when it was not wanted to. Don't you know what it was? Go up in your own
cedar closet, and step about in the dark, and see what brings up round
your ankles. Julia, poor child, cried her eyes out about it. When I got
well enough to sit up, and as soon as I could talk and plan with her,
she brought down seven of these old things, antiquated Belmontes and
Simplex Elliptics, and horrors without a name, and she made a pile of
them in the bedroom, and asked me in the most penitent way what she
should do with them.
"You can't burn them" said she; "fire won't touch them. If you bury them
in the garden, they come up at the second raking. If you give them to
the servants, they say, 'Thank-e, missus,' and throw them in the back
passage. If you give them to the poor, they throw them into the street
in front, and do not say, 'Thank-e,' Sarah sent seventeen over to the
sword factory, and the foreman swore at the boy, and told him he would
flog him within an inch of his life if he brought any more of his sauce
there; and so--and so," sobbed the poor child, "I just rolled up these
wretched things, and laid them in the cedar closet, hoping, you know,
that some day the government would want something, and would advertise
for them. You know what a good thing; I made out of the bottle corks."
In fact, she had sold our bottle corks for four thousand two hundred and
sixteen dollars of the first issue. We afterward bought two umbrellas
and a corkscrew with the money.
Well, I did not scold Julia. It was certainly no fault of hers that I
was walking on the lower shelf of her cedar closet. I told her to make
a parcel of the things, and the first time we went to drive I hove the
whole shapeless heap into the river, without saying mass for them.
But let no man think, or no woman, that this was the end of troubles. As
I look back on that winter, and on the spring of 1865 (I do not mean the
steel spring), it seems to me only the beginning. I got out on crutches
at last; I had the office transferred to my house, so that Lafarge and
Hepburn could work there nights, and communicate with me when I could
not go out; but mornings I hobbled up to the Department, and sat with
the Chief, and took his orders. Ah me! shall I soon forget that damp
winter morning, when we all had such hope at the office. One or two of
the army fellows looked in at the window as they ran by, and we knew
that they felt well; and though I would not ask Old Wick, as we had
nick-named the Chief, what was in the wind, I knew the time had come,
and that the lion meant to break the net this time. I made an excuse to
go home earlier than usual; rode down to the house in the Major's
ambulance, I remember; and hopped in, to surprise Julia with the good
news, only to find that the whole house was in that quiet uproar which
shows that something bad has happened of a sudden.
"What is it, Chloe?" said I, as the old wench rushed by me with a bucket
of water.
"Poor Mr. George, I 'fraid he's dead, sah!"
And there he really was,--dear handsome, bright George Schaff,--the
delight of all the nicest girls of Richmond; he lay there on Aunt
Eunice's bed on the ground floor, where they had brought him in. He was
not dead,--and he did not die. He is making cotton in Texas now. But he
looked mighty near it then. "The deep cut in his head" was the worst I
then had ever seen, and the blow confused everything. When McGregor got
round, he said it was not hopeless; but we were all turned out of the
room, and with one thing and another he got the boy out of the swoon,
and somehow it proved his head was not broken.
No, but poor George swears to this day it were better it had been, if it
could only have been broken the right way and on the right field. For
that evening we heard that everything had gone wrong in the surprise.
There we had been waiting for one of those early fogs, and at last the
fog had come. And Jubal Early had, that morning, pushed out every man he
had, that could stand; and they lay hid for three mortal hours, within I
don't know how near the picket line at Fort Powhatan, only waiting for
the shot which John Streight's party were to fire at Wilson's Wharf, as
soon as somebody on our left centre advanced in force on the enemy's
line above Turkey Island stretching across to Nansemond. I am not in the
War Department, and I forget whether he was to advance _en barbette_ or
by _échelon_ of infantry. But he was to advance somehow, and he knew
how; and when he advanced, you see, that other man lower down was to
rush in, and as soon as Early heard him he was to surprise Powhatan, you
see; and then, if you have understood me, Grant and Butler and the whole
rig of them would have been cut off from their supplies, would have had
to fight a battle for which they were not prepared, with their right
made into a new left, and their old left unexpectedly advanced at an
oblique angle from their centre, and would not that have been the end of
them?
Well, that never happened. And the reason it never happened was, that
poor George Schaff, with the last fatal order for this man whose name I
forget (the same who was afterward killed the day before High Bridge),
undertook to save time by cutting across behind my house, from Franklin
to Green Streets. You know how much time he saved,--they waited all day
for that order. George told me afterwards that the last thing he
remembered was kissing his hand to Julia, who sat at her bedroom window.
He said he thought she might be the last woman he ever saw this side of
heaven. Just after that, it must have been,--his horse--that white
Messenger colt old Williams bred--went over like a log, and poor George
was pitched fifteen feet head-foremost against a stake there was in that
lot. Julia saw the whole. She rushed out with all the women, and had
just brought him in when I got home. And that was the reason that the
great promised combination of December, 1864, never came off at all.
I walked out in the lot, after McGregor turned me out of the chamber, to
see what they had done with the horse. There he lay, as dead as old
Messenger himself. His neck was broken. And do you think, I looked to
see what had tripped him. I supposed it was one of the boys' bandy
holes. It was no such thing. The poor wretch had tangled his hind legs
in one of those infernal hoop-wires that Chloe had thrown out in the
piece when I gave her her new ones. Though I did not know it then, those
fatal scraps of rusty steel had broken the neck that day of Robert Lee's
army.
That time I made a row about it. I felt too badly to go into a passion.
But before the women went to bed,--they were all in the sitting-room
together,--I talked to them like a father. I did not swear. I had got
over that for a while, in that six weeks on my back. But I did say the
old wires were infernal things, and that the house and premises must be
made rid of them. The aunts laughed,--though I was so serious,--and
tipped a wink to the girls. The girls wanted to laugh, but were afraid
to. And then it came out that the aunts had sold their old hoops, tied
as tight as they could tie them, in a great mass of rags. They had made
a fortune by the sale,--I am sorry to say it was in other rags, but the
rags they got were new instead of old,--it was a real Aladdin bargain.
The new rags had blue backs, and were numbered, some as high as fifty
dollars. The rag-man had been in a hurry, and had not known what made
the things so heavy. I frowned at the swindle, but they said all was
fair with a pedler,--and I own I was glad the things were well out of
Richmond. But when I said I thought it was a mean trick, Lizzie and
Sarah looked demure, and asked what in the world I would have them do
with the old things. Did I expect them to walk down to the bridge
themselves with great parcels to throw into the river, as I had done by
Julia's? Of course it ended, as such things always do, by my taking the
work on my own shoulders. I told them to tie up all they had in as small
a parcel as they could, and bring them to me.
Accordingly, the next day, I found a handsome brown paper parcel, not so
very large, considering, and strangely square, considering, which the
minxes had put together and left on my office table. They had a great
frolic over it. They had not spared red tape nor red wax. Very official
it looked, indeed, and on the left-hand corner, in Sarah's boldest and
most contorted hand, was written, "Secret service." We had a great laugh
over their success. And, indeed, I should have taken it with me the next
time I went down to the Tredegar, but that I happened to dine one
evening with young Norton of our gallant little navy, and a very curious
thing he told us.
We were talking about the disappointment of the combined land attack. I
did not tell what upset poor Schaff's horse; indeed, I do not think
those navy men knew the details of the disappointment. O'Brien had told
me, in confidence, what I have written down probably for the first time
now. But we were speaking, in a general way, of the disappointment.
Norton finished his cigar rather thoughtfully, and then said: "Well,
fellows, it is not worth while to put in the newspapers, but what do you
suppose upset our grand naval attack, the day the Yankee gunboats
skittled down the river so handsomely?"
"Why," said Allen, who is Norton's best-beloved friend, "they say that
you ran away from them as fast as they did from you."
"Do they?" said Norton, grimly. "If you say that, I'll break your head
for you. Seriously, men," continued he, "that was a most extraordinary
thing. You know I was on the ram. But why she stopped when she stopped I
knew as little as this wineglass does; and Callender himself knew no
more than I. We had not been hit. We were all right as a trivet for all
we knew, when, skree! she began blowing off steam, and we stopped dead,
and began to drift down under those batteries. Callender had to
telegraph to the little Mosquito, or whatever Walter called his boat,
and the spunky little thing ran down and got us out of the scrape.
Walter did it right well; if he had had a monitor under him he could not
have done better. Of course we all rushed to the engine-room. What in
thunder were they at there? All they knew was they could get no water
into her boiler.
"Now, fellows, this is the end of the story. As soon as the boilers
cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged
if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth,
and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that
French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the
Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have
such a chance again!"
Some of the men thought Norton lied. But I never was with him when he
did not tell the truth. I did not mention, however, what I had thrown
into the water the last time I had gone over to Manchester. And I
changed my mind about Sarah's "secret-service" parcel. It remained on my
table.
That was the last dinner our old club had at the Spotswood, I believe.
The spring came on, and the plot thickened. We did our work in the
office as well as we could; I can speak for mine, and if other
people--but no matter for that! The 3d of April came, and the fire, and
the right wing of Grant's army. I remember I was glad then that I had
moved the office down to the house, for we were out of the way there.
Everybody had run away from the Department; and so, when the powers that
be took possession, my little sub-bureau was unmolested for some days. I
improved those days as well as I could,--burning carefully what was to
be burned, and hiding carefully what was to be hidden. One thing that
happened then belongs to this story. As I was at work on the private
bureau,--it was really a bureau, as it happened, one I had made Aunt
Eunice give up when I broke my leg,--I came, to my horror, on a neat
parcel of coast-survey maps of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. They were
not the same Maury stole when he left the National Observatory, but they
were like them. Now I was perfectly sure that on that fatal Sunday of
the flight I had sent Lafarge for these, that the President might use
them, if necessary, in his escape. When I found them, I hopped out and
called for Julia, and asked her if she did not remember his coming for
them. "Certainly," she said, "it was the first I knew of the danger.
Lafarge came, asked for the key of the office, told me all was up,
walked in, and in a moment was gone."
And here, on the file of April 3d, was Lafarge's line to me:--
"I got the secret-service parcel myself, and have put it in the
President's own hands. I marked it, 'Gulf coast,' as you bade me."
What could Lafarge have given to the President? Not the soundings of
Hatteras Bar. Not the working-drawings of the first monitor. I had all
these under my hand. Could it be,--"Julia, what did we do with that
stuff of Sarah's that she marked _secret service?_"
As I live, we had sent the girls' old hoops to the President in his
flight.
And when the next day we read how he used them, and how Pritchard
arrested him, we thought if he had only had the right parcel he would
have found the way to Florida.
That is really the end of this memoir. But I should not have written it,
but for something that happened just now on the piazza. You must know,
some of us wrecks are up here at the Berkeley baths. My uncle has a
place near here. Here came to-day John Sisson, whom I have not seen
since Memminger ran and took the clerks with him. Here we had before,
both the Richards brothers, the great paper men, you know, who started
the Edgerly Works in Prince George's County, just after the war began.
After dinner, Sisson and they met on the piazza. Queerly enough, they
had never seen each other before, though they had used reams of
Richards's paper in correspondence with each other, and the treasury had
used tons of it in the printing of bonds and bank-bills. Of course we
all fell to talking of old times,--old they seem now, though it is not a
year ago. "Richards," said Sisson at last, "what became of that last
order of ours for water-lined, pure linen government-callendered paper
of _sureté?_ We never got it, and I never knew why."
"Did you think Kilpatrick got it?" said Richards, rather gruffly.
"None of your chaff, Richards. Just tell where the paper went, for in
the loss of that lot of paper, as it proved, the bottom dropped out of
the Treasury tub. On that paper was to have been printed our new issue
of ten per cent, convertible, you know, and secured on that up-country
cotton, which Kirby Smith had above the Big Raft. I had the printers
ready for near a month waiting for that paper. The plates were really
very handsome. I'll show you a proof when we go up stairs. Wholly new
they were, made by some Frenchmen we got, who had worked for the Bank of
France. I was so anxious to have the thing well done, that I waited
three weeks for that paper, and, by Jove, I waited just too long. We
never got one of the bonds off, and that was why we had no money in
March."
Richards threw his cigar away. I will not say he swore between his
teeth, but he twirled his chair round, brought it down on all fours,
both his elbows on his knees and his chin in both hands.
"Mr. Sisson," said he, "if the Confederacy had lived, I would have died
before I ever told what became of that order of yours. But now I have no
secrets, I believe, and I care for nothing. I do not know now how it
happened. We knew it was an extra nice job. And we had it on an elegant
little new French Fourdrinier, which cost us more than we shall ever
pay. The pretty thing ran like oil the day before. That day, I thought
all the devils were in it. The more power we put on the more the rollers
screamed; and the less we put on, the more sulkily the jade stopped. I
tried it myself every way; back current; I tried; forward current; high
feed; low freed, I tried it on old stock, I tried it on new; and, Mr.
Sisson, I would have made better paper in a coffee-mill! We drained off
every drop of water. We washed the tubs free from size. Then my brother,
there, worked all night with the machinists, taking down the frame and
the rollers. You would not believe it, sir, but that little bit of
wire,"--and he took out of his pocket a piece of this hateful steel,
which poor I knew so well by this time,--"that little bit of wire had
passed in from some hoop-skirt, passed the pickers, passed the screens,
through all the troughs, up and down through what we call the
lacerators, and had got itself wrought in, where, if you know a
Fourdrinier machine, you may have noticed a brass ring riveted to the
cross-bar, and there this cursed little knife--for you see it was a
knife, by that time--had been cutting to pieces the endless wire web
every time the machine was started. You lost your bonds, Mr. Sisson,
because some Yankee woman cheated one of my rag-men."
On that story I came up stairs. Poor Aunt Eunice! She was the reason I
got no salary on the 1st of April. I thought I would warn other women by
writing down the story.
That fatal present of mine, in those harmless hour-glass parcels, was
the ruin of the Confederate navy, army, ordnance, and treasury; and it
led to the capture of the poor President too.
But, Heaven be praised, no one shall say that my office did not do its
duty!
CHRISTMAS WAITS IN BOSTON.
FROM THE INGHAM PAPERS.
[When my friends of the Boston Daily Advertiser asked me last year to
contribute to their Christmas number, I was very glad to recall this
scrap of Mr. Ingham's memoirs.
For in most modern Christmas stories I have observed that the rich wake
up of a sudden to befriend the poor, and that the moral is educed from
such compassion. The incidents in this story show, what all life shows,
that the poor befriend the rich as truly as the rich the poor: that, in
the Christian life, each needs all.
I have been asked a dozen times how far the story is true. Of course no
such series of incidents has ever taken place in this order in four or
five hours. But there is nothing told here which has not parallels
perfectly fair in my experience or in that of any working minister.]
* * * * *
I always give myself a Christmas present.
And on this particular year the present was a carol party, which is
about as good fun, all things consenting kindly, as a man can have.
Many things must consent, as will appear. First of all, there must be
good sleighing; and second, a fine night for Christmas eve. Ours are not
the carollings of your poor shivering little East Angles or South
Mercians, where they have to plod round afoot in countries which do not
know what a sleigh-ride is.
I had asked Harry to have sixteen of the best voices in the chapel
school to be trained to five or six good carols, without knowing why. We
did not care to disappoint them if a February thaw setting in on the
24th of December should break up the spree before it began. Then I had
told Howland that he must reserve for me a span of good horses, and a
sleigh that I could pack sixteen small children into, tight-stowed.
Howland is always good about such things, knew what the sleigh was for,
having done the same in other years, and made the span four horses of
his own accord, because the children would like it better, and "it would
be no difference to him." Sunday night, as the weather nymphs ordered,
the wind hauled round to the northwest and everything froze hard. Monday
night, things moderated and the snow began to fall steadily,--so
steadily; and so Tuesday night the Metropolitan people gave up their
unequal contest, all good men and angels rejoicing at their
discomfiture, and only a few of the people in the very lowest _Bolgie_
being ill-natured enough to grieve. And thus it was, that by Thursday
evening was one hard compact roadway from Copp's Hill to the
Bone-burner's Gehenna, fit for good men and angels to ride over, without
jar, without noise, and without fatigue to horse or man. So it was that
when I came down with Lycidas to the chapel at seven o'clock, I found
Harry had gathered there his eight pretty girls and his eight jolly
boys, and had them practising for the last time,
"Carol, carol, Christians,
Carol joyfully;
Carol for the coming
Of Christ's nativity."
I think the children had got inkling of what was coming, or perhaps
Harry had hinted it to their mothers. Certainly they were warmly
dressed, and when, fifteen minutes afterwards, Howland came round
himself with the sleigh, he had put in as many rugs and bear-skins as if
he thought the children were to be taken new-born from their respective
cradles. Great was the rejoicing as the bells of the horses rang beneath
the chapel windows, and Harry did not get his last _da capo_ for his
last carol. Not much matter indeed, for they were perfect enough in it
before midnight.
Lycidas and I tumbled in on the back seat, each with a child in his lap
to keep us warm; I flanked by Sam Perry, and he by John Rich, both of
the mercurial age, and therefore good to do errands. Harry was in front
somewhere flanked in like wise, and the other children lay in
miscellaneously between, like sardines when you have first opened the
box I had invited Lycidas, because, besides being my best friend, he is
the best fellow in the world, and so deserves the best Christmas eve can
give him. Under the full moon, on the still white snow, with sixteen
children at the happiest, and with the blessed memories of the best the
world has ever had, there can be nothing better than two or three such
hours.
"First, driver, out on Commonwealth Avenue. That will tone down the
horses. Stop on the left after you have passed Fairfield Street." So we
dashed up to the front of Haliburton's palace, where he was keeping his
first Christmas tide. And the children, whom Harry had hushed down for a
square or two, broke forth with good full voice under his strong lead in
"Shepherd of tender sheep,"
singing with all that unconscious pathos with which children do sing,
and starting the tears in your eyes in the midst of your gladness. The
instant the horses' bells stopped their voices began. In an instant more
we saw Haliburton and Anna run to the window and pull up the shades, and
in a minute more faces at all the windows. And so the children sung
through Clement's old hymn. Little did Clement think of bells and snow,
as he taught it in his Sunday school there in Alexandria. But perhaps
to-day, as they pin up the laurels and the palm in the chapel at
Alexandria, they are humming the words, not thinking of Clement more
than he thought of us. As the children closed with
"Swell the triumphant song
To Christ, our King."
Haliburton came running out, and begged me to bring them in. But I told
him, "No," as soon as I could hush their shouts of "Merry Christmas";
that we had a long journey before us, and must not alight by the way.
And the children broke out with
"Hail to the night,
Hail to the day,"
rather a favorite,--quicker and more to the childish taste perhaps than
the other,--and with another "Merry Christmas" we were off again.
Off, the length of Commonwealth Avenue, to where it crosses the
Brookline branch of the Mill-Dam, dashing along with the gayest of the
sleighing-parties as we came back into town, up Chestnut Street, through
Louisburg Square; ran the sleigh into a bank on the slope of Pinckney
Street in front of Walter's house; and, before they suspected there that
any one had come, the children were singing
"Carol, carol, Christians,
Carol joyfully."
Kisses flung from the window; kisses flung back from the street. "Merry
Christmas" again with a good-will, and then one of the girls began,
"When Anna took the baby,
And pressed his lips to hers,"
and all of them fell in so cheerily. O dear me! it is a scrap of old
Ephrem the Syrian, if they did but know it! And when, after this, Harry
would fain have driven on, because two carols at one house was the
rule, how the little witches begged that they might sing just one song
more there, because Mrs. Alexander had been so kind to them, when she
showed them about the German stitches. And then up the hill and over to
the North End, and as far as we could get the horses up into Moon Court,
that they might sing to the Italian image-man who gave Lucy the boy and
dog in plaster, when she was sick in the spring. For the children had,
you know, the choice of where they would go, and they select their best
friends, and will be more apt to remember the Italian image-man than
Chrysostom himself, though Chrysostom should have "made a few remarks"
to them seventeen times in the chapel. Then the Italian image-man heard
for the first time in his life
"Now is the time of Christmas come,"
and
"Jesus in his babes abiding."
And then we came up Hanover Street and stopped under Mr. Gerry's chapel,
where they were dressing the walls with their evergreens, and gave them
"Hail to the night,
Hail to the day,"
and so down State Street and stopped at the Advertiser office, because,
when the boys gave their "Literary Entertainment," Mr. Hale put in their
advertisement for nothing, and up in the old attic there the compositors
were relieved to hear
"Nor war nor battle sound,"
and
"The waiting world was still;"
so that even the leading editor relaxed from his gravity, and the
"In-General" man from his more serious views, and the Daily the next
morning wished everybody a merry Christmas with even more unction, and
resolved that in coming years it would have a supplement, large enough
to contain all the good wishes. So away again to the houses of
confectioners who had given the children candy,--to Miss Simonds's
house, because she had been so good to them in school,--to the palaces
of millionnaires who had prayed for these children with tears if the
children only knew it,--to Dr. Frothingham's in Summer Street, I
remember, where we stopped because the Boston Association of Ministers
met here,--and out on Dover Street Bridge, that the poor chair-mender
might hear our carols sung once more before he heard them better sung in
an other world where nothing needs mending.
"King of glory, king of peace!"
"Hear the song, and see the Star!"
"Welcome be thou, heavenly King!"
"Was not Christ our Saviour?"
and all the others, rung out with order or without order, breaking the
hush directly as the horses' bells were stilled, thrown into the air
with all the gladness of childhood, selected sometimes as Harry happened
to think best for the hearers, but more often as the jubilant and
uncontrolled enthusiasm of the children bade them break out in the most
joyous, least studied, and purely lyrical of all. O, we went to twenty
places that night, I suppose! We went to the grandest places in Boston,
and we went to the meanest. Everywhere they wished us a merry Christmas,
and we them. Everywhere a little crowd gathered round us, and then we
dashed away far enough to gather quite another crowd; and then back,
perhaps, not sorry to double on our steps if need were, and leaving
every crowd with a happy thought of
"The star, the manger, and the Child!"
At nine we brought up at my house, D Street, three doors from the
corner, and the children picked their very best for Polly and my six
little girls to hear, and then for the first time we let them jump out
and run in. Polly had some hot oysters for them, so that the frolic was
crowned with a treat. There was a Christmas cake cut into sixteen
pieces, which they took home to dream upon; and then hoods and muffs on
again, and by ten o'clock, or a little after, we had all the girls and
all the little ones at their homes. Four of the big boys, our two
flankers and Harry's right and left hand men, begged that they might
stay till the last moment. They could walk back from the stable, and
"rather walk than not, indeed." To which we assented, having gained
parental permission, as we left younger sisters in their respective
homes.
II.
Lycidas and I both thought, as we went into these modest houses, to
leave the children, to say they had been good and to wish a "Merry
Christmas" ourselves to fathers, mothers, and to guardian aunts, that
the welcome of those homes was perhaps the best part of it all. Here was
the great stout sailor-boy whom we had not seen since he came back from
sea. He was a mere child when he left our school years on years ago, for
the East, on board Perry's vessel, and had been round the world. Here
was brave Mrs. Masury. I had not seen her since her mother died.
"Indeed, Mr. Ingham, I got so used to watching then, that I cannot sleep
well yet o' nights; I wish you knew some poor creature that wanted me
to-night, if it were only in memory of Bethlehem." "You take a deal of
trouble for the children," said Campbell, as he crushed my hand in his;
"but you know they love you, and you know I would do as much for you and
yours,"--which I knew was true. "What can I send to your children?" said
Dalton, who was finishing sword-blades. (Ill wind was Fort Sumter, but
it blew good to poor Dalton, whom it set up in the world with his
sword-factory.) "Here's an old-fashioned tape-measure for the girl, and
a Sheffield wimble for the boy. What, there is no boy? Let one of the
girls have it then; it will count one more present for her." And so he
pressed his brown-paper parcel into my hand. From every house, though
it were the humblest, a word of love, as sweet, in truth, as if we could
have heard the voice of angels singing in the sky.
I bade Harry good night; took Lycidas to his lodgings, and gave his wife
my Christmas wishes and good night; and, coming down to the sleigh
again, gave way to the feeling which I think you will all understand,
that this was not the time to stop, but just the time to begin. For the
streets were stiller now, and the moon brighter than ever, if possible,
and the blessings of these simple people and of the grand people, and of
the very angels in heaven, who are not bound to the misery of using
words when they have anything worth saying,--all these wishes and
blessings were round me, all the purity of the still winter night, and I
didn't want to lose it all by going to bed to sleep. So I put the boys
all together, where they could chatter, took one more brisk turn on the
two avenues, and then, passing through Charles Street, I believe I was
even thinking of Cambridge, I noticed the lights in Woodhull's house,
and, seeing they were up, thought I would make Fanny a midnight call.
She came to the door herself. I asked if she were waiting for Santa
Claus, but saw in a moment that I must not joke with her. She said she
had hoped I was her husband. In a minute was one of those contrasts
which make life, life. God puts us into the world that we may try them
and be tried by them.
Poor Fanny's mother had been blocked up on the Springfield train as she
was coming on to Christmas. The old lady had been chilled through, and
was here in bed now with pneumonia. Both Fanny's children had been
ailing when she came, and this morning the doctor had pronounced it
scarlet fever. Fanny had not undressed herself since Monday, nor slept,
I thought, in the same time. So while we had been singing carols and
wishing merry Christmas, the poor child had been waiting, and hoping
that her husband or Edward, both of whom were on the tramp, would find
for her and bring to her the model nurse, who had not yet appeared. But
at midnight this unknown sister had not arrived, nor had either of the
men returned. When I rang, Fanny had hoped I was one of them.
Professional paragons, dear reader, are shy of scarlet fever. I told the
poor child that it was better as it was. I wrote a line for Sam Perry to
take to his aunt, Mrs. Masury, in which I simply said: "Dear mamma, I
have found the poor creature who wants you to-night. Come back in this
carriage." I bade him take a hack at Gates's, where they were all up
waiting for the assembly to be done at Papanti's. I sent him over to
Albany Street; and really as I sat there trying to soothe Fanny, it
seemed to me less time than it has taken to dictate this little story
about her, before Mrs. Masury rang gently, and I left them, having made
Fanny promise that she would consecrate the day, which at that moment
was born, by trusting God, by going to bed and going to sleep, knowing
that her children were in much better hands than hers. As I passed out
of the hall, the gas-light fell on a print of Correggio's Adoration,
where Woodhull had himself written years before,
"Ut appareat iis qui in tenebris et umbra mortis positi sunt."
"Darkness and the shadow of death" indeed, and what light like the light
and comfort such a woman as my Mary Masury brings!
And so, but for one of the accidents, as we call them, I should have
dropped the boys at the corner of Dover Street, and gone home with my
Christmas lesson.
But it happened, as we irreverently say,--it happened as we crossed Park
Square, so called from its being an irregular pentagon of which one of
the sides has been taken away, that I recognized a tall man, plodding
across in the snow, head down, round-shouldered, stooping forward in
walking, with his right shoulder higher than his left; and by these
tokens I knew Tom Coram, prince among Boston princes. Not Thomas Coram
that built the Foundling Hospital, though he was of Boston too; but he
was longer ago. You must look for him in Addison's contribution to a
supplement to the Spectator,--the old Spectator, I mean, not the
Thursday Spectator, which is more recent. Not Thomas Coram, I say, but
Tom Coram, who would build a hospital to-morrow, if you showed him the
need, without waiting to die first, and always helps forward, as a
prince should, whatever is princely, be it a statue at home, a school in
Richmond, a newspaper in Florida, a church in Exeter, a steam-line to
Liverpool, or a widow who wants a hundred dollars. I wished him a merry
Christmas, and Mr. Howland, by a fine instinct, drew up the horses as I
spoke. Coram shook hands; and, as it seldom happens that I have an empty
carriage while he is on foot, I asked him if I might not see him home.
He was glad to get in. We wrapped him up with spoils of the bear, the
fox, and the bison, turned the horses' heads again,--five hours now
since they started on this entangled errand of theirs,--and gave him his
ride. "I was thinking of you at the moment," said Coram,--"thinking of
old college times, of the mystery of language as unfolded by the Abbé
Faria to Edmond Dantes in the depths of the Chateau d'If. I was
wondering if you could teach me Japanese, if I asked you to a Christmas
dinner." I laughed. Japan was really a novelty then, and I asked him
since when he had been in correspondence with the sealed country. It
seemed that their house at Shanghae had just sent across there their
agents for establishing the first house in Edomo, in Japan, under the
new treaty. Everything looked promising, and the beginnings were made
for the branch which has since become Dot and Trevilyan there. Of this
he had the first tidings in his letters by the mail of that afternoon.
John Coram, his brother, had written to him, and had said that he
enclosed for his amusement the Japanese bill of particulars, as it had
been drawn out, on which they had founded their orders for the first
assorted cargo ever to be sent from America to Edomo. Bill of
particulars there was, stretching down the long tissue-paper in
exquisite chirography. But by some freak of the "total depravity of
things," the translated order for the assorted cargo was not there. John
Coram, in his care to fold up the Japanese writing nicely, had left on
his own desk at Shanghae the more intelligible English. "And so I must
wait," said Tom philosophically, "till the next East India mail for my
orders, certain that seven English houses have had less enthusiastic and
philological correspondents than my brother."
I said I did not see that. That I could not teach him to speak the
Taghalian dialects so well, that he could read them with facility before
Saturday. But I could do a good deal better. Did he remember writing a
note to old Jack Percival for me five years ago? No, he remembered no
such thing; he knew Jack Percival, but never wrote a note to him in his
life. Did he remember giving me fifty dollars, because I had taken a
delicate boy, whom I was going to send to sea, and I was not quite
satisfied with the government outfit? No, he did not remember that,
which was not strange, for that was a thing he was doing every day,
"Well, I don't care how much you remember, but the boy about whom you
wrote to Jack Percival, for whose mother's ease of mind you provided
the half-hundred, is back again,--strong, straight, and well; what is
more to the point, he had the whole charge of Perry's commissariat on
shore at Yokohama, was honorably discharged out there, reads Japanese
better than you read English; and if it will help you at all, he shall
be here at your house at breakfast." For as I spoke we stopped at
Coram's door. "Ingham," said Coram, "if you were not a parson, I should
say you were romancing." "My child," said I, "I sometimes write a
parable for the Atlantic; but the words of my lips are verity, as all
those of the Sandemanians. Go to bed; do not even dream of the Taghalian
dialects; be sure that the Japanese interpreter will breakfast with you,
and the next time you are in a scrape send for the nearest minister.
George, tell your brother Ezra that Mr. Coram wishes him to breakfast
here to-morrow morning at eight o'clock; don't forget the number,
Pemberton Square, you know." "Yes, sir," said George; and Thomas Coram
laughed, said "Merry Christmas," and we parted.
It was time we were all in bed, especially these boys. But glad enough
am I as I write these words that the meeting of Coram set us back that
dropped-stitch in our night's journey. There was one more delay. We were
sweeping by the Old State House, the boys singing again, "Carol, carol,
Christians," as we dashed along the still streets, when I caught sight
of Adams Todd, and he recognized me. He had heard us singing when we
were at the Advertiser office. Todd is an old fellow-apprentice of
mine,--and he is now, or rather was that night, chief pressman in the
Argus office. I like the Argus people,--it was there that I was South
American Editor, now many years ago,--and they befriend me to this hour.
Todd hailed me, and once more I stopped. "What sent you out from your
warm steam-boiler?" "Steam-boiler, indeed," said Todd. "Two rivets
loose,--steam-room full of steam,--police frightened,--neighborhood in a
row,--and we had to put out the fire. She would have run a week without
hurting a fly,--only a little puff in the street sometimes. But there we
are, Ingham. We shall lose the early mail as it stands. Seventy-eight
tokens to be worked now." They always talked largely of their edition at
the Argus. Saw it with many eyes, perhaps; but this time, I am sure,
Todd spoke true. I caught his idea at once. In younger and more muscular
times, Todd and I had worked the Adams press by that fly-wheel for full
five minutes at a time, as a test of strength; and in my mind's eye, I
saw that he was printing his paper at this moment with relays of
grinding stevedores. He said it was so. "But think of it to-night," said
he. "It is Christmas eve, and not an Irishman to be hired, though one
paid him ingots. Not a man can stand the grind ten minutes." I knew that
very well from old experience, and I thanked him inwardly for not
saying "the demnition grind," with Mantihni. "We cannot run the press
half the time," said he; "and the men we have are giving out now. We
shall lose all our carrier delivery." "Todd," said I, "is this a night
to be talking of ingots, or hiring, or losing, or gaining? When will you
learn that Love rules the court, the camp, and the Argus office." And I
wrote on the back of a letter to Campbell: "Come to the Argus office,
No. 2 Dassett's Alley, with seven men not afraid to work"; and I gave it
to John and Sam, bade Howland take the boys to Campbell's house,--walked
down with Todd to his office,--challenged him to take five minutes at
the wheel, in memory of old times,--made the tired relays laugh as they
saw us take hold; and then,--when I had cooled off, and put on my
Cardigan,--met Campbell, with his seven sons of Anak, tumbling down the
stairs, wondering what round of mercy the parson had found for them this
time. I started home, knowing I should now have my Argus with my coffee.
III.
And so I walked home. Better so, perhaps, after all, than in the lively
sleigh, with the tinkling bells.
"It was a calm and silent night!--
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might,
And now was queen of land and sea!
No sound was heard of clashing wars,--
Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain;
Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars
Held undisturbed their ancient reign
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago!"
What an eternity it seemed since I started with those children singing
carols. Bethlehem, Nazareth, Calvary, Rome, Roman senators, Tiberius,
Paul, Nero, Clement, Ephrem, Ambrose, and all the singers,--Vincent de
Paul, and all the loving wonderworkers, Milton and Herbert and all the
carol-writers, Luther and Knox and all the prophets,--what a world of
people had been keeping Christmas with Sam Perry and Lycidas and Harry
and me; and here were Yokohama and the Japanese, the Daily Argus and its
ten million tokens and their readers,--poor Fanny Woodhull and her sick
mother there, keeping Christmas too! For a finite world, these are a
good many "waits" to be singing in one poor fellow's ears on one
Christmas-tide.
"'Twas in the calm and silent night!--
The senator of haughty Rome,
Impatient urged his chariot's flight,
From lordly revel, roiling home.
Triumphal arches gleaming swell
His breast, with thoughts of boundless sway
What recked the _Roman_ what befell
A paltry province far away,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago!
"Within that province far away
Went plodding home a weary boor;
A streak of light before him lay,
Fallen through a half-shut stable door
Across his path. He passed,--for naught
Told _what was going on within_;
How keen the stars, his only thought,
The air how calm and cold and thin,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago!"
"Streak of light"--Is there a light in Lycidas's room? They not in bed!
That is making a night of it! Well, there are few hours of the day or
night when I have not been in Lycidas's room, so I let myself in by the
night-key he gave me, ran up the stairs,--it is a horrid seven-storied,
first-class lodging-house. For my part, I had as lief live in a steeple.
Two flights I ran up, two steps at a time,--I was younger then than I am
now,--pushed open the door which was ajar, and saw such a scene of
confusion as I never saw in Mary's over-nice parlor before. Queer! I
remember the first thing that I saw was wrong was a great ball of white
German worsted on the floor. Her basket was upset. A great
Christmas-tree lay across the rug, quite too high for the room; a large
sharp-pointed Spanish clasp-knife was by it, with which they had been
lopping it; there were two immense baskets of white papered presents,
both upset; but what frightened me most was the centre-table. Three or
four handkerchiefs on it,--towels, napkins, I know not what,--all brown
and red and almost black with blood! I turned, heart-sick, to look into
the bedroom,--and I really had a sense of relief when I saw somebody.
Bad enough it was, however. Lycidas, but just now so strong and well,
lay pale and exhausted on the bloody bed, with the clothing removed from
his right thigh and leg, while over him bent Mary and Morton. I learned
afterwards that poor Lycidas, while trimming the Christmas-tree, and
talking merrily with Mary and Morton,--who, by good luck, had brought
round his presents late, and was staying to tie on glass balls and
apples,--had given himself a deep and dangerous wound with the point of
the unlucky knife, and had lost a great deal of blood before the
hemorrhage could be controlled. Just before I entered, the stick
tourniquet which Morton had improvised had slipped in poor Mary's
unpractised hand, at the moment he was about to secure the bleeding
artery, and the blood followed in such a gush as compelled him to give
his whole attention to stopping its flow. He only knew my entrance by
the "Ah, Mr. Ingham," of the frightened Irish girl, who stood useless
behind the head of the bed.
"O Fred," said Morton, without looking up, "I am glad you are here."
"And what can I do for you?"
"Some whiskey,--first of all."
"There are two bottles," said Mary, who was holding the candle,--"in the
cupboard behind his dressing-glass."
I took Bridget with me, struck a light in the dressing-room (how she
blundered about the match), and found the cupboard door locked! Key
doubtless in Mary's pocket,--probably in pocket of "another dress." I
did not ask. Took my own bunch, willed tremendously that my account-book
drawer key should govern the lock, and it did. If it had not, I should
have put my fist through the panels. Bottle of bedbug poison; bottle
marked "bay rum"; another bottle with no mark; two bottles of Saratoga
water. "Set them all on the floor, Bridget." A tall bottle of Cologne.
Bottle marked in MS. What in the world is it? "Bring that candle,
Bridget." "Eau destillée. Marron, Montreal." What in the world did
Lycidas bring distilled water from Montreal for? And then Morton's clear
voice in the other room, "As quick as you can, Fred." "Yes! in one
moment. Put all these on the floor, Bridget." Here they are at last.
"Bourbon whiskey." "Corkscrew, Bridget."
"Indade, sir, and where is it?" "Where? I don't know. Run down as quick
as you can, and bring it. His wife cannot leave him." So Bridget ran,
and the first I heard was the rattle as she pitched down the last six
stairs of the first flight headlong. Let us hope she has not broken her
leg. I meanwhile am driving a silver pronged fork into the Bourbon
corks, and the blade of my own penknife on the other side.
"Now, Fred," from George within. (We all call Morton "George.") "Yes,
in one moment," I replied. Penknife blade breaks off, fork pulls right
out, two crumbs of cork come with it. Will that girl never come?
I turned round; I found a goblet on the wash-stand; I took Lycidas's
heavy clothes-brush, and knocked off the neck of the bottle. Did you
ever do it, reader, with one of those pressed glass bottles they make
now? It smashed like a Prince Rupert's drop in my hand, crumbled into
seventy pieces,--a nasty smell of whiskey on the floor,--and I, holding
just the hard bottom of the thing with two large spikes running
worthless up into the air. But I seized the goblet, poured into it what
was left in the bottom, and carried it in to Morton as quietly as I
could. He bade me give Lycidas as much as he could swallow; then showed
me how to substitute my thumb for his, and compress the great artery.
When he was satisfied that he could trust me, he began his work again,
silently; just speaking what must be said to that brave Mary, who seemed
to have three hands because he needed them. When all was secure, he
glanced at the ghastly white face, with beads of perspiration on the
forehead and upper lip, laid his finger on the pulse, and said: "We will
have a little more whiskey. No, Mary, you are overdone already; let Fred
bring it." The truth was that poor Mary was almost as white as Lycidas.
She would not faint,--that was the only reason she did not,--and at the
moment I wondered that she did not fall. I believe George and I were
both expecting it, now the excitement was over. He called her Mary and
me Fred, because we were all together every day of our lives. Bridget,
you see, was still nowhere.
So I retired for my whiskey again,--to attack that other bottle. George
whispered quickly as I went, "Bring enough,--bring the bottle." Did he
want the bottle corked? Would that Kelt ever come up stairs? I passed
the bell-rope as I went into the dressing-room, and rang as hard as I
could ring. I took the other bottle, and bit steadily with my teeth at
the cork, only, of course, to wrench the end of it off. George called
me, and I stepped back. "No," said he, "bring your whiskey."
Mary had just rolled gently back on the floor. I went again in despair.
But I heard Bridget's step this time. First flight, first passage;
second flight, second passage. She ran in in triumph at length, with a
_screw-driver!_
"No!" I whispered,--"no. The crooked thing you draw corks with," and I
showed her the bottle again. "Find one somewhere and don't come back
without it." So she vanished for the second time.
"Frederic!" said Morton. I think he never called me so before. Should I
risk the clothes-brush again? I opened Lycidas's own drawers,--papers,
boxes, everything in order,--not a sign of a tool.
"Frederic!" "Yes," I said. But why did I say "Yes"? "Father of Mercy,
tell me what to do."
And my mazed eyes, dim with tears,--did you ever shed tears from
excitement?--fell on an old razor-strop of those days of shaving, made
by C. WHITTAKER, SHEFFIELD. The "Sheffield" stood in black letters out
from the rest like a vision. They make cork screws in Sheffield too. If
this Whittaker had only made a corkscrew! And what is a "Sheffield
wimble?"
Hand in my pocket,--brown paper parcel.
"Where are you, Frederic?" "Yes," said I, for the last time. Twine off!
brown paper off. And I learned that the "Sheffield wimble" was one of
those things whose name you never heard before, which people sell you in
Thames Tunnel, where a hoof-cleaner, a gimlet, a screw-driver, and a
_corkscrew_ fold into one handle.
"Yes," said I, again. "Pop," said the cork "Bubble, bubble, bubble,"
said the whiskey. Bottle in one hand, full tumbler in the other, I
walked in. George poured half a tumblerful down Lycidas's throat that
time. Nor do I dare say how much he poured down afterwards. I found that
there was need of it, from what he said of the pulse, when it was all
over. I guess Mary had some, too.
This was the turning-point. He was exceedingly weak, and we sat by him
in turn through the night, giving, at short intervals, stimulants and
such food as he could swallow easily; for I remember Morton was very
particular not to raise his head more than we could help. But there was
no real danger after this.
As we turned away from the house on Christmas morning,--I to preach and
he to visit his patients,--he said to me, "Did you make that whiskey?"
"No," said I, "but poor Dod Dalton had to furnish the corkscrew."
And I went down to the chapel to preach. The sermon had been lying ready
at home on my desk,--and Polly had brought it round to me,--for there
had been no time for me to go from Lycidas's home to D Street and to
return. There was the text, all as it was the day before:--
"They helped every one his neighbor, and every one said to his
brother, Be of good courage. So the carpenter encouraged the
goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote
the anvil."
And there were the pat illustrations, as I had finished them yesterday;
of the comfort Mary Magdalen gave Joanna, the court lady; and the
comfort the court lady gave Mary Magdalen, after the mediator of a new
covenant had mediated between them; how Simon the Cyrenian, and Joseph
of Arimathea, and the beggar Bartimeus comforted each other, gave each
other strength, common force, _com-fort_, when the One Life flowed in
all their veins; how on board the ship the Tent-Maker proved to be
Captain, and the Centurion learned his duty from his Prisoner, and how
they "_All_ came safe to shore," because the New Life was there. But as
I preached, I caught Frye's eye. Frye is always critical; and I said to
myself, "Frye would not take his illustrations from eighteen hundred
years ago." And I saw dear old Dod Dalton trying to keep awake, and
Campbell hard asleep after trying, and Jane Masury looking round to see
if her mother did not come in; and Ezra Sheppard, looking, not so much
at me, as at the window beside me, as if his thoughts were the other
side of the world. And I said to them all, "O, if I could tell you, my
friends, what every twelve hours of my life tells me,--of the way in
which woman helps woman, and man helps man, when only the ice is
broken,--how we are all rich so soon as we find out that we are all
brothers, and how we are all in want, unless we can call at any moment
for a brother's hand,--then I could make you understand something, in
the lives you lead every day, of what the New Covenant, the New
Commonwealth, the New Kingdom is to be."
But I did not dare tell Dod Dalton what Campbell had been doing for
Todd, nor did I dare tell Campbell by what unconscious arts old Dod had
been helping Lycidas. Perhaps the sermon would have been better had I
done so.
But, when we had our tree in the evening at home, I did tell
all this story to Polly and the bairns, and I gave Alice her
measuring-tape,--precious with a spot of Lycidas's blood,--and Bertha
her Sheffield wimble. "Papa," said old Clara, who is the next child,
"all the people gave presents, did not they, as they did in the picture
in your study?"
"Yes," said I, "though they did not all know they were giving them."
"Why do they not give such presents every day?" said Clara.
"O child," I said, "it is only for thirty-six hours of the three hundred
and sixty-five days, that all people remember that they are all brothers
and sisters, and those are the hours that we call, therefore, Christmas
eve and Christmas day."
"And when they always remember it," said Bertha, "it will be Christmas
all the time! What fun!"
"What fun, to be sure; but Clara, what is in the picture?"
"Why, an old woman has brought eggs to the baby in the manger, and an
old man has brought a sheep. I suppose they all brought what they had."
"I suppose those who came from Sharon brought roses," said Bertha. And
Alice, who is eleven, and goes to the Lincoln School, and therefore
knows everything, said, "Yes, and the Damascus people brought Damascus
wimbles."
"This is certain," said Polly, "that nobody tried to give a straw, but
the straw, if he really gave it, carried a blessing."
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young friends is most fraternal."--_New Church Magazine_.
* * * * *
_Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the
Publishers_,
ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote A: After Chapman.]
[Footnote B: After Cowper and Pope. Long after!]
[Footnote C: Iliad, vi.]
[Footnote D: Iliad, vi--POPE.]
[Footnote E: Iliad, xii., after Sotheby.]
[Footnote F: I do not know that this explanation is at all clear. Let
me, as the mathematicians say, give an instance which will illustrate
the importance of this profession. It is now a few months since I
received the following note from a distinguished member of the
Cabinet:--
"WASHINGTON, January ----, 1842.
"DEAR SIR:--We are in a little trouble about a little thing. There
are now in this city no less than three gentlemen bearing
credentials to government as Chargés from the Republic of Oronoco.
They are, of course, accredited from three several home
governments. The President signified, when the first arrived, that
he would receive the Chargé from that government, on the 2d
proximo, but none of us know who the right Chargé is. The
newspapers tell nothing satisfactory about it. I suppose you know:
can you write me word be fore the 2d?
"The gentlemen are: Dr. Estremadura, accredited from the
'Constitutional Government,'--his credentials are dated the 2d of
November; Don Paulo Vibeira, of the 'Friends of the People,' 5th
of November; M. Antonio de Vesga, 'Constitution of 1823,' October
27th. They attach great importance to our decision, each having
scrip to sell. In haste, truly yours."
To this letter I returned the following reply:--
"SIR:--Our latest dates from Oronoco are to the 13th ultimo. The
'Constitution of '23' was then in full power. If, however, the
policy of our government be to recognize the gentlemen whose
principals shall be in office on the 2d proximo, it is a very
different affair.
"You may not be acquainted with the formulas for ascertaining the
duration of any given modern revolution. I now use the following,
which I find almost exactly correct.
"Multiply the age of the President by the number of statute miles
from the equator, divide by the number of pages in the given
Constitution; the result will be the length of the outbreak, in
days. This formula includes, as you will see, an allowance for the
heat of the climate, the zeal of the leader, and the verbosity of
the theorists. The Constitution of 1823 was reproclaimed on the
25th of October last If you will give the above formula into the
hands of any of your clerks, the calculation from it will show
that that government will go out of power on the 1st of February,
at 25 minutes after 1, P.M. Your choice, on the 2d, must be
therefore between Vibeira and Estremadura; here you will have no
difficulty. Bobádil (Vibeira's principal) was on the 13th ultimo
confined under sentence of death, at such a distance from the
capital that he cannot possibly escape and get into power before
the 2d of February. The 'Friends of the People,' in Oronoco, have
always moved slowly; they never got up an insurrection in less
than nineteen days' canvassing; that was in 1839. Generally they
are even longer. Of course, Estremadura will be your man.
"Believe me, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"GEORGE HACKMATACK"
The Cabinet had the good sense to act on my advice. My information
proved nearly correct, the only error being one of seven minutes in the
downfall of the 1823 Constitution. This arose from my making no
allowance for difference of longitude between Piaut, where their
government was established, and Opee, where it was crushed. The
difference of time between those places is six minutes and fifty-three
seconds, as the reader may see on a globe.
Estremadura was, of course, presented to the President, and sold his
scrip.]
[Footnote G: Newspaper men of 1868 will be amused to think that half
past one was late in 1836. At that time the "Great Western Mail" was due
in Boston at 6 P.M., and there was no later news except "local," or an
occasional horse express.]
[Footnote H: The reader will observe the Arcadian habits of 1836, when
the German was yet unknown.]
[Footnote I: Anno Christi, 60.]
[Footnote J: Tacit. Annal., xiv. 9]
[Footnote K: Anno Christi, 60. See Neander, P. & T., B. iii. ch. x]
[Footnote L: This correspondence, as preserved in the collections of
fragments, has too much the aspect of a school-boy exercise to claim
much credit, though high authorities support it as genuine. But the
probability that there was such a correspondence, though now lost, is
very strong.]
[Footnote M: The Fire Alarm is the invention of Dr. William F. Channing:
"A wizard of such dreaded fame,
That when in Salamanca's cave,
Him listed his magic wand to wave,
The bells would ring in Notre Dame"]
[Footnote N: I am proud to say that such suggestions have had so much
weight, that in 1868 the alarm strikes the number of the box which first
telegraphs danger, six-four, six-four, &c., six being the district
number, and four the box number in that district.]
[Footnote O: Tetrao lagopus.]
[Footnote P: Which means, "In the thirteenth century," my dear little
bell and coral reader. You have rightly guessed that the question means
"What is the history of the Reformation in Hungary?"]