll tell yer what I'm goin' to do."

"Lord help us! he has taken the fever in some sudden, violent way, and

is out of his head. I must humor him till some one comes"; in pursuance

of which swift determination, I tried to say, quite composedly,--

"I will be still and hear you; but open the window. Why did you shut

it?"

"I'm sorry I can't do it, Ma'am; but yer'd jump out, or call, if I did,

an' I'm not ready yet. I shut it to make yer sleep, an' heat would do it

quicker 'n anything else I could do."

The captain moved, and feebly muttered, "Water!" Instinctively I rose,

to give it to him, but the heavy hand came down upon my shoulder, and in

the same decided tone Robert said,--

"The water went with the physic; let him call."

"Do let me go to him! he'll die without care!"

"I mean he shall;--don't yer interfere, if yer please, Ma'am."

In spite of his quiet tone and respectful manner, I saw murder in his

eyes, and turned faint with fear; yet the fear excited me, and, hardly

knowing what I did, I seized the hands that had seized me, crying,--

"No, no, you shall not kill him! it is base to hurt a helpless man. Why

do you hate him? He is not your master?"

"He's my brother."

I felt that answer from head to foot, and seemed to fathom what was

coming, with a prescience vague, but unmistakable. One appeal was left

to me, and I made it.

"Robert, tell me what it means? Do not commit a crime and make me

accessory to it. There is a better way of righting wrong than by

violence;--let me help you find it."

My voice trembled as I spoke, and I heard the frightened flutter of my

heart; so did he, and if any little act of mine had ever won affection

or respect from him, the memory of it served me then. He looked down,

and seemed to put some question to himself; whatever it was, the answer

was in my favor, for when his eyes rose again, they were gloomy, but not

desperate.

"I _will_ tell you, Ma'am; but mind, this makes no difference; the boy

is mine. I'll give the Lord a chance to take him fust; if He don't, I

shall."

"Oh, no! remember, he is your brother."

An unwise speech; I felt it as it passed my lips, for a black frown

gathered on Robert's face, and his strong hands closed with an ugly sort

of grip. But he did not touch the poor soul gasping there behind him,

and seemed content to let the slow suffocation of that stifling room end

his frail life.

"I'm not like to forget that, Ma'am, when I've been thinkin' of it all

this week. I knew him when they fetched him in, an' would 'a' done it

long 'fore this, but I wanted to ask where Lucy was; he knows,--he told

to-night--an' now he's done for."

"Who is Lucy?" I asked hurriedly, intent on keeping his mind busy with

any thought but murder.

With one of the swift transitions of a mixed temperament like this, at

my question Robert's deep eyes filled, the clenched hands were spread

before his face, and all I heard were the broken words,--

"My wife,--he took her"--

In that instant every thought of fear was swallowed up in burning

indignation for the wrong, and a perfect passion of pity for the

desperate man so tempted to avenge an injury for which there seemed no

redress but this. He was no longer slave or contraband, no drop of black

blood marred him in my sight, but an infinite compassion yearned to

save, to help, to comfort him. Words seemed so powerless I offered none,

only put my hand on his poor head, wounded, homeless, bowed down with

grief for which I had no cure, and softly smoothed the long neglected

hair, pitifully wondering the while where was the wife who must have

loved this tender-hearted man so well.

The captain moaned again, and faintly whispered, "Air!" but I never

stirred. God forgive me! just then I hated him as only a woman thinking

of a sister woman's wrong could hate. Robert looked up; his eyes were

dry again, his mouth grim. I saw that, said, "Tell me more," and he

did,--for sympathy is a gift the poorest may give, the proudest stoop to

receive.

"Yer see, Ma'am, his father,--I might say ours, if I warn't ashamed of

both of 'em,--his father died two years ago, an' left us all to Marster

Ned,--that's him here, eighteen then. He always hated me, I looked so

like old Marster: he don't,--only the light skin an' hair. Old Marster

was kind to all of us, me 'specially, an' bought Lucy off the next

plantation down there in South Car'lina, when he found I liked her. I

married her, all I could, Ma'am; it warn't much, but we was true to one

another till Marster Ned come home a year after an' made hell fur both

of us. He sent my old mother to be used up in his rice-swamp in Georgy;

he found me with my pretty Lucy, an' though young Miss cried, an' I

prayed to him on my knees, an' Lucy run away, he wouldn't have no mercy;

he brought her back, an'--took her, Ma'am."

"Oh! what did you do?" I cried, hot with helpless pain and passion.

How the man's outraged heart sent the blood flaming up into his face and

deepened the tones of his impetuous voice, as he stretched his arm

across the bed, saying, with a terribly expressive gesture,--

"I half murdered him, an' to-night I'll finish."

"Yes, yes,--but go on now; what came next?"

He gave me a look that showed no white man could have felt a deeper

degradation in remembering and confining these last acts of brotherly

oppression.

"They whipped me till I couldn't stand, an' then they sold me further

South. Yer thought I was a white man once;--look here!"

With a sudden wrench he tore the shirt from neck to waist, and on his

strong brown shoulders showed me furrows deeply ploughed, wounds which,

though healed, were ghastlier to me than any in that house. I could not

speak to him, and, with the pathetic dignity a great grief lends the

humblest sufferer, he ended his brief tragedy by simply saying,--

"That's all, Ma'am. I've never seen her since, an' now I never shall in

this world,--maybe not in t' other."

"But, Robert, why think her dead? The captain was wandering when he said

those sad things; perhaps he will retract them when he is sane. Don't

despair; don't give up yet."

"No, Ma'am, I guess he's right; she was too proud to bear that long.

It's like her to kill herself. I told her to, if there was no other way;

an' she always minded me, Lucy did. My poor girl! Oh, it warn't right!

No, by God, it warn't!"

As the memory of this bitter wrong, this double bereavement, burned in

his sore heart, the devil that lurks in every strong man's blood leaped

up; he put his hand upon his brother's throat, and, watching the white

face before him, muttered low between his teeth,--

"I'm lettin' him go too easy; there's no pain in this; we a'n't even

yet. I wish he knew me. Marster Ned! it's Bob; where's Lucy?"

From the captain's lips there came a long faint sigh, and nothing but a

flutter of the eyelids showed that he still lived. A strange stillness

filled the room as the elder brother held the younger's life suspended

in his hand, while wavering between a dim hope and a deadly hate. In the

whirl of thoughts that went on in my brain, only one was clear enough to

act upon. I must prevent murder, if I could,--but how? What could I do

up there alone, locked in with a dying man and a lunatic?--for any mind

yielded utterly to any unrighteous impulse is mad while the impulse

rules it. Strength I had not, nor much courage, neither time nor wit for

stratagem, and chance only could bring me help before it was too late.

But one weapon I possessed,--a tongue,--often a woman's best defence;

and sympathy, stronger than fear, gave me power to use it. What I said

Heaven only knows, but surely Heaven helped me; words burned on my lips,

tears streamed from my eyes, and some good angel prompted me to use the

one name that had power to arrest my hearer's hand and touch his heart.

For at that moment I heartily believed that Lucy lived, and this earnest

faith rousted in him a like belief.

He listened with the lowering look of one in whom brute instinct was

sovereign for the time,--a look that makes the noblest countenance base.

He was but a man,--a poor, untaught, outcast, outraged man. Life had few

joys for him; the world offered him no honors, no success, no home, no

love. What future would this crime mar? and why should he deny himself

that sweet, yet bitter morsel called revenge? How many white men, with

all New England's freedom, culture, Christianity, would not have felt as

he felt then? Should I have reproached him for a human anguish, a human

longing for redress, all now left him from the ruin of his few poor

hopes? Who had taught him that self-control, self-sacrifice, are

attributes that make men masters of the earth and lift them nearer

heaven? Should I have urged the beauty of forgiveness, the duty of

devout submission? He had no religion, for he was no saintly "Uncle

Tom," and Slavery's black shadow seemed to darken all the world to him

and shut out God. Should I have warned him of penalties, of judgments,

and the potency of law? What did he know of justice, or the mercy that

should temper that stern virtue, when every law, human and divine, had

been broken on his hearthstone? Should I have tried to touch him by

appeals to filial duty, to brotherly love? How had his appeals been

answered? What memories had father and brother stored up in his heart to

plead for either now? No,--all these influences, these associations,

would have proved worse than useless, had I been calm enough to try

them. I was not; but instinct, subtler than reason, showed me the one

safe clue by which to lead this troubled soul from the labyrinth in

which it groped and nearly fell. When I paused, breathless, Robert

turned to me, asking, as if human assurances could strengthen his faith

in Divine Omnipotence,--

"Do you believe, if I let Marster Ned live, the Lord will give me back

my Lucy?"

"As surely as there is a Lord, you will find her here or in the

beautiful hereafter, where there is no black or white, no master and no

slave."

He took his hand from his brother's throat, lifted his eyes from my face

to the wintry sky beyond, as if searching for that blessed country,

happier even than the happy North. Alas, it was the darkest hour before

the dawn!--there was no star above, no light below but the pale glimmer

of the lamp that showed the brother who had made him desolate. Like a

blind man who believes there is a sun, yet cannot see it, he shook his

head, let his arms drop nervelessly upon his knees, and sat there dumbly

asking that question which many a soul whose faith is firmer fixed than

his has asked in hours less dark than this,--"Where is God?" I saw the

tide had turned, and strenuously tried to keep this rudderless life-boat

from slipping back into the whirlpool wherein it had been so nearly

lost.

"I have listened to you, Robert; now hear me, and heed what I say,

because my heart is full of pity for you, full of hope for your future,

and a desire to help you now. I want you to go away from here, from the

temptation of this place, and the sad thoughts that haunt it. You have

conquered yourself once, and I honor you for it, because, the harder the

battle, the more glorious the victory; but it is safer to put a greater

distance between you and this man. I will write you letters, give you

money, and send you to good old Massachusetts to begin your new life a

freeman,--yes, and a happy man; for when the captain is himself again, I

will learn where Lucy is, and move heaven and earth to find and give her

back to you. Will you do this, Robert?"

Slowly, very slowly, the answer came; for the purpose of a week, perhaps

a year, was hard to relinquish in an hour.

"Yes, Ma'am, I will."

"Good! Now you are the man I thought you, and I'll work for you with all

my heart. You need sleep, my poor fellow; go, and try to forget. The

captain is still alive, and as yet you are spared that sin. No, don't

look there; I'll care for him. Come, Robert, for Lucy's sake."

Thank Heaven for the immortality of love! for when all other means of

salvation failed, a spark of this vital fire softened the man's iron

will until a woman's hand could bend it. He let me take from him the

key, let me draw him gently away and lead him to the solitude which now

was the most healing balm I could bestow. Once in his little room, he

fell down on his bed and lay there as if spent with the sharpest

conflict of his life. I slipped the bolt across his door, and unlocked

my own, flung up the window, steadied myself with a breath of air, then

rushed to Doctor Franck. He came; and till dawn we worked together,

saving one brother's life, and taking earnest thought how best to secure

the other's liberty. When the sun came up as blithely as if it shone

only upon happy homes, the Doctor went to Robert. For an hour I heard

the murmur of their voices; once I caught the sound of heavy sobs, and

for a time a reverent hush, as if in the silence that good man were

ministering to soul as well as sense. When he departed he took Robert

with him, pausing to tell me he should get him off as soon as possible,

but not before we met again.

Nothing more was seen of them all day; another surgeon came to see the

captain, and another attendant came to fill the empty place. I tried to

rest, but could not, with the thought of poor Lucy tugging at my heart,

and was soon back at my post again, anxiously hoping that my contraband

had not been too hastily spirited away. Just as night fell there came a

tap, and opening, I saw Robert literally "clothed and in his right

mind." The Doctor had replaced the ragged suit with tidy garments, and

no trace of that tempestuous night remained but deeper lines upon the

forehead and the docile look of a repentant child. He did not cross the

threshold, did not offer me his hand,--only took off his cap, saying,

with a traitorous falter in his voice,--

"God bless you, Ma'am! I'm goin'."

I put out both my hands, and held his fast.

"Good bye, Robert! Keep up good heart, and when I come home to

Massachusetts we'll meet in a happier place than this. Are you quite

ready, quite comfortable for your journey?"

"Yes, Ma'am, yes; the Doctor's fixed everything; I'm goin' with a friend

of his; my papers are all right, an' I'm as happy as I can be till I

find"--

He stopped there; then went on, with a glance into the room,--

"I'm glad I didn't do it, an' I thank yer, Ma'am, fer hinderin'

me,--thank yer hearty; but I'm afraid I hate him jest the same."

Of course he did; and so did I; for these faulty hearts of ours cannot

turn perfect in a night, but need frost and fire, wind and rain, to

ripen and make them ready for the great harvest-home. Wishing to divert

his mind, I put my poor mite into his hand, and, remembering the magic

of a certain little book, I gave him mine, on whose dark cover whitely

shone the Virgin Mother and the Child, the grand history of whose life

the book contained. The money went into Robert's pocket with a grateful

murmur, the book into his bosom with a long look and a tremulous--

"I never saw _my_ baby, Ma'am."

I broke down then; and though my eyes were too dim to see, I felt the

touch of lips upon my hands, heard the sound of departing feet, and knew

my contraband was gone.

When one feels an intense dislike, the less one says about the subject

of it the better; therefore I shall merely record that the captain

lived,--in time was exchanged; and that, whoever the other party was, I

am convinced the Government got the best of the bargain. But long before

this occurred, I had fulfilled my promise to Robert; for as soon as my

patient recovered strength of memory enough to make his answer

trustworthy, I asked, without any circumlocution,--

"Captain Fairfax, where is Lucy?"

And too feeble to be angry, surprised, or insincere, he straightway

answered,--

"Dead, Miss Dane."

"And she killed herself, when you sold Bob?"

"How the Devil did you know that?" he muttered, with an expression

half-remorseful, half-amazed; but I was satisfied, and said no more.

Of course, this went to Robert, waiting far away there in a lonely

home,--waiting, working, hoping for his Lucy. It almost broke my heart

to do it; but delay was weak, deceit was wicked; so I sent the heavy

tidings, and very soon the answer came,--only three lines; but I felt

that the sustaining power of the man's life was gone.

"I thought I'd never see her any more; I'm glad to know she's out of

trouble. I thank yer, Ma'am; an' if they let us, I'll fight fer yer till

I'm killed, which I hope will be 'fore long."

Six months later he had his wish, and kept his word.

Every one knows the story of the attack on Fort Wagner; but we should

not tire yet of recalling how our Fifty-Fourth, spent with three

sleepless nights, a day's fast, and a march under the July sun, stormed

the fort as night fell, facing death in many shapes, following their

brave leaders through a fiery rain of shot and shell, fighting valiantly

for "God and Governor Andrew,"--how the regiment that went into action

seven hundred strong came out having had nearly half its number

captured, killed, or wounded, leaving their young commander to be

buried, like a chief of earlier times, with his body-guard around him,

faithful to the death. Surely, the insult turns to honor, and the wide

grave needs no monument but the heroism that consecrates it in our

sight; surely, the hearts that held him nearest see through their tears

a noble victory in the seeming sad defeat; and surely, God's benediction

was bestowed, when this loyal soul answered, as Death called the roll,

"Lord, here am I, with the brothers Thou hast given me!"

The future must show how well that fight was fought; for though Fort

Wagner still defies us, public prejudice is down; and through the

cannon-smoke of that black night the manhood of the colored race shines

before many eyes that would not see, rings in many ears that would not

hear, wins many hearts that would not hitherto believe.

When the news came that we were needed, there was none so glad as I to

leave teaching contrabands, the new work I had taken up, and go to nurse

"our boys," as my dusky flock so proudly called the wounded of the

Fifty-Fourth. Feeling more satisfaction, as I assumed my big apron and

turned up my cuffs, than if dressing for the President's levee, I fell

to work on board the hospital-ship in Hilton-Head harbor. The scene was

most familiar, and yet strange; for only dark faces looked up at me from

the pallets so thickly laid along the floor, and I missed the sharp

accent of my Yankee boys in the slower, softer voices calling cheerily

to one another, or answering my questions with a stout, "We'll never

give it up, Ma'am, till the last Reb's dead," or, "If our people's free,

we can afford to die."

Passing from bed to bed, intent on making one pair of hands do the work

of three, at least, I gradually washed, fed, and bandaged my way down

the long line of sable heroes, and coming to the very last, found that

he was my contraband. So old, so worn, so deathly weak and wan, I never

should have known him but for the deep scar on his cheek. That side lay

uppermost, and caught my eye at once; but even then I doubted, such an

awful change had come upon him, when, turning to the ticket just above

his head, I saw the name, "Robert Dane." That both assured and touched

me, for, remembering that he had no name, I knew that he had taken mine.

I longed for him to speak to me, to tell how he had fared since I lost

sight of him, and let me perform some little service for him in return

for many he had done for me; but he seemed asleep; and as I stood

reliving that strange night again, a bright lad, who lay next him softly

waving an old fan across both beds, looked up and said,--

"I guess you know him, Ma'am?"

"You are right. Do you?"

"As much as any one was able to, Ma'am."

"Why do you say 'was,' as if the man were dead and gone?"

"I s'pose because I know he'll have to go. He's got a bad jab in the

breast, an' is bleedin' inside, the Doctor says. He don't suffer any,

only gets weaker 'n' weaker every minute. I've been fannin' him this

long while, an' he's talked a little; but he don't know me now, so he's

most gone, I guess."

There was so much sorrow and affection in the boy's face, that I

remembered something, and asked, with redoubled interest,--

"Are you the one that brought him off? I was told about a boy who nearly

lost his life in saving that of his mate."

I dare say the young fellow blushed, as any modest lad might have done;

I could not see it, but I heard the chuckle of satisfaction that escaped

him, as he glanced from his shattered arm and bandaged side to the pale

figure opposite.

"Lord, Ma'am, that's nothin'; we boys always stan' by one another, an' I

warn't goin' to leave him to be tormented any more by them cussed Rebs.

He's been a slave once, though he don't look half so much like it as me,

an' I was born in Boston."

He did not; for the speaker was as black as the ace of spades,--being a

sturdy specimen, the knave of clubs would perhaps be a fitter

representative,--but the dark freeman looked at the white slave with the

pitiful, yet puzzled expression I have so often seen on the faces of our

wisest men, when this tangled question of Slavery presents itself,

asking to be cut or patiently undone.

"Tell me what you know of this man; for, even if he were awake, he is

too weak to talk."

"I never saw him till I joined the regiment, an' no one 'peared to have

got much out of him. He was a shut-up sort of feller, an' didn't seem to

care for anything but gettin' at the Rebs. Some say he was the fust man

of us that enlisted; I know he fretted till we were off, an' when we

pitched into old Wagner, he fought like the Devil."

"Were you with him when he was wounded? How was it?"

"Yes, Ma'am. There was somethin' queer about it; for he 'peared to know

the chap that killed him, an' the chap knew him. I don't dare to ask,

but I rather guess one owned the other some time,--for, when they

clinched, the chap sung out, 'Bob!' an' Dane, 'Marster Ned!'--then they

went at it."

I sat down suddenly, for the old anger and compassion struggled in my

heart, and I both longed and feared to hear what was to follow.

"You see, when the Colonel--Lord keep an' send him back to us!--it a'n't

certain yet, you know, Ma'am, though it's two days ago we lost

him--well, when the Colonel shouted, 'Rush on, boys, rush on!' Dane tore

away as if he was goin' to take the fort alone; I was next him, an' kept

close as we went through the ditch an' up the wall. Hi! warn't that a

rusher!" and the boy flung up his well arm with a whoop, as if the mere

memory of that stirring moment came over him in a gust of irrepressible

excitement.

"Were you afraid?" I said,--asking the question women often put, and

receiving the answer they seldom fail to get.

"No, Ma'am!"--emphasis on the "Ma'am,"--"I never thought of anything but

the damn' Rebs, that scalp, slash, an' cut our ears off, when they git

us. I was bound to let daylight into one of 'em at least, an' I did.

Hope he liked it!"

"It is evident that you did, and I don't blame you in the least. Now go

on about Robert, for I should be at work."

"He was one of the fust up; I was just behind, an' though the whole

thing happened in a minute, I remember how it was, for all I was yellin'

an' knockin' round like mad. Just where we were, some sort of an officer

was wavin' his sword an' cheerin' on his men; Dane saw him by a big

flash that come by; he flung away his gun, give a leap, an' went at that

feller as if he was Jeff, Beauregard, an' Lee, all in one. I scrabbled

after as quick as I could, but was only up in time to see him git the

sword straight through him an' drop into the ditch. You needn't ask what

I did next, Ma'am, for I don't quite know myself; all I'm clear about

is, that I managed somehow to pitch that Reb into the fort as dead as

Moses, git hold of Dane, an' bring him off. Poor old feller! we said we

went in to live or die; he said he went in to die, an' he's done it."

I had been intently watching the excited speaker; but as he regretfully

added those last words I turned again, and Robert's eyes met

mine,--those melancholy eyes, so full of an intelligence that proved he

had heard, remembered, and reflected with that preternatural power which

often outlives all other faculties. He knew me, yet gave no greeting;

was glad to see a woman's face, yet had no smile wherewith to welcome

it; felt that he was dying, yet uttered no farewell. He was too far

across the river to return or linger now; departing thought, strength,

breath, were spent in one grateful look, one murmur of submission to the

last pang he could ever feel. His lips moved, and, bending to them, a

whisper chilled my cheek, as it shaped the broken words,--

"I would have done it,--but it's better so,--I'm satisfied."

Ah! well he might be,--for, as he turned his face from the shadow of the

life that was, the sunshine of the life to be touched it with a

beautiful content, and in the drawing of a breath my contraband found

wife and home, eternal liberty and God.

* * * * *

THE SAM ADAMS REGIMENTS IN THE TOWN OF BOSTON.--CONCLUDED.[1]

THE REMOVAL.

"I have been in constant panic," wrote Franklin in London to Dr. Cooper

in Boston, "since I heard of troops assembling in Boston, lest the

madness of mobs, or the interference of soldiers, or both, when too near

each other, might occasion some mischief difficult to be prevented or

repaired, and which might spread far and wide."

The people wore indignant at the introduction of the troops, and the

crown officials were arrogant and goading; but so wise and forbearing

were the popular leaders, that, for ten months, from October, 1768, to

August, 1769, no detriment came to their cause from the madness of mobs

or the insolence of soldiers. The Loyalists, in this public order, saw

the wholesome terror with which military force had imbued the community;

they said this "had prevented, if it had not put a final period to, its

most pestilential town-meetings": but they termed this quiet "only a

truce procured from the dread of the bayonet"; and they held that

nothing would reach and suppress the rising spirit of independence but a

radical stroke at the democratic element in the local Constitution. They

relied on physical force to carry out such a policy, and hence they

looked on the demand of the people for a withdrawal of the troops as

equivalent to a demand for the abandonment of their policy and the

abdication of the Government. The partial removal already made caused

great chagrin. The report, at first, was hardly credited in British

political circles, and, when confirmed, was construed into inability,

inconsistency, and concession by the Administration, and a sign that

things were growing worse in America.

General Gage had withdrawn the Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments,

the detachment of the Fifty-Ninth, and the company of artillery, which

left the Fourteenth Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple and the

Twenty-Ninth under Lieutenant-Colonel Carr,--the two regiments which

Lord North termed "the Sam Adams Regiments,"--not enough, if the

Ministers intended to govern by military force, and too many, if they

did not intend this. They continued under General Mackay until he left

for England, when the command devolved on Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple,

the senior officer, under whom they had landed, who was exacting, severe

in his judgment on the Patriots, and impatient of professional service.

Commodore Hood and his family also sailed for Halifax. Both Mackay and

Hood, aiming at reconciliation, and liberal in non-essentials, easily

won the general good-will. The disuse of the press-gang, which even

"Junius" was now justifying, and which England had not learned to

abominate, but which rowelled the differently trained mind of the

Colonies, was regarded as a great concession to personal liberty; and

the discontinuance of parades and horse-racing on Sundays was accepted

as a concession to a religious sentiment that was very general, and

which, so far from deserving the sneer of being hypocritical, indicated

the wide growth of respect for things noble and divine. These officers

seemed, at least, to steer clear of political matters, to keep to the

line of their profession, and to make the best of an irksome duty. They

lived on good terms with the popular leaders, were invited to visit the

common-schools with the Selectmen, appeared at the public festivals,

and, on their departure, were handsomely complimented in both the Whig

and Tory journals for the manner in which they had discharged their

duties. They were, however, no mere lookers-on, and their official

representations and conclusions were no more far-reaching than those of

their superiors. Hood, from Halifax, wrote in harsh terms of Boston,

although he put on record severe and true things of that chronic local

infliction, the Commissioners of the Customs. His official letters,

printed this year, were open to sharp criticism, which they received in

the journals. Not, however, until the publication of the Cavendish

Debates was it known that General Mackay, who was regarded as uncommonly

liberal, received every personal attention, and was the most

complimented by the press, stood up in the House of Commons, soon after

his arrival in England, and maligned Boston in severe terms. He charged

the town with being without government; said it was tyrannized over by a

set of men hardly respectable, in point of fortune; and even had the

hardihood to say that some of the troops he commanded there had been

sold for slaves!

Boston, now a subject of speculation in Continental courts, as well as

of abuse in Parliament, was destined to undergo a still severer trial

for the succeeding seven months, from August, 1769, to March, 1770,

during the continuance of the two remaining regiments. This was an

eventful period, characterized by violent agitation in the Colonies to

promote a repeal of the revenue acts and an abandonment of the

intermeddling and aggressive policy of the Ministry; and it was marked

by uncommon political activity in Boston. The popular leaders, as

though no British troops were lookers-on, and in spite, too, of the

protests and commands of the crown officials, steadily guided the

deliberations of the people in Faneuil Hall; and at times the disorderly

also, in violations of law and personal liberty that can never be

justified, intrepidly carried out their projects. The events of this

period tended powerfully to inflame the public mind. The appeals of the

Patriots, through the press, show their appreciation of the danger of an

outbreak, and yet their determination to meet their whole duty. They

endeavored to restrain the rash among the Sons of Liberty within the

safe precincts of the law; yet, repelling all thought of submission to

arbitrary power, they strove to lift up the general mind to the high

plane of action which a true patriotism demanded, and prepare it, if

need were, for the majestic work of revolution.

The executive, during an interval thus exciting and important, was in a

transition-state, from Francis Bernard to Thomas Hutchinson. It was

semi-officially announced in the journals, when the Governor sailed for

England, that the Administration had no intention of superseding his

commission; and it was intimated that the Lieutenant-Governor would

administer the functions of the office until the return of the chief

magistrate to his post. These officials, for nine years, had been warm

personal friends and intimate political associates. Indeed, so close had

been their private and public relations, that Bernard ascribed the

origin of his administrative difficulties to his adoption of the

quarrels of Hutchinson. For a long time, the Governor had been seeking

and expecting something better in the political line than his present

office, as a substantial recognition of his zeal; and he had urged, and

was now urging, the selection of the Lieutenant-Governor for his

successor in office. He represented that Hutchinson was well versed in

the local affairs,--knew the motives of the Governor,--warmly approved

the policy of the Ministry,--had been, on critical occasions, a trusted

confidential adviser,--and, in fact, had become so thoroughly identified

with public affairs, that, of the two officials, he (Hutchinson) was the

most hated by the faction, which the Governor seemed to consider a

special recommendation. He favored this appointment as a measure that

would be equivalent to an indorsement of his own administration, and

therefore a compliment to himself and a blow at the faction. "It would

be," he said, "a peculiarly happy stroke; for while it would discourage

the Sons of Liberty, it would afford another great instance of rewarding

faithful servants to the Crown."

Thomas Hutchinson, descended from one of the most respected families of

New England, and the son of an honored merchant of Boston, was now

fifty-seven years of age. He was a pupil at the Old North Grammar

School, and was graduated at Harvard College, when he entered upon a

mercantile life. He was not successful as a merchant. Thus early,

however, he evinced the untiring industry that marked his whole career.

He had a decided political turn, and, with uncommon natural talent, had

the capacity and the ambition for public life. An irreproachable private

character, pleasing manners, common-sense views of things, and politics

rather adroit than high-toned, secured him a run of popular favor and

executive confidence so long that he had now (1769) been thirty-three

years uninterruptedly engaged in public affairs; and he confessed to his

friends that this concern in politics had created a hankering for them

which a return to business-pursuits could not overcome. He had reason to

be gratified at the tokens of public approbation. He was so faithful to

the municipal interests as a Selectman that the town intrusted him with

an important mission to England, which he satisfactorily executed; his

wide commercial knowledge, familiarity with constitutional law and

history, decided ability in debate, and reputed disinterestedness, gave

him large influence as a Representative in the General Court; he showed

as Councillor an ever ready zeal for the prerogative, and thus won the

most confidential relations with so obsequious a courtier as Bernard; as

Judge of Probate, he was attentive, kind to the widow, accurate, and won

general commendation; and as a member of the Superior Court, he

administered the law, in the main, satisfactorily. He had been Chief

Justice for nine years, and for eleven years the Lieutenant-Governor. He

had also prepared two volumes of his History, which, though rough in

narrative, is a valuable authority, and his volume of "Collections" was

now announced. His fame at the beginning of the Revolutionary

controversy was at its zenith; for, according to John Adams, "he had

been admired, revered, rewarded, and almost adored; and the idea was

common that he was the greatest and best man in America." He was now,

and had been for years, the master-spirit of the Loyalist party. It Is

an anomaly that he should have attained to this position. He had had

practical experience, as a merchant, of the intolerable injustice of the

old mercantile system, and yet he sided with its friends; he had dealt,

as a politician, to a greater degree than most men, with the rights and

privileges which the people prized, conceded that they had made no ill

use of them, and yet urged that they ought to be abridged; as a patriot,

when he loved his native land wisely, he remonstrated against the

imposition of the Stamp Tax, and yet he grew into one of the sturdiest

of the defenders of the supremacy of Parliament in all cases whatsoever.

He exhibited the usual characteristics of public men who from unworthy

considerations change their principles and desert their party. No man

urged a more arbitrary course; no man passed more discreditable

judgments on his patriot contemporaries; and if in that way he won the

smiles of the court which he was swift to serve, he earned the hatred of

the land which he professed to love. The more his political career is

studied, the greater will be the wonder that one who was reared on

republican soil, and had antecedents so honorable, should have become so

complete an exponent of arbitrary power.

Hutchinson was not so blinded by party-spirit or love of money or of

place as not to see the living realities of his time; for he wrote that

a thirst for liberty seemed to be the ruling passion, not only of

America, but of the age, and that a mighty empire was rising on this

continent, the progress of which would be a theme for speculative and

ingenious minds in distant ages. It was the vision of the cold and clear

intellect, distrusting the march of events and the capacity and

intelligence of the people, he had no heart to admire, he had not even

the justice to recognize, the greatness that was making an immortal

record,--the sublime faith, the divine enthusiasm, the dauntless

resolve, the priceless consciousness of being in the right, that were

the life and inspiration of the lovers of freedom. He conceded, however,

that the body of the people were honest, but acted on the belief,

inspired by wrong-headed leaders, that their liberties were in danger;

and while, with the calculation of the man of the world, he dreaded, and

endeavored to stem, still, with a statesman's foresight, he appreciated

and held in respect, the mysterious element of public opinion. He felt

that it was rising as a power. He saw this power already intrenched in

the impregnable lines of free institutions. Seeking to know its springs,

he was a close and at times a shrewd observer, as well from a habit of

research, in tracing the currents of the past, as from occupying a

position which made it a duty to watch the growth of what influenced the

present. His letters, very voluminous, deal with causes as well as with

facts, and are often fine tributes to the life-giving power of vital

political ideas, from the pen of a subtle and determined enemy.

When the executive functions devolved on Hutchinson, it had been

semi-officially announced that the Ministry, wholly out of commercial

considerations, intended to propose, at the next session of Parliament,

a repeal of a portion of the revenue acts; and the Patriots were

pressing, with more zeal than ever, the non-importation agreement, in

the hope of obtaining, as matter of constitutional right, a total

repeal. To enforce this agreement, the merchants had held a public

meeting in Faneuil Hall, adopted a series of spirited resolves, and

adjourned to a future day; and Hutchinson's first important

gubernatorial decision had reference to this meeting. He had urged the

necessity of troops to sustain the authority of the Government. He had

awarded to them the credit of preventing a great catastrophe. He had

written that they would make the Boston saints as tame as lambs. It was

his settled conviction that the Americans never would set armies in the

field against Great Britain, and if they did, that "a few troops would

be sufficient to quell them." He was now importuned to use the troops at

his command to disperse the merchants' meeting at its adjournment. He

held that this meeting was contrary to law. He characterized its

resolves as contemptuous and insolent, and derogatory to the authority

of Parliament. He never grew weary of holding up to reprobation the

objects which the merchants had in view. And his political friends now

asked him to make good his professions by acts. But he declined to

interfere with this meeting. The merchants proceeded to a close with

their business. Hutchinson's explanation of his course to the Ministry,

on this occasion, applies to the popular demonstrations which took

place, at intervals, down to the military crisis. "I am very sensible,"

are his words, "that the whole proceeding is unwarrantable; but it is so

generally countenanced in this and in several of the Colonies, and the

authority of Government is so feeble, that an attempt to put a stop to

it would have no other effect than still further to inflame the minds of

the people. I can do no more than represent to your Lordship, and wait

for such instructions as may be thought proper." And he continued to

present these combinations of the merchants as "a most certain evidence

of the lost authority of Government," and as exhibiting "insolence and

contempt of Parliament." But he complains that they were not so much

regarded in England as he expected they would be, and that he was left

to act on his own judgment. He soon saw pilloried in the newspapers the

names of a son of Governor Bernard and two of his own sons, in a list of

Boston merchants who "audaciously counteracted the united sentiments of

the body of merchants throughout North America by importing British

goods contrary to agreement."

The Lieutenant-Governor again kept quiet, as a town-meeting went on,

which he watched with the keenest interest, freely commented on in his

letters, and which is far too important to be overlooked in any review

of these times. William Bollan, the Colonial Agent in London, sent to

the popular leaders a selection from the letters of Governor Bernard,

General Gage, Commodore Hood, and others, bearing on the introduction of

the troops, which were judged to have aspersed the character, affected

the rights, and injured the interests of the town. Their publication

made a profound impression on the public mind, and they became the theme

of every circle. At one of the political clubs, in which the Adamses,

the Coopers, Warren, and others were wont to discuss public affairs,

Otis, in a blaze of indignation, charged the crown officials with

haughtiness, arbitrary dispositions, and the insolence of office, and

vehemently urged a town-meeting. One was soon summoned by the Selectmen,

which deliberated with dignity and order, and made answer to the

official indictment in a strong, conclusive, and grand "Appeal to the

World," and appointed, as a committee to circulate it, Thomas Cushing,

Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, Richard Dana, Joshua Henshaw, Joseph

Jackson, and Benjamin Kent,--men of sterling character, and bearing

names that have shed lustre on the whole country. Reason and truth,

thus put forth, exerted an influence. Hutchinson felt the force of this.

"We find, my Lord, by experience," he advised Lord Hillsborough, October

19, 1769, "that associations and assemblies pretending to be legal and

constitutional, assuming powers that belong only to established

authority, prove more fatal to this authority than mobs, riots, or the

most tumultuous disorders; for such assemblies, from erroneous or

imperfect notions of the nature of government, very often meet with the

approbation of the body of the people, and in such case there is no

internal power which can be exerted to suppress them. Such case we are

in at present, and shall probably continue in it until the wisdom of

Parliament delivers us from it."

It would be difficult to say what power the people now assumed that

belonged only to established authority; they assumed only the right of

public meeting and of liberty of discussion, which are unquestionable in

every free country; but the ruling spirit of Hutchinson is seen in this

fine tribute to the instrumentality of the town-meeting, for he regarded

the American custom of corporate presentation of political matters as

illegal, and the power of Parliament as sufficient to meet it with pains

and penalties. As the committee already named sent forth the doings of

the town, they said, (October 23, 1769,) "The people will never think

their grievances redressed till every revenue act is repealed, the Board

of Commissioners dissolved, and the troops removed."

A few days after this the Lieutenant-Governor was obliged to deal with a

mob, which grew out of the meanness of importers, whose selfish course

proved to be a great strain on the forbearing policy of the popular

leaders. The merchants on the Tory side, among whom were two of

Hutchinson's sons, persisted in importing goods; and he writes, with a

good deal of pride, as though it were meritorious, that since the

agreement was formed these two sons had imported two hundred chests of

tea, which they had been so clever as to sell. But such was the public

indignation at this course, that they, too, were compelled to give in to

the non-importation agreement; and Hutchinson's letters are now severer

than ever on the Patriots. He characterizes "the confederacy of

merchants" as a very high offence, and the Sons of Liberty as the

greatest tyrants ever known. But as he continually predicted a crisis,

he said, "I can find nobody to join with me in an attempt to discourage

them." He adds, "If any tumults should happen, I shall be under less

difficulty than if my own children had been the pretended occasion of

them; and for this reason Dalrymple tells me he is very glad they have

done as they have." The immediate occasion of the mob was the dealing of

the people with an informer on the twenty-eighth of October. They got

track of him about noon, and, after a long search, found him towards

evening, when they immediately prepared to tar and feather him. It was

quite dark. A formidable procession carted the culprit from one quarter

of the town to another, and threatened to break the windows of all

houses which were without lights. The Lieutenant-Governor summoned such

of the members of the Council as were at hand, and the justices of the

county, to meet him at the Council-Chamber; he requested Dalrymple to

order the force under his command "to be ready to march when the

occasion required"; and he "kept persons employed to give him immediate

notice of every new motion of the mob." Dalrymple, with a soldier's

alacrity, complied with the official request; but the mob went on its

course, for "none of the justices nor the sheriff," writes Hutchinson,

"thought it safe for them to restrain so great a body of people in a

dark evening,"--and the only work done by the soldiers was to protect

Mien, the printer, who, being goaded into discharging a pistol among the

crowd, fled to the main guard for safety. The finale of this mob is thus

related by Hutchinson:--"Between eight and nine o'clock they dispersed

of their own account, and the town was quiet."

The intrepid and yet prudent course of the popular leaders and of the

people, in standing manfully for the common cause in presence of the

British troops, was now eliciting the warmest encomiums on the town from

the friends of liberty in England and in the Colonies. The generous

praise was copied into the local journals, and, so far from being

received with assumption, became a powerful incentive to worthy action.

"Your Bostonians," a Southern letter runs, "shine with renewed lustre.

Their last efforts were indeed like themselves, full of wisdom,

prudence, and magnanimity. Such a conduct must silence every pretended

suspicion, and baffle every vile attempt to calumniate their noble and

generous struggles in the cause of American Liberty." "So much wisdom

and virtue," says a New-Hampshire letter, "as hath been conspicuous in

the Bostonians, will not go unrewarded. You will in all respects

increase until you become the glory of New England, the pride of British

kings, the scourge of tyrants, and the joy of the whole earth," "The

patriotism of Boston," says another letter, "will be revered through

every age." One of these tributes, from a Southern journal, in the

Boston papers of December 18, 1769, runs,--"The noble conduct of the

Representatives, Selectmen, and principal merchants of Boston, in

defending and supporting the rights of America and the British

Constitution, cannot fail to excite love and gratitude in the heart of

every worthy person in the British empire. They discover a dignity of

soul worthy the human mind, which is the true glory of man, and merits

the applause of all rational beings. Their names will shine unsullied in

the bright records of Panic to the latest ages, and unborn millions will

rise up and call them blessed."

This eulogy on Boston is a great fact of these times, and therefore

ought to have a place in a history of them. It was not of a local cast,

for it appears in several Colonies and in England; it was not a

manufacture of politicians, for it is seen in the private letters of the

friends of constitutional liberty which have come to light subsequently

to the events; it was not a transient enthusiasm, for the same strain

was continued during the years preceding the war. The praise was

bestowed on a town small in territory and comparatively small in

population. Such were the cities of Greece in the era of their renown.

"The territories of Athens, Sparta, and their allies," remarks Gibbon,

"do not exceed a moderate province of France or England; but after the

trophies of Salamis or Platæa, they expand in our fancy to the gigantic

size of Asia, which had been trampled under the feet of the victorious

Greeks." No trophies had been gathered in an American Platæa; there had

been no great civic triumph; there was no hero upon whom public

affection centred; nor was there here a field on which to weave a web of

court-intrigue, or to play a game of criminal ambition;--there was,

indeed, little that common constructors of history would consider to be

history. Yet it was now written, and made common thought by an

unfettered press,--"Nobler days nor deeds were never seen than at this

time."[2] This was an instinctive appreciation of a great truth; for

the real American Revolution was going on in the tidal flow of thought

and feeling, and in the formation of public opinion. A people inspired

by visions of better days for humanity, luxuriating in the emotions of

hope and faith, yearning for the right, mastering the reasoning on which

it was based, were steadily taking their fit place on the national

stage, in the belief of the nearness of a mighty historic hour. And

their spontaneous praise was for a community heroically acting on

national principles and for a national cause. Because of this did they

predict that unborn millions would hold up the men of Boston as worthy

to be enrolled in the shining record of Fame.

As the new year (1770) came in, the people were looking forward to a

meeting of the General Court, always a season of peculiar interest, and

more so now than ever, for it was certain that the debates in this body

would turn on the foremost local subject, the removal of the troops. But

the subject was no longer merely local, for it had become a general

issue, one affecting not only Boston and Massachusetts, but other towns

and Colonies, and the interest felt in the controversy was wide and

deep. "In this day of constitutional light," a New-York essay copied

into a Boston newspaper runs, "it is monstrous that troops should be

kept, not to protect the right, but to enslave the continent." While it

was thus put by the journals, the policy was meant to be of this

significance by the Ministry; and the letters printed for the first time

in this monograph attest the accuracy of the Patriot judgment. On purely

local grounds, also, the presence of the troops continued to be

deplored. "The troops," Dr. Cooper wrote, January 1, 1770, "greatly

corrupt our morals, and are in every sense an oppression. May Heaven

soon deliver us from this great evil!" Samuel Adams said, "The troops

must move to the Castle; it must be the first business of the General

Court to move them out of town"; and James Otis said. "The Governor has

the power to move them under the Constitution." Hutchinson endeavored to

conciliate the people by making arrangements with General Gage for a

removal of the main guard from its location near the Town-House, being

informed that this might satisfy the greater part of the members.

Having taken this precaution, Hutchinson was really anxious for a

meeting of the General Court. He was in great uncertainty both as to

public and private affairs. He knew now that Bernard was not to return,

but he did not know who was to be the successor; he conjectured that it

might be "that the government was to be put on a new establishment, and

a person of rank appointed Governor"; and he confessed that he was

"ignorant of the Ministerial plan" as to the Colonies. The Legislature

was appointed to convene on the tenth of January. But the November

packet from England, happening to make an uncommonly short passage,

brought him a peremptory order, which he received on the evening of the

third of January, to prorogue the time of the sitting of the General

Court; and the journals of the next morning contain his Proclamation,

setting forth that "by His Majesty's command" the Legislature was

prorogued to the second Wednesday in March. "I guess," Hutchinson

writes, "that the Court is prorogued to a particular day with an

intention that something from the King or the Parliament shall be then

laid before them." "Some of the distant members will be on their journey

before the Proclamation reaches them; and if the packet had not had a

better passage than common, my orders would have found the Court

sitting." As a consequence of this unlooked-for prorogation, the main

guard continued to be stationed near the Town-House, until a portion of

it played its tragic part on the memorable fifth of March.

The Lieutenant-Governor was apprehensive that this sudden prorogation

would cause a great clamor; but he judged that the popular leaders were

rather humbled and mortified than roused and enraged by it; and he soon

expressed the conviction that this was the right step. But the favorite

organ of the Patriots, the "Boston Gazette," in its next issue, of

January the eighth, indicates anything but humility. Through it James

Otis, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams spoke kindling words to a community

who received words from them as things. Otis, in a card elicited by

strictures on the "unmanly assault, battery, and barbarous wounding" of

himself by Robinson, declared that "a clear stage and no favor were all

he ever wished or wanted in court, country, camp, or city"; Hancock, in

a card commenting on the report that he had violated the merchants'

agreement, "publicly defied all mankind" to prove the allegation, and

pledged his coöperation "in every legal and laudable measure to redress

the grievances under which the Province and the Continent had so long

labored"; and Samuel Adams, under the signature of "Vindex," tested the

legality of the prorogation by the terms of the Charter, and adjured

every man to make it the subject of his contemplation. "We all

remember," are his weighty words, "that, no longer ago than last year,

the extraordinary dissolution by Governor Bernard, in which he declared

he was purely Ministerial, produced another assembly, which, though

legal in all its proceedings, awaked an attention in the very soul of

the British empire." He claimed that a Massachusetts executive ought to

act from the dictates of his own judgment. "It is not to be expected

that in ordinary times, much less at such an important period as this,

any man, though endowed with the wisdom of Solomon, at the distance of

three thousand miles, can be an adequate judge of the expediency of

proroguing, and in effect of putting an end to, an American legislative

assembly."

The Lieutenant-Governor had now to meet the severest pressure brought to

bear on him by the Tory faction for the employment of the troops,

occasioned by a violation on the part of his sons of their agreement as

to a sale of goods. They had stipulated with the merchants that an

importation of teas made by them should remain unsold, and, as security,

had given to the committee of inspection the key of the building in

which it was stored. Yet they secretly made sales, broke the lock, and

delivered the teas. This was done when the non-importation agreement was

the paramount measure,--when fidelity to it was patriotism, was honor,

was union, was country,--and when all eyes were looking to see Boston

faithful. "If this agreement of the merchants," said "Determinatus" in

the "Boston Gazette," "is of that consequence to all America which our

brethren in all the other governments and in Great Britain itself think

it to be,--if the fate of unborn millions is suspended upon it, verily

it behooves not the merchants only, but every individual of every class

in city and country to aid and support them, and peremptorily to insist

upon its being strictly adhered to. And yet what is most astonishing is,

that some two or three persons, of very little consequence in

themselves, have dared openly to give out that they will vend the goods

they have imported, though they have solemnly pledged their faith to the

body of merchants that they should remain in store till a general

importation takes place." The merchants met in Faneuil Hall in a large

and commanding gathering; for it was composed of the solid men of the

town. After deliberation, they proceeded in a body to the residence of

the Lieutenant-Governor to remonstrate against the course of his sons.

Meantime, the ultra Loyalists pressed him to order the troops to

disperse the meeting; the Commissioners savagely urged, that "there

could not be a better time for trying the strength of the government";

and others said, "It were best to bring matters to extremities." The

commanding officers of the troops now expected work, and prepared for

it. Dalrymple dealt out twelve rounds of cartridges to the men. But

Hutchinson involuntarily shrank from the bloody business of this

programme. He tried other means than force. He appealed to the justices

of the peace, and through the sheriff he commanded the meeting, in His

Majesty's name, to disperse. But the intrepid merchants, in a written

paper, in Hancock's handwriting, averred that law warranted their

proceeding; and so they calmly adhered to the action that patriotism

dictated. Hutchinson at length sent for the Moderator, William Phillips,

of fragrant Revolutionary renown and of educational fame, and stipulated

to deposit a sum of money to stand for the tea that had been sold, and

to return the balance of it to the store. The concession was accepted.

In explanation of his course, and with special reference to the action

of the Commissioners in this case, Hutchinson pleaded a want of power,

under the Constitution, to comply with their demand. "They did not

consider the Constitution," he remarked, "and that by the Charter I can

do nothing without the Council, the major part of whom are against me,

and the civil magistrates, many of whom made a part of the body which

was to be suppressed; so that there could not have been a worse occasion

[to call out the troops], and I think anything tragical would have set

the whole Province in a flame, and maybe spread farther."

Thus Hutchinson, as well as Franklin, dreaded the effect of a serious

collision between the citizens and the troops. At this time the feeling

was one of sullen acquiescence in their presence. "Molineaux," he says,

February 18, 1770, "to whom the Sons of Liberty have given the name of

Paoli, and some others, are restless; but there seems to be no

disposition to any general muster of the people again." And yet the

newspapers were now crowded with unusually exciting matter, and so

continued up to the first week in March: articles about the Liberty-Pole

in New York being cut down by the military and replaced in a triumphal

procession by the people; about McDougal's imprisonment for printing

free comments on the Assembly for voting supplies to the troops; the

famous address of "Junius" to the King, in which one count is his

alienation of a people who left their native land for freedom and found

it in a desert; the details of the shooting, by an informer, of

Christopher Snider, the son of a poor German, and of the imposing

funeral, which moved from the Liberty-Tree to the burial-place. The

importers now feared an assault on their houses; whereupon soldiers were

allowed as a guard to some, while others slept with loaded guns at their

bedsides. These things deserve to be borne in mind; for they show how

much there was to exasperate, when the popular leaders were called upon

to meet a paroxysm without a precedent in the Colonies.

It seemed to the Patriots astonishing that the Ministry persisted in

keeping troops in Boston. There was no spirit of resistance to law;

there was no plot maturing to resist the Government; the avocations of

life went on as usual; the popular leaders, men of whom any community

might be proud, averred that their opposition to public measures had

been prudent and legal, and that they had not taken "a single step that

could not be fully justified on constitutional grounds"; and the demand

in the public prints was continuous to know what the troops were wanted

for, and how they were to be used. On the other hand, the ultra

Loyalists as continuously represented that the town was full of a

rebellious spirit, was a nest of disorder, and threatened the leaders in

it with transportation. Hutchinson seems to have apprehended that this

misrepresentation had been carried so far as to be suicidal; for he

advised Lord Hillsborough, that, "in matters that had no relation to the

dispute between the Kingdom and the Colonies, government retained its

vigor, and the administration of it was attended with no unusual

difficulty." This is to the point, and conclusive. This was the truth on

which the popular leaders rested; and hence it seemed to them a marvel

that the Ministry, to use the words of Samuel Adams, should employ

troops only "to parade the streets of Boston, and, by their ridiculous

merry-andrew tricks, to become the objects of contempt of the women and

children."

It would be a tedious and profitless task to go over the bickerings and

quarrels that occurred between the inhabitants and the soldiers. The

high-spirited citizens, on being challenged in their walks, could not

keep their temper; the roughs, here as in every place, would have their

say; and the coarse British soldier could not be restrained by

discipline; yet in all the brawls, for seventeen months, not a gun was

fired in an affray. Fist had been met with fist, and club with club; and

not unfrequently these quarrels were settled in the courts. The nature

of such emergency as would justify the troops in firing on the people

was acutely discussed in the newspapers, and undoubtedly the subject was

talked about in private circles and in the political clubs. "What shall

I say?" runs an article in the "Gazette." "I shudder at the thought.

Surely no provincial magistrate could be found so steeled against the

sensations of humanity and justice as wantonly to order troops to fire

on an unarmed populace, and more than repeat in Boston the tragic scene

exhibited in St. George's Fields." It was a wanton fire on an unarmed

populace that was protected against; and the protest was by men who

involuntarily shrank from mob-law as they would from the hell of

anarchy. They apprehended an impromptu collision between the people and

the troops; they knew that an illegal and wanton fire on the people

would produce such collision; the danger of this result formed,

undoubtedly, a large portion of the common talk; and the frequency and

manner in which the subject was discussed elicited from General Gage the

rather sweeping remark, that every citizen in Boston was a lawyer. Every

citizen was interested in the support of public liberty and public

order, and might well regard with deep concern the threats that were

continually made, which, if executed, would disturb both. Hutchinson, in

one of his letters, thus states the conclusions that were reached:--"Our

heroes for liberty say that no troops dare to fire on the people without

the order of the civil magistrate, and that no civil magistrate, would

dare to give such orders. In the first part of their opinion they may be

right; in the second they cannot be sure until they have made the

trial."

On Friday, the second of March, in the forenoon, as three soldiers were

at Gray's Ropewalks, near the head of India Wharf, they were asked by

one of the workmen to empty a vault. Sharp altercation followed this

insult, and the soldiers went off, but soon returned with a party of

their comrades, when there was a challenge to a boxing-match, and this

grew into a fight, the rope-makers using their "wouldring-sticks," and

the soldiers clubs and cutlasses. It proved to be the most serious

quarrel that had occurred. Lieutenant-Colonel Carr, commander of the

Twenty-Ninth, which, Hutchinson said, was composed of such bad fellows

that discipline could not restrain them, made a complaint to the

Lieutenant-Governor relative to the provoking conduct of the rope-maker

which brought on the affray; and thus this affair became the occasion of

political consultation, which tended to intensify the animosity between

the parties.

On Saturday, the report was circulated that the parties who were engaged

in this affray would renew the fight on Monday evening; on Sunday, Carr

and other officers went into the ropewalk, giving out that they were

searching for a sergeant of their regiment; but though on these days

there was much irritation, the town was comparatively quiet.

On Monday, the Lieutenant-Governor laid the complaint of

Lieutenant-Colonel Carr before the Council, and asked the advice of this

body, which gave rise to debate about the removal of the

troops,--members freely expressing the opinion, that the way to prevent

collisions between the military and the people was to withdraw the two

regiments to the Castle. No important action was taken by the Council,

although the apprehension was expressed that the ropewalk affair might

grow into a general quarrel. And it is worthy of remark, that, ominous

as the signs were, the Lieutenant-Governor took no precautionary

measures, not even the obvious step of having the troops restrained to

their barracks. His letters, and, indeed, his whole course, up to the

eventful evening of this day, indicate confidence in the opinion that

there was no intention on the part of the popular leaders to molest the

troops, and that the troops, without an order from the civil authority,

would not fire on the citizens.

Nor was there now, as zealous Loyalists alleged, any plan formed by the

popular leaders, or by any persons of consideration, to expel the troops

by force from the town, much less the obnoxious Commissioners of the

Customs; nor is there any evidence to support the allegation on the

other side, that the crown officials, civil or military, meditated or

stimulated an attack on the inhabitants. The Patriots regarded what had

occurred and what was threatened, like much that had taken place during

the last seventeen months, as the motions of a rod of power needlessly

held over the people to overawe them, serving no earthly good, but

souring their minds and embittering their passions; the crown officials

represented this chafing of the free spirit at the incidents of military

rule as a sign of the lost authority of Government and of a desire for

independence. Among the fiery spirits, accurately on both sides the

mob-element, the ropewalk affair was regarded as a drawn game, and a

renewal of the fight was desired on the ground that honor was at stake;

while to spirit up the roughs among the Whigs, to use Dr. Gordon's

words,--"the newspapers had a pompous account of a victory obtained by

the inhabitants of New York over the soldiers there in an affray, while

the Boston newspapers could present but a tame relation of the result of

the affray here." These facts account satisfactorily for the intimations

and warnings given during the day to prominent characters on both sides,

and for the handbill that was circulated in the afternoon. The course

things took fully justifies the remark of Gordon, that "everything

tended to a crisis, and it is rather wonderful that it did not exist

sooner, when so many circumstances united to hasten its approach."

There was a layer of ice on the ground, a slight fall of snow during the

day, and a young moon in the evening. At an early hour, as though

something uncommon was expected, parties of boys, apprentices, and

soldiers strolled through the streets, and neither side was sparing of

insult. Ten or twelve soldiers went from the main guard, in King Street,

across this street to Murray's Barracks, in Brattle Street, about three

hundred yards from King Street; and another party came out of these

barracks, armed with clubs and cutlasses, bent on a stroll. A little

after eight o'clock, quite a crowd collected near the Brattle-Street

Church, many of whom had canes and sticks; and after a spell of

bantering wretched abuse on both sides, things grew into a fight. As it

became more and more threatening, a few North-Enders ran to the Old

Brick Meeting-House, on what is now Washington Street, at the head of

King Street, and lifted a boy into a window, who rang the bell. About

the same time, Captain Goldfinch, of the army, who was on his way to

Murray's Barracks, crossed King Street, near the Custom-House, at the

corner of Exchange Lane, where a sentinel had long been stationed; and

as he was passing along, he was taunted by a barber's apprentice as a

mean fellow for not paying for dressing his hair, when the sentinel ran

after the boy and gave him a severe blow with his musket. The boy went

away crying, and told several persons of the assault, while the Captain

passed on towards Murray's Barracks, but found the passage into the yard

obstructed by the affray going on here,--the crowd pelting the soldiers

with snowballs, and the latter defending themselves. Being the senior

officer, he ordered the men into the barracks; the gate of the yard was

then shut, and the promise was made that no more men should be let out

that evening. In this way the affray here was effectually stopped.

For a little time, perhaps twenty minutes, there was nothing to attract

to a centre the people who were drawn by the alarm-bell out of their

homes on this frosty, moonlight, memorable evening; and in various

places individuals were asking where the fire was. King Street, then, as

now, the commercial centre of Boston, was quiet. A group was standing

before the main guard with firebags and buckets in their hands; a few

persons were moving along in other parts of the street; and the sentinel

at the Custom-House, with his firelock on his shoulder, was pacing his

beat quite unmolested. In Dock Square, a small gathering, mostly of

participants in the affair just over, were harangued by a large, tall

man, who wore a red cloak and a white wig; and as he closed, there was a

hurrah, and the cry, "To the main guard!" In another street, a similar

cry was raised, "To the main guard!--that is the nest!" But no assault

was made on the main guard. The word went round that there was no fire,

"only a rumpus with the soldiers," who had been driven to their

quarters; and well-disposed citizens, as they withdrew, were saying,

"Every man to his home!"