CHAPTER VII.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. II.--AUGUST, 1858.--NO. X.

DAPHNAIDES:

OR THE ENGLISH LAUREL, FROM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON.

They in thir time did many a noble dede,

And for their worthines full oft have bore

The crown of laurer leavés on the hede,

As ye may in your oldé bookés rede:

And how that he that was a conquerour

Had by laurer alway his most honour.

DAN CHAUCER: _The Flowre and the Leaf_.

It is to be lamented that antiquarian zeal is so often diverted from

subjects of real to those of merely fanciful interest. The mercurial

young gentlemen who addict themselves to that exciting department of

letters are open to censure as being too fitful, too prone to flit,

bee-like, from flower to flower, now lighting momentarily upon an

indecipherable tombstone, now perching upon a rusty morion, here

dipping into crumbling palimpsests, there turning up a tattered

reputation from heaps of musty biography, or discovering that the

brightest names have had sad blots and blemishes scoured off by the

attrition of Time's ceaseless current. We can expect little from

investigators so volatile and capricious; else should we expect the

topic we approach in this paper to have been long ago flooded with

light as of Maedler's sun, its dust dissipated, and sundry curves and

angles which still baffle scrutiny and provoke curiosity exposed even

to Gallio-llke wayfarers. It is, in fact, a neglected topic. Its

derivatives are obscure, its facts doubtful. Questions spring from

it, sucker-like, numberless, which none may answer. Why, for

instance, in apportioning his gifts among his posterity, did Phoebus

assign the laurel to his step-progeny, the sons of song, and pour the

rest of the vegetable world into the pharmacopoeia of the favored

Æsculapius? Why was even this wretched legacy divided in aftertimes

with the children of Mars? Was its efficacy as a non-conductor of

lightning as reliable as was held by Tiberius, of guileless memory,

Emperor of Rome? Were its leaves really found green as ever in the

tomb of St. Humbert, a century and a half after the interment of that

holy confessor? In what reign was the first bay-leaf, rewarding the

first poet of English song, authoritatively conferred? These and other

like questions are of so material concern to the matter we have in

hand, that we may fairly stand amazed that they have thus far escaped

the exploration of archaeologists. It is not for us to busy ourselves

with other men's affairs. Time and patience shall develope profounder

mysteries than these. Let us only succeed in delineating in brief

monograph the outlines of a natural history of the British

Laurel,--_Laurea nobilis, sempervirens, florida_,--and in posting

here and there, as we go, a few landmarks that shall facilitate the

surveys of investigators yet unborn, and this our modest enterprise

shall be happily fulfilled.

One portion of it presents no serious difficulty. There is an

uninterrupted canon of the Laureates running as far back as the reign

of James I. Anterior, however, to that epoch, the catalogue fades away

in undistinguishable darkness. Names are there of undoubted splendor,

a splendor, indeed, far more glowing than that of any subsequent

monarch of the bays; but the legal title to the garland falls so far

short of satisfactory demonstration, as to oblige us to dismiss the

first seven Laureates with a dash of that ruthless criticism with

which Niebuhr, the regicide, dispatched the seven kings of Rome. To

mark clearly the bounds between the mythical and the indubitable, a

glance at the following brief of the Laureate _fasti_ will

greatly assist us, speeding us forward at once to the substance of our

story.

I. The MYTHICAL PERIOD, extending from the supposititious coronation

of Laureate CHAUCER, _in temp. Edv. III., 1367_, to that of

Laureate JONSON, _in temp. Caroli I._ To this period belong,

GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 1367-1400

JOHN SCOGAN, 1400-1413

JOHN KAY, 1465-

ANDREW BERNARD, 1486-

JOHN SKELTON, 1509-1529

EDMUND SPENSER, 1590-1599

SAMUEL DANIEL, }

MICHAEL DRAYTON, } 1600-1630

BEN JONSON, }

II. The DRAMATIC, extending from the latter event to the demise of

Laureate SHADWELL, _in temp. Gulielmi III., 1692._ Here we have

BEN JONSON, 1630-1637

WILL DAVENANT, 1637-1668

JOHN DRYDEN, 1670-1689

THOMAS SHADWELL, 1689-1692

III. The LYRIC, from the reign of Laureate TATE, 1693, to the demise

of Laureate PYE, 1813:--

NAHUM TATE, 1693-1714

NICHOLAS ROWE, 1714-1718

LAURENCE EUSDEN, 1719-1730

COLLEY CIBBER, 1730-1757

WILLIAM WHITEHEAD, 1758-1785

THOMAS WARTON, 1785-1790

HENRY JAMES PYE, 1790-1813

IV. The VOLUNTARY, from the accession of Laureate SOUTHEY, 1813, to

the present day:--

ROBERT SOUTHEY, 1813-1843

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1843-1850

ALFRED TENNYSON, 1850-

Have no faith in those followers of vain traditions who assert the

existence of the Laureate office as early as the thirteenth century,

attached to the court of Henry III. Poets there were before

Chaucer,--_vixere fortes ante Agamemnona_,--but search Rymer from

cord to clasp and you shall find no documentary evidence of any one of

them wearing the leaf or receiving the stipend distinctive of the

place. Morbid credulity can go no farther back than to the "Father of

English Poetry":--

"That renounced Poet,

Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,

On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled":[1]

"Him that left half-told

The story of Cambuscan bold;

Of Camball, and of Algarsife,

And who had Canace to wife":[2]

"That noble Chaucer, in those former times,

Who first enriched our English with his rhymes,

And was the first of ours that ever broke

Into the Muse's treasures, and first spoke

In mighty numbers."[3]

Tradition here first assumes that semblance of probability which

rendered it current for three centuries. Edward the Third--resplendent

name in the constitutional history of England--is supposed to have

been so deeply impressed with Chaucer's poetical merits, as to have

sought occasion for appropriate recognition. Opportunely came that

high festival at the capital of the world, whereat

"Franccis Petrark, the laureat poete,

... whos rethorike swete

Enlumined all Itaille of poetrie,"[4]

received the laurel crown at the hands of the Senate of Rome, with a

magnificence of ceremonial surpassed only by the triumphs of imperial

victors a thousand years before. Emulous of the gorgeous example, the

English monarch forthwith showered corresponding honors upon Dan

Chaucer, adding the substantial perquisites of a hundred marks and a

tierce of Malvoisie, a year. To this agreeable story, Laureate Warton,

than whom no man was more intimately conversant with the truth there

is in literary history, appears in one of his official odes to yield

assent:--

"Victorious Edward gave the vernal bough

Of Britain's bay to bloom on Chaucer's brow:

Fired with the gift, he changed to sounds sublime

His Norman minstrelsy's discordant chime."[5]

The legend, however, does not bear inquiry. King Edward, in 1367,

certainly granted an annuity of twenty marks to "his varlet, Geoffrey

Chaucer." Seven years later there was a further grant of a pitcher of

wine daily, together with the controllership of the wool and petty

wine revenues for the port of London. The latter appointment, to which

the pitcher of wine was doubtless incident, was attended with a

requirement that the new functionary should execute all the duties of

his post in person,--a requirement involving as constant and laborious

occupation as that of Charles Lamb, chained to his perch in the India

House. These concessions, varied slightly by subsequent patents from

Richard II. and Henry IV., form the entire foundation to the tale of

Chaucer's Laureateship.[6] There is no reference in grant or patent to

his poetical excellence or fame, no mention whatever of the laurel, no

verse among the countless lines of his poetry indicating the reception

of that crowning glory, no evidence that the third Edward was one whit

more sensitive to the charms of the Muses than the third William,

three hundred years after. Indeed, the condition with which the

appointment of this illustrious custom-house officer was hedged

evinced, if anything, a desire to discourage a profitless wooing of

the Nine, by so confining his mind to the incessant routine of an

uncongenial duty as to leave no hours of poetic idleness. Whatever

laurels Fame may justly garland the temples of Dan Chaucer withal, she

never, we are obliged to believe, employed royal instrument at the

coronation.

John Scogan, often confounded with an anterior Henry, has been named

as the Laureate of Henry IV., and immediate successor of

Chaucer. Laureate Jonson seems to encourage the notion:--

"_Mere Fool._ Skogan? What was he?

"_Jophiel._ Oh, a fine gentleman, and master of arts

Of Henry the Fourth's time, that made disguises

For the King's sons, and writ in ballad-royal

Daintily well.

"_Mere Fool_. But he wrote like a gentleman?

"_Jophiel_. In rhyme, fine, tinkling rhyme, and flowand verse,

With now and then some sense; and he was paid for't,

Regarded and rewarded; which few poets

Are nowadays."[7]

But Warton places Scogan in the reign of Edward IV., and reduces him

to the level of Court Jester, his authority being Dr. Andrew Borde,

who, early in the sixteenth century, published a volume of his

platitudes.[8] There is nothing to prove that he was either poet or

Laureate; while, on the other hand, it must be owned, one person might

at the same time fill the offices of Court Poet and Court Fool. It is

but fair to say that Tyrwhitt, who had all the learning and more than

the accuracy of Warton, inclines to Jonson's estimate of Scogan's

character and employment.

One John Kay, of whom we are singularly deficient in information, held

the post of Court Poet under the amorous Edward IV. What were his

functions and appointments we cannot discover.

Andrew Bernard held the office under Henry VII. and Henry VIII. He was

a churchman, royal historiographer, and tutor to Prince Arthur. His

official poems were in Latin. He was living as late as 1522.

John Skelton obtained the distinction of Poet-Laureate at Oxford, a

title afterward confirmed to him by the University of Cambridge: mere

university degrees, however, without royal indorsement. Henry

VIII. made him his "Royal Orator," whatever that may have been, and

otherwise treated him with favor; but we hear nothing of sack or

salary, find nothing among his poems to intimate that his performances

as Orator ever ran into verse, or that his "laurer" was of the regal

sort.

A long stride carries us to the latter years of Queen Elizabeth,

where, and in the ensuing reign of James, we find the names of Edmund

Spenser, Samuel Daniel, and Michael Drayton interwoven with the

bays. Spenser's possession of the laurel rests upon no better evidence

than that, when he presented the earlier books of the "Faery Queen" to

Elizabeth, a pension of fifty pounds a year was conferred upon him,

and that the praises of _Gloriana_ ring through his realm of

Faëry in unceasing panegyric. But guineas are not laurels, though for

sundry practical uses they are, perhaps, vastly better; nor are the

really earnest and ardent eulogia of the bard of Mulla the same in

kind with the harmonious twaddle of Tate, or the classical quiddities

of Pye. He was of another sphere, the highest heaven of song, who

"Waked his lofty lay

To grace Eliza's golden sway;

And called to life old Uther's elfin-tale,

And roved through many a necromantic vale,

Portraying chiefs who knew to tame

The goblin's ire, the dragon's flame,

To pierce the dark, enchanted hall

Where Virtue sat in lonely thrall.

From fabling Fancy's inmost store

A rich, romantic robe he bore,

A veil with visionary trappings hung,

And o'er his Virgin Queen the fairy-texture flung."[9]

Samuel Daniel was not only a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, but more

decidedly so of her successor in the queendom, Anne of Denmark. In the

household of the latter he held the position of Groom of the Chamber,

a sinecure of handsome endowment, so handsome, indeed, as to warrant

an occasional draft upon his talents for the entertainment of her

Majesty's immediate circle, which held itself as far as possible aloof

from the court, and was disposed to be self-reliant for its

amusements. Daniel had entered upon the vocation of courtier with

flattering auspices. His precocity while at Oxford has found him a

place in the "Bibliotheca Eruditorum Præcocium." Anthony Wood bears

witness to his thorough accomplishments in all kinds, especially in

history and poetry, specimens of which, the antiquary tells us, were

still, in his time, treasured among the archives of Magdalen. He

deported himself so amiably in society, and so inoffensively among his

fellow-bards, and versified his way so tranquilly into the good graces

of his royal mistresses, distending the thread, and diluting the

sense, and sparing the ornaments, of his passionless poetry,--if

poetry, which, by the definition of its highest authority, is "simple,

sensuous, passionate," can ever be unimpassioned,--that he was the

oracle of feminine taste while he lived, and at his death bequeathed a

fame yet dear to the school of Southey and Wordsworth. Daniel was no

otherwise Laureate than his position in the queen's household may

authorize that title. If ever so entitled by contemporaries, it was

quite in a Pickwickian and complimentary sense. His retreat from the

busy vanity of court life, an event which happened several years

before his decease in 1619, was hastened by the consciousness of a

waning reputation, and of the propriety of seeking better shelter than

that of his laurels. His eloquent "Defense of Rhyme" still asserts for

him a place in the hearts of all lovers of stately English prose.

Old Michael Drayton, whose portrait has descended to us, surmounted

with an exuberant twig of bays, is vulgarly classed with the

legitimate Laureates. Southey, pardonably anxious to magnify an office

belittled by some of its occupants, does not scruple to rank Spenser,

Daniel, and Drayton among the Laurelled:--

"That wreath, which, in Eliza's golden days,

My master dear, divinest Spenser, wore,

That which rewarded Drayton's learned lays,

Which thoughtful Ben and gentle Daniel bore," etc.

But in sober prose Southey knew, and later in life taught, that not

one of the three named ever wore the authentic laurel.[10] That Drayton

deserved it, even as a successor of the divinest Spenser, who shall

deny? With enough of patience and pedantry to prompt the composition

of that most laborious, and, upon the whole, most humdrum and

wearisome poem of modern times, the "Polyolbion," he nevertheless

possessed an abounding exuberance of delicate fancy and sound poetical

judgment, traces of which flash not unfrequently even athwart the

dulness of his _magnum opus_, and through the mock-heroism of

"England's Heroical Epistles," while they have full play in his "Court

of Faëry." Drayton's great defect was the entire absence of that

dramatic talent so marvellously developed among his contemporaries,--a

defect, as we shall presently see, sufficient of itself to disqualify

him for the duties of Court Poet. But, what was still worse, his mind

was not gifted with facility and versatility of invention, two equally

essential requisites; and to install him in a position where such

faculties were hourly called into play would have been to put the

wrong man in the worst possible place. Drayton was accordingly a

court-pensioner, but not a court-poet. His laurel was the honorary

tribute of admiring friends, in an age when royal pedantry rendered

learning fashionable and a topic of exaggerated regard. Southey's

admission is to this purpose. "He was," he says, "one of the poets to

whom the title of Laureate was given in that age,--not as holding the

office, but as a mark of honor, to which they were entitled." And with

the poetical topographer such honors abounded. Not only was he

gratified with the zealous labors of Selden in illustration of the

"Polyolbion," but his death was lamented in verse of Jonson, upon

marble supplied by the Countess of Dorset:--

"Do, pious marble, let thy readers know

What they and what their children owe

To Drayton's name, whose sacred dust

We recommend unto thy trust.

Protect his memory, and preserve his story;

Remain a lasting monument of his glory:

And when thy ruins shall disclaim

To be the treasurer of his name,

His name, that cannot fade, shall be

An everlasting monument to thee."

The Laureateship, we thus discover, had not, down to the days of

James, become an institution. Our mythical series shrink from close

scrutiny. But in the gayeties of the court of the Stuarts arose

occasion for the continuous and profitable employment of a court-poet,

and there was enough thrift in the king to see the advantage of

securing the service for a certain small annuity, rather than by the

payment of large sums as presents for occasional labors. The masque, a

form of dramatic representation, borrowed from the Italian, had been

introduced into England during the reign of Elizabeth. The interest

depended upon the development of an allegorical subject apposite to

the event which the performance proposed to celebrate, such as a royal

marriage, or birthday, or visit, or progress, or a marriage or other

notable event among the nobility and gentry attached to the court, or

an entertainment in honor of some distinguished personage. To produce

startling and telling stage effects, machinery of the most ingenious

contrivance was devised; scenery, as yet unknown in ordinary

exhibitions of the stage, was painted with elaborate finish; goddesses

in the most attenuated Cyprus lawn, bespangled with jewels, had to

slide down upon invisible wires from a visible Olympus; Tritons had to

rise from the halls of Neptune through waters whose undulations the

nicer resources of recent art could not render more genuinely marine;

fountains disclosed the most bewitching of Naiads; and Druidical oaks,

expanding, surrendered the imprisoned Hamadryad to the air of

heaven. Fairies and Elves, Satyrs and Forsters, Centaurs and Lapithae,

played their parts in these gaudy spectacles with every conventional

requirement of shape, costume, and behavior _point-de-vice_, and were

supplied by the poet, to whom the letter-press of the show had been

confided, with language and a plot, both pregnant with more than

Platonic morality. Some idea of the magnificence of these displays,

which beggared the royal privy-purse, drove household-treasurers mad,

and often left poet and machinist whistling for pay, may be gathered

from the fact that a masque sometimes cost as much as two thousand

pounds in the mechanical getting-up, a sum far more formidable in the

days of exclusively hard money than in these of paper currency. Scott

has described, for the benefit of the general reader, one such pageant

among the "princely pleasures of Kenilworth"; while Milton, in his

"Masque performed at Ludlow Castle," presents the libretto of another,

of the simpler and less expensive sort. During the reign of James, the

passion for masques kindled into a mania. The days and nights of

Inigo Jones were spent in inventing machinery and contriving

stage-effects. Daniel, Middleton, Fletcher, and Jonson were busied

with the composition of the text; and the court ladies and cavaliers

were all from morning till night in the hands of their dancing and

music masters, or at private study, or at rehearsal, preparing for the

pageant, the representation of which fell to their share and won them

enviable applause. Of course the burden of original invention fell

upon the poets; and of the poets, Daniel and Jonson were the most

heavily taxed. In 1616, James I., by patent, granted to Jonson an

annuity for life of one hundred marks, to him in hand not often well

and truly paid. He was not distinctly named as Laureate, but seems to

have been considered such; for Daniel, on his appointment, "withdrew

himself," according to Gifford, "entirely from court." The

strong-boxes of James and Charles seldom overflowed. Sir Robert Pye,

an ancestor of that Laureate Pye whom we shall discuss by-and-by, was

the paymaster, and often and again was the overwrought poet obliged to

raise

"A woful cry

To Sir Robert Pye,"

before some small instalment of long arrearages could be procured. And

when, rarely, very rarely, his Majesty condescended to remember the

necessities of "his and the Muses' servant," and send a present to the

Laureate's lodgings, its proportions were always so small as to excite

the ire of the insulted Ben, who would growl forth to the messenger,

"He would not have sent me this, (_scil._ wretched pittance,) did

I not live in an alley."

We now arrive at the true era of the Laureateship. Charles, in 1630,

became ambitious to signalize his reign by some fitting tribute to

literature. A petition from Ben Jonson pointed out the way. The

Laureate office was made a patentable one, in the gift of the Lord

Chamberlain, as purveyor of the royal amusements. Ben was confirmed

in the office. The salary was raised from one hundred marks to one

hundred pounds, an advance of fifty per cent, to which was added

yearly a tierce of Canary wine,--an appendage appropriate to the

poet's convivial habits, and doubtless suggested by the mistaken

precedent of Chaucer's daily flagon of wine. Ben Jonson was certainly,

of all men living in 1630, the right person to receive this honor,

which then implied, what it afterward ceased to do, the primacy of the

diocese of letters. His learning supplied ballast enough to keep the

lighter bulk of the poet in good trim, while it won that measure of

respect which mere poetical gifts and graces would not have

secured. He was the dean of that group of "poets, poetaccios,

poetasters, and poetillos," [11] who beset the court. If a display of

erudition were demanded, Ben was ready with the heavy artillery of the

unities, and all the laws of Aristotle and Horace, Quintilian and

Priscian, exemplified in tragedies of canonical structure, and

comedies whose prim regularity could not extinguish the most

delightful and original humor--Robert Burton's excepted--that

illustrated that brilliant period. But if the graceful lyric or

glittering masque were called for, the boundless wealth of Ben's

genius was most strikingly displayed. It has been the fashion, set by

such presumptuous blunderers as Warburton and such formal prigs as

Gifford, to deny our Laureate the possession of those ethereal

attributes of invention and fancy which play about the creations of

Shakspeare, and constitute their exquisite charm. This arbitrary

comparison of Jonson and Shakspeare has, in fact, been the bane of the

former's reputation. Those who have never read the masques argue,

that, as "very little Latin and less Greek," in truth no learning of

any traceable description, went to the creation of _Ariel_ and

_Caliban_, _Oberon_ and _Puck_, the possession of Latin, Greek, and

learning generally, incapacitates the proprietor for the same happy

exercise of the finer and more gracious faculties of wit and fancy.

Of this nonsense Jonson's masques are the best refutation. Marvels of

ingenuity in plot and construction, they abound in "dainty invention,"

animated dialogue, and some of the finest lyric passages to be found

in dramatic literature. They are the Laureate's true laurels. Had he

left nothing else, the "rare arch-poet" would have held, by virtue of

these alone, the elevated rank which his contemporaries, and our own,

freely assign him. Lamb, whose appreciation of the old dramatists was

extremely acute, remarks,--"A thousand beautiful passages from his

'New Inn,' and from those numerous court masques and entertainments

which he was in the daily habit of furnishing, might be adduced to

show the poetical fancy and elegance of mind of the supposed rugged

old bard." [12] And in excess of admiration at one of the Laureate's

most successful pageants, Herrick breaks forth,--

"Thou hadst the wreath before, now take the tree,

That henceforth none be laurel-crowned but thee." [13]

An aspiration fortunately unrealized.

It was not long before the death of Ben, that John Suckling, one of

his boon companions

"At those lyric feasts,

Made at 'The Sun,'

'The Dog,' 'The Triple Tun,'

Where they such clusters had

As made them nobly wild, not mad," [14]

handed about among the courtiers his "Session of the Poets," where an

imaginary contest for the laurel presented an opportunity for

characterizing the wits of the day in a series of capital strokes, as

remarkable for justice as shrewd wit. Jonson is thus introduced:--

"The first that broke silence was good old Ben,

Prepared with Canary wine,

And he told them plainly he deserved the bays,

For his were called works, while others' were but plays;

"And bid them remember how he had purged the stage

Of errors that had lasted many an age;

And he hoped they did not think 'The Silent Woman,'

'The Fox,' and 'The Alchymist' outdone by no man.

"Apollo stopt him there, and bid him not go on;

'Twas merit, he said, and not presumption,

Must carry it; at which Ben turned about,

And in great choler offered to go out;

"But those who were there thought it not fit

To discontent so ancient a wit,

And therefore Apollo called him back again,

And made him mine host of his own 'New Inn.'"

This _jeu d'esprit_ of Suckling, if of no value otherwise, would

be respectable as an original which the Duke of Buckinghamshire,[15]

Leigh Hunt,[16] and our own Lowell[17] have successfully and happily

imitated.

In due course, Laureate Jonson shared the fate of all potentates, and

was gathered to the laurelled of Elysium. The fatality occurred in

1637. When his remains were deposited in the Poet's Corner, with the

eloquent laconism above them, "O Rare Ben Jonson!" all the wits of the

day stood by the graveside, and cast in their tribute of bays. The

rite over, all the wits of the day hurried from the aisles of

Westminster to the galleries of Whitehall to urge their several claims

to the successorship. There were, of the elder time, Massinger,

drawing to the close of a successful career,--Ford, with his growing

fame,--Marmion, Heywood, Carlell, Wither. There was Sandys, especially

endeared to the king by his orthodox piety, so becoming the son of an

archbishop, and by his versions of the "Divine Poems," which were next

year given to the press, and which found a place among the half-dozen

volumes which a decade later solaced the last hours of his royal

master. There were the names, in the junior class, of Tom Carew, noted

for his amatory songs and his one brilliant masque,--Tom Killigrew, of

pleasant humor, and no mean writer of tragedy,--Suckling, the wittiest

of courtiers, and the most courtly of wits,--Cartwright, Crashaw,

Davenant, and May. But of all these, the contest soon narrowed down to

the two latter. William Davenant was in all likelihood the son of an

innkeeper at Oxford; he was certainly the son of the innkeeper's

wife. A rumor, which Davenant always countenanced, alleged that

William Shakspeare, a poet of some considerable repute in those times,

being in the habit of passing between Stratford-on-the-Avon and

London, was wont to bait and often lodge at this Oxford hostelry. At

one of these calls the landlady had proved more than ordinarily frail

or the poet more than ordinarily seductive,--who can wonder at even

virtue stooping to folly when the wooer was the Swan of Avon, beside

whom the bird that captivated Leda was as a featherless gosling?--and

the consequence had been Will Davenant, born in the year of our Lord

1605, Shakspeare standing as godfather at the baptism. A boy of lively

parts was Will, and good-fortune brought those parts to the notice of

the grave and philosophic Greville, Lord Brooke, whose dearest boast

was the friendship in early life of Sir Philip Sidney. The result of

this notice was a highly creditable education at school and

university, and an ultimate introduction into the foremost society of

the capital. Davenant, finding the drama supreme in fashionable

regard, devoted himself to the drama. He also devoted himself to the

cultivation of Ben Jonson, then at the summit of renown, assisting in

an amateur way in the preparation of the court pageants, and otherwise

mitigating the Laureate's labors. From 1632 to 1637, these aids were

frequent, and established a very plausible claim to the

succession. Thomas May, who shortly became his sole competitor, was a

man of elevated pretensions. As a writer of English historical poems

and as a translator of Lucan he had earned a prominent position in

British literature; as a continuator of the "Pharsalia" in Latin verse

of exemplary elegance, written in the happiest imitation of the

martyred Stoic's unimpassioned mannerism, he secured for British

scholarship that higher respect among Continental scholars which

Milton's Latin poems and "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano" presently

after confirmed. Of the several English writers of Latin verse, May

stands unquestionably in the front rank, alongside of Milton and

Bourne,--taking precedence easily of Owen, Cowley, and Gray. His

dramatic productions were of a higher order than Davenant's. They have

found a place in Dodsley's and the several subsequent collections of

early dramas, not conceded to the plays of the latter. Masque-making,

however, was not in his line. His invention was not sufficiently

alert, his dialogue not sufficiently lively, for a species of poetry

which it was the principal duty of the Laureate to furnish. Besides,

it is highly probable, his sympathies with rebellious Puritanism were

already so far developed as to make him an object of aversion to the

king. Davenant triumphed. The defeated candidate lived to see the

court dispersed, king and Laureate alike fugitive, and to receive from

the Long Parliament the place of Historiographer, as a compensation

for the lost bays. When, in 1650, he died, Cromwell and his

newly-inaugurated court did honor to his obsequies. The body was

deposited in Westminster Abbey; but the posthumous honor was in

reserve for it, of being torn from the grave after the Restoration,

and flung into a ditch along with the remains of three or four other

republican leaders.

Davenant's career in office was unfortunate. There is reason to doubt

whether, even before the rebellion broke out, his salary was regularly

paid him. During the Civil War he exchanged the laurel for a casque,

winning knighthood by his gallant carriage at the siege of Gloucester.

Afterward, he was so far in the confidence of Queen Henrietta Maria,

as to be sent as her envoy to the captive king, beseeching him to save

his head by conceding the demands of Parliament. When, the errand

proving abortive, the royal head was lost, Davenant returned to Paris,

consoled himself by finishing the first two books of his "Gondibert,"

and then, despairing of a restoration, embarked (in 1650) from France

for Virginia, where monarchy and the rights of Charles II were

unimpaired. Fate, however, had not destined him for a colonist and

backwoodsman. His ship, tempest-tossed, was driven into an English

port, and the poet was seized and carried close prisoner to

London. There the intervention of Milton, the Latin Secretary of the

Council, is said to have saved his life. He was kept in the Tower for

at least two years longer, however. The date of his release is

uncertain, but, once at liberty, Davenant returned ardently to his

former pursuits. A license was procured for musical exhibitions, and

the phrase "musical exhibitions" was interpreted, with official

connivance, as including all manner of dramatic performances. To the

Laureate and to this period belongs the credit of introducing scenery,

hitherto restricted to court masques, into the machinery of the

ordinary drama. The substitution of female for male actors, in

feminine characters, was also an innovation of this period. And as an

incident of the Laureateship there is still another novelty to be

noted. There is no crown without its thorns. The laurel renders the

pillow of the wearer as knotty, uneasy, and comfortless as does a

coronal of gold and jewels. Among the receipts of the office have been

the jokes, good and bad, the sneers, the satire of contemporary

wits,--such being the paper currency in which the turbulent subjects

of the laurel crown think proper to pay homage to their

sovereign. From the days of Will Davenant to these of ours, the custom

has been faithfully observed. Davenant's earliest assailants were of

his own political party, followers of the exiled Charles, the men whom

Milton describes as "perditissimus ille peregrinantium aulieorum

grex." These--among them a son of the memorable Donne, Sir John

Denham, and Alan Broderick--united in a volume of mean motive and

insignificant merit, entitled, "Verses written by Several of the

Author's Friends, to be reprinted with the Second Edition of

Gondibert." This was published in 1653. The effect of the onslaught

has not been recorded. We know only that Davenant, surviving it,

continued to prosper in his theatrical business, writing most of the

pieces produced on his stage until the Restoration, when he drew forth

from its hiding-place his wreath of laurel-evergreen, and resumed it

with honor.

A fair retrospect of Davenant's career enables us to select without

difficulty that one of his labors which is most deserving of

applause. Not his "Gondibert," notwithstanding it abounds in fine

passages,--notwithstanding Gay thought it worth continuation and

completion, and added several cantos,--notwithstanding Lamb eulogized

it with enthusiasm, Southey warmly praised, and Campbell and Hazlitt

coolly commended it. Nor his comedies, which are deservedly forgotten;

nor his improvements in the production of plays, serviceable as they

were to the acting drama. But to his exertions Milton owed impunity

from the vengeance otherwise destined for the apologist of regicide,

and so owed the life and leisure requisite to the composition of

"Paradise Lost." Davenant, grateful for the old kindness of the

ex-secretary, used his influence successfully with Charles to let the

offender escape.[18] This is certainly the greenest of Davenant's

laurels. Without it, the world might not have heard one of the

sublimest expressions of human genius.

Davenant died in 1668. The laurel was hung up unclaimed until 1670,

when John Dryden received it, with patent dated back to the summer

succeeding Davenant's death. Dryden assures us that it was Sir Thomas

Clifford, whose name a year later lent the initial letter to the

"Cabal," who presented him to the king, and procured his

appointment.[19] Masques had now ceased to be the mode. What the

dramatist could do to amuse the _blasé_ court of Charles II. he

was obliged to do within the limits of legitimate dramatic

representation, due care being taken to follow French models, and

substitute the idiom of Corneille and Molière for that of

Shakspeare. Dryden, whose plays are now read only by the curious, was,

in 1670, the greatest of living dramatists. He had expiated his

Cromwellian backslidings by the "Astraea Redux," and the "Annus

Mirabilis." He had risen to high favor with the king. His tragedies

in rhyming couplets were all the vogue. Already his fellow-playwrights

deemed their success as fearfully uncertain, unless they had secured,

price three guineas, a prologue or epilogue from the Laureate. So

fertile was his own invention, that he stood ready to furnish by

contract five plays a year,--a challenge fortunately declined by the

managers of the day. Thus, if the Laureate stipend were not punctually

paid, as was often the case, seeing the necessitous state of the royal

finances and the bevy of fair ladies, whose demands, extravagant as

they were, took precedence of all others, his revenues were adequate

to the maintenance of a family, the matron of which was a Howard,

educated, as a daughter of nobility, to the enjoyment of every

indulgence. These were the Laureate's brightest days. His popularity

was at its height, a fact evinced by the powerful coalitions deemed

necessary to diminish it. Indeed, the laurel had hardly rested upon

Dryden's temples before he experienced the assaults of an organized

literary opposition. The Duke of Buckingham, then the admitted leader

of fashionable prodigacy, borrowed the aid of Samuel Butler, at whose

"Hudibras" the world was still laughing,--of Thomas Sprat, then on the

high-road to those preferments which have given him an important place

in history,--of Martin Clifford, a familiar of the green-room and

coffee-house,--and concocted a farce ridiculing the person and office

of the Laureate. "The Rehearsal" was acted in 1671. The hero,

_Mr. Bayes_, imitated all the personal peculiarities of Dryden,

used his cant phrases, burlesqued his style, and exposed, while

pretending to defend, his ridiculous points, until the laugh of the

town was fairly turned upon the "premier-poet of the realm." The wit

was undoubtedly of the broadest, and the humor at the coffee-room

level; but it was so much the more effective. Dryden affected to be

indifferent to the satire. He jested at the time taken[20] and the

number of hands employed upon the composition. Twenty years later he

was at pains to declare his perfect freedom from rancor in consequence

of the attack.

There, is much reason to suspect, however, that "The Rehearsal" was

not forgotten, when the "Absalom and Achitophel" was written, and that

the character of _Zimri_ gathered much of its intense vigor and depth

of shadow from recollections of the ludicrous _Mr. Bayes_. The

portrait has the look of being designed as a quittance in full of old

scores. "The Rehearsal," though now and then recast and reënacted to

suit other times, is now no otherwise remembered than as the suggester

of Sheridan's "Critic."

Upon the heels of this onslaught others followed rapidly. Rochester,

disposed to singularity of opinion, set up Elkanah Settle, a young

author of some talent, as a rival to the Laureate. Anonymous bardings

lampooned him. _Mr. Bayes_ was a broad target for every shaft, so

that the complaint so feelingly uttered in his latter days, that "no

man living had ever been so severely libelled" as he, had a wide

foundation of fact. Sometimes, it must be owned, the thrusts were the

natural result of controversies into which the Laureate indiscreetly

precipitated himself; sometimes they came of generous partisanship in

behalf of friends, such friends, for example, as Sir Robert Howard,

his brother-in-law, an interminable spinner of intolerable verse, who

afflicted the world in his day with plays worse than plagues, and

poems as worthless as his plays. It was to a quarrel for and a quarrel

against this gentleman that we are indebted for the most trenchant

satire in the language. Sir Robert had fallen out with Dryden about

rhyming tragedies, of which he disapproved; and while it lasted, the

contest was waged with prodigious acrimony. Among the partisans of the

former was Richard Flecknoe, a Triton among the smaller scribbling

fry. Flecknoe--blunderingly classed among the Laureates by the

compiler of "Cibber's Lives of the Poets"--was an Irish priest, who

had cast his cassock, or, as he euphuistically expressed it, "laid

aside the mechanic part of priesthood," in order to fulfil the loftier

mission of literary garreteer in London. He had written poems and

plays without number; of the latter, but one, entitled "Love's

Dominion," had been brought upon the stage, and was summarily hissed

off. Jealousy of Dryden's splendid success brought him to the side of

Dryden's opponent, and a pamphlet, printed in 1668, attacked the

future Laureate so bitterly, and at points so susceptible, as to make

a more than ordinary draft upon the poet's patience, and to leave

venom that rankled fourteen years without finding vent.[21] About the

same time, Thomas Shadwell, who is represented in the satire as

likewise an Irishman, brought Sir Robert on the stage in his "Sullen

Lovers," in the character of _Sir Positive At-all_, a caricature

replete with absurd self-conceit and impudent dogmatism. Shadwell was

of "Norfolcian" family, well-born, well-educated, and fitted for the

bar, but drawn away from serious pursuits by the prevalent rage for

the drama. The offence of laughing at the poet's brother-in-law

Shadwell had aggravated by accepting the capricious patronage of Lord

Rochester, by subsequently siding with the Whigs, and by aiding the

ambitious designs of Shaftesbury in play and pamphlet,--labors the

value of which is not to be measured by the contemptuous estimate of

the satirist. The first outburst of the retributive storm fell upon

the head of Shadwell. The second part of "Absalom and Achitophel,"

which appeared in the autumn of 1682, contains the portrait of

_Og_, cut in outlines so sharp as to remind us of an unrounded

alto-rilievo:--

Now stop your noses, readers, all and some,

For here's a tun of midnight work to come,

Og, from a treason-tavern rolling home;

Round as a globe, and liquored every chink,

Goodly and great he sails behind his link.

With all his bulk, there's nothing lost in Og,

For every inch that is not fool is rogue ....

The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull

With this prophetic blessing, Be thou dull!

Drink, swear, and roar, forbear no lewd delight

Fit for thy bulk; do anything but write.

Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink,

Still thou mayst live, avoiding pen and ink.

I see, I see, 'tis counsel given in vain;

For treason botched in rhyme will be thy bane ....

A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull,

For writing treason, and for writing dull...

I will not rake the dunghill of thy crimes,

For who would read thy life who reads thy rhymes?

But of King David's foes be this the doom,

May all be like the young man Absalom!

And for my foes, may this their blessing be,

To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee!

Of the multitudinous rejoinders and counterblasts provoked by this

thunder, Dryden, it is supposed, ascribed the authorship of one of the

keenest to Shadwell. We are to conceive some new and immediate

provocation as added to the old grudge, to call for a second attack so

soon; for it was only a month later that the "MacFlecknoe" appeared;

not in 1689, as Dr. Johnson states, who, mistaking the date, also errs

in assuming the cause of Dryden's wrath to have been the transfer of

the laurel from his own to the brows of Shadwell. "MacFlecknoe" is by

common consent the most perfect and perfectly acrid satire in English

literature. The topics selected, the foibles attacked, the ingenious

and remorseless ridicule with which they are overwhelmed, the

comprehensive vindictiveness which converted every personal

characteristic into an instrument for the more refined torment of the

unhappy victim, conjoin to constitute a masterpiece of this lower form

of poetical composition;--poetry it is not. While Flecknoe's

pretensions as a dramatist were fairly a subject of derision, Shadwell

was eminently popular. He was a pretender to learning, and,

entertaining with Dryden strong convictions of the reality of a

literary metempsychosis, believed himself the heir of Jonson's genius

and erudition. The title of the satire was, therefore, of itself a

biting sarcasm. His claims to sonship were transferred from Jonson,

then held the first of dramatic writers, to Flecknoe, the last and

meanest; and to aggravate the insult, the "Mac" was inserted as an

irritating allusion to the alleged Irish origin of both,--an allusion,

however harmless and senseless now, vastly significant at that era of

Irish degradation. Of the immediate effect of this scarification upon

Shadwell we have no information; how it ultimately affected his

fortunes we shall see presently.

During the closing years of Charles, and through the reign of James,

Dryden added to the duties of Court Poet those of political

pamphleteer and theological controversialist. The strength of his

attachment to the office, his sense of the honor it conferred, and his

appreciation of the salary we may infer from the potent influence such

considerations exercised upon his conversion to Romanism. In the

admirable portrait, too, by Lely, he chose to be represented with the

laurel in his hand. After his dethronement, he sought every occasion

to deplore the loss of the bays, and of the stipend, which in the

increasing infirmity and poverty of his latter days had become

important. The fall of James necessarily involved the fall of his

Laureate and Historiographer. Lord Dorset, the generous but sadly

undiscriminating patron of letters, having become Lord Chamberlain, it

was his duty to remove the reluctant Dryden from the two places,--a

duty not to be postponed, and scarcely to be mitigated, so violent was

the public outcry against the renegade bard. The entire Protestant

feeling of the nation, then at white heat, was especially ardent

against the author of the "Hind and Panther," who, it was said, had

treated the Church of England as the persecutors had treated the

primitive martyr, dressed her in the skin of a wild beast, and exposed

her to the torments of her adversaries. It was not enough to eject him

from office,--his inability to subscribe the test oaths would have

done so much,--but he was to be replaced by that one of his political

and literary antagonists whom he most sincerely disliked, and who

still writhed under his lash. Dorset appears to have executed the

disagreeable task with real kindness. He is said to have settled upon

the poet, out of his own fortune, an annuity equal to the lost

pension,--a statement which Dr. Johnson and Macaulay have repeated

upon the authority of Prior. What Prior said on the subject may be

found in the Dedication of Tonson's noble edition of his works to the

second Earl of Dorset:--"When, as Lord Chamberlain, he was obliged to

take the king's pension from Mr. Dryden, (who had long before put

himself out of a possibility of receiving any favor from the court,)

my Lord allowed him an equivalent out of his own estate. However

displeased with the conduct of his old acquaintance, he relieved his

necessities; and while he gave him his assistance in private, in

public he extenuated and pitied his error." But there is some reason

for thinking this equivalent was only the equivalent of one year's

salary, and this assistance casual, not stated; else we are at a loss

to understand the continual complaints of utter penury which the poet

uttered ever after. Some of these complaints were addressed to his

benefactor himself, as in the Dedication to Juvenal and Persius,

1692:--"Age has overtaken me, and _want_, a more insufferable

evil, through the change of the times, _has wholly disenabled

me_. Though I must ever acknowledge, to the honor of your Lordship,

and the eternal memory of your charity, that, since this revolution,

wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and

the loss of that poor subsistence I had from two kings, whom I served

more faithfully than profitably to myself,--then your Lordship was

pleased, out of no other motive than your own nobleness, without any

desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most

bountiful _present_, which, in that time when I was most in want

of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief." This

passage was the sole authority, we suspect, Prior had for a story

which was nevertheless sufficiently true to figure in an adulatory

dedication; and, indeed, Prior may have used the word "equivalent"

loosely, and had Dorset's gift been more than a year's income, Dryden

would hardly have called it a "present,"--a phrase scarcely applicable

to the grant of a pension.[22]

Dismissed from office and restored to labors more congenial than the

dull polemics which had recently engaged his mind, Dryden found

himself obliged to work vigorously or starve. He fell into the hands

of the booksellers. The poems, it deserves remark, upon which his fame

with posterity must finally rest, were all produced within the period

bounded by his deposition and his death. The translations from

Juvenal, the versions of Persius and of Virgil, the Fables, and the

"Ode upon St. Cecilia's Day," were the works of this period. He lived

to see his office filled successively by a rival he despised and a

friend who had deserted him, and in its apparently hopeless

degradation perhaps found consolation for its loss.

Thomas Shadwell was the Poet-Laureate after Dryden, assuming the

wreath in 1689. We have referred to his origin; Langbaine gives 1642

as the date of his birth; so that he must have set up as author early

in life, and departed from life shortly past middle-age. Derrick

assures us that he was lusty, ungainly, and coarse in person,--a

description answering to the full-length of _Og_. The commentators

upon "MacFlecknoe" have not made due use of one of Shadwell's habits,

in illustration of the reason why a wreath of poppies was selected for

the crown of its hero. The dramatist, Warburton informs us, was

addicted to the use of opium, and, in fact, died of an overdose of

that drug. Hence

"His temples, last, with poppies were o'er-spread,

That nodding seemed to consecrate his head."

A couplet which Pope echoes in the "Dunciad":--

"Shadwell nods, the poppy on his brows."

A similar allusion may be found in the character of _Og_:--

"Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink," etc.

That the Laureate was heavy-gaited in composition, taking five years

to finish one comedy,--that he was, on the other hand, too swift,

trusting Nature rather than elaborate Art,--that he was dull and

unimaginative,--that he was keen and remarkably sharp-witted,--that he

affected a profundity of learning of which he gave no evidences,--that

his plays were only less numerous than Dryden's, are other particulars

we gather from conflicting witnesses of the period. Certainly, no one

of the Laureates, Cibber excepted, was so mercilessly lampooned. What

Cibber suffered from the "Dunciad" Shadwell suffered from

"MacFlecknoe." Incited by Dryden's example, the poets showered their

missiles at him, and so perseveringly as to render him a traditional

butt of satire for two or three generations. Thus Prior:--

"Thus, without much delight or grief,

I fool away an idle life,

Till Shadwell from the town retires,

Choked up with fame and sea-coal fires,

To bless the wood with peaceful lyric:

Then hey for praise and panegyric;

Justice restored, and nations freed,

And wreaths round William's glorious head."

And Parnell:--

"But hold! before I close the scene,

The sacred altar should be clean.

Oh, had I Shadwell's second bays,

Or, Tate! thy pert and humble lays,--

Ye pair, forgive me, when I vow

I never missed your works till now,--

I'd tear the leaves to wipe the shrine,

That only way you please the Nine;

But since I chance to want these two,

I'll make the songs of Durfey do."

And in a far more venomous and violent style, the noteless mob of

contemporary writers.

Shadwell, after all, was very far from being the blockhead these

references imply. His "Third Nights" were probably far more

profitable than Dryden's.[23] By his friends he was classed with the

liveliest wits of a brilliant court. Rochester so classed him:--

"I loathe the rabble: 'tis enough for me,

If Sedley, Shadwell, Shephard, Wycherley,

Godolphin, Butler, Buckhurst, Buckingham,

And some few more, whom I omit to name,

Approve my sense: I count their censure fame."[24]

And compares him elsewhere with Wycherley:--

"Of all our modern wits, none seem to me

Once to have touched upon true comedy,

But hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley.

Shadwell's unfinished works do yet impart

Great proofs of force of nature, none of art;

With just, bold strokes, he dashes here and there,

Showing great mastery with little care,

Scorning to varnish his good touches o'er

To make the fools and women praise them more.

But Wycherley earns hard whate'er he gains;

He wants no judgment, and he spares no pains," etc.

And, not disrespectfully, Pope:--

"In all debates where critics bear a part,

Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art,

Of Shakspeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit;

How Beaumont's judgment checked what Fletcher writ;

How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;

But for the passions, Southerne, sure, and Rowe!

These, only these, support the crowded stage,

From eldest Heywood down to Cibber's age."[25]

Sedley joined him in the composition of more than one comedy.

Macaulay, in seeking illustrations of the times and occurrences of

which he writes, cites Shadwell five times, where he mentions

Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve once.[26] From his last play, "The

Stockjobbers," performed in November, 1692, while its author was on

his death-bed, the historian introduces an entire scene into his

text.[27] Any one, indeed, who can clear his mind from the unjust

prejudice produced by Dryden's satire, and read the comedies of

Shadwell with due consideration for the extemporaneous haste of their

composition, as satires upon passing facts and follies, will find,

that, so far from never deviating into sense, sound common-sense and

fluent wit were the Laureate's staple qualities. If his comedies have

not, like those of his contemporaries just named, enjoyed the

good-fortune to be collected and preserved among the dramatic

classics, the fact is primarily owing to the ephemeral interest of the

hits and allusions, and secondarily to "MacFlecknoe."

[To be continued.]

Footnote 1: SPENSER: _Faery Queen_. See also the _Two Cantos

of Mutability,_ Cant. VII.:--

"That old Dan Geffrey, in whose gentle spright

The pure well-head of poesie did dwell."

Footnote 2: MILTON: _Il Penseroso._

Footnote 3: WORDSWORTH: _Poems of Later Years_.

Footnote 4: CHAUCER: _Clerke's Tale_, Prologue.

Footnote 5: WARTON: _Ode on his Majesty's Birthday, 1787_.

Footnote 6: Tyrwhitt's Chaucer: _Historical Notes on his Life._

Footnote 7: _Masque of the Fortunate Islands_.

Footnote 8: _History of English Poetry_, Vol. II. pp. 335-336,

ed. 1840.

Footnote 9: WARTON: _Birthday Ode_, 1787.

Footnote 10: See his _British Poets, from Chaucer to Jonson_,

Art. _Daniel_. Southey contemplated a continuation of Warton's

_History_, and, in preparing for that labor, learned many things

he had never known of the earlier writers.

Footnote 11: Jonson's classification. See his _Poetaster_.

Footnote 12: _Lamb's Works, and Life_, by Talfourd, Vol. IV. p. 89.

Footnote 13: Hesperides, _Encomiastic Verses_.

Footnote 14: Herrick, _ubi supra._--To the haunts here named

must be added the celebrated _Mermaid_, of which Shakspeare was

the _Magnus Apollo_, and _The Devil_, where Pope imagines

Ben to have gathered peculiar inspiration:--

"And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,

He swears the Muses met him at _The Devil_."

_Imitation of Horace_, Bk. ii. Epist. i.

Footnote 15: _Election of a Poet-Laureate_, 1719, Works, Vol. II.

Footnote 16: _Feast of the Poets_, 1814.

Footnote 17: _Fable for Critics_, 1850.

Footnote 18: This story rests on the authority of Thomas Betterton,

the actor, who received it from Davenant.

Footnote 19: Dedication of the _Pastorals_ of Virgil, to Hugh,

Lord Clifford, the son of Sir Thomas.

Footnote 20: There were some indications that portions of the farce

had been written while Davenant was living and had been intended for

him. _Mr. Bayes_ appears in one place with a plaster on his nose,

an evident allusion to Davenant's loss of that feature. In a lively

satire of the time, by Richard Duke, it is asserted that Villiers was

occupied with the composition of _The Rehearsal_ from the

Restoration down to the day of its production on the stage:--

"But with playhouses, wars, immortal wars,

He waged, and ten years' rage produced a farce.

As many rolling years he did employ,

And hands almost as many, to destroy

Heroic rhyme, as Greece to ruin Troy.

Once more, says Fame, for battle he prepares,

And threatens rhymers with a second farce:

But, if as long for this as that we stay,

He'll finish Clevedon sooner than his play."

_The Review_

Footnote 21: It is little to the credit of Dryden, that, having saved

up his wrath against Flecknoe so long, he had not reserved it

altogether. Flecknoe had been dead at least four years when the

satire appeared.

Footnote 22: Macaulay quotes Blackmore's _Prince Arthur_, to

illustrate Dryden's dependence upon Dorset:--

"The poets' nation did obsequious wait

For the kind dole divided at his gate.

Laurus among the meagre crowd appeared,

An old, revolted, unbelieving bard,

Who thronged, and shoved, and pressed, and would be heard.

"Sakil's high roof, the Muse's palace, rung

With endless cries, and endless songs he sung.

To bless good Sakil Laurus would be first;

But Sakil's prince and Sakil's God he curst.

Sakil without distinction threw his bread,

Despised the flatterer, but the poet fed."

_Laurus_, of course, stands for Dryden, and _Sakil_ for

Dorset.

Footnote 23: _The Squire of Alsatia_ is said to have realized him

£130.

Footnote 24: _An Allusion to the Tenth Satire of the First Book of

Horace_.--The word "censure" will, of course, be understood to mean

_judgment_, not _condemnation_.

Footnote 25: _Imitation of Horace_, Bk. ii. Epist. i.

Footnote 26: See the _History of England_, Vol. IV., Chapter 17,

for reference to Shadwell's _Volunteers_.

Footnote 27: _History of England_, Chapter 19.

THE ROMANCE OF A GLOVE.

"Halt!" cried my travelling companion. "Property overboard!"

The driver pulled up his horses; and, before I could prevent him,

Westwood leaped down from the vehicle, and ran back for the article

that had been dropped.

It was a glove,--my glove, which I had inadvertently thrown out, in

taking my handkerchief from my pocket.

"Go on, driver!" and he tossed it into my hand as he resumed his seat

in the open stage.

"Take your reward," I said, offering him a cigar; "but beware of

rendering me another such service!"

"If it had been your hat or your handkerchief, be sure I should have

let it lie where it fell. But a glove,--that is different. I once

found a romance in a glove. Since then, gloves are sacred." And

Westwood gravely bit off the end of his cigar.

"A romance? Tell me about that. I am tired of this endless stretch of

sea-like country, these regular ground-swells; and it's a good

two-hours' ride yet to yonder headland, which juts out into the

prairie, between us and the setting sun. Meanwhile, your romance."

"Did I say romance? I fear you would hardly think it worthy of the

name," said my companion. "Every life has its romantic episodes, or,

at least, incidents which appear such to him who experiences them. But

these tender little histories are usually insipid enough when told. I

have a maiden aunt, who once came so near having an offer from a pale

stripling, with dark hair, seven years her junior, that to this day

she often alludes to the circumstance, with the remark, that she

wishes she knew some competent novel-writer in whom she could confide,

feeling sure that the story of that period of her life would make the

groundwork of a magnificent work of fiction. Possibly I inherit my

aunt's tendency to magnify into extraordinary proportions trifles

which I look at through the double convex lens of a personal

interest. So don't expect too much of my romance, and you shall hear

it.

"I said I found it in a glove. It was by no means a remarkable

glove,--middle-sized, straw-colored, and a neat fit for this hand, in

which I now hold your very excellent cigar. Of course, there was a

young lady in the case;--let me see,--I don't believe I can tell you

the story," said Westwood, "after all!"

I gently urged him to proceed.

"Pshaw!" said he, after kindling his cigar with a few vigorous whiffs,

"what's the use of being foolish? My aunt was never diffident about

telling her story, and why should I hesitate to tell mine? The young

lady's name,--we'll call her simply Margaret. She was a blonde, with

hazel eyes and dark hair. Perhaps you never heard of a blonde with

hazel eyes and dark hair? She was the only one I ever saw; and there

was the finest contrast imaginable between her fair, fresh complexion,

and her superb tresses and delicately-traced eyebrows. She was

certainly lovely, if not handsome; and--such eyes! It was an event in

one's life, Sir, just to look through those luminous windows into her

soul. That could not happen every day, be sure! Sometimes for weeks

she kept them turned from me, the ivory shutters half-closed, or the

mystic curtains of reserve drawn within; then, again, when I was

tortured with unsatisfied yearnings, and almost ready to despair, she

would suddenly turn them upon me, the shutters thrown wide, the

curtains away, and a flood of radiance streaming forth, that filled me

so full of light and gladness, that I had no shadowy nook left in me

for a doubt to hide in. She must have been conscious of this power of

expression. She used it so sparingly, and, it seemed to me, artfully!

But I always forgave her when she did use it, and cherished resentment

only when she did not.

"Margaret was shy and proud; I could never completely win her

confidence; but I knew, I knew well at last, that her heart was

mine. And a deep, tender, woman's heart it was, too, despite her

reserve. Without many words, we understood each other, and

so----Pshaw!" said Westwood, "my cigar is out!"

"On with the story!"

"Well, we had our lovers' quarrels, of course. Singular, what foolish

children love makes of us!--rendering us sensitive, jealous, exacting,

in the superlative degree. I am sure, we were both amiable and

forbearing towards all the world besides; but, for the powerful reason

that we loved, we were bound to misinterpret words, looks, and

actions, and wound each other on every convenient occasion. I was

pained by her attentions to others, or perhaps by an apparent

preference of a book or a bouquet to me. Retaliation on my part and

quiet persistence on hers continued to estrange us, until I generally

ended by conceding everything, and pleading for one word of kindness,

to end my misery.

"I was wrong,--too quick to resent, too ready to concede. No doubt, it

was to her a secret gratification to exercise her power over me; and

at last I was convinced that she wounded me purposely, in order to

provoke a temporary estrangement, and enjoy a repetition of her

triumph.

"It was at a party; the thing she did was to waltz with a man whom she

knew I detested, whom _I_ knew _she_ could not respect, and

whose half-embrace, as he whirled her in the dance, almost put murder

into my thoughts.

"'Margaret,' I said, 'one last word! If you care for me, beware!'

"That was a foolish speech, perhaps. It was certainly

ineffectual. She persisted, looking so calm and composed, that a great

weight fell upon my heart. I walked away; I wandered about the

saloons; I tried to gossip and be gay; but the wound was too deep.

"I accompanied her home, late in the evening. We scarcely spoke by the

way. At the door, she looked me sadly in the face,--she gave me her

hand; I thought it trembled.

"'Good-night!' she said, in a low voice.

"'Good-bye!' I answered, coldly, and hurried from the house.

"It was some consolation to hear her close the door after I had

reached the corner of the street, and to know that she had been

listening to my footsteps. But I was very angry. I made stern

resolutions; I vowed to myself, that I would wring her heart, and

never swerve from my purpose until I had wrung out of it abundant

drops of sorrow and contrition. How I succeeded you shall hear.

"I had previously engaged her to attend a series of concerts with me;

an arrangement which I did not now regret, and for good reasons. Once

a week, with famous punctuality, I called for her, escorted her to the

concert-room, and carefully reconducted her home,--letting no

opportunity pass to show her a true gentleman's deference and

respect,--conversing with her freely about music, books, anything, in

short, except what we both knew to be deepest in each other's

thoughts. Upon other occasions, I avoided her, and even refrained from

going to places where she was expected,--especially where she knew

that I knew she was expected.

"Well," continued Westwood, "my designs upon her heart, which I was

going to wring so unmercifully, did not meet with very brilliant

success. To confess the humiliating truth, I soon found that I was

torturing myself a good deal more than I was torturing her. As a last

and desperate resort, what do you think I did?"

"You probably asked her to ask your forgiveness."

"Not I! I have a will of adamant, as people find, who tear away the

amiable flowers and light soil that cover it; and she had reached the

impenetrable, firm rock. I neither made any advances towards a

reconciliation nor invited any. But I'll tell you what I did do, as a

final trial of her heart. I had, for some time, been meditating a

European tour, and my interest in her had alone kept me at home. Some

friends of mine were to sail early in the spring, and I now resolved

to accompany them. I don't know how much pride and spite there was in

the resolution,--probably a good deal. I confess I wished to make her

suffer,--to show her that she had calculated too much upon my

weakness,--that I could be strong and happy without her. Yet, with all

this bitter and vindictive feeling, I listened to a very sweet and

tender whisper in my heart, which said, 'Now, if her love speaks

out,--now, if she says to me one true, kind, womanly word,--she shall

go with me, and nothing shall ever take her from me again!' The

thought of what _might_ be, if she would but say that word, and

of what _must_ be, irrevocably, if her pride held out, shook me

mightily. But my resolution was taken: I would trust the rest to fate.

"On the day of the last concert, I imparted the secret of my intended

journey to a person who, I felt tolerably sure, would rush at once to

Margaret with the news. Then, in the evening, I went for her; I was

conscious that my manner towards her was a little more tender, or

rather, a little less coldly courteous, that night, than it had

usually been of late; for my feelings were softened, and I had never

seen her so lovely. I had never before known what a treasure I was

about to lose. The subject of my voyage was not mentioned, and if she

had heard of it, she accepted the fact without the least

visible concern. Her quietness under the circumstances chilled

me,--disheartened me quite. I am not one of those who can give much

superfluous love, or cling with unreasonable, blind passion to an

object that yields no affection in return. A quick and effectual

method of curing a fancy in persons of my temperament is to teach them

that it is not reciprocated. Then it expires like a flame cut off from

the air, or a plant removed from the soil. The death-struggle, the

uprooting, is the painful thing; but when the heart is thoroughly

convinced that its love is misplaced, it gives up, with one last sigh

as big as fate, sheds a few tears, says a prayer or two, thanks God

for the experience, and becomes a wiser, calmer,--yes, and a happier

heart than before."

"True," I said; "but our hearts are not thus easily convinced."

"Ay, there's the rub. It is for want of a true perception. There

cannot be a true love without a true perception. Love is for the soul

to know, from its own intuition,--not for the understanding to

believe, from the testimony of those very unreliable witnesses, called

eyes and ears. This seems to have been my case,--my soul was aware of

_her_ love, and all the evidence of my external senses could not

altogether destroy that interior faith. But that evening I said,--'I

believe you now, my senses! I doubt you now, my soul!--she never loved

me!' So I was really very cold towards her--for about twenty minutes.

"I walked home with her;--we were both silent; but at the door she

asked me to go in. Here my calmness deserted me, and I could hardly

hold my heart, while I replied,--

"'If you particularly wish it.'

"'If I did not, I should not ask you,' she said; and I went in.

"I was ashamed and vexed at myself for trembling so,--for I was in a

tremor from head to foot. There was company in the parlors,--some of

Margaret's friends. I took my seat upon a sofa, and soon she came and

sat by my side.

"'I suppose,' said one, 'Mr. Westwood has been telling Margaret all

about it.'

"'About what?' Margaret inquired,--and here the truth flashed upon

me,--the news of my proposed voyage had not yet reached her! She

looked at me with a troubled, questioning expression, and said,--

"'I felt that something was going to happen. Tell me what it is.'

"I answered,--'Your friend can best explain what she means.'

"Then out came the secret. A shock of surprise sent the color from

Margaret's face; and raising her eyes, she asked, quite calmly, but in

a low and unnatural tone,--

"'Is this so?'

"I said, 'I suppose I cannot deny it.'

"'You are really going?'

"'I am really going.'

"She could not hide her agitation. Her white face betrayed her. Then

I was glad, wickedly glad, in my heart,--and vain enough to be

gratified that others should behold and know I held a power over

her. Well,--but I suffered for that folly.

"'I feel hurt,' she said, after a little while, 'because you have not

told me this. You have no sister,' (this was spoken very quietly,)

'and it would have been a privilege for me to take a sister's place,

and do for you those little things which sisters do for brothers who

are going on long journeys.'

"I was choked;--it was a minute before I could speak. Then I said that

I saw no reason why she should tax her time or thoughts to do anything

for me.

"'Oh, you know,' she said, 'you have been kind to me,--so much kinder

than I have deserved!'

"It was unendurable,--the pathos of the words! I was blinded,

stifled,--I almost groaned aloud. If we had been alone, there our

trial would have ended. I should have snatched her to my soul. But

the eyes of others were upon us, and I steeled myself.

"'Besides,' I said, 'I know of nothing that you can do for me.'

"'There must be many little things;--to begin with, there is your

glove, which you are tearing to pieces.'

"True, I was tearing my glove,--she was calm enough to observe it!

That made me angry.

"'Give it to me; I will mend it for you. Haven't you other gloves that

need mending?'

"I, who had triumphed, was humbled.

"My heart was breaking,--and she talked of mending gloves! I did not

omit to thank her. I coldly arose to go.

"Well, I felt now that it was all over. The next day I secured my

passage in the steamer in which my friends were to sail. I took pains

that Margaret should hear of that, too. Then came the preparations for

travel,--arranging affairs, writing letters, providing myself with a

compact and comfortable outfit. Europe was in prospect,--Paris,

Switzerland, Italy, lands to which my dreams had long since gone

before me, and to which I now turned my eyes with reawakening

aspirations. A new glory arose upon my life, in the light of which

Margaret became a fading star. It was so much easier than I had

thought, to give her up, to part from her! I found that I could forget

her, in the excitement of a fresh and novel experience; while

she--could she forget me? When lovers part, happy is he who goes! alas

for the one that is left behind!

"One day, when I was busy with the books which I was to take with me,

a small package was handed in. I need not tell you that I experienced

a thrill, when I saw Margaret's handwriting upon the wrapper. I tore

it open,--and what think you I found? My glove! Nothing else. I

smiled bitterly, to see how neatly she had mended it; then I sighed;

then I said, 'It is finished!' and tossed the glove disdainfully into

my trunk.

"On the day before that fixed for the sailing of the steamer, I made

farewell calls upon many of my friends,--among others, upon

Margaret. But, through the perversity of pride and will, I did not go

alone,--I took with me Joseph, a mutual acquaintance, who was to be my

_compagnon de voyage_. I felt some misgivings, to see how

Margaret had changed; she was so softened, and so pale!

"The interview was a painful one, and I cut it short. As we were going

out, she gently detained me, and said,--

"'Did you receive--your glove?'

"'Oh, yes,' I said, and thanked her for mending it.

"'And is this all--all you have to say?' she asked.

"'I have nothing more to say--except good-bye.'

"She held my hand. 'Nothing else?'

"'No,--it is useless to talk of the past, Margaret; and the

future--may you be happy!--Good-bye!'

"I thought she would speak; I could not believe she would let me go;

but she did! I bore up well, until night. Then came a revulsion. I

walked three times past the house, wofully tempted, my love and my

will at cruel warfare; but I did not go in. At midnight I saw the

light in her room extinguished; I knew she had retired, but whether to

sleep, or weep, or pray--how could I tell? I went home. I did not

close my eyes that night. I was glad to see the morning come, after

_such_ a night!

"The steamer was to sail at ten. The bustle of embarkation; strange

scenes and strange faces; parting from friends; the ringing of the

bell; last adieus,--some, who were to go with us, hurrying aboard,

others, who were to stay behind, as hastily going ashore; the

withdrawal of the plank,--sad sight to many eyes! casting off the

lines, the steamer swinging heavily around, the rushing, irregular

motion of the great, slow paddles; the waving of handkerchiefs from

the decks, and the responsive signals from the crowd lining the wharf;

off at last,--the faces of friends, the crowd, the piers, and, lastly,

the city itself, fading from sight; the dash of spray, the freshening

breeze, the novel sight of our little world detaching itself and

floating away; the feeling that America was past, and Europe was

next;--all this filled my mind with animation and excitement, which

shut out thoughts of Margaret. Could I have looked with clairvoyant

vision, and beheld her then, locked in her chamber, should I have been

so happy? Oh, what fools vanity and pride make of us! Even then, with

my heart high-strung with hope and courage, had I known the truth, I

should have abandoned my friends, the voyage, and Europe, and returned

in the pilot's boat, to find something more precious than all the

continents and countries of the globe, in the love of that heart which

I was carelessly flinging away."

Here Westwood took breath. The sun was now almost set. The prairie was

still and cool; the heavy dews were beginning to fall; the shadows of

the green and flowered undulations filled the hollows, like a rising

tide; the headland, seen at first so far and small, was growing

gradually large and near; and the horses moved at a quicker

pace. Westwood lighted his cigar, drew a few whiffs, and proceeded.

"We had a voyage of eleven days. But to me an immense amount of

experience was crowded into that brief period. The fine exhilaration

of the start,--the breeze gradually increasing to a gale; then

horrible sea-sickness, home-sickness, love-sickness; after which, the

weather which sailors love, games, gayety, and flirtation. There is no

such social freedom to be enjoyed anywhere as on board an ocean

steamer. The breaking-up of old associations, the opening of a fresh

existence, the necessity of new relationships,--this fuses the crust

of conventionality, quickens the springs of life, and renders

character sympathetic and fluent. The past is easily put away; we

become plastic to new influences; we are delighted at the discovery of

unexpected affinities, and astonished to find in ourselves so much

wit, eloquence, and fine susceptibility, which we did not before dream

we possessed.

"This freedom is especially provocative of flirtation. We see each

fair brow touched with a halo whose colors are the reflection of our

own beautiful dreams. Loveliness is ten-fold more lovely, bathed in

this atmosphere of romance; and manhood is invested with ideal

graces. The love within us rushes, with swift, sweet heart-beats, to

meet the love responsive in some other. Don't think I am now artfully

preparing your mind to excuse what I am about to confess. Take these

things into consideration, if you will; then think as you please of

the weakness and wild impulse with which I fell in love with----

"We will call her Flora. The most superb, captivating creature that

ever ensnared the hearts of the sons of Adam. A fine olive

complexion; magnificent dark auburn hair; eyes full of fire and

softness; lips that could pout or smile with incomparable fascination;

a figure of surprising symmetry, just voluptuous enough. But, after

all, her great power lay in her freedom from all affectation and

conventionality,--in her spontaneity, her free, sparkling, and

vivacious manners. She was the most daring and dazzling of women,

without ever appearing immodest or repulsive. She walked with such

proud, secure steps over the commonly accepted barriers of social

intercourse, that even those who blamed her and pretended to be

shocked were compelled to admire. She was the belle, the Juno, of the

saloon, the supreme ornament of the upper deck. Just twenty,--not

without wit and culture,--full of poetry and enthusiasm. Do you blame

me?"

"Not a whit," I said; "but for Margaret"----

"Ah, Margaret!" said Westwood, with a sigh. "But, you see, I had given

her up. And when one love is lost, there sink such awful chasms into

the soul, that, though they cannot be filled, we must at least bridge

them over with a new affection. The number of marriages built in this

way, upon false foundations of hollowness and despair, is

incomputable. We talk of jilted lovers and disappointed girls

marrying 'out of spite.' No doubt, such petty feeling hurries forward

many premature matches. But it is the heart, left shaken, unsupported,

wretchedly sinking, which reaches out its feelers for sympathy,

catches at the first penetrable point, and clings like a helpless vine

to the sunny-sided wall of the nearest consolation. If you wish to

marry a girl and can't, and are weak enough to desire her still, this

is what you should do: get some capable man to jilt her. Then seize

your chance. All the affections which have gone out to him, unmet,

ready to droop, quivering with the painful, hungry instinct to grasp

some object, may possibly lay hold of you. Let the world sneer; but

God pity such natures, which lack the faith and fortitude to live and

die true to their best love!

"Out of my own mouth do I condemn myself? Very well, I condemn myself;

_peccavi_! I If I had ever loved Margaret, then I did not love

Flora. The same heart cannot find its counterpart indifferently in two

such opposites. What charmed me in one was her purity, softness, and

depth of soul. What fascinated me in the other was her bloom, beauty,

and passion. Which was the true sympathy?

"I did not stop to ask that question when it was most important that

it should be seriously considered. I rushed into the crowd of

competitors for Flora's smiles, and distanced them all. I was pleased

and proud that she took no pains to conceal her preference for me. We

played chess; we read poetry out of the same book; we ate at the same

table; we sat and watched the sea together, for hours, in those clear,

bright days; we promenaded the deck at sunset, her hand upon my arm,

her lips forever turning up tenderly towards me, her eyes pouring

their passion into me. Then those glorious nights, when the ocean was

a vast, wild, fluctuating stream, flashing and sparkling about the

ship, spanned with a quivering bridge of splendor on one side, and

rolling off into awful darkness and mystery, on the other; when the

moon seemed swinging among the shrouds like a ball of white fire; when

the few ships went by like silent ghosts; and Flora and I, in a long

trance of happiness, kept the deck, heedless of the throng of

promenaders, forgetful of the past, reckless of the future, aware only

of our own romance, and the richness of the present hour.

"Joseph, my travelling-companion, looked on, and wrote letters. He

showed me one of these, addressed to a friend of Margaret's. In it he

extolled Flora's beauty, piquancy, and supremacy; related how she made

all the women jealous and all the men mad; and hinted at my triumph. I

knew that that letter would meet Margaret's eyes, and was vain enough

to be pleased.

"At last, one morning, at daybreak, I went on deck, and saw the shores

of England. Only a few days before, we had left America behind us,

brown and leafless, just emerging from the long gloom of winter; and

now the slopes of another world arose green and inviting in the flush

of spring. There was a bracing breeze; the dingy waters of the Mersey

rolled up in wreaths of beauty; the fleets of ships, steamers, sloops,

lighters, pilot-boats, bounding over the waves, meeting, tacking,

plunging, swaying gracefully under the full-swelling canvas, presented

a picture of wonderful animation; and the mingling hues of sunshine

and mist hung over all. I paced the deck, solemnly joyful, swift

thoughts pulsing through me of a dim far-off Margaret, of a near

radiant Flora, of hope and happiness superior to fate. It was one of

those times when the excited soul transfigures the world, and we

marvel how we could ever succumb to a transient sorrow while the whole

universe blooms, and an infinite future waits to open for us its doors

of wonder and joy.

"In this state of mind I was joined by Flora. She laid her hand on my

arm, and we walked up and down together. She was serious, almost sad,

and she viewed the English hills with a pensiveness which became her

better than mirth.

"'So,' she sighed, 'all our little romances come to an end!'

"'Not so,' I said; 'or if one romance ends, it is to give place to

another, still truer and sweeter. Our lives may be all a succession of

romances, if we will make them so. I think now I will never doubt the

future; for I find, that, when I have given up my dearest hopes, my

best-beloved friends, and accepted the gloomy belief that all life

besides is barren,--then comes some new experience, filling my empty

cup with a still more delicious wine.'

"'Don't vex me with your philosophy!' said Flora. 'I don't know

anything about it. All I know is this present,--this sky, this earth,

this sea, and the joy between, which I can't give up quite so easily

as you can, with your beautiful theory, that something better awaits

you.'

"'I have told you,' I replied,--for I had been quite frank with

her,--'how I left America,--what a blank life was to me then; and did

I not turn my back upon all that to meet face to face the greatest

happiness which I have ever yet known? Ought not this to give me faith

in the divinity that shapes our ends?'

"'And so,' she answered, 'when I have lost you, I shall have the

satisfaction of thinking that you are enjoying some still more

exquisite consolation for the slight pangs you may have felt at

parting from me! Your philosophy will make it easy for you to say,

"Good-bye! it was a pretty romance; I go to find prettier ones

still"; and then forget me altogether!'

"'And you,' I said, 'will that be easy for you?'

"'Yes,' she cried, with spirit,--'anything is easy to a proud,

impetuous woman, who finds that the brief romance of a ten-days'

acquaintance has already become tiresome to the second party. I am

glad I have enjoyed what I have; that is so much gain, of which you

cannot rob me; and now I can say good-bye as coolly as you, or I can

die of shame, or I can at once walk over this single rail into the

water, and quench this little candle, and so an end!'

"She sprang upon a bench, and, I swear to you, I thought she was going

down! I was so exalted by this passionate demonstration, that I should

certainly have gone over with her, and felt perfectly content to die

in her arms,--at least, until I began to realize what a very

disagreeable bath we had chosen to drown in.

"I drew her away; I walked up and down with that superb creature

panting and palpitating almost upon my heart; I poured into her ear I

know not what extravagant vows; and before the slow-handed sailors had

fastened their cable to the buoy in the channel, we had knotted a more

subtile and difficult noose, not to be so easily undone!

"Now see what strange, variable fools we are! Months of tender

intercourse had failed to bring about anything like a positive

engagement between Margaret and myself; and here behold me irrevocably

pledged to Flora, after a brief ten-days' acquaintance!

"Six mortal hours were exhausted in making the steamer fast,--in

sending off her Majesty's mails, of which the cockney speaks with a

tone of reverence altogether disgusting to us free-minded

Yankees,--and in entertaining the custom-house inspectors, who paid a

long and tedious visit to the saloon and our luggage. Then we were

suffered to land, and enter the noisy, solid streets of Liverpool,

amid the donkeys and beggars and quaint scenes which strike the

American so oddly upon a first visit. All this delay, the weariness

and impatience, the contrast between the morning and the hard, grim

reality of mid-day, brought me down from my elevation. I felt alarmed

to think of what had passed. I seemed to have been doing some wild,

unadvised act in a fit of intoxication. Margaret came up before me,

sad, silent, reproachful; and as I gazed upon Flora's bedimmed face, I

wondered how I had been so charmed.

"We took the first train for London, where we arrived at midnight. Two

weeks in that vast Babel,--then, ho! for Paris! Twelve hours by rail

and steamer carried us out of John Bull's dominions into the brilliant

metropolis of his French neighbor. Joseph accompanied us, and wrote

letters home, filled with gossip which I knew, or hoped, would make

Margaret writhe. I had not found it so easy to forget her as I had

supposed it would be. Flora's power over me was sovereign; but when I

was weary of the dazzle and whirl of the life she led me,--when I

looked into the depths of my heart, and saw what the thin film of

passion and pleasure concealed,--in those serious moments which

would come, and my soul put stern questions to me,--then,

Sir,--then--Margaret had her revenge.

"A month, crowded and glittering with novelty and incident, preceded

our departure for Switzerland. I accompanied Flora's party; Joseph

remained behind. We left Paris about the middle of June, and returned

in September. I have no words to speak of that era in my life. I saw,

enjoyed, suffered, learned so much! Flora was always glad,

magnificent, irresistible. But, as I knew her longer, my moments of

misgiving became more frequent and profound. If I had aspired to

nothing higher than a life of sensuous delights, she would have been

all I could wish. But----

"We were to spend the winter in Italy. Meanwhile, we had another month

in Paris. Here I had found Joseph again, who troubled me a good deal

with certain rumors he had received concerning Margaret. According to

these, she had been in feeble health ever since we left, and her

increasing delicacy was beginning to alarm her friends. 'But,' added

another of Joseph's correspondents, 'don't let Westwood flatter

himself that he is the cause, for she is cured of him; and there is

talk of an engagement between her and a handsome young clergyman, who

is both eloquent and fascinating.'

"This bit of gossip made me very bitter and angry. 'Forget me so

soon?' I said; 'and receive the attentions of another man?' You see

how consistent I was, to condemn her for the very fault I had myself

been so eager to commit!

"Well, the round of rides, excursions, soirées, visits to the operas

and theatres, walks on the Boulevards, and in the galleries of the

Louvre, ended at last. The evening before we were to set out for the

South of France, I was at my lodgings, unpacking and repacking the

luggage which I had left in Joseph's care during my absence among the

Alps; I was melancholy, dissatisfied with the dissipations which had

exhausted my time and energies, and thinking of Margaret. I had not

preserved a single memento of her; and now I wished I had one,--if

only a withered leaf, or a line of her writing. In this mood, I

chanced to cast my eye upon a stray glove, in the bottom of my

trunk. I snatched at it eagerly, and, in the impulse of the

moment,--before I reflected that I was wronging Flora,--pressed it to

my lips. Yes, I found the place where it had been mended, the spot

Margaret's fingers had touched, and gave it a kiss for every

stitch. Then, incensed at myself, I flung it from me, and hurried from

the room. I walked towards the Place de la Concorde, where the

brilliant lamps burned like a constellation. I strolled through the

Elysian Fields, and watched the lights of the carriages swarming like

fire-flies up the long avenue; stopped by the concert gardens, and

listened to the glorified girls singing under rosy and golden

pavilions the last songs of the season; wandered about the

fountains,--by the gardens of the Tuileries, where the trees stood so

shadowy and still, and the statues gleamed so pale,--along the quays

of the Seine, where the waves rolled so dark below,--trying to settle

my thoughts, to master myself, to put Margaret from me.

"Weary at length, I returned to my chamber, seated myself composedly,

and looked down at the glove which lay where I had thrown it, upon the

polished floor. Mechanically I stooped and took up a bit of folded

paper. It was written upon,--I unrolled it, and read. It was as if I

had opened the record of doom! Had the apparition of Margaret herself

risen suddenly before me, I could not have been more astounded. It was

a note from her,--and such a note!--full of love, suffering, and

humility,--poured out of a heart so deep and tender and true, that the

shallowness of my own seemed utterly contemptible, in comparison with

it. I cannot tell you what was written, but it was more than even my

most cruel and exacting pride could have asked. It was what would once

have made me wild with joy,--now it almost maddened me with

despair. I, who had often talked fine philosophy to others, had not a

grain of that article left to physic my own malady. But one course

seemed plain before me, and that was, to go quietly and drown myself

in the Seine, which I had seen flowing so swift and dark under the

bridges, an hour ago, when I stood and mused upon the tragical corpses

its solemn flood had swallowed.

"I am a little given to superstition, and the mystery of the note

excited me. I have no doubt but there was some subtile connection

between it and the near presence of Margaret's spirit, of which I had

that night been conscious. But the note had reached me by no

supernatural method, as I was at first half inclined to believe. It

was, probably, the touch, the atmosphere, the ineffably fine influence

which surrounded it, which had penetrated my unconscious perceptions,

and brought her near. The paper, the glove, were full of

Margaret,--full of something besides what we vaguely call mental

associations,--full of emanations of the very love and suffering which

she had breathed into the writing.

"How the note came there upon the floor was a riddle which I was too

much bewildered to explain by any natural means. Joseph, who burst in

upon me, in my extremity of pain and difficulty, solved it at once. It

had fallen out of the glove, where it had lain folded, silent,

unnoticed, during all this intervening period of folly and vexation of

soul. Margaret had done her duty, in time; I had only myself to blame

for the tangle in which I now found myself. I was thinking of Flora,

upon the deck of the steamship, when, in a moment of chagrin, she had

been so near throwing herself over; wondering to what fate her passion

and impetuosity would hurry her now, if she knew; cursing myself for

my weakness and perfidy; while Joseph kept asking me what I intended

to do.

"'Do? do?' I said, furiously,--'I shall kill you, that is what I shall

do, if you drive me mad with questions which neither angels nor fiends

can answer!'

"'I know what you will do,' said Joseph; 'you will go home and marry

Margaret.'

"You can have no conception of the effect of these words,--_Go home

and marry Margaret_. I shook as I have seen men shake with the

ague. All that might have been,--what might be still,--the happiness

cast away, and perhaps yet within my reach,--the temptation of the

Devil, who appealed to my cowardice, to fly from Flora, break my vows,

risk my honor and her life, for Margaret,--all this rushed through me

tumultuously. At length I said,--

"'No, Joseph; I shall do no such thing. I can never be worthy of

Margaret; it will be only by fasting and prayer that I can make myself

worthy of Flora.'

"'Will you start for Italy in the morning?' he asked, pitilessly.

"'For Italy in the morning?' I groaned. Meet Flora, travel with her,

play the hypocrite, with smiles on my lips and hell in my heart,--or

thunderstrike her at once with the truth;--what was I to do? To some

men the question would, perhaps, have presented few difficulties. But

for me, Sir, who am not quite devoid of conscience, whatever you may

think,--let me tell you, I'd rather hang by sharp hooks over a

roasting fire than be again suspended as I was betwixt two such

alternatives, and feel the torture of both!

"Having driven Joseph away, I locked myself into my room, and suffered

the torments of the damned in as quiet a manner as possible, until

morning. Then Joseph returned, and looked at me with dismay.

"'For Heaven's sake!' he said, 'you ought not to let this thing kill

you,--and it will, if you keep on.'

"'So much the better,' I said, 'if it kills nobody but me. But don't

be alarmed. Keep perfectly cool, and attend to the commission I am

going to trust to you. I can't see Flora this morning; I must gain a

little time. Go to the station of the Lyons railway, where I have

engaged to meet her party; say to her that I am detained, but that I

will join her on the journey. Give her no time to question you, and be

sure that she does not stay behind.'

"'I'll manage it,--trust me!' said Joseph. And off he started. At the

end of two hours, which seemed twenty, he burst into my room,

crying,--

"'Good news! she is gone! I told her you had lost your passport, and

would have to get another from our minister.'

"'What!' I exclaimed, 'you lied to her?'

"'Oh! there was no other way!' said Joseph, ingenuously,--'she is so

sharp! They're to wait for you at Marseilles. But I'll manage that,

too. On their arrival at the Hotel d'Orient, they'll find a

telegraphic dispatch from me. I wager a hat, they'll leave in the

first steamer for Naples. Then you can follow at your leisure.'

"'Thank you, Joseph.'

"I felt relieved. Then came a reaction. The next day I was attacked

by fever. I know not how long I struggled against it, but it mastered

me. The last things I remember were the visits of friends, the strange

talk of a French physician, whispers and consultations, which I knew

were about me, yet took no interest in,--and at length Joseph rushing

to my bedside, in a flutter of agitation, and gasping,--

"'Flora!'

"'What of Flora?' I demanded.

"'I telegraphed, but she wouldn't go; she has come back; she is here!'

"I was sinking back into the stupor from which I had been roused, when

I heard a rustling which seemed afar off, yet was in my chamber; then

a vision appeared to my sickened sight,--a face which I dimly thought

I had seen before,--a flood of curls and a rain of kisses showering

upon me,--sobs and devouring caresses,--Flora's voice calling me

passionate names; and I lying so passive, faintly struggling to

remember, until my soul sank whirling in darkness, and I knew no more.

"One morning, I cannot tell you how long after, I awoke and found

myself in a strange-looking room, filled with strange objects, not the

least strange of which was the thing that seemed myself. At first I

looked with vague and motionless curiosity out of the Lethe from which

my mind slowly emerged; painless, and at peace; listlessly questioning

whether I was alive or dead,--whether the limp weight lying in bed

there was my body,--the meaning of the silence and the closed

curtains. Then, with a succession of painful flashes, as if the pole

of an electrical battery had been applied to my brain, memory

returned,--Margaret, Flora, Paris, delirium. I next remember hearing

myself groan aloud,--then seeing Joseph at my side. I tried to speak,

but could not. Upon my pillow was a glove, and he placed it against my

cheek. An indescribable, excruciating thrill shot through me; still I

could not speak. After that, came a relapse. Like Mrs. Browning's

poet, I lay

''Twixt gloom and gleam,

With Death and Life at each extreme.'

"But one morning I was better. I could talk. Joseph bent over me,

weeping for joy.

"'The danger is past!' he said. 'The doctors say you will get well!'

"'Have I been so ill, then?'

"'Ill?' echoed Joseph. 'Nobody thought you could live. We all gave you

up, except her;--and she'----

"'She!' I said,--'is she here?'

"'From the moment of her arrival,' replied Joseph, 'she has never left

you. Oh, if you don't thank God for her,'--he lowered his

voice,--'and live all the rest of your life just to reward her, you

are the most ungrateful wretch! You would certainly have died but for

her. She has scarcely slept, till this morning, when they said you

would recover.'

"Joseph paused. Every word he spoke went down like a weight of lead

into my soul. I had, indeed, been conscious of a tender hand soothing

my pillow, of a lovely form flitting through my dreams, of a breath

and magnetic touch of love infusing warm, sweet life into me,--but it

had always seemed Margaret, never Flora.

"'The glove?' I asked.

"'Here it is,' said Joseph. 'In your delirium you demanded it; you

would not be without it; you caressed it, and addressed to it the

tenderest apostrophes.'

"'And Flora,--she heard?'

"'Flora?' repeated Joseph. 'Don't you know--haven't you any idea--what

has happened? It has been terrible!'

"'Tell me at once!' I said. 'Keep nothing back!'

"'Immediately on her return from Marseilles,--you remember that?'

"'Yes, yes! go on!'

"'She established herself here. Nobody could come between her and you;

and a brave, true girl she proved herself. Oh, but she was wild about

you! She offered the doctors extravagant sums--she would have bribed

Heaven itself, if she could--not to let you die. But there came a

time,--one night, when you were raving about Margaret,--I tell

you, it was terrible! She would have the truth, and so I told

her,--everything, from the beginning. It makes me shudder now to think

of it,--it struck her so like death!'

"'What did she say?--what did she do?'

"'She didn't say much,--"Oh, my God! my God!"--something like that.

The next morning she showed me a letter which she had written to

Margaret.'

"'To Margaret?' I started up, but fell back again, helpless, with a

groan.

"'Yes,' said Joseph,--'and it was a letter worthy of the noblest

woman. I wrote another, for I thought Margaret ought to know

everything. It might save her life, and yours, too. In the mean time,

I had got worse news from her still,--that her health continued to

decline, and that her physician saw no hope for her except in a voyage

to Italy. But that she resolutely refused to undertake, until she got

those letters. You know the rest.'

"'The rest?' I said, as a horrible suspicion flashed upon me. 'You

told me something terrible had happened.'

"'Yes,--to Flora. But you have heard the worst. She is gone; she is by

this time in Rome.'

"'Flora gone? But you said she was here.'

"'_She?_ So _she_ is! But did you think I meant Flora? I

supposed you knew. Not Flora,--but Margaret! Margaret!'

"I shrieked out, 'Margaret?' That's the last I remember,--at least,

the last I can tell. She was there,--I was in her arms;--she had

crossed the sea, not to save her own life, but mine. And Flora had

gone, and my dreams were true; and the breath and magnetic touch of

love, which infused warm, sweet life into me, and seemed not Flora's,

but Margaret's, were no illusion, and----what more can I tell?

"From the moment of receiving those letters, Margaret's energies were

roused, and she had begun to regain her health. There is no such

potent medicine as hope and love. It had saved her, and it saved

me. My recovery was sure and speedy. The happiness which had seemed

too great, too dear to be ever possible, was now mine. She was with me

again, all my own! Only the convalescent, who feels the glow of love

quicken the pure pulses of returning health, knows what perfect bliss

is.

"As soon as I was strong enough to travel, we set out for Italy, the

faithful Joseph accompanying us. We enjoyed Florence, its palaces and

galleries of art, the quaint old churches, about which the religious

sentiment of ages seems to hang like an atmosphere, the morning and

evening clamor of musical bells, the Arno, and the olive-crowned

Tuscan hills,--all so delightful to the senses and the soul. After

Florence, Naples, with its beautiful, dangerous, volcanic environs,

where the ancients aptly located their heaven and hell, and where a

luxurious, passionate people absorbs into its blood the spirit of the

soil, and the fire and languor of the clime. From Naples to Rome,

where we saw St Peter's, that bubble on the surface of the globe,

which the next earthquake may burst, the Vatican, with its marvels of

statuary, the ruined temples of the old gods and heroes, the Campagna,

the Pope, and--Flora. We had but a glimpse of her. It was one night,

at the Colosseum. We had been musing about that vast and solemn pile

by the moonlight, which silvered it over with indescribable beauty,

and at last, accompanied by our guides, bearing torches, we ascended

through dark and broken passages to the upper benches of the

amphitheatre. As we were passing along one side, we saw picturesquely

moving through the shadows of the opposite walls, with the immense

arena between, the red-flaring torches and half-illuminated figures of

another party of visitors. I don't know whether it was instinct, or

acuteness of vision, that suggested Flora; but, with a sudden leap of

the heart, I felt that she was there. We descended, and passed out

under the dark arches of the stupendous ruin. The other visitors

walked a little in advance of us,--two of the number lingering behind

their companions; and certain words of tenderness and passion we

heard, which strangely brought to my mind those nights on the

ocean-steamer.

"'What is the matter with you?' said Margaret, looking in my face.

"'Hush!' I whispered,--'there--that woman--is Flora!'

"She clung to me,--I drew her closer, as we paused; and the happy

couple went on, over the ancient Forum, by the silent columns of the

ruined temples, and disappeared from sight upon the summit of the

Capitoline Hill.

"A few months later, we heard of the marriage of Flora to an English

baronet; she is now _my Lady_, and I must do her the justice to

say that I never knew a woman better fitted to bear that title. As

for Margaret,--if you will return with me to my home on the Hudson,

after we have finished our hunt after those Western lands, you shall

see her, together with the loveliest pair of children that ever made

two proud parents happy.

"And here," added Westwood, "we have arrived at the end of our day's

journey; we have had the Romance of the Glove, and now--let's have

some supper."

TO ----.

ON RECEIVING HIS "FEW VERSES FOR A FEW FRIENDS."

"(PRINTED, NOT PUBLISHED.)"

Well thought! Who would not rather hear

The songs to Love and Friendship sung,

Than those which move the stranger's tongue

And feed his unselected ear?

Our social joys are more than fame;

Life withers in the public look:

Why mount the pillory of a book,

Or barter comfort for a name?

Who in a house of glass would dwell,

With curious eyes at every pane?

To ring him in and out again

Who wants the public crier's bell?

To see the angel in one's way,

Who wants to play the ass's part,

Bear on his back the wizard Art,

And in his service speak or bray?

And who his manly locks would shave

And quench the eyes of common sense,

To share the noisy recompense

That mocked the shorn and blinded slave?

The heart has needs beyond the head,

And, starving in the plenitude

Of strange gifts, craves its common food,

Our human nature's daily bread.

We are but men: no gods are we

To sit in mid-heaven, cold and bleak,

Each separate, on his painful peak,

Thin-cloaked in self-complacency!

Better his lot whose axe is swung

In Wartburg woods, or that poor girl's

Who by the Ilm her spindle whirls

And sings the songs that Luther sung,

Than his, who, old and cold and vain,

At Weimar sat, a demigod,

And bowed with Jove's imperial nod

His votaries in and out again!

Ply, Vanity, thy wingèd feet!

Ambition, hew thy rocky stair!

Who envies him who feeds on air

The icy splendors of his seat?

I see your Alps above me cut

The dark, cold sky,--and dim and lone

I see ye sitting, stone on stone,

With human senses dulled and shut.

I could not reach you, if I would,

Nor sit among your cloudy shapes;

And (spare the fable of the Grapes

And Fox) I would not, if I could.

Keep to your lofty pedestals!

The safer plain below I choose:

Who never wins can rarely lose,

Who never climbs as rarely falls.

Let such as love the eagle's scream

Divide with him his home of ice:

For me shall gentler notes suffice,--

The valley-song of bird and stream,

The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees,

The flail-beat chiming far away,

The cattle-low at shut of day,

The voice of God in leaf and breeze!

Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend,

And help me to the vales below,

(In truth, I have not far to go,)

Where sweet with flowers the fields extend.

THE SINGING-BIRDS AND THEIR SONGS.

Those persons enjoy the most happiness, if possessed of a benevolent

heart and favored by ordinary circumstances of fortune, who have

acquired by habit and education the power of deriving pleasure from

objects that lie immediately around them. But these common sources of

happiness are opened to those only who are endowed with genius, or who

have received a certain kind of intellectual training. The more

ordinary the mental and moral organization and culture of the

individual, the more far-fetched and dear-bought must be his

enjoyments. Nature has given us in full development only those

appetites which are necessary to our physical well-being. She has

left our moral appetites and capacities in the germ, to be developed

by education and circumstances. Hence those agreeable sensations that

come chiefly from the exercise of the imagination, which may be called

the pleasures of sentiment, are available only to persons of a

peculiar refinement of mind. The ignorant and rude may be dazzled and

delighted by physical beauty, and charmed by loud and stirring sounds;

but those more simple melodies and less attractive colors and forms

that appeal to the mind for their principal effect act more powerfully

upon individuals of superior culture.

In proportion as we have been trained to be agreeably affected by the

outward forms of Nature, and the sounds that proceed from the animate

and inanimate world, are we capable of being made happy without

resorting to expensive and vulgar recreations. It ought, therefore, to

be one of the chief points in the education of youth, while teaching

them the still more important offices of humanity, to cultivate and

enliven their susceptibility to the charms of natural objects. Then

would the aspects of Nature, continually changing with the progress of

the seasons and the sounds that enliven their march, satisfy, in a

great measure, that craving for agreeable sensations which leads

mankind away from humble and healthful pursuits to those of a more

artificial and exciting life. The value of such pleasures consists not

so much in their cheapness as in their favorable moral influences,

which improve the heart, while they lead the mind to observations that

pleasantly exercise and develope, without tasking its powers. The

quiet emotions, half musical and half poetical, which are awakened by

listening to the songs of birds, belong to this class of refined

enjoyments.

But the music of birds, though agreeable to all, conveys positive and

durable pleasure only to those who have learned to associate with

their notes, in connection with the scenes of Nature, a thousand

interesting and romantic images. To many persons of this character it

affords more delight than the most brilliant music of the opera or the

concert. In vain, therefore, will it be said, as an objection, that

the notes of birds have no charm, save that which is derived from

association, and that, considered as music, they do not equal that of

the most simple reed or flageolet. It is sufficient to remark, that

the most delightful influences of Nature proceed from those sights and

sounds that appeal to the imagination and affections through the

medium of slight and almost insensible impressions made upon the eye

and the ear. At the moment when these physical impressions exceed a

certain mean, the spell is broken, and the enjoyment becomes sensual,

not intellectual. How soon, indeed, would the songs of birds lose

their effect, if they were loud and brilliant, like a band of

instruments! It is their simplicity that gives them their charm.

As a further illustration of this point, it may be remarked that

simple melodies have among all people exercised a greater power over

the imagination than louder and more complicated music. Nature employs

a very small amount of physical sensation to create an intellectual

passion, and when an excess is used a diminished effect is produced. I

am persuaded that the effect of a great part of our sacred music is

lost by an excess of harmony and a too great volume of sound. On the

same principle, a loud crash of thunder deafens and terrifies; but its

low and distant rumbling produces an agreeable emotion of sublimity.

The songs of birds are as intimately allied with poetry as with

music. The lark has been aptly denominated a "feathered lyric" by one

of the English poets; and the analogy becomes apparent when we

consider how much the song of a bird resembles a lyrical ballad in its

influence on the mind. Though it utters no words, how plainly it

suggests a long train of agreeable images of love, beauty, friendship,

and home! When a young person has suffered any severe wound of the

affections, he seldom fails, if endowed with a sensitive mind, to

listen to the birds as sharers in his affliction. Through them the

deities of the groves seem to offer him their consolation. By

indulging this habit of making companionship with the objects of

Nature, all pleasing sights and sounds gradually become certain

anodynes for his sorrow; and those who have this mental alembic for

turning grief into a poetic melancholy can seldom be reduced to a

state of absolute despondency. Poetry, or rather the poetic sentiment,

exalts all our pleasures and soothes all our afflictions by some

illusive charm, whether it be turned into the channel of religion or

romance. Without this reflection of light from the imagination, what

is the passion of love? and what is our love of beauty and of sweet

sounds, but a mere gravitation?

The voice of every singing-bird has its associations in the minds of

all susceptible persons who were born and nurtured within the

precincts of its untutored minstrelsy. The music of birds is

modulated in pleasant unison with all the chords of affection and

imagination, filling the soul with a lively consciousness of happiness

and beauty, and soothing it with romantic visions of memory,--of love,

when it was an ethereal sentiment of adoration and not a passion, and

of friendship, when it was a passion and not an expedience,--of dear

and simple adventures, and of comrades who had part in them,--of

dappled mornings, and serene and glowing sunsets,--of sequestered

nooks and mossy seats in the old wood,--of paths by the riverside, and

flowers that smiled a bright welcome to our rambling,--of lingering

departures from home, and of old by-ways, overshadowed by trees and

hedged with roses and viburnums, that spread their shade and their

perfume around our path to gladden our return. By this pleasant

instrumentality has Nature provided for the happiness of those who

have learned to be delighted with the survey of her works, and with

the sound of those voices which she has appointed to communicate to

the human soul the joys of her inferior creation.

The singing-birds, with reference to their songs, may be divided into

four classes. First, the Rapid Singers, whose song is uninterrupted,

of considerable length, and uttered with fervor, and in apparent

ecstasy. Second, the Moderate Singers, whose notes are slowly

modulated, but without pauses or rests between their different

strains. Third, the Interrupted Singers, who seldom modulate their

notes with rapidity, and make decided pauses between their several

strains, of which there are in general from five to eight or

nine. Fourth, the Warblers, whose notes consist of only one or two

strains, not combined into a song.

The canary, among foreign birds, and the linnet and bobolink, among

American birds, are familiar examples of the first class; the common

robin and the veery of the second; the wood-thrush, the cat-bird, and

the mocking-bird, of the third; and the blue-bird, the pewee, and the

purple martin, of the fourth class. It may be added, that some birds

are nearly periodical in their habits of singing, preferring the

morning and evening, and occasional periods in other parts of the day,

while others sing almost indifferently at all hours. The greater

number of species, however, are more tuneful in the early morning than

at any other hour.

June, in this part of the world, is the most vocal month of the

year. Many of our principal songsters do not arrive until near the

middle of May; and all, whether they come early or late, continue in

song throughout the month of June. The bobolink, which is one of the

first to become silent, continues vocal until the second week in

July. So nearly simultaneous is the discontinuance of the songs of

this species, that it might seem as if their silence were

preconcerted, and that by a vote they had, on a certain day, adjourned

over to another year. If an unusually genial day occurs about the

seventh of July, we may hear multitudes of them singing merrily on

that occasion. Should this time be followed by two or three

successive days of chilly and rainy weather, their tunefulness is so

generally brought to a close during this period, that we may not hear

another musical note from a single individual after the seventh. The

songs of birds are discontinued as soon as their amorous dalliances

and the care of their offspring have ceased. Hence those birds that

raise but one brood of young during the season, like the bobolink, are

the first to become silent.

No one of the New England birds is an autumnal warbler; though the

song-sparrow often greets the fine mornings in October with his lays,

and the shore-lark, after spending the summer in Labrador and about

the shores of Hudson's Bay, is sometimes heard in autumn, soaring and

singing at the dawn of day, while on his passage to the South. The

bobolink, the veery, or Wilson's thrush, the red thrush, and the

golden robin, are silent after the middle of July; the wood-thrush,

the cat-bird, and the common robin, not until a month later; but the

song-sparrow alone continues to sing throughout the summer. The

tuneful season of the year, in New England, embraces a period of about

four months, from the middle of April to the middle of August.

There are certain times of the day, as well as certain seasons of the

year, when the birds are most musical. The grand concert of the

feathered tribe takes place during the hour between dawn and sunrise.

During the remainder of the day they sing less in concert, though many

species are very musical at noonday, and seem, like the nocturnal

birds, to prefer the hour when others are silent. At sunset there is an

apparent attempt to unite once more in chorus, but this is far from

being so loud or so general as in the morning. The little birds which

I have classed in the fourth division are a very important

accompaniment to the anthem of dawn, their notes, though short,

serving agreeably to fill up the pauses made by the other

musicians. Thus, the hair-bird (_Fringilla Socialis_) has a sharp

and trilling note, without any modulation, and not at all melodious,

when heard alone; but in the morning it is the chief harmonizer of the

whole chorus, and serves, more than any other voice, to give unity and

symphony to the multitude of miscellaneous parts.

There are not many birds whose notes could be accurately described

upon the gamut. The nearest approach we can make to accuracy is to

give some general idea of their time and modulation. Their musical

intervals can be distinguished but with difficulty, on account of the

rapidity of their utterance. I have often attempted to transcribe some

of their notes upon the musical scale, but I am persuaded that such

sketches can be only approximations to literal correctness. As

different individuals of the same species sing very differently, the

notes, as transcribed from the song of one individual, will never

exactly represent the song of another. If we listen attentively,

however, to a number of songs, we shall detect in all of them a

_theme_, as it is termed by musicians, of which the different

individuals of the species warble their respective variations. Every

song is, technically speaking, a _fantasia_ constructed upon this

theme, from which none of the species ever departs.

It is very generally believed that the singing-birds are confined to

temperate latitudes, and that the tropical birds have not the gift of

song. That this is an error is apparent from the testimony of

travellers, who speak of the birds in the Sandwich Islands and New

Zealand as singing delightfully, and some fine songsters are

occasionally imported in cages from tropical climates. The origin of

this notion may be explained in several ways. It is worthy of notice

that within the tropics the singing season of different species of

birds does not occur at the same time. One species may be musical in

the spring, another in summer, and others in autumn and winter. When

one species, therefore, has begun to sing, another has ceased, so

that, at whatever time of the year the traveller stops, he hears but

few birds engaged in song.

In the temperate latitudes, on the contrary, as soon as the birds

arrive, they commence building their nests, and become musical at the

same time. If a stranger from a tropical climate should arrive in this

country in the spring, and remain here during the months of May and

June, he would hear more birds singing together than he ever heard at

once in his own clime; but were he to arrive about the middle of July,

when the greater number of our birds have discontinued their songs, he

would probably, if he knew the reputation of the Northern birds,

marvel a little at their silence. If there are as many birds singing

at one time during the whole year, in the hot climates, as we hear in

this country in the latter half of summer, the greater average would

appear to be on the side of the former.

It may also be remarked, that the singing-birds of the tropics are not

so well known as those of temperate latitudes which are inhabited by

civilized men. The savages and barbarians, who are the principal

inhabitants of hot countries, are seldom observant of the habits or

the voices of the singing-birds. A musician of the feathered race, as

well as a harpist or violinist, must have an appreciating audience, or

his powers can never be made known to the world. But even with the

same audience, the tropical singing-birds would probably be less

esteemed than songsters of equal merit in the temperate latitudes;

for, amid the stridulous and deafening sounds made by the insects in

warm climates, the notes of birds would be scarcely audible.

We are still inclined to believe, however, that there is a larger

proportion of musical birds in the temperate than in the torrid zone,

because in the former region there are more of those species that

build low and live among the grass and shrubbery, and it is well known

that the singing-birds are mostly of the latter description. In warm

climates the vegetation consists chiefly of trees and tall vines,

forming together an umbrageous canopy overhead, with but a scanty

undergrowth. In temperate latitudes the shrubbery predominates,

especially in the most northerly parts. Moreover, the grasses that

furnish by their seeds a great proportion of the food of the smaller

birds are almost entirely wanting in the torrid zone.

The birds that live in trees are remarkable for their brilliant

plumage; those that live upon the ground and in the shrubbery are

plainly dressed. This is a provision of Nature for their protection,

as the ground-birds must have a predominance of tints that resemble

the general hues of the surface of the earth. I do not know a single

brightly-plumed bird that nestles upon the ground, unless the bobolink

may be considered an exception. They are almost invariably colored

like sparrows. The birds that inhabit the trees, on the other hand,

need less of this protection, though the females are commonly of an

olive or greenish yellow, which harmonizes with the general hue of the

foliage, and screens them from observation, while sitting upon the

nest. The male, on the contrary, who seldom sits upon the nest,

requires a plumage that will render him conspicuous to the female and

to the young, after they have left their nest. It is remarkable, that

Nature, in all cases in which she has created a difference in the

plumage of the male and female, has used the hues of their plumage

only for the protection of the mother and the young, for whose

advantage she has dressed the male parent in colors that must somewhat

endanger his own safety.

The color of the plumage of birds seems to bear less relation to their

powers of song than to their habitats; and as the birds that live in

trees are commonly less tuneful, they are more brilliantly arrayed.

The bird employs his song in wooing his mate, as well as in

entertaining her after she is wedded; and it is not unlikely that

Nature may have compensated those which are deficient in song by

giving them a superior beauty of plumage. As the offices of courtship

devolve entirely upon the males, it is the more necessary that they

should be possessed of conspicuous attractions; but as the task of

sitting upon the nest devolves upon the female, she requires more of

that protection which arises from the conformity of her plumage with

the general hue of the objects that surround her nest. While she is

sitting, the plain hues of her dress protect her from observation; but

when she leaves her nest to seek her companion, she is enabled by his

brilliant colors the more easily to discover him. The male is diligent

in providing for the wants of the offspring, and hence it is important

that his dress should render him conspicuous. When the young birds

have left the nest, upon seeing the flash of his plumage, they

immediately utter their call, and by this note, which might not

otherwise be sounded at the right moment, he detects them and supplies

them with food. Should a bird of prey suddenly come into their

neighborhood, he overlooks the plainly-dressed mother and off-spring,

and gives chase to the male parent, who not only escapes, but at the

same time diverts the attention of the foe from his defenceless

progeny.

But the birds that build low, either upon the ground or among the

shrubbery, are exposed to a greater number and variety of

enemies. Hence it becomes necessary that the males as well as the

females should have that protection which is afforded by sobriety of

color. Not being made conspicuous by their plumage, they are endowed

with the gift of song, that they may make known their presence to

their mate and their young by their voice. I have often thought that

the song of the bird was designed by Nature for the benefit of the

young, no less than for the entertainment of his mate. The sounds

uttered by birds on account of their young always precede the period

of incubation. The common hen begins to cluck several days before she

begins to sit upon her eggs. In like manner the male singing-bird

commences his song when the pair are making ready to build their

nest. While his mate is sitting, his song reminds her of his presence,

and inspires her with a feeling of security and content, during the

period of her confinement. As soon as the young are hatched, they

begin to learn his voice and grow accustomed to it, and when they fly

from the nest they are prevented by the sound of it from wandering and

getting bewildered. If they happen to fly beyond certain bounds, the

song of the male parent warns them of their distance, and causes them

to turn and draw near the place from which it seems to issue. Thus the

song of the male bird, always uttered within a certain circumference,

of which the nest is the centre, becomes a kind of sentinel voice, to

keep the young birds within prudent limits.

It is not easy to explain why a larger proportion of the birds that

occupy trees should be destitute of song, except on the supposition

that in such elevated situations the young are more easily guided by

sight than by hearing. Still there are many songsters which are

dressed in brilliant plumage, and of these we have some examples among

our native birds. These, however, are evident exceptions to the

general fact, and we may trace a plain analogy in this respect between

birds and insects. The musical insects are, we believe, invariably

destitute of brilliant plumage. Butterflies and moths do not sing; the

music of insects comes chiefly from the plainly-dressed locust and

grasshopper tribes.

OUR TALKS WITH UNCLE JOHN.

TALK NUMBER ONE.

We were happy children, Alice and I, when, on Alice's sixteenth

birthday, we persuaded our father, the most indulgent parent in

Cincinnati, that there was no need of our going to school any longer;

not that our education was finished,--we did not even put up such a

preposterous plea as that,--but because Mrs. C. did not intend to send

Laura, and we did not believe any of our set of girls would go back

after the holidays.

There is no being so facile as an American father, especially where

his daughters are concerned; and our dear father was no exception to

the general rule. So our school education was finished. For the

rest, for the real education of our minds and hearts, we took care of

ourselves.

How could it be otherwise? Our father, a leading merchant in

Cincinnati, spent his days in his counting-room, and his evenings

buried in his newspapers or in his business calculations, on the

absorbing nature of which we had learned to build with such certainty,

that, when his consent was necessary to some scheme of pleasure, we

preferred our requests with such a nice adjustment of time, that the

answer generally was, "January 3d,--two thousand bales,--yes, my

dear,--and twelve are sixteen,--yes, Alice, don't bother me, child!"

and, armed with that unconscious assent, we sought our mother.

"Papa says that we may go. Do you think, mamma, that Miss D. can have

our dresses in time?"

Our dear mother, most faithful and indefatigable in her care for our

bodily wants, what time had she for aught else? With feeble health,

with poor servants, with a large house crowded with fine furniture,

and with the claims of a numerous calling and party-giving

acquaintance,--claims which both my father and herself imagined his

business and her social position made imperative,--what could she do

more than to see that our innumerable white skirts were properly

tucked, embroidered, washed, and starched, that our party dresses were

equal to those which Mrs. C. and Mrs. D. provided for their girls, and

that our bonnets were fashionable enough for Fourth Street? Could she

find time for anything more? Yes,--on our bodily ailments she always

found time to bestow motherly care, watchfulness, and sympathy; of our

mental ills she knew nothing.

So we cared for ourselves, Alice and I, through those merry,

thoughtless two years that followed,--merry (not happy) in our

Fourth-Street promenades, our Saturday-afternoon assignations at the

dancing-school rooms, our parties and picnics; and merry still, but

thoughtless always, in our eager search for excitement in the novels,

whose perusal was our only literary enjoyment.

Somehow we woke up,--somehow we groped our way out of our

frivolity. First came weariness, then impatience, and last a

passing-away of all things old and a putting-on of things new.

I remember well the day when Alice first spoke out her unrest. My

pretty Alice! I see her now, as she flung herself across the foot of

the bed, and, her chin on her hand, watched me combing and parting my

hair. I see again those soft, dark brown eyes, so deep in their liquid

beauty that you lost yourself gazing down into them; again I see

falling around her that wealth of auburn hair of the true Titian

color, the smooth, low forehead, and the ripe, red lips, whose

mobility lent such varying expression to her face.

At that moment the eyes drooped and the lips trembled with weariness.

"Must we go to that tiresome party, Kate? We have been to three this

week; they are all alike."

I looked at her. "Are you in earnest? will you stay at home? I know I

shall be tired to death; but what will Laura C. say? what will all

the girls think?"

Alice raised herself on her elbow. "Kate, I don't believe it is any

matter what they think. Do we really care for any of them, except to

wish them well? and we can wish them well without being with them all

the time. Do you know, Kate, I have been tired to death of all this

for these three months? It was very well at first, when we first left

school; parties were pleasant enough then, but now"--and Alice sprang

from the bed and seated herself in a low chair at my feet, as, glowing

and eager, she went on, her face lighting with her rapid

speech,--"Kate, I have thought it over and over again, this tiresome,

useless life; it wears me out, and I mean to change it. You know we

may do just as we please; neither papa nor mamma will care. I shall stay

at home."

"But what will people say?" I put in, feebly.

Alice's eyes flashed. "You know, Kate, I don't care for 'people,' as

you call them. I only know that I am utterly weary of this petty

visiting and gossiping, this round of parties, concerts, and lectures,

where we meet the same faces. There is no harm in it that I know of,

but it is simply so stupid. If we met new people, it would be

something; but the same girls, the same beaux."

"And George W. and Henry B., what will they do for partners to-night?

what will become of them?"

Alice put up her lip. "They will console themselves with Laura C. and

those Kentucky girls from Louisville. For my part, I shall put on my

walking-dress, and go over the river to spend the evening with Uncle

John, and, what is more, I shall ask mamma to let me stay two or three

days." And, suiting the action to the word, she began to dress

hurriedly.

"You will surely never go without me, Alice?"

"You will never stay behind, if I do go, Kate," said she, looking back

at me laughingly. "But make haste, I shall gain mamma over in five

minutes; and we must be quick, if we are to reach Uncle John's before

tea-time."

Uncle John,--even now that long years have passed, so long that it

seems to me as if I had gone into another state of existence, as if I

were not the same person as in those times,--even now the thought of

him makes my heart beat quick and the blood thrill more rapidly

through my veins. He was the delight of my childhood; far better, he

was the comfort and support of my after years. Even as a child, I

knew, knew by some intuitive perception, that Uncle John was not

happy. How soon I learned that he was a disappointed man I cannot

tell; but long before I grew up into womanhood I was conscious that he

had made some mistake in life, that some cloud hung over him. I never

asked, I never talked on the subject, even to Alice; there was always

an understanding between us that we should be silent about that which

each of us felt with all the certainty of knowledge.

But if Uncle John was unhappy himself, who was there that he did not

make happy? No one who came near him,--from his nieces whom he petted

and spoiled, down to the little negroes who rolled, unrebuked, over

the grass before his window in summer, or woke him on a Christmas

morning with their shrill "Christmas gift, Massa John!" Not that Uncle

John was a busybody, troubling himself about many things, and seeking

out occasions for obtruding his kindnesses. He lived so secluded a

life in the old family-house on the outskirts of Newport, (we were a

Kentucky family,) as to raise the gossiping curiosity of all new

residents, and to call forth the explanatory remark from the old

settlers, that the Delanos were all queer people, but John Delano was

the queerest of them all.

So Uncle John spent his time between his library and his garden, while

Old Aunt Molly took upon herself the cares of the household, and kept

the pantry always in a condition to welcome the guests, to whom, with

Kentucky hospitality, Uncle John's house was always open. Courteous he

was as the finest gentleman of olden times, and sincerely glad to see

his friends, but I have thought sometimes that he was equally glad to

have them go away. While they were with him he gave them the truest

welcome, leaving garden and books to devote himself to their

entertainment; but I have detected a look of relief on his face as he

shut the gate upon them and sought the shelter of his own little

study, that sanctum which even we children were not allowed to enter

except on special occasions, on a quiet winter evening, or, perhaps,

on as quiet a summer morning.

Uncle John had not always lived in the old house. We knew, that, after

Grandpapa's death, it had been shut up,--for my father's business

engagements would not allow my mother to reside in it, and Uncle John

had been for years among the Indians in the far Northwest. We had

heard of him sometimes, but we had never seen him, we hardly realized

that he was a living person, till one day he suddenly appeared among

us, rough-looking and uncouth in his hunter's dress, with his heavy

beard and his long hair, bringing with him his multifarious

assortment, so charming to our eyes, of buffalo-robes and elk-horns,

wolf-skins and Indian moccasins.

He staid with us that winter, and very merry and happy he seemed to us

at first;--looking back upon it now, I should call it, not happiness,

but excitement;--but as the winter passed on, even we children saw

that all was not right with him. He gradually withdrew himself from

the constant whirl of society in our house, and, by the spring, had

settled himself in the old home at Newport, adding to his old

furniture only his books, which he had been all winter collecting, and

the primitive _in_conveniences of his own room, which his rough

Western life had rendered indispensable to him. His study presented a

singular mixture of civilization and barbarism, and its very

peculiarities made it a delight to Alice and me. There were a few rare

engravings on the walls, hung between enormous antlers which supported

rough-looking rifles and uncouth hunting-shirts,--cases of elegantly

bound and valuable books, half hidden by heavy buffalo-robes marked

all over with strange-looking hieroglyphics which told the Indian

_coups_,--study-chairs of the most elaborate manufacture, with

levers and screws to incline them to any, the idlest, inclination,

over the backs of which hung white wolf-skins, mounted, claws and all,

with brilliant red cloth,--and in the corner, on the pretty Brussels

carpet, the prettiest that mamma could find at Shellito's, lay the bag

of Indian weed (Uncle John scorned tobacco) with which he filled his

pipe every evening, and the moccasins which he always wore when at

home.

In vain did Alice and I spend our eyesight in embroidering slippers

for him; our Christmas gifts were received with a kiss or a stroke of

the head, and then put into Aunt Molly's hands to be taken care of,

while he still wore the rough moccasins, made far up among the

Blackfoot Indians, which he laughingly declared were warmer, cooler,

softer, and stronger than any slippers or boots that civilized

shoemaker ever turned off his last.

Quiet as it was at the old house, it had always been a source of

happiness to us to be allowed to make a visit to Uncle John. There,

if that were possible, we did more as we pleased than even at home;

there were not even the conventionalities of society to restrain us;

we were in the country, comparatively. And who like Uncle John knew

what real country pleasures were? who like him could provide for every

contingency? who was so full of expedients in those happy gypsying

expeditions which we would entice him into, and which sometimes lasted

for days, nay, weeks? He would mount Alice and myself on two of his

sure-footed little Indian ponies, with which his trader friends always

kept him supplied; and throwing a pair of saddle-bags, filled with

what he called our woman's traps, over his own, he would start with us

for a trip across the country for miles, stopping at the farm-houses

at night, laughing us out of our conventional notions about the

conveniences of lodging, and so forth,--and camping out during the

day, making what we called a continuous picnic. And then the stories

he would tell us of his adventures among the Blackfeet,--of his

trading expeditions,--his being taken prisoner by the Sioux,--his life

in the forts,--till Alice would creep nearer to him in her nervous

excitement, as if to be sure that he was really with her, and then beg

him to go on and tell us something more. Once I asked him how he

happened to go out among the Indians. His face darkened,--"My little

Kate, you must not ask questions,"--and as I turned to Alice, her eyes

were full of tears. She had been looking at him while I spoke, and she

told me afterwards that something about Uncle John's lips made her

cry, they quivered so, and were set afterwards so tight. We never

asked him that question again.

But the ferry-boat, "The Belle of Newport," has neared the landing

while I have been introducing Uncle John, and the soft summer twilight

saw us wending our way through the town towards the Kentucky hills,

whose rounded outlines were still bright with the evening red. Just

on the rise of the nearest was the Old House,--for it went with us by

no other name,--and at the garden-gate stood Uncle John, his face

brightening as he saw us, while behind him a row of eager faces showed

their wide-stretched mouths and white teeth.

"Come to spend two or three days, Alice?" said Uncle John, that

evening, as we sat with shaded lamp in the study, his moccasined feet

resting on the window-seat, while he sank into the depths of his

leather-covered Spanish chair. "Why, what has become of the parties

that Aunt Molly heard about in your kitchen on her way to market

yesterday? Where are all our handsome young students that were coming

home for the holidays? Remember, I'll have none of them following you

over here, and disarranging my books by way of showing off their

knowledge."

Alice laughed. "Not a soul knows where we are, Uncle John, except

mamma, and she promised not to tell. Laura C. has a party to-night,

and she will be provoked enough at our running away; but the truth

is,----well, Uncle John, I am tired of parties; indeed, I am tired of

our way of living, and--and Kate and I thought we would come and ask

you what we ought to do about it."

Uncle John puckered up his face with a comical expression, and then,

looking out of the window, whistled the Indian buffalo-call.

Alice sprung up. "Don't whistle that provoking thing, Uncle John!

Indeed, I am thoroughly in earnest,--parties are so tiresome,--all

exactly alike; we always see the same people, or the same sort of

people. There is nothing about them worth having, except the dancing;

and even that is not as good as a scamper over the hills with you and

the ponies. You know we have been going to parties for these two

years; we have seen so much of society, no wonder we are tired of it."

"Sit down, Alice," said Uncle John; "you do look really in earnest, so

I suppose you must not be whistled at. And you have come all the way

over here this evening to get me to solve Life's problem for you? My

dear, I cannot work it out for myself. You are 'tired of society'?

Why, little one, you have not seen society yet. Suppose I could put

you down to-night in the midst of some European court,--could show you

men whose courage, wit, or learning had made them world-famous,--women

whose beauty, grace, and cultivation brought those world-famous men to

their side, and who held them there by the fascination that

high-breeding knows how to use. Should you talk of sameness then?"

Alice's eyes sparkled for a moment, then she said,--

"Yes, I should tire even of that, after a while, glorious as it would

be at first."

"Have you reached such sublime heights of philosophy already? Then,

perhaps, I shall not seem to be talking nonsense, when I tell you that

there is nothing in the world of which you would not tire after the

first joy of possession was over, no position which would not seem

monotonous. You do not believe me? Of course not. We all buy our own

experience in life; on one of two rocks we split: either we do not

want a thing after we have got it, or we do not get it till we no

longer want it. Some of us suffer shipwreck both ways. But, Alice, you

must find that out for yourself."

"Can we not profit by each other's mistakes, Uncle?"

"No, child. To what purpose should I show you the breakers where my

vessel struck? Do you suppose you will steer exactly in my path? But

what soberness is this? you are not among breakers yet; you are simply

'tired of living';" and Uncle John's smile was too genial to be called

satirical.

"Tired of not living, I think," replied Alice,--"tired of doing

nothing, of having nothing to do. The girls, Laura and the rest of

them, find so much excitement in what seems to me so stupid!"

"You are not exactly like 'Laura and the rest of them,' I fancy, my

dear, and what suits them is rather too tame for you. But what do you

propose to do with yourself now that you are beginning to live?"

"Now you are laughing at me, Uncle, and you will laugh more when I

tell you that I mean to study and to make Kate study with me."

"Poor Kate!--if you should fancy swimming, shooting, or any other

unheard-of pursuit, Kate would be obliged to swim and shoot with

you. But I will not laugh any more. Study, if you will, Alice; you

will learn fast enough, and, in this age of fast-advancing

civilization, when the chances of eligible matrimony for young ladies

in your station are yearly becoming less and less,--oh, you need not

put up your lip and peep into my bachelor's shaving-glass!--let me

tell you that a literary taste is a recourse not to be despised. Of

course you will study now to astonish me, or to surprise your young

friends, or for some other equally wise reason; but the time may come

when literature will be its own exceeding great reward."

"Uncle, answer me one thing,--are you as happy here in your quiet

study as you were in your exciting life among the Indians? Do you not

tire of this everyday sameness?"

"Close questioning, Alice, but I will answer you truly. Other things

being equal, I confess to you that the Indian life was the more

monotonous of the two. I look back now on my twenty years of savage

life and see nothing to vary its dreary sameness; the dangers were

always alike, the excitements always the same, and the rest was a dead

blank. The whole twenty years might be comprised in four words,--we

fought, we hunted, we eat, we slept. No, there is no monotony like

that,--no life so stupid as that of the savage, with his low wants and

his narrow hopes and fears. My life here among my books, which seems

to you so tame, is excitement itself compared with that. Your

stupidest party is full of life, intelligence, wit, when put beside an

Indian powwow. There is but one charm in that wandering life,

Alice,--the free intercourse with Nature; _that_ never tires; but

then you must remember that to enjoy it you must be cultivated up to

it. There needs all the teaching of civilization, nay, the education

of life, to enjoy Nature truly. These quiet hills, these beech

forests, are more to me now than Niagara was at eighteen; and Niagara

itself, which raises the poet above the earth, falls tame on the mind

of the savage. Believe one who knows,--the man of civilization who

goes back to the savage state throws away his life; his very mind

becomes, like the dyer's hand, 'subdued to what it works in.'

"But I am going out of your depth again, girls," continued he, looking

at our wondering, half-puzzled faces. "Let it go, Alice; Life is a

problem too hard for you to solve as yet; perhaps it will solve

itself. Meantime, we will brighten ourselves up to-morrow by a good

scamper over the hills, and, the next day, if your fancy for study

still holds, we will plan out some hard work, and I will show you what

real study is. Now go to bed; but see first that Aunt Molly has her

sandwiches and gingerbread ready for the morning."

TALK NUMBER TWO.

Uncle John was well qualified to show us what real study was, for in

his early youth he had read hard and long to fit himself for a

literary life. What had changed his course and driven him to the far

West we did not know, but since his return he had brought the

perseverance and judgment of middle life to the studies of his youth,

and in his last ten years of leisure had made himself that rarest of

things among Americans, a scholar, one worthy of the name.

Under his guidance our studies took life, and Alice threw herself into

them with all the energy of her nature. In vain papa pished and

pshawed, and mamma grieved, and begged John not to spoil the girls by

making bookworms of them; in vain "Laura C. and the rest of them"

entreated us to join this picnic or show ourselves at that party; in

vain the young men professed themselves afraid of us, and the girls

tossed their heads and called us blue-stockings. Alice's answer to all

was, "I like studying; it is a great deal more entertaining than going

to parties; Uncle John's study is pleasanter than Mrs. C.'s parlor,

and a ride on his little Winnebago better fun than dancing." And so

the years went on. We were not out of society,--that could not be in

our house,--but our associates changed; young men of a higher standing

frequented the house; we knew intimately the cultivated women, to

whom, before, we had simply bowed at parties; and mamma and papa grew

quite satisfied.

Not so Alice; the spirit of unrest was on her again, but this time it

was not because of the weariness of life, but that she was oppressed

by the fulness of her own happiness. She had waked up to life in

waking up to love, and had poured out on Herbert B. the whole wealth

of her heart. There was everything in her engagement to satisfy her

friends, everything to gratify papa and mamma; and if I sometimes

thought Herbert's too feeble a nature to guide hers, or if Uncle John

sometimes talked with or listened to him as if he were measuring his

depth and then went away with an anxious expression of face, who shall

say how much of selfishness influenced us both? for was he not to take

from us the pet and pride of our lives?

They were to be married in a few weeks, on Alice's twentieth birthday,

and then leave for New York, where Herbert was connected in business

with his father.

It was on a gloomy December afternoon that Alice came running up to

our room, where I was reading my Italian lesson, and exclaimed,--

"Quick, Kate! put away those stupid books, and let us go over to Uncle

John's for the night."

"Where is Herbert?"

"Herbert? Nonsense! I have sent him off with orders not to look for me

again till to-morrow, and to-night I mean to pretend that there is no

Herbert in the world. Perhaps this will be my last talk with Uncle

John."

We walked quickly through the streets, shrouded in the dark

winter-afternoon atmosphere heavy with coal-smoke, the houses on each

side dripping with the fog-drops and looking dirty and cheerless with

the black streaks running from the corners of each window, like tears

down the face of some chimney-sweep or coal-boy, till, reaching the

foot of Ludlow Street, we stood ankle-deep in mud, waiting for the

little steamer, which still ploughed its way through the dark,

sullen-looking water thick with the red mud which the late rise had

brought down, and with here and there heavy pieces of ice floating by.

"Uncle John will never expect us to-night, Alice."

"I cannot help it,--I must go; for I shall never be satisfied without

one good talk with him before I leave, and Herbert will never spare me

another evening. Besides, Uncle John will be only too glad to see us

in this suicidal weather, as he will call it." And she sprang upon the

boat, laughing at my woebegone face.

"You are glad to see us here, Uncle John,--glad we came in spite of

the fog, and sleet, and ice, and Kate's long face. How anybody can

have a long face because of the weather, I cannot understand,--or,

indeed, why there should be long faces at all in the world, when

everything is so gloriously full of life."

"How many years is it, Alice,--three, I think,--since you were tired

of living, found life so wearisome?"

"Yes, just about three years since Kate and I ran away from Laura C.'s

party and came over here to ask you to help us out of our stupidity. I

remember it all,--how you puzzled me by telling me that every position

in life had its sameness. Ah, Uncle John, you forgot one thing when

you told me that nothing satisfied us in this world." And Alice looked

up from her little stool, where she sat before the fire at Uncle

John's feet, with the flush of deep feeling coloring her cheeks and

the dewy light of happiness in her eyes.

"And that one thing, Alice?"

"You are lying in wait for my answer, to give it that smile that I

hate,--it is so unbelieving and so sad; I will not have you wear it on

your face to-night, Uncle John. You cannot, if I speak my whole heart

out. And why should I not, before you and Kate,--Kate, who is like my

other self, and you, dear Uncle John, who, ever since the time we were

talking about, have been so much to me? Do you know, I never told

anybody before? but all you said that night never left me. I thought

of it so much! Was it true that life was so dissatisfying? You who had

tried so thoroughly, who had gone through such a life of adventure,

had seemed to me really to live, was all as flat and unprofitable to

you as one of our tiresome parties or morning calls? And something in

my own heart told me it was true, something that haunted me all

through my greatest enjoyments, through my studies that I took up

then, and which have been to me, oh, Uncle John, so much more than

ever I expected they would be! Yes, through all that I believed you,

believed you till now, believed you till I knew Herbert."

"And has Herbert told you better?"

"Uncle John, you do not know how the whole of life is glorified for

me,--glorified by his love. I do not deserve it; all I can do is to

return it ten-fold; but this I know, that, while I keep it, there can

be nothing tame or dull,--life, everything, is gilded by my own

happiness."

"And if you lose it?"

The flush on her face fell. "I should be miserable!--I should not--no,

I could not live any longer!"

"Alice," said Uncle John, his face losing its half-mocking smile with

which he had been watching her eager countenance, "Alice, did you know

that I had been married?"

We started. "Married? No. How was it, and when?"

"It is no matter now, my girls. Some time I may tell you about it. I

should not have spoken of it now, but that I know my little Alice

would not believe a word I am going to tell her, if she thought she

was listening to an old bachelor's croakings. Now I can speak with

authority. You think you could not live without Herbert's love? My

dear, we can live without a great many things that we fancy

indispensable. Nor is it so very easy to die. There comes many a time

in life when it would seem quite according to the fitness of things,

just the proper ending to the romance, to lie down and die; but,

unfortunately, or rather fortunately, dying is a thing that we cannot

do so just in the nick of time; and indeed"--and Uncle John's face

assumed its strange smile, which seemed to take you, as it were,

suddenly behind the scenes, to show you the wrong side of the

tapestry,--"and indeed," he continued, "when I look back on the times

in my life that I should have died, when it was fitting and proper to

die, when I felt that dying would be such a trump card to play, if

only I could manage it, I must say that I am glad now that it was

beyond my power to arrange things according to the melodramatic

rules. As it is, I am alive now. I shake my fist at all the ghosts of

my departed tragedies and say, 'I am worth two of you. I am alive. I

have all the chances of the future in my favor.'"

Here he caught sight of Alice's wide-opened eyes, and his smile

changed into his own genial laugh, as he kissed her forehead and went

on.

"That was a little aside, Alice, made to my other self, my

metaphysical man,--not meant at all for my audience. I was meditating

a lecture on the causes of conjugal happiness, but I seem to have

stumbled upon a knot in the very first unwinding of the thread of my

discourse."

"I'll listen to the lecture, Uncle, though I see but one simple and

all-sufficient cause for my happiness."

"That Herbert loves you, ha? Know, my pretty neophyte, that happiness,

married happiness especially, does not come from being loved, but from

loving. What says our Coleridge?

"'For still the source, not fountain, gives

The daily food on which Love lives.'

"And he is right, although you shake your curls. In most marriages, in

all that are not matters of convenience, one party has a stronger

heart, will, character, than the other. And that one loves the most

from the very necessity of his nature, and, loving most, is the

happier. The other falls, after a while, into a passive state, becomes

the mere recipient of love, and finds his or her happiness in

something else, or perhaps does not find it at all."

"Neither side would satisfy me, Uncle John; I hardly know which fate

would be the more terrible. Do you think I would accept such a

compromise in exchange for all I am living and feeling now? I would

rather be miserable at once than so half-happy."

"But, my darling, Colin and Chloe cannot spend their whole lives

singing madrigals and stringing daisies. It is not in human nature to

support, for any length of time, such superhuman bliss. The time will

come when Colin will find no more rhymes to 'dove,' and when Chloe

will tire of hearing the same one. It is possible that Herbert will

some time tire of reading Shelley to you,--nay, it is even possible

that the time may come when you will tire of hearing him; it is of

that time I would talk. The present is as perfectly satisfactory to me

as to you and Herbert, though not exactly in the same degree."

"Well, Uncle, what is your advice to Chloe disillusioned,--if you

insist that such a thing must be?"

"Simply this, my own dear little child," answered Uncle John, and his

voice took almost a solemn tone in its deep tenderness,--"when that

time comes, as come it must, do not worry your husband with idle

regrets for the past; remember that the husband is not the lover;

remember that your sex love through your imagination, and look always

for that clothing and refining of passion with sentiment, which, with

us, belong only to the poetry and chivalry of youthful ardor. We may

love you as well afterward,--nay, we may love you a great deal

better,--but we cannot take the trouble of telling you so every day;

we expect you to believe it once for all; and you,--you like to hear

it over and over again, and, not hearing it, you begin to fancy it no

longer true, and fall to trying experiments on your happiness. A fatal

error this, Alice. There is nothing that men so often enjoy as the

simply being let alone; but not one woman in a hundred can be made to

believe in such a strange enjoyment. Then the wife becomes

_exigeante_ and impatient, and the husband, after fruitless

attempts to find out what he has done, never suspecting that the real

trouble is what he has left undone, finds her unreasonable, and begins

to harden himself to griefs which he classes, like Miss Edgeworth,

under the head of 'Sorrows of my Lord Plumcake.'"

"Miserable fate of the nobler sex, Uncle,--disturbed, even in the

sublime heights of philosophical self-possession, by the follies and

unreasonablenesses of the weaker vessel! I suppose you allow men to

live out their natures unrebuked, while women must live down theirs?"

"Not I, Alice,--but I am by nature a special pleader, and, just now, I

am engaged on Herbert's side of the case. Fee me well, my darling, by

a kiss or a merry look, and bring Herbert up to judgment, and I will

tell him home truths too."

"Let me hear your argument for the other side, most subtile of

reasoners, and I may, perhaps, be able to repeat them at second-hand,

when occasion calls for them."

"Don't think of it, my dear! Second-hand arguments are like

second-hand coffee,--the aroma and the strength have disappeared,

never to be brought back again. But if the husband were really here,

and the wife had paid well for properly-administered advice, I should

say to him, 'Do not fancy that you have done everything for your wife

when you have given her house, servants, and clothes; she really wants

a little attention now and then. Try to turn your thoughts away from

your more important affairs long enough to notice the pretty

morning-wrapper or the well-fitting evening-dress which has cost her

some thought for your sake; do not let a change in the furniture or a

new ornament in the parlor go unnoticed till the bill comes in. And

while, of course, you claim from her the most ready sympathy in all

your interests and enthusiasms, give her, once in a great while, say

every year or so, a little genuine interest in the housekeeping trials

or dressmaker grievances that meet her at every turn.

"Moreover, I would recommend to you, should your wife happen to have

some literary or artistic tastes, not to ignore them entirely because

they do not pay so well as your counting-room accounts do, and are not

so entertaining to you as billiards. I would even indulge her by

sacrificing a whole evening to her, once in a while, even to the

detriment of your own business or pleasure. Depend upon it, it will

pay in the end."

"Now, Uncle, like Rosalind, you have simply misused your whole sex in

your special pleadings, both for and against. If Herbert were here, I

would appeal to him to know if the time can ever come when what I do

can be uninteresting to him. But I know, for myself, that such a thing

cannot be. You are not talking from your own experience, Uncle?"

added she, suddenly looking up in his face.

"My dear Alice, were it possible, should it ever seem likely, that my

experience might benefit you, how readily I would lay it open before

you! But those who have lived their lives are like the prophets of

old,--their words are believed only when they are fulfilled. The

meaning of life is never understood till it is past. Like Moses on the

rock, our faces are covered when the Lord passes by, and we see only

his back. But look behind you, my darling!"

Alice turned suddenly and her face lighted up into the full beauty of

happiness as she saw Herbert standing in the doorway.

"I hope you have room for me, Mr. Delano," said he, advancing, "for

here I am, weather-bound, as well as Miss Alice and Kate. There is a

drizzling rain falling out-of-doors, and your Kentucky roads are fast

growing impassable for walkers."

Uncle John put into words the question that Alice's eyes had been

asking so eagerly.

"Where did you stumble from, my dear fellow,--and at this time of

night, too?"

"Why, I could not find any one at home on Fourth Street, so I took the

last ferry-boat and came over, on a venture, to try the Kentucky

hospitality, of which we New-Yorkers hear so much; and my stumbling

walk through the mud made me so unpresentable, that I found the way

round the house to Aunt Molly's premises, and left the tracks of my

muddy boots all over her white kitchen, till she, in despair, provided

me with a pair of your moccasins, and, shod in these shoes of silence,

I came quietly in upon you. I do hope you are all glad to see me," he

added, sitting down on the low seat that Alice had left, and looking

up in her face as she stood by her uncle.

Alice shook her head with a pretty assumption of displeasure, as she

said, "I told you I did not want to see you till to-morrow." But

hardly half an hour had elapsed before she and Herbert had wandered

off into the parlor, and Uncle John and I were left to watch them

through the open door.

"If he were not so impulsive," said Uncle John, abruptly,--"if he were

not so full of fancies! Kate, you are a wise and discreet little lady,

and we understand each other. Did I say too much?"

Just then Alice looked back.

"Chloe is the one who sings madrigals to-night, Uncle; she is going to

read Colin a lesson"; and, sitting down at the piano, she let her

hands run over the keys and burst out joyously into that variation of

Raleigh's pretty pastoral song,--

"Shepherd, what's Love? I prithee tell."

"It is a fountain and a well,

Where pleasure and repentance dwell;

And this is Love, as I've heard tell:

Repentance, repentance, repentance!"

TALK NUMBER THREE.

Five years have passed since Alice sat at Uncle John's feet and

listened to his words that gave lessons of wisdom while they seemed

only to amuse; and now she sits again on the low stool, looking up in

his face, while I stand behind him and look down on her, marking the

changes that those years have wrought. She has come back to us, our

own Alice still,--but how different from the impetuous, impulsive girl

who left us five years ago! Her face has lost its early freshness,

though it seems to me lovelier than before, in its matured, womanly

expression; but her eyes, which used to be lifted so eagerly, to

glance so rapidly in their varying expression, are now hidden by their

lashes even when she is talking earnestly; her lips have lost their

mobility, and have even something stern in their fixedness; whilst her

hair, brought down smoothly over her forehead and twisted firmly in

the low knot behind, and her close-fitting widow's dress add to the

sobriety and almost matronliness of her appearance.

For Alice is a widow now, and has come back to us in her bereavement.

We have known but little of her real self for some years, so guarded

have been her letters; and not until the whole terrible truth burst

upon us, did we do more than suspect that her married life had not

brought the happiness she anticipated. She is talking freely now she

is at home again among her own people.

"I have sometimes thought, Uncle John, that all you said to me, the

last night I spent here, had some meaning deeper than met the ear. Had

you second sight? Did you foresee the future? Or was there that in

the present which foreshadowed it to you?"

"I am no prophet, Alice. I spoke only from what I knew of life, and

from my knowledge of your character and Herbert's. But I am yet to

know how my words have been fulfilled."

"It makes no difference now," said she, slowly, and with a touching

weariness. "And yet," she added, rousing herself, "it would make all

the difference in the world to me, if I could see clearly where it was

that I was to blame. Certainly I must have done wrong; such

wretchedness could not have come otherwise."

Uncle John drew her hand within his, while he answered calmly,--"It is

very probable you have done wrong, my darling; who of us are wise and

prudent, loving and forbearing, as we should be?"

"You think so? How glad I am to hear you say so! Yes, I can see it

now; I can see how I did that very thing against which you warned

me. First came the time when Herbert forgot to admire everything which

I did and said, and I--I tried little pouting ways, that I did not

feel. Then they were so successful, that I carried them too far, and

Herbert did not pet me out of them. Then I grew anxious and began to

guess at that truth which was only too clear to me at last, that he

did not love me as I loved him. Next,--oh, Uncle John, how much I was

to blame!--I watched every word and look, gave meanings to things that

had none, asked explanations where Herbert had none to give, and

fairly put him under such restraint that he could neither look nor act

himself. He fretted under it,--who would not?--and then began the

thousand excuses for being away from home, business engagements,

club-meetings, some country-customers of the firm, who must be taken

to the theatre, and, at last, no excuse at all but want of time. I

knew then that his love for me had never been more than a passing

fancy, and, woman-like, I grew proud, shut my heart up from him,

buried myself in my books. I never studied before as I did then, Uncle

John, for I studied to get away from myself, and, looking back, I

wonder even now at what I accomplished. Yes, you were right, books are

fast friends,--and mine would have brought me their own exceeding

great reward, had not my spirit been so bitter.

"It was then that mamma was so sick and I came home. Did you think me

wonderfully calm, Kate? I think somebody said I showed astonishing

self-control; but, in truth, I was frightened at myself,--I had no

feeling about anything, Mamma's sickness seemed something entirely

removed from me, something which concerned me not in the least. I was

calm because I felt nothing. I wondered then and wonder now that you

did not find me out, for I knew how unlike I was to my former

self. Then mamma got well, and I was not glad; I went back to New

York, and felt no sorrow at parting with you all.

"But when I got back, oh, Uncle John, I was too late!--too late to do

right, even had I wished it! I don't know,--I made good resolutions on

my way back: Heaven knows if I should have had strength to put them in

practice. But it was all over; not only had I lost Herbert, but he had

lost himself. The first time I saw him he was not himself,--I might as

well say it,--he was drunk.

"There is no need of going through the rest, Uncle,--you will not ask

it. I think I did everything I could;--I threw away my books; I

devoted myself to making his home pleasant to him; never, no, never,

in my girlish days, did I take half the pains to please him that I did

now to win him from himself. I read to him, I sang to him, I filled

the house with people that I knew were to his taste, I dressed for

him, I let myself be admired by others that he might feel proud of me,

might think me more worthy of admiration,--but all to no

purpose. Sometimes I hoped, but more often I despaired; his fall

seemed to me fearfully rapid, though now the three years seem to have

been interminable. At last I had no hope but that of concealing the

truth from you all. You thought me churlish, Kate, in my answer to

your proposal to spend last winter with me? My darling, I dared not

have you in my house. But it is over now. I knew how that last

horrible attack would end when I sent for papa. He had gone through

two before that, and the doctor told me the third would be fatal. Poor

Herbert!--Uncle John, can I ever forgive myself?"

Alice looked up with dry and burning eyes into Uncle John's face, over

which the tears were streaming.

"My child, it is right that you should blame yourself. What sorrow do

we meet in life that we do not in part bring upon ourselves? Who is

there of us who is not wise after time? which of us has not made some

fatal mistake?"

I felt half indignant that Uncle John did not tell her how much more

to blame, how weak, how reckless Herbert had been; but the calmer

expression which came over Alice's countenance showed me that he was

right, that he best knew her heart. She could not now be just to

herself; she was happier in being unjust.

We were still and silent for a long time. The light wood-fire on the

hearth crackled and burned to ashes, but it had done its office in

tempering the chill of the autumn evening, and through the half-open

door stole the 'sweet decaying smell' of the fallen leaves, while the

hush of an Indian-summer night seemed to calm our very hearts with its

stillness.

Uncle John spoke at last. His voice was very gentle and subdued as he

said:

"I told you once, Alice, that my life should be opened to you, if ever

its errors could be either warning or consolation to you. But who am

I, to judge what beacon-lights we may hold out to each other? There is

as much egotism, sometimes, in silence as in the free speech which

asks for sympathy. Perhaps I have been too proud to lay open my

follies before you and my little Kate."

Alice looked up, with a touch of her old eagerness, as Uncle John went

on.

"It was long before you were born, my dear, that, for some college

peccadilloes,--it is so long ago that I have almost forgotten now what

they were,--I was suspended (rusticated we called it) for a term, and

advised by the grave and dignified president to spend my time in

repenting and in keeping up with my class. I had no mind to come

home; I had no wish, by my presence, to keep the memory of my

misdemeanors before my father's mind for six months; so I asked and

gained leave to spend the summer in a little town in Western

Massachusetts, where, as I said, I should have nothing to tempt me

from my studies. I had heard from a classmate what famous shooting and

fishing were to be found there, and I knew something of the beauty of

Berkshire scenery; but I honorably intended to study well and

faithfully, taking only the moderate amount of recreation necessary

for my health.

"I went, and soon established myself in a quiet farm-house with my

books, gun, and fishing-rod, and had passed there a whole month with

an approving conscience and tolerable success both in studies and

sport, when the farmer announced one morning, that, as he had one

boarder, he might as well take another, and that a New York lady had

been inquiring of his neighbor Johnson, when he was in the city last

week, for some farm-house where they would be willing to take her

cheap for the summer. She could have the best room, and he didn't

suppose she'd be in anybody's way, so he had told Johnson that she

might come, if she would put up with their country fare.

"She came the next week. She was a widow, some thirty years old, ten

years older than I was. I did not think her pretty,--perhaps

_piquante_, but that was all. In my first fastidiousness, I

thought her hardly lady-like, and laughed at her evident attempts to

attract my notice,--at her little vanities and affectations. But I do

not know; we were always together; I saw no other woman but the

farmer's wife. There were the mountain walks, the trees, the flowers,

the moonlight; she talked so well upon them all! In short, you do not

know, no young girl can know, the influence which a woman in middle

life, if she has anything in her, has over a young man; and she,--she

had shrewdness and a certain talent, and, I think now, knew what she

was doing,--at any rate, I fell madly in love. I knew my father would

never consent to my marrying then; I knew I was ruining my prospects

by doing so; but that very knowledge only made me more eager to secure

her.

"She was entirely independent of control, being left a widow with some

little property, and threw no obstacles in my way. We were married

there, in that little village, and for a few weeks I lived in a fool's

paradise.

"I could not tell you--indeed, I would not tell you, if I could--how

by degrees I found out what I had done,--that I had flung away my

heart on a woman who married me simply to secure herself the position

in society which her own imprudence had lost; how, when she found I

had nothing to offer her but a home in my father's house, entirely

dependent upon him, she accused me of having deceived her for the sake

of her own miserable pittance; how she made herself the common talk of

Newport by her dissipation, her extravagance, her affectations; how

her love of excitement led her into such undisguised flirtations,

under the name of friendships, with almost every man she met, that her

imprudences, to call them by no harsher name, made my father insist,

that, for my mother's sake, I should seek another home.

"I did so, but it was only to go through a repetition of similar

scenes, of daring follies on her part, and reproaches on mine. At

last, desperate, I induced my father to settle on her what would have

been my share of his property on condition that she should return to

New York,--while I, crushed down, mortified, and ashamed to look my

friends in the face, and sick of the wrongs and follies of civilized

life, grasped eagerly at an opportunity to join a fur-trading party,

and buried myself alive in the wilds of the Northwest.

"I had no object in going there but to escape from my wife and from

myself; but, once there, the charm of that free life took possession

of me; adventure followed adventure; opportunities opened to me, and I

grew to be an influential person, and made myself a home among the

Indians. It is a wild life that the Indian traders live up in that

far-away country, and many a reckless deed is done there which public

opinion would frown upon here. I am afraid I was no better than my

companions; I lived my life and drew from it whatever enjoyment it

would bring; but, at least, I did not brutalize myself as some of them

did; for that I may thank the refining influence of my early

education. Meantime, I was almost lost to my family and, indeed, I

hardly regretted it, for nothing would have brought me back while my

wife lived, and, if I were not to be with my friends, why eat my heart

out with longings for them? So, for nearly twenty years, I lived the

life of adventure, danger, and privation, that draws its only charm

from its independence.

"At last came a letter from your mother. It found its way to me from

fort to fort, brought up part of the way with the letters to the

troops stationed at our upper forts, then carried by the Indian

runners to the trading-posts of the fur-companies till it reached me

in the depths of the Rocky Mountains. My wife was dead,--she had died

suddenly; my property, all that she had not squandered, (and it was so

tied up by my father's forethought that she could only throw away a

part of it,) was my own again; my sister longed to see me, and

promised me a welcome to her house and heart. I grew restless from

that moment, and, converting into money the not inconsiderable wealth

with which I had surrounded myself in the shape of furs, horses,

buffalo-robes, and so forth, I came down to the States again to begin

life anew, a man of forty-five, my head whitened, and my features

marked before their time from the life of exposure which I had

led. Alice, I, too, was too late. I had dropped out of the tide of

life and progress in my twenty years' seclusion, and, struggle as I

might, I could not retrieve the time lost. The present age knew not of

me,--I had lost my place in it; the thoughts, feelings, habits, of all

around were strange to me; I had been pushed out of the line of march,

and never could I fall into step again. In society, in business, in

domestic life, it was all the same. Trial after trial taught me, at

last, the truth; and when I had learned not only to believe it, but to

accept it, I came home to my father's house, now mine, and made myself

friends of my books,--those faithful ones who were as true to me as if

I had never deserted them. They have brought me content, if not

happiness; and you, Alice, you and Kate, you have filled fully an old

man's heart."

Alice's tears were dropping fast on Uncle John's hand as she said,--

"I will be more to you henceforward than ever before. I have nothing

else to live for now. Kate is the home child; but I--I will stay with

you, and you shall teach me, too, to be contented,--to find my

happiness, as you do, in making the happiness of all around."

Uncle John passed his other hand over her hair,--

"You shall stay with me for the present, my darling,--perhaps as long

as I live. But life is not over for you, Alice. You have youth,--you

have years in store. For you it is not _too late_."

AN EVENING MELODY.

Oh that yon pines which crown the steep

Their fires might ne'er surrender!

Oh that yon fervid knoll might keep,

While lasts the world, its splendor!

Pale poplars on the wind that lean,

And in the sunset shiver,

Oh that your golden stems might screen

For aye yon glassy river!

That yon white bird on homeward wing

Soft-sliding without motion,

And now in blue air vanishing

Like snow-flake lost in ocean,

Beyond our sight might never flee,

Yet onward still be flying;

And all the dying day might be

Immortal in its dying!

Pellucid thus in golden trance,

Thus mute in expectation,

What waits the Earth? Deliverance?

Ah, no! Transfiguration!

She dreams of that New Earth divine,

Conceived of seed immortal:

She sings, "Not mine the holier shrine,

But mine the cloudy portal!"

CHESUNCOOK

[Concluded.]

Early the next morning we started on our return up the Penobscot, my

companion wishing to go about twenty-five miles above the Moosehead

carry to a camp near the junction of the two forks, and look for moose

there. Our host allowed us something for the quarter of the moose

which we had brought, and which he was glad to get. Two explorers from

Chamberlain Lake started at the same time that we did. Red flannel

shirts should be worn in the woods, if only for the fine contrast

which this color makes with the evergreens and the water. Thus I

thought when I saw the forms of the explorers in their birch, poling

up the rapids before us, far off against the forest. It is the

surveyor's color also, most distinctly seen under all circumstances.

We stopped to dine at Ragmuff, as before. My companion it was who

wandered up the stream to look for moose this time, while Joe went to

sleep on the bank, so that we felt sure of him; and I improved the

opportunity to botanize and bathe. Soon after starting again, while

Joe was gone back in the canoe for the frying-pan, which had been

left, we picked a couple of quarts of tree-cranberries for a sauce.

I was surprised by Joe's asking me how far it was to the Moosehorn. He

was pretty well acquainted with this stream, but he had noticed that I

was curious about distances, and had several maps. He, and Indians

generally, with whom I have talked, are not able to describe

dimensions or distances in our measures with any accuracy. He could

tell, perhaps, at what time we should arrive, but not how far it

was. We saw a few wood-ducks, sheldrakes, and black ducks, but they

were not so numerous there at that season as on our river at home. We

scared the same family of wood-ducks before us, going and returning.

We also heard the note of one fish-hawk, somewhat like that of a

pigeon-woodpecker, and soon after saw him perched near the top of a

dead white-pine against the island where we had first camped, while a

company of peetweets were twittering and teetering about over the

carcass of a moose on a low sandy spit just beneath. We drove the

fish-hawk from perch to perch, each time eliciting a scream or

whistle, for many miles before us. Our course being up-stream, we were

obliged to work much harder than before, and had frequent use for a

pole. Sometimes all three of us paddled together, standing up, small

and heavily laden as the canoe was. About six miles from Moosehead, we

began to see the mountains east of the north end of the lake, and at

four o'clock we reached the carry.

The Indians were still encamped here. There were three, including the

St. Francis Indian who had come in the steamer with us. One of the

others was called Sabattis. Joe and the St. Francis Indian were

plainly clear Indian, the other two apparently mixed Indian and white;

but the difference was confined to their features and complexions, for

all that I could see. We here cooked the tongue of the moose for

supper,--having left the nose, which is esteemed the choicest part, at

Chesuncook, boiling, it being a good deal of trouble to prepare it. We

also stewed our tree-cranberries, (_Viburnum opulus_,) sweetening

them with sugar. The lumberers sometimes cook them with

molasses. They were used in Arnold's expedition. This sauce was very

grateful to us who had been confined to hard bread, pork, and

moose-meat, and, notwithstanding their seeds, we all three pronounced

them equal to the common cranberry; but perhaps some allowance is to

be made for our forest appetites. It would be worth the while to

cultivate them, both for beauty and for food. I afterward saw them in

a garden in Bangor. Joe said that they were called _ebeemenar_.

While we were getting supper, Joe commenced curing the moose-hide, on

which I had sat a good part of the voyage, he having already cut most

of the hair off with his knife at the Caucomgomoc. He set up two

stout forked poles on the bank, seven or eight feet high, and as much

asunder east and west, and having cut slits eight or ten inches long,

and the same distance apart, close to the edge, on the sides of the

hide, he threaded poles through them, and then, placing one of the

poles on the forked stakes, tied the other down tightly at the

bottom. The two ends also were tied with cedar bark, their usual

string, to the upright poles, through small holes at short intervals.

The hide, thus stretched, and slanted a little to the north, to expose

its flesh side to the sun, measured, in the extreme, eight feet long

by six high. Where any flesh still adhered, Joe boldly scored it with

his knife to lay it open to the sun. It now appeared somewhat spotted

and injured by the duck shot. You may see the old frames on which

hides have been stretched at many camping-places in these woods.

For some reason or other, the going to the forks of the Penobscot was

given up, and we decided to stop here, my companion intending to hunt

down the stream at night. The Indians invited us to lodge with them,

but my companion inclined to go to the log-camp on the carry. This

camp was close and dirty, and had an ill smell, and I preferred to

accept the Indians' offer, if we did not make a camp for ourselves;

for, though they were dirty, too, they were more in the open air, and

were much more agreeable, and even refined company, than the

lumberers. The most interesting question entertained at the

lumberers' camp was, which man could "handle" any other on the carry;

and, for the most part, they possessed no qualities which you could

not lay hands on. So we went to the Indians' camp or wigwam.

It was rather windy, and therefore Joe concluded to hunt after

midnight, if the wind went down, which the other Indians thought it

would not do, because it was from the south. The two mixed bloods,

however, went off up the river for moose at dark, before we arrived at

their camp. This Indian camp was a slight, patched-up affair, which

had stood there several weeks, built shed-fashion, open to the fire on

the west. If the wind changed, they could turn it round. It was

formed by two forked stakes and a cross-bar, with rafters slanted from

this to the ground. The covering was partly an old sail, partly

birch-bark, quite imperfect, but securely tied on, and coming down to

the ground on the sides. A large log was rolled up at the back side

for a headboard, and two or three moose-hides were spread on the

ground with the hair up. Various articles of their wardrobe were

tucked around the sides and corners, or under the roof. They were

smoking moose-meat on just such a crate as is represented by With in

De Bry's "Collectio Peregrinationum," published in 1588, and which the

natives of Brazil called _boucan_, (whence buccaneer,) on which

were frequently shown pieces of human flesh drying along with the

rest. It was erected in front of the camp over the usual large fire,

in the form of an oblong square. Two stout forked stakes, four or five

feet apart and five feet high, were driven into the ground at each

end, and then two poles ten feet long were stretched across over the

fire, and smaller ones laid transversely on these a foot apart. On the

last hung large, thin slices of moose-meat smoking and drying, a space

being left open over the centre of the fire. There was the whole

heart, black as a thirty-two pound ball, hanging at one corner. They

said, that it took three or four days to cure this meat, and it would

keep a year or more. Refuse pieces lay about on the ground in

different stages of decay, and some pieces also in the fire, half

buried and sizzling in the ashes, as black and dirty as an old

shoe. These last I at first thought were thrown away, but afterwards

found that they were being cooked. Also a tremendous rib-piece was

roasting before the fire, being impaled on an upright stake forced in

and out between the ribs. There was a moose-hide stretched and curing

on poles like ours, and quite a pile of cured skins close by. They had

killed twenty-two moose within two months, but, as they could use but

very little of the meat, they left the carcasses on the

ground. Altogether it was about as savage a sight as was ever

witnessed, and I was carried back at once three hundred years. There

were many torches of birch-bark, shaped like straight tin horns, lying

ready for use on a stump outside.

For fear of dirt, we spread our blankets over their hides, so as not

to touch them anywhere. The St. Francis Indian and Joe alone were

there at first, and we lay on our backs talking with them till

midnight. They were very sociable, and, when they did not talk with

us, kept up a steady chatting in their own language. We heard a small

bird just after dark, which, Joe said, sang at a certain hour in the

night,--at ten o'clock, he believed. We also heard the hylodes and

tree-toads, and the lumberers singing in their camp a quarter of a

mile off. I told them that I had seen pictured in old books pieces of

human flesh drying on these crates; whereupon they repeated some

tradition about the Mohawks eating human flesh, what parts they

preferred, etc., and also of a battle with the Mohawks near Moosehead,

in which many of the latter were killed; but I found that they knew

but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by

stories about their ancestors as readily as any way. At first I was

nearly roasted out, for I lay against one side of the camp, and felt

the heat reflected not only from the birch-bark above, but from the

side; and again I remembered the sufferings of the Jesuit

missionaries, and what extremes of heat and cold the Indians were said

to endure. I struggled long between my desire to remain and talk with

them, and my impulse to rush out and stretch myself on the cool grass;

and when I was about to take the last step, Joe, hearing my murmurs,

or else being uncomfortable himself, got up and partially dispersed

the fire. I suppose that that is Indian manners,--to defend yourself.

While lying there listening to the Indians, I amused myself with

trying to guess at their subject by their gestures, or some proper

name introduced. There can be no more startling evidence of their

being a distinct and comparatively aboriginal race, than to hear this

unaltered Indian language, which the white man cannot speak nor

understand. We may suspect change and deterioration in almost every

other particular, but the language which is so wholly unintelligible

to us. It took me by surprise, though I had found so many arrow-heads,

and convinced me that the Indian was not the invention of historians

and poets. It was a purely wild and primitive American sound, as much

as the barking of a _chickaree_, and I could not understand a

syllable of it; but Paugus, had he been there, would have understood

it. These Abenakis gossiped, laughed, and jested, in the language in

which Eliot's Indian Bible is written, the language which has been

spoken in New England who shall say how long? These were the sounds

that issued from the wigwams of this country before Columbus was born;

they have not yet died away; and, with remarkably few exceptions, the

language of their forefathers is still copious enough for them. I felt

that I stood, or rather lay, as near to the primitive man of America,

that night, as any of its discoverers ever did.

In the midst of their conversation, Joe suddenly appealed to me to

know how long Moosehead Lake was.

Meanwhile, as we lay there, Joe was making and trying his horn, to be

ready for hunting after midnight. The St. Francis Indian also amused

himself with sounding it, or rather calling through it; for the sound

is made with the voice, and not by blowing through the horn. The

latter appeared to be a speculator in moose-hides. He bought my

companion's for two dollars and a quarter, green. Joe said that it

was worth two and a half at Oldtown. Its chief use is for moccasins.

One or two of these Indians wore them. I was told, that, by a recent

law of Maine, foreigners are not allowed to kill moose there at any

season; white Americans can kill them only at a particular season, but

the Indians of Maine at all seasons. The St. Francis Indian

accordingly asked my companion for a _wighiggin_, or bill, to

show, since he was a foreigner. He lived near Sorel. I found that he

could write his name very well, _Tahmunt Swasen_. One Ellis, an

old white man of Guilford, a town through which we passed, not far

from the south end of Moosehead, was the most celebrated moose-hunter

of those parts. Indians and whites spoke with equal respect of

him. Tahmunt said, that there were more moose here than in the

Adirondack country in New York, where he had hunted; that three years

before there were a great many about, and there were a great many now

in the woods, but they did not come out to the water. It was of no use

to hunt them at midnight,--they would not come out then. I asked

Sabattis, after he came home, if the moose never attacked him. He

answered, that you must not fire many times so as to mad him. "I fire

once and hit him in the right place, and in the morning I find him. He

won't go far. But if you keep firing, you mad him. I fired once five

bullets, every one through the heart, and he did not mind 'em at all;

it only made him more mad." I asked him if they did not hunt them with

dogs. He said, that they did so in winter, but never in the summer,

for then it was of no use; they would run right off straight and

swiftly a hundred miles.

Another Indian said, that the moose, once scared, would run all day. A

dog will hang to their lips, and be carried along till he is swung

against a tree and drops off. They cannot run on a "glaze," though

they can run in snow four feet deep; but the caribou can run on

ice. They commonly find two or three moose together. They cover

themselves with water, all but their noses, to escape flies. He had

the horns of what he called "the black moose that goes in low lands."

These spread three or four feet. The "red moose" was another kind,

"running on mountains," and had horns which spread six feet. Such were

his distinctions. Both can move their horns. The broad flat blades are

covered with hair, and are so soft, when the animal is alive, that you

can run a knife through them. They regard it as a good or bad sign, if

the horns turn this way or that. His caribou horns had been gnawed by

mice in his wigwam, but he thought that the horns neither of the moose

nor of the caribou were ever gnawed while the creature was alive, as

some have asserted. An Indian, whom I met after this at Oldtown, who

had carried about a bear and other animals of Maine to exhibit, told

me that thirty years ago there were not so many moose in Maine as now;

also, that the moose were very easily tamed, and would come back when

once fed, and so would deer, but not caribou. The Indians of this

neighborhood are about as familiar with the moose as we are with the

ox, having associated with them for so many generations. Father

Rasles, in his Dictionary of the Abenaki Language, gives not only a

word for the male moose, (_aianbé_) and another for the female,

(_hèrar_,) but for the bone which is in the middle of the heart

of the moose (!), and for his left hind-leg.

There were none of the small deer up there; they are more common about

the settlements. One ran into the city of Bangor two years before, and

jumped through a window of costly plate glass, and then into a mirror,

where it thought it recognized one of its kind, and out again, and so

on, leaping over the heads of the crowd, until it was captured. This

the inhabitants speak of as the deer that went a-shopping. The

last-mentioned Indian spoke of the _lunxus_ or Indian devil,

(which I take to be the cougar, and not the _Gulo luscus_,) as

the only animal in Maine which man need fear; it would follow a man,

and did not mind a fire. He also said, that beavers were getting to be

pretty numerous again, where we went, but their skins brought so

little now that it was not profitable to hunt them.

I had put the ears of our moose, which were ten inches long, to dry

along with the moose-meat over the fire, wishing to preserve them; but

Sabattis told me that I must skin and cure them, else the hair would

all come off. He observed, that they made tobacco-pouches of the skins

of their ears, putting the two together inside to inside. I asked him

how he got fire; and he produced a little cylindrical box of

friction-matches. He also had flints and steel, and some punk, which

was not dry; I think it was from the yellow birch. "But suppose you

upset, and all these and your powder get wet." "Then," said he, "we

wait till we get to where there is some fire." I produced from my

pocket a little vial, containing matches, stoppled water-tight, and

told him, that, though we were upset, we should still have some dry

matches; at which he stared without saying a word.

We lay awake thus a long while talking, and they gave us the meaning

of many Indian names of lakes and streams in the vicinity,--especially

Tahmunt. I asked the Indian name of Moosehead Lake. Joe answered,

_Sebamook_; Tahmunt pronounced it _Sebemook_. When I asked

what it meant, they answered, Moosehead Lake. At length, getting my

meaning, they alternately repeated the word over to themselves, as a

philologist might,--_Sebamook_,--_Sebamook_,--now and then

comparing notes in Indian; for there was a slight difference in their

dialects; and finally Tahmunt said, "Ugh! I know,"--and he rose up

partly on the moose-hide,--"like as here is a place, and there is a

place," pointing to different parts of the hide, "and you take water

from there and fill this, and it stays here; that is _Sebamook_."

I understood him to mean that it was a reservoir of water which did

not run away, the river coming in on one side and passing out again

near the same place, leaving a permanent bay. Another Indian said,

that it meant Large-Bay Lake, and that _Sebago_ and _Sebec_,

the names of other lakes, were kindred words, meaning large open

water. Joe said that _Seboois_ meant Little River. I observed

their inability, often described, to convey an abstract idea. Having

got the idea, though indistinctly, they groped about in vain for words

with which to express it. Tahmunt thought that the whites called it

Moosehead Lake, because Mount Kineo, which commands it, is shaped like

a moose's head, and that Moose River was so called "because the

mountain points right across the lake to its mouth." John Josselyn,

writing about 1673, says, "Twelve miles from Casco Bay, and passable

for men and horses, is a lake, called by the Indians Sebug. On the

brink thereof, at one end, is the famous rock, shaped like a moose

deer or helk, diaphanous, and called the Moose Rock." He appears to

have confounded Sebamook with Sebago, which is nearer, but has no

"diaphanous" rock on its shore.

I give more of their definitions, for what they are worth,--partly

_because_ they differ sometimes from the commonly received ones. They

never analyzed these words before. After long deliberation and

repeating of the word, for it gave much trouble, Tahmunt said that

_Chesuncook_ meant a place where many streams emptied in (?), and he

enumerated them,--Penobscot, Umbazookskus, Cusabesex, Red Brook,

etc.--"_Caucomgomoc_,--what does that mean?" "What are those

large white birds?" he asked. "Gulls," said I. "Ugh! Gull

Lake."--_Pammadumcook_, Joe thought, meant the Lake with Gravelly

Bottom or Bed.--_Kenduskeag_, Tahmunt concluded at last, after asking

if birches went up it, for he said that he was not much acquainted

with it, meant something like this: "You go up Penobscot till you come

to _Kenduskeag_, and you go by, you don't turn up there. That is

_Kenduskeag_." (?) Another Indian, however, who knew the river better,

told us afterward that it meant Little Eel River.--_Mattawamkeag_ was

a place where two rivers meet. (?)--_Penobscot_ was Rocky River. One

writer says, that this was "originally the name of only a section of

the main channel, from the head of the tide-water to a short distance

above Oldtown."

A very intelligent Indian, whom we afterward met, son-in-law of

Neptune, gave us also these other definitions:--_Umbazookskus_, Meadow

Stream; _Millinoket_, Place of Islands; _Aboljacarmegus_, Smooth-Ledge

Falls (and Dead-Water); _Aboljacarmeguscook_, the stream emptying in;

(the last was the word he gave when I asked about _Aboljacknagesic_,

which he did not recognize;) _Mattahumkeag_, Sand-Creek Pond;

_Piscataquis_, Branch of a River.

I asked our hosts what _Musketaquid_, the Indian name of Concord,

Mass., meant; but they changed it to _Musketicook_, and repeated

that, and Tahmunt said that it meant Dead Stream, which is probably

true. _Cook_ appears to mean stream, and perhaps _quid_

signifies the place or ground. When I asked the meaning of the names

of two of our hills, they answered that they were another language. As

Tahmunt said that he traded at Quebec, my companion inquired the

meaning of the word _Quebec_, about which there has been so much

question. He did not know, but began to conjecture. He asked what

those great ships were called that carried soldiers. "Men-of-war," we

answered. "Well," he said, "when the English ships came up the river,

they could not go any further, it was so narrow there; they must go

back,--go-back,--that's Que-bec." I mention this to show the value of

his authority in the other cases.

Late at night the other two Indians came home from moose-hunting, not

having been successful, aroused the fire again, lighted their pipes,

smoked awhile, took something strong to drink, and ate some

moose-meat, and, finding what room they could, lay down on the

moose-hides; and thus we passed the night, two white men and four

Indians, side by side.

When I awoke in the morning the weather was drizzling. One of the

Indians was lying outside, rolled in his blanket, on the opposite side

of the fire, for want of room. Joe had neglected to awake my

companion, and he had done no hunting that night. Tahmunt was making a

cross-bar for his canoe with a singularly shaped knife, such as I have

since seen other Indians using. The blade was thin, about three

quarters of an inch wide, and eight or nine inches long, but curved

out of its plane into a hook, which he said made it more convenient to

shave with. As the Indians very far north and northwest use the same

kind of knife, I suspect that it was made according to an aboriginal

pattern, though some white artisans may use a similar one. The Indians

baked a loaf of flour bread in a spider on its edge before the fire

for their breakfast; and while my companion was making tea, I caught a

dozen sizable fishes in the Penobscot, two kinds of sucker and one

trout. After we had breakfasted by ourselves, one of our bedfellows,

who had also breakfasted, came along, and, being invited, took a cup

of tea, and finally, taking up the common platter, licked it

clean. But he was nothing to a white fellow, a lumberer, who was

continually stuffing himself with the Indians' moose-meat, and was the

butt of his companions accordingly. He seems to have thought that it

was a feast "to eat all." It is commonly said that the white man

finally surpasses the Indian on his own ground, and it was proved true

in this case. I cannot swear to his employment during the hours of

darkness, but I saw him at it again as soon as it was light, though he

came a quarter of a mile to his work.

The rain prevented our continuing any longer in the woods; so giving

some of our provisions and utensils to the Indians, we took leave of

them. This being the steamer's day, I set out for the lake at once. At

the carry-man's camp I saw many little birds, brownish and yellowish,

with some white tail-feathers, hopping on the wood-pile, in company

with the slate-colored snow-bird, (_Fringilla hiemalis_,) but

more familiar than they. The lumberers said that they came round their

camps, and they gave them a vulgar name. Their simple and lively note,

which was heard in all the woods, was very familiar to me, though I

had never before chanced to see the bird while uttering it, and it

interested me not a little, because I had had many a vain chase in a

spring-morning in the direction of that sound, in order to identify

the bird. On the 28th of the next month, (October,) I saw in my yard,

in a drizzling day, many of the same kind of birds flitting about amid

the weeds, and uttering a faint _chip_ merely. There was one

full-plumaged Yellow-crowned Warbler (_Sylvia coronata_) among

them, and I saw that the others were the young birds of that

season. They had followed me from Moosehead and the North. I have

since frequently seen the full-plumaged ones while uttering that note

in the spring.

I walked over the carry alone and waited at the head of the lake. An

eagle, or some other large bird, flew screaming away from its perch by

the shore at my approach. For an hour after I reached the shore there

was not a human being to be seen, and I had all that wide prospect to

myself. I thought that I heard the sound of the steamer before she

came in sight on the open lake. I noticed at the landing, when the

steamer came in, one of our bedfellows, who had been a-moose-hunting

the night before, now very sprucely dressed in a clean white shirt and

fine black pants, a true Indian dandy, who had evidently come over the

carry to show himself to any arrivers on the north shore of Moosehead

Lake, just as New York dandies take a turn up Broadway and stand on

the steps of a hotel.

Midway the lake we took on board two manly-looking middle-aged men,

with their _bateau_, who had been exploring for six weeks as far

as the Canada line, and had let their beards grow. They had the skin

of a beaver, which they had recently caught, stretched on an oval

hoop, though the fur was not good at that season. I talked with one of

them, telling him that I had come all this distance partly to see

where the white-pine, the Eastern stuff of which our houses are built,

grew, but that on this and a previous excursion into another part of

Maine I had found it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look

for it. With a smile, he answered, that he could hardly tell

me. However, he said that he had found enough to employ two teams the

next winter in a place where there was thought to be none left. What

was considered a "tip-top" tree now was not looked at twenty years

ago, when he first went into the business; but they succeeded very

well now with what was considered quite inferior timber then. The

explorer used to cut into a tree higher and higher up, to see if it

was false-hearted, and if there was a rotten heart as big as his arm,

he let it alone; but now they cut such a tree, and sawed it all around

the rot, and it made the very best of boards, for in such a case they

were never shaky.

One connected with lumbering operations at Bangor told me that the

largest pine belonging to his firm, cut the previous winter, "scaled"

in the woods four thousand five hundred feet, and was worth ninety

dollars in the log at the Bangor boom in Oldtown. They cut a road

three and a half miles long for this tree alone. He thought that the

principal locality for the white-pine that came down the Penobscot now

was at the head of the East Branch and the Allegash, about Webster

Stream and Eagle and Chamberlain Lakes. Much timber has been stolen

from the public lands. (Pray, what kind of forest-warden is the Public

itself?) I heard of one man who, having discovered some particularly

fine trees just within the boundaries of the public lands, and not

daring to employ an accomplice, cut them down, and by means of block

and tackle, without cattle, tumbled them into a stream, and so

succeeded in getting off with them without the least assistance.

Surely, stealing pine-trees in this way is not so mean as robbing

hen-roosts.

We reached Monson that night, and the next day rode to Bangor, all the

way in the rain again, varying our route a little. Some of the taverns

on this road, which were particularly dirty, were plainly in a

transition state from the camp to the house.

* * * * *

The next forenoon we went to Oldtown. One slender old Indian on the

Oldtown shore, who recognized my companion, was full of mirth and

gestures, like a Frenchman. A Catholic priest crossed to the island in

the same _bateau_ with us. The Indian houses are framed, mostly of one

story, and in rows one behind another, at the south end of the island,

with a few scattered ones. I counted about forty, not including the

church and what my companion called the council-house. The last, which

I suppose is their town-house, was regularly framed and shingled like

the rest. There were several of two stories, quite neat, with

front-yards inclosed, and one at least had green blinds. Here and

there were moose-hides stretched and drying about them. There were no

cart-paths, nor tracks of horses, but foot-paths; very little land

cultivated, but an abundance of weeds, indigenous and naturalized;

more introduced weeds than useful vegetables, as the Indian is said to

cultivate the vices rather than the virtues of the white man. Yet

this village was cleaner than I expected, far cleaner than such Irish

villages as I have seen. The children were not particularly ragged nor

dirty. The little boys met us with bow in hand and arrow on string,

and cried, "Put up a cent." Verily, the Indian has but a feeble hold

on his bow now; but the curiosity of the white man is insatiable, and

from the first he has been eager to witness this forest

accomplishment. That elastic piece of wood with its feathered dart, so

sure to be unstrung by contact with civilization, will serve for the

type, the coat-of-arms of the savage. Alas for the Hunter Race! the

white man has driven off their game, and substituted a cent in its

place. I saw an Indian woman washing at the water's edge. She stood on

a rock, and, after dipping the clothes in the stream, laid them on the

rock, and beat them with a short club. In the grave-yard, which was

crowded with graves, and overrun with weeds, I noticed an inscription

in Indian, painted on a wooden grave-board. There was a large wooden

cross on the island.

Since my companion knew him, we called on Governor Neptune, who

lived in a little "ten-footer," one of the humblest of them

all. Personalities are allowable in speaking of public men, therefore

I will give the particulars of our visit. He was a-bed. When we

entered the room, which was one half of the house, he was sitting on

the side of the bed. There was a clock hanging in one corner. He had

on a black frock-coat, and black pants, much worn, white cotton shirt,

socks, a red silk handkerchief about his neck, and a straw hat. His

black hair was only slightly grayed. He had very broad cheeks, and his

features were decidedly and refreshingly different from those of any

of the upstart Native American party whom I have seen. He was no

darker than many old white men. He told me that he was eighty-nine;

but he was going a-moose-hunting that fall, as he had been the

previous one. Probably his companions did the hunting. We saw various

squaws dodging about. One sat on the bed by his side and helped him

out with his stories. They were remarkably corpulent, with smooth,

round faces, apparently full of good-humor. Certainly our much-abused

climate had not dried up their adipose substance. While we were

there,--for we stayed a good while,--one went over to Oldtown,

returned and cut out a dress, which she had bought, on another bed in

the room. The Governor said, that "he could remember when the moose

were much larger; that they did not use to be in the woods, but came

out of the water, as all deer did. Moose was whale once. Away down

Merrimack way, a whale came ashore in a shallow bay. Sea went out and

left him, and he came up on land a moose. What made them know he was a

whale was, that at first, before he began to run in bushes, he had no

bowels inside, but"----and then the squaw who sat on the bed by his

side, as the Governor's aid, and had been putting in a word now and

then and confirming the story, asked me what we called that soft thing

we find along the sea-shore. "Jelly-fish," I suggested. "Yes," said

he, "no bowels, but jelly-fish."

There may be some truth in what he said about the moose growing larger

formerly; for the quaint John Josselyn, a physician who spent many

years in this very district of Maine in the seventeenth century, says,

that the tips of their horns "are sometimes found to be two fathoms

asunder,"--and he is particular to tell us that a fathom is six

feet,--"and [they are] in height, from the toe of the forefoot to the

pitch of the shoulder, twelve foot, both which hath been taken by some

of my sceptique readers to be monstrous lies"; and he adds,--"There

are certain transcendentia in every creature, which are the indelible

character of God, and which discover God." This is a greater dilemma

to be caught in than is presented by the cranium of the young Bechuana

ox, apparently another of the _transcendentia_, in the collection

of Thomas Steel, Upper Brook Street, London, whose "entire length of

horn, from tip to tip, along the curve, is 13 ft. 5 in.; distance

(straight) between the tips of the horns, 8 ft. 8-1/2 in." However, the

size both of the moose and the cougar, as I have found, is generally

rather underrated than overrated, and I should be inclined to add to

the popular estimate a part of what I subtracted from Josselyn's.

But we talked mostly with the Governor's son-in-law, a very sensible

Indian; and the Governor, being so old and deaf, permitted himself to

be ignored, while we asked questions about him. The former said, that

there were two political parties among them,--one in favor of schools,

and the other opposed to them, or rather they did not wish to resist

the priest, who was opposed to them. The first had just prevailed at

the election and sent their man to the legislature. Neptune and

Aitteon and he himself were in favor of schools. He said, "If Indians

got learning, they would keep their money." When we asked where Joe's

father, Aitteon, was, he knew that he must be at Lincoln, though he

was about going a-moose-hunting, for a messenger had just gone to him

there to get his signature to some papers. I asked Neptune if they had

any of the old breed of dogs yet. He answered, "Yes." "But that," said

I, pointing to one that had just come in, "is a Yankee dog." He

assented. I said that he did not look like a good one. "Oh, yes!" he

said, and he told, with much gusto, how, the year before, he had

caught and held by the throat a wolf. A very small black puppy rushed

into the room and made at the Governor's feet, as he sat in his

stockings with his legs dangling from the bedside. The Governor rubbed

his hands and dared him to come on, entering into the sport with

spirit. Nothing more that was significant transpired, to my knowledge,

during this interview. This was the first time that I ever called on a

governor, but, as I did not ask for an office, I can speak of it with

the more freedom.

An Indian who was making canoes behind a house, looking up pleasantly

from his work,--for he knew my companion,--said that his name was Old

John Pennyweight. I had heard of him long before, and I inquired after

one of his contemporaries, Joe Four-pence-ha'penny; but, alas! he no

longer circulates. I made a faithful study of canoe-building, and I

thought that I should like to serve an apprenticeship at that trade

for one season, going into the woods for bark with my "boss," making

the canoe there, and returning in it at last.

While the _bateau_ was coming over to take us off, I picked up

some fragments of arrow-heads on the shore, and one broken stone

chisel, which were greater novelties to the Indians than to me. After

this, on Old Fort Hill, at, the bend of the Penobscot, three miles

above Bangor, looking for the site of an Indian town which some think

stood thereabouts, I found more arrow-heads, and two little dark and

crumbling fragments of Indian earthenware, in the ashes of their

fires. The Indians on the Island appeared to live quite happily and

to be well treated by the inhabitants of Oldtown.

We visited Veazie's mills, just below the Island, where were sixteen

sets of saws,--some gang saws, sixteen in a gang, not to mention

circular saws. On one side, they were hauling the logs up an

inclined plane by water-power; on the other, passing out the boards,

planks, and sawed timber, and forming them into rafts. The trees were

literally drawn and quartered there. In forming the rafts, they use

the lower three feet of hard-wood saplings, which have a crooked and

knobbed butt-end, for bolts, passing them up through holes bored in

the corners and sides of the rafts, and keying them. In another

apartment they were making fence-slats, such as stand all over New

England, out of odds and ends,--and it may be that I saw where the

picket-fence behind which I dwell at home came from. I was surprised

to find a boy collecting the long edgings of boards as fast as cut

off, and thrusting them down a hopper, where they were _ground

up_ beneath the mill, that they might be out of the way; otherwise

they accumulate in vast piles by the side of the building, increasing

the danger from fire, or, floating off, they obstruct the river. This

was not only a saw-mill, but a grist-mill, then. The inhabitants of

Oldtown, Stillwater, and Bangor cannot suffer for want of

kindling-stuff, surely. Some get their living exclusively by picking

up the drift-wood and selling it by the cord in the winter. In one

place I saw where an Irishman, who keeps a team and a man for the

purpose, had covered the shore for a long distance with regular piles,

and I was told that he had sold twelve hundred dollars' worth in a

year. Another, who lived by the shore, told me that he got all the

material of his out-buildings and fences from the river; and in that

neighborhood I perceived that this refuse wood was frequently used

instead of sand to fill hollows with, being apparently cheaper than

dirt.

I got my first clear view of Katadn, on this excursion, from a hill

about two miles northwest of Bangor, whither I went for this

purpose. After this I was ready to return to Massachusetts.

* * * * *

Humboldt has written an interesting chapter on the primitive forest,

but no one has yet described for me the difference between that wild

forest which once occupied our oldest townships, and the tame one

which I find there to-day. It is a difference which would be worth

attending to. The civilized man not only clears the land permanently

to a great extent, and cultivates open fields, but he tames and

cultivates to a certain extent the forest itself. By his mere

presence, almost, he changes the nature of the trees as no other

creature does. The sun and air, and perhaps fire, have been

introduced, and grain raised where it stands. It has lost its wild,

damp, and shaggy look, the countless fallen and decaying trees are

gone, and consequently that thick coat of moss which lived on them is

gone too. The earth is comparatively bare and smooth and dry. The

most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce

still grows shaggy with usnea. The surface of the ground in the Maine

woods is everywhere spongy and saturated with moisture. I noticed that

the plants which cover the forest floor there are such as are commonly

confined to swamps with us,--the _Clintonia borealis_, orchises,

creeping snowberry, and others; and the prevailing aster there is the

_Aster acuminatus_, which with us grows in damp and shady

woods. The asters _cordifolias_ and _macrophyllus_ also are

common, asters of little or no color, and sometimes without petals. I

saw no soft, spreading, second-growth white-pines, with smooth bark,

acknowledging the presence of the wood-chopper, but even the young

white-pines were all tall and slender rough-barked trees.

Those Maine woods differ essentially from ours. There you are never

reminded that the wilderness which you are threading is, after all,

some villager's familiar wood-lot, some widow's thirds, from which her

ancestors have sledded fuel for generations, minutely described in

some old deed which is recorded, of which the owner has got a plan

too, and old bound-marks may be found every forty rods, if you will

search. 'Tis true, the map may inform you that you stand on land

granted by the State to some academy, or on Bingham's purchase; but

these names do not impose on you, for you see nothing to remind you of

the academy or of Bingham. What were the "forests" of England to

these? One writer relates of the Isle of Wight, that in Charles the

Second's time "there were woods in the island so complete and

extensive, that it is said a squirrel might have travelled in several

parts many leagues together on the top of the trees." If it were not

for the rivers, (and he might go round their heads,) a squirrel could

here travel thus the whole breadth of the country.

We have as yet had no adequate account of a primitive pine-forest. I

have noticed that in a physical atlas lately published in

Massachusetts, and used in our schools, the "wood land" of North

America is limited almost solely to the valleys of the Ohio and some

of the Great Lakes, and the great pine-forests of the globe are not

represented. In our vicinity, for instance, New Brunswick and Maine

are exhibited as bare as Greenland. It may be that the children of

Greenville, at the foot of Moosehead Lake, who surely are not likely

to be scared by an owl, are referred to the valley of the Ohio to get

an idea of a forest; but they would not know what to do with their

moose, bear, caribou, beaver, etc., there. Shall we leave it to an

Englishman to inform us, that "in North America, both in the United

States and Canada, are the most extensive pine-forests in the world"?

The greater part of New Brunswick, the northern half of Maine, and

adjacent parts of Canada, not to mention the northeastern part of New

York and other tracts further off, are still covered with an almost

unbroken pine-forest.

But Maine, perhaps, will soon be where Massachusetts is. A good part

of her territory is already as bare and common-place as much of our

neighborhood, and her villages generally are not so well shaded as

ours. We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of

sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man. Consider Nahant, the

resort of all the fashion of Boston,--which peninsula I saw but

indistinctly in the twilight, when I steamed by it, and thought that

it was unchanged since the discovery. John Smith described it in 1614

as "the Mattahunts, two pleasant isles of groves, gardens, and

cornfields"; and others tell us that it was once well wooded, and even

furnished timber to build the wharves of Boston. Now it is difficult

to make a tree grow there, and the visitor comes away with a vision of

Mr. Tudor's ugly fences a rod high, designed to protect a few

pear-shrubs. And what are we coming to in our Middlesex towns?--a

bald, staring town-house, or meeting-house, and a bare liberty-pole,

as leafless as it is fruitless, for all I can see. We shall be obliged

to import the timber for the last, hereafter, or splice such sticks as

we have;--and our ideas of liberty are equally mean with these. The

very willow-rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder,--and

every sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the

memory of man! As if individual speculators were to be allowed to

export the clouds out of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament,

one by one. We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth

for nutriment.

They have even descended to smaller game. They have lately, as I hear,

invented a machine for chopping up huckleberry-bushes fine, and so

converting them into fuel!--bushes which, for fruit alone, are worth

all the pear-trees in the country many times over. (I can give you a

list of the three best kinds, if you want it.) At this rate, we shall

all be obliged to let our beards grow at least, if only to hide the

nakedness of the land and make a sylvan appearance. The farmer

sometimes talks of "brushing up," simply as if bare ground looked

better than clothed ground, than that which wears its natural

vesture,--as if the wild hedges, which, perhaps, are more to his

children than his whole farm beside, were _dirt_. I know of one

who deserves to be called the Tree-hater, and, perhaps, to leave this

for a new patronymic to his children. You would think that he had

been warned by an oracle that he would be killed by the fall of a

tree, and so was resolved to anticipate them. The journalists think

that they cannot say too much in favor of such "improvements" in

husbandry; it is a safe theme, like piety; but as for the beauty of

one of these "model farms," I would as lief see a patent churn and a

man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is

making money, it may be counterfeiting. The virtue of making two

blades of grass grow where only one grew before does not begin to be

superhuman.

Nevertheless, it was a relief to get back to our smooth, but still

varied landscape. For a permanent residence, it seemed to me that

there could be no comparison between this and the wilderness,

necessary as the latter is for a resource and a background, the raw

material of all our civilization. The wilderness is simple, almost to

barrenness. The partially cultivated country it is which chiefly has

inspired, and will continue to inspire, the strains of poets, such as

compose the mass of any literature. Our woods are sylvan, and their

inhabitants woodmen and rustics,--that is, _selvaggia_, and the

inhabitants are _salvages_. A civilized man, using the word in

the ordinary sense, with his ideas and associations, must at length

pine there, like a cultivated plant, which clasps its fibres about a

crude and undissolved mass of peat. At the extreme North, the voyagers

are obliged to dance and act plays for employment. Perhaps our own

woods and fields,--in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel

about the huckleberries,--with the primitive swamps scattered here and

there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection

of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes.

They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a

people have,--the common which each village possesses, its true

paradise, in comparison with which all elaborately and wilfully

wealth-constructed parks and gardens are paltry imitations. Or, I

would rather say, such _were_ our groves twenty years ago. The

poet's, commonly, is not a logger's path, but a woodman's. The logger

and pioneer have preceded him, like John the Baptist; eaten the wild

honey, it may be, but the locusts also; banished decaying wood and the

spongy mosses which feed on it, and built hearths and humanized Nature

for him.

But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no

simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines, but fragile

flowers, like the orchises, commonly described as too delicate for

cultivation, which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of

peat. These remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty,

the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the

Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the

Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness.

The kings of England formerly had their forests "to hold the king's

game," for sport or food, sometimes destroying villages to create or

extend them; and I think that they were impelled by a true

instinct. Why should not we, who have renounced the king's authority,

have our national preserves, where no villages need be destroyed, in

which the bear and panther, and some even of the hunter race, may

still exist, and not be "civilized off the face of the earth,"--our

forests, not to hold the king's game merely, but to hold and preserve

the king himself also, the lord of creation,--not for idle sport or

food, but for inspiration and our own true re-creation? or shall we,

like villains, grub them all up, poaching on our own national domains?

MY CHILDREN.

Have you seen Annie and Kitty,

Two merry children of mine?

All that is winning and pretty

Their little persons combine.

Annie is kissing and clinging

Dozens of times in a day,--

Chattering, laughing, and singing,

Romping, and running away.

Annie knows all of her neighbors.

Dainty and dirty alike,--

Learns all their talk, and, "be jabers,"

Says she "adores little Mike!"

Annie goes mad for a flower,

Eager to pluck and destroy,--

Cuts paper dolls by the hour,

Always her model--a boy!

Annie is full of her fancies,

Tells most remarkable lies,

(Innocent little romances,)

Startling in one of her size.

Three little prayers we have taught her,

Graded from winter to spring;

Oh, you should listen my daughter

Saying them all in a string!

Kitty--ah, how my heart blesses

Kitty, my lily, my rose!

Wary of all my caresses,

Chary of all she bestows.

Kitty loves quietest places,

Whispers sweet sermons to chairs,

And, with the gravest of faces,

Teaches old Carlo his prayers.

Matronly, motherly creature!

Oh, what a doll she has built--

Guiltless of figure or feature--

Out of her own little quilt!

Nought must come near it to wake it;

Noise must not give it alarm;

And when she sleeps, she must take it

Into her bed, on her arm.

Kitty is shy of a caller,

Uttering never a word;

But when alone in the parlor,

Talks to herself like a bird.

Kitty is contrary, rather,

And, with a comical smile,

Mutters, "I won't," to her father,--

Eyeing him slyly the while.

Loving one more than the other

Isn't the thing, I confess;

And I observe that their mother

Makes no distinction in dress.

Preference must be improper

In a relation like this;

I wouldn't toss up a copper--

(Kitty, come, give me a kiss!)

THE KINLOCH ESTATE, AND HOW IT WAS SETTLED.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER VII.

Early Monday morning, Mr. Hardwick walked across the green to call

upon Mrs. Kinloch. Lucy Ransom, the house-maid, washing in the

back-yard, saw him coming, and told her mistress;--before he rang,

Mrs. Kinloch had time to tie on her lace cap, smooth her hair, and

meet him in the hall.

"Good mum-morning, Mrs. Kinloch!"

"Walk in, Mr. Hardwick,--this way, into the sitting-room."

He took a seat quietly by the maple-shaded window. Mrs. Kinloch was

silent and composed. Her coolness nerved instead of depressing him,

and he began at once.

"I've ker-come to see you about the debt which my nun-nephew, Mark,

owes the estate."

"I don't know what _I_ can do about it," she replied, in a placid

tone.

"We've ben nun-neighbors, now, these f-fifteen years, Mrs. Kinloch,

and never h-had any difficulty th-that I know on. An' as the ler-law

had been used per-pretty ha'sh toward Mark, I th-thought I'd see ef

'twa'n't per-possible't some mistake had ben made."

"I don't know what mistake there has been. Squire Clamp must collect

whatever is due. It isn't harsh to do that, is it?"

"Not ha'sh to a-ask for it, but not jest the ker-kind thing to bring

ser-suit before askin'. Mark got a word and a ber-blow, but the blow

came f-first. We didn't treat yer-you so when you was a widder."

"So you go back to old times, and bring up my poverty and your

charity, do you?" said the widow, bitterly.

"By nun-no means," replied the blacksmith. "I don't w-wish to open

'counts th-that've ben settled so long; an' more, I don't intend to

ber-ber-beg from you, nor a-anybody else. We pay our debts, an' don't

'xpect nor don't wer-want to do any different."

"Then I don't see what you are so flurried about."

"Ef so be Squire Ker-Kinloch was alive, I could tell you ber-better;

or rather, I shouldn't have to go to yer-you about it. He allers give

Mark to underst-hand that he shouldn't be hard upon him,--th-that he

could pay along as he ger-got able."

"Why should he favor him more than others? I am sure not many men

would have lent the money in the first place, and I don't think it

looks well to be hanging back now."

"As to why yer-your husband was disposed to favor Mark, I have

_my_ opinion. But the der-dead shall rest; I sh-sha'n't call up

their pale faces." He drew his breath hard, and his eyes looked full

of tender memories.

After a moment he went on. "I don't w-wish to waste words; I

mum-merely come to say that Mark has five hunderd dollars, and that I

can scrape up a couple o' hunderd more, and will give my note w-with

him for the balance. Th-that's all we can handily do; an' ef that'll

arnswer, we should ler-like to have you give word to stop the suit."

"You will have to go to Squire Clamp," was the reply. "I don't presume

to dictate to my lawyer, but shall let him do what he thinks best. You

haven't been to him, I conclude? I don't think he will be

unreasonable."

Mr. Hardwick looked steadily at her.

"Wer-well, Mrs. Kinloch," said he, slowly, "I th-think I

understand. Ef I don't, it isn't because you don't mum-make the matter

plain. I sha'n't go to Squire Clamp till I have the mum-money, all of

it. I hope no a-a-enemy of yourn will be so hard to y-you as my

friends are to me."

With singular command over her tongue and temper, Mrs. Kinloch

contented herself with hoping that he would find no difficulty in

arranging matters with the lawyer, bade him good-morning, civilly, and

shut the door behind him. But when he was gone, her anger, kept so

well under control before, burst forth.

"Stuttering old fool!" she exclaimed, "to come here to badger me!--to

throw up to me the wood he cut, or the apples he brought me!--as

though Mr. Kinloch hadn't paid that ten times over! He'll find how it

is before long."

"What's the matter?" asked Mildred, meeting her step-mother in the

hall, and noticing her flushed cheek, her swelling veins, and

contorted brows.

"Why, nothing, but a talk with Uncle Ralph, who has been rather

saucy."

"Saucy? Uncle Ralph saucy? Why, he is the most kindly man in the

world,--sometimes hasty, but always well-mannered. I don't see how he

could be saucy."

"I advise you not to stand up for him against your mother."

"I shouldn't defend him in anything wrong; but I think there must be

some misunderstanding."

"He is like Mark, I suppose, always perfect in your eyes."

This was the first time since Mr. Kinloch's death that the step-mother

had ever alluded to the fondness which had existed between Mark and

Mildred as school-children, and her eyes were bent upon the girl

eagerly. It was as though she had knocked at the door of her heart,

and waited for its opening to look into the secret recesses. A quick

flush suffused Mildred's face and neck.

"You are unkind, mother," she said; for the glance was sharper than

the words; and then, bursting into tears, she went to her room.

"So it has come to this!" said Mrs. Kinloch to herself. "Well, I did

not begin at all too soon."

She walked through the hall to the back piazza. She heard voices from

beyond the shrubbery that bordered the grass-plot where the clothes

were hung on lines to dry. Lucy, the maid, evidently was there, for

one; indeed, by shifting her position so as to look through an opening

in the bushes, Mrs. Kinloch could see the girl; but she was not busy

with her clothes-basket. An arm was bent around her plump and graceful

figure. The next instant, as Mrs. Kinloch saw by standing on tiptoe,

two forms swayed toward each other, and Lucy, no way reluctantly,

received a kiss from--Hugh Branning!

Very naughty, certainly,--but it is incumbent on me to tell the truth,

and accordingly I have put it down.

Now my readers are doubtless prepared for a catastrophe. They will

expect to hear Mrs. Kinloch cry, "Lucy Ransom, you jade, what are you

doing? Take your clothes and trumpery and leave this house!" You will

suppose that her son Hugh will be shut up in the cellar on bread and

water, or sent off to sea in disgrace. That is the traditional way

with angry mistresses, I know; but Mrs. Kinloch was not one of the

common sort. She did not know Talleyrand's maxim,--"Never act from

first impulses, for they are always--_right_!" Indeed, I doubt if

she had ever heard of that slippery Frenchman; but observation and

experience had led her to adopt a similar line of policy.

Therefore she did not scold or send away Lucy; she could not well do

without her; and besides, there were reasons which made it desirable

that the girl should remain friendly. She did not call out to her

hopeful son, either,--although her fingers _did_ itch to tweak

his profligate ears. She knew that a dispute with him would only end

in his going off in a huff, and she thought she could employ him

better. So she coughed first and then stepped out into the yard. Hugh

presently came sauntering down the walk, and Lucy sang among the

clothes-lines as blithely and unconcerned as though her lips had never

tasted any flavor more piquant than bread and butter.

It was rather an equivocal look which the mistress cast over her

shoulder at the girl. It might have said,--"Poor fool! singe your

wings in the candle, if you will." It might have been only the scorn

of outraged virtue.

"Hugh," said Mrs. Kinloch, "come into the house a moment. I want to

speak with you."

The young man looked up rather astonished, but he could not read his

mother's placid face. Her hair lay smooth on her temples, under her

neat cap; her face was almost waxy pale, her lips gently pressed

together; and if her clear, gray eyes had beamed with a warm or more

humid light, she might have served a painter as a model for a

"steadfast nun, devout and pure."

When they reached the sitting-room, Mrs. Kinloch began.

"Hugh, do you think of going to sea again? Now that I am alone in the

world, don't you think you can make up your mind to stay at home?"

"I haven't thought much about it, mother. I suppose I should go when

ordered, as a matter of course; I have nothing else to do."

"That need not be a reason. There is plenty to do without waiting for

promotion in the navy till you are gray."

"Why, mother, you know I have no profession, and, I suppose I may say,

no money. At least, the Squire made no provision for me that I know

of, and I'm sure you cannot wish me to live on your 'thirds.'"

"My son, you should have some confidence in my advice, by this

time. It doesn't require a great fortune to live comfortably here."

"Yes, but it is deused dull in this old town. No theatre,--no

concert,--no music at all, but from organ-grinders,--no

parties,--nothing, in fact, but prayer-meetings from one week's end to

another. I should die of the blues here."

"Only find something to do, settle yourself into a pleasant home, and

you'll forget your uneasiness."

"That's very well to say"----

"And very easy to do. But it isn't the way to begin by flirting with

every pretty, foolish girl you see. Oh, Hugh! you are all I have now

to love. I shall grow old soon, and I want to lean upon you. Give up

the navy; be advised by me."

Hugh whistled softly. He did not suppose that his mother knew of his

gallantry. He was amused at her sharp observation.

"So you think I'm a flirt, mother?" said he. "You are out,

entirely. I'm a pattern of propriety at home!"

"You need not tell me, Hugh! I know more than you think. But I didn't

know that a son of mine could be so simple as I find you are."

"She's after me," thought Hugh. "She saw me, surely."

His mother went on.

"With such an opportunity as you have to get yourself a wife----Don't

laugh! I want to see you married, for you will never sow your wild

oats until you are. With such a chance as you have"----

"Why, mother," broke in Hugh, "it isn't so bad as that."

"Isn't so bad? What do you mean?"

"Why, _you_ know what you're driving at, and so do I. Lucy is a

good girl enough, but I never meant anything serious. There's no need

of my marrying her."

"What _are_ you talking about?"

"Now, mother, what's the use? You are only trying to read me a moral

lecture, because I gave Lucy a harmless smack."

"Lucy Ransom!" repeated Mrs. Kinloch, with ineffable scorn. "Lucy

Ransom! I hope my son isn't low enough to dally with a housemaid, a

scullion! If I _had_ seen such a spectacle, I should have kept my

mouth shut for shame. 'A guilty conscience needs no accuser'; but I am

sorry you had not pride enough to keep your disgusting fooleries to

yourself."

"Regularly sold!" muttered Hugh, as he beat a rat-tattoo on the

window-pane.

"I gave you credit for more penetration, Hugh. Now, just look a

minute. What would you think of the shrewdness of a young man, who

had no special turn for business, but a great fondness for taking his

ease,--with no money nor prospect of any,--and who, when he had the

opportunity to step at once into fortune and position, made no

movement to secure it?"

"Well, the application?"

"The fortune may be yours, if you will."

"Don't tell me riddles. Show me the prize, and I'm after it."

"But it has an incumbrance."

"Well?"

"A pretty, artless, affectionate little woman, who will make you the

best wife in the world."

"Splendid, by Jove! Who is she?"

"You needn't look far. We generally miss seeing the thing that is

under our nose."

"Why, mother, there isn't an heiress in Innisfield except my sister

Mildred."

"Mildred is not your sister. You are no more to each other than the

two farthest persons on earth."

"True enough! Well, mother, you _are_ an old 'un!"

"Don't!"--with a look of disgust,--"don't use your sailor slang here!

To see that doesn't require any particular shrewdness."

"But Mildred never liked me much. She always ran from me, like the

kitten from old Bose. She has always looked as though she thought I

would bite, and that it was best she should keep out of reach under a

chair."

"Any young man of good address and fair intelligence can make an

impression on a girl of eighteen, if he has the will, the time, and

the opportunity. You have everything in your favor, and if you don't

take the fortune that lies right in your path, you deserve to go to

the poor-house."

Hugh meditated.

"Good-morning," said Mrs. Kinloch. "You know the horse and carriage,

or the saddle-ponies, are always yours when you want to use them."

Great discoveries seem always so simple, that we wonder they were not

made from the first. The highest truths are linked with the commonest

objects and events of daily life.

Hugh looked about him as much astonished as though he had been shown a

gold mine in old Quobbin, where he could dig for the asking. What

determination he made, the course of our story will show.