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[Illustration: GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE
1847.
Engraved by W.E. Tucker, Esq.]
GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
VOL. XXX. January, 1847. No. 1.
Table of Contents
Fiction, Literature and Articles
The Oath of Marion. A Story of the Revolution.
The Night Watch
Sense and Sympathy
One of the “Upper Ten Thousand,” and One of the
People
Musa; or The Pilgrim of Truth
Three Eras of Destiny in the Life of the Painter
Angelica Kauffmann
Sly Love
Game-Birds of America.—No. III.
The Islets of the Gulf
Review of New Books
Poetry and Fashion
Miriam
To the Husband
“Oh Mother of a Mighty Race.”
Caius Marius
Love
Solitude
The Past
Hawking
Le Follet
Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
* * * * *
GRAHAM’S
AMERICAN MONTHLY
MAGAZINE
Of Literature and Art,
EMBELLISHED WITH
MEZZOTINT AND STEEL ENGRAVINGS, MUSIC, ETC.
WILLIAM C. BRYANT, J. FENIMORE COOPER, RICHARD H. DANA, JAMES K. PAULDING,
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, CHARLES F. HOFFMAN, JOSEPH C. NEAL, J. R. LOWELL.
MRS. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY, MISS C. M. SEDGWICK, MRS. FRANCES S. OSGOOD,
MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY, MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS, MRS. AMELIA B. WELBY,
MRS. A. M. F. ANNAN, ETC.
PRINCIPAL CONTRIBUTORS.
GEORGE R. GRAHAM, EDITOR.
VOLUME XXX.
PHILADELPHIA:
GEORGE R. GRAHAM & CO. 129 CHESTNUT STREET.
. . . . . .
1847.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
OF THE
THIRTIETH VOLUME.
JANUARY, 1847, TO JUNE, 1847.
Alexandre Dumas’ Hamlet. By F. J. GRUND, 142
Abroad and at Home. By F. E. F. 250
A Coquette Conquered. By J. S. WALLACE, 254
A Dream. By FANNY FORESTER, 314
A Chapter on Eating. By FRANCIS J. GRUND, 332
“Boots;” or the Misfortunes of Peter Faber. By JOSEPH C. 325
NEAL,
Frank Beverly. By MARY SPENCER PEASE, 296
Game-Birds of America. No. III. 47
Glimpses of a Soul. By FRANCES S. OSGOOD, 90
Game-Birds of America. No. IV. 118
Game-Birds of America. No. V. 162
Game Birds of America. No. VI. 320
Law and Love. Or Gaining a Case. By ICHABOD JONES, 153
Life in New York. By FRANCES S. OSGOOD, 177
Musa; Or the Pilgrim of Truth. By JAMES K. PAULDING, 28
My Aunt Fabbins’s Old Garret. By C. P. CRANCH, 157
Mrs. Bell’s Ball. By L. L. 214
Mr. Kerr Mudgeon. Or “You Wont, Wont You?” By JOSEPH C. 246
NEAL,
Margaret’s Well. A Tale of the Great Civil War. By HENRY 282
WILLIAM HERBERT,
Old Maids. Or Kate Wilson’s Morning Visit. By ENNA 193
DUVAL,
One of the “Upper Ten Thousand,” and One of the People. 21
By Mrs. J. C. CAMPBELL,
Sense and Sympathy. By F. E. F. 13
Sly Love. Or Cousin Frank. By Mrs. CAROLINE H. BUTLER, 38
Starting Wrong. By F. E. F. 133
Singleton Snippe. Who Married for a Living. By JOSEPH C. 165
NEAL,
Spectral and Supernatural Appearances. By R. BALMANNO, 361
The Oath of Marion. A Story of the Revolution. By 1, 92, 169
CHARLES J. PETERSON,
The Night Watch. A Tale. 10
Three Eras of Destiny in the Life of the Painter 33
Angelica Kauffmann. By Miss H. B. MACDONALD,
The Islets of the Gulf. Or Rose Budd. By J. FENIMORE 49, 121, 181,
COOPER, 217, 301, 349
Tribulation Trepid. By JOSEPH C. NEAL, 85
The Executioner. By A NEW CONTRIBUTOR, 101
The Young Painter. A Tale. By Mrs. JANE L. SWIFT, 111
Thomas Carlyle and His Works. By HENRY D. THOREAU, 145, 238
The Fields of Stillwater and Saratoga. By N. C. BROOKS, 205
A. M.,
The Loyalist’s Daughter. A Tale of the American 265, 337
Revolution. By P. HAMILTON MYERS,
The Irish Match-Maker. A Story of Clare. By J. GERACHTY 274
M’TEAGUE,
The Strawberry-Woman. By T. S. ARTHUR, 345
The Musician. By HENRY COOD WATSON, 372
POETRY.
Ægeus. By WM. H. C. HOSMER, 100
A Prayer. By J. B. 161
Autumn. By JESSE E. DOW, 229
April. 245
Are They Not All Ministering Spirits. By S. DRYDEN 319
PHELPS,
A Prayer. By Mrs. C. E. DA PONTE, 336
Caius Marius. By Mrs. E. J. EAMES, 20
Fanny. By Mrs. MARY SUMNER, 179
Fanny’s First Smile. By FRANCES S. OSGOOD, 262
Hawking. By E. M. SIDNEY, 81
Heart Struggles. By Mrs. J. C. CAMPBELL, 176
Love. By J. BAYARD TAYLOR, 27
Lady Jane Grey. By Mrs. E. J. EAMES, 110
Lines. By L. J. CIST, 180
Love Unrequited. By ALICE G. LEE, 228
Lines to a Jews-Harp. By L. B. M., 262
Lines on Visiting Broad Street Hotel. By W. H. C. 344
HOSMER,
Miriam. By KATE DASHWOOD, 9
Midnight Masses. By ARTHUR ALLYN, 132
Morning Invitation. By THE PRIVATE SCHOLAR, 336
Night. By ALICE GREY, 292
“Oh Mother of a Mighty Race.” By WM. C. BRYANT, 20
“Oh! that a Little Cot were Mine!” By ROBERT F. GREELY, 120
Pittsburgh. By E. M. SIDNEY, 249
Picture of Tasso. By Mrs. E. J. EAMES, 371
Solitude. By ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH, 27
Sonnets on Receiving a Crown of Ivy from John Keats. By 117
LEIGH HUNT,
Song. By WM. C. BRYANT, 152
Stanzas. By THOMAS FITZGERALD, 237
Sonnet. 279
Settlement of the Genesee. By WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER, 293
Sea-Side Musings. By ADALIZA CUTTER, 313
Sonnet from Petrarch, on the Death of Laura. Translated 331
by ALICE GREY,
To the Husband. By ELLA, 12
The Past. By E. J. E., 37
The Maid of Linden Lane. By T. BUCHANAN READ, 99
The Gleaner. By E. M. SIDNEY, 143
The Midshipman’s Farewell. By Mrs. CORNELIA DA PONTE, 152
The Love Dial. By G. W. PATTON, 192
The Brickmaker. By T. BUCHANAN READ, 200
To Mrs. A. T. By Dr. JNO. C. M’CABE, 201
The Oriole’s Return. By Miss C. MITCHELL, 213
The Skater’s Song. By H. B. T. 216
The Portrait. By KATE DASHWOOD, 237
The Statue in the Snow. By J. B. TAYLOR, 253
The Stolen Child. By THOMAS BUCHANAN READ, 280
To Mrs. P——, of Chestnut Street. 313
The Idiot Boy. By E. P. 330
The Soul’s Search. By T. BUCHANAN READ, 348
To Lizzie. By Mrs. M. N. M’DONALD, 348
To Ianthe. By GEO. W. HOBSON, 360
Youthful Love. By ALICE G. LEE, 331
REVIEWS.
History of the Thirty Years’ War. By Rev. A. J. 82
Morrison,
The History of Civilization from the Fall of the Roman 82
Empire to the French Revolution. By F. Guizot.
Translated by Wm. Hazlitt,
Stories from the Italian Poets. By Leigh Hunt, 82
The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore, 83
The French Revolution. By Thomas Carlyle, 83
The Life and Correspondence of John Foster. Edited by J. 83
E. Ryland,
The New Timon. A Romance of London, 83
Memoirs of the Life of Addison. By Miss Aiken, 83
Christine, and Other Poems. By T. B. Read, 144
Dealings with the Firm of Domby & Son. By Charles 144
Dickens,
Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert and Sanders. By 144
Izaak Walton,
Poems. By Ralph Waldo Emerson, 202
The Modern Standard Drama. Edited by Epes Sargent, 202
The Poems of Thomas Campbell, 203
Views A-Foot: or Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff. By 204
J. Bayard Taylor,
Alderbrook. By Miss Emily Chubbuck, 204
The Prose Writers of America. By Rufus Wilmot Griswold, 263
Songs of the Sea, and other Poems. By Epes Sargent, 263
The Battle of Life. By Charles Dickens, 264
The Countess of Rudolstadt. By George Sand, 264
Cyclopedia of English Literature. Edited by Robert 264
Chambers,
Travels in Peru. By Dr. J. J. Von Tschudi, 264
Ballads and other Poems. By Mary Howitt, 264
The Dog. By William Youatt, 264
The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. By William Hazlitt, 322
American Comedies. By James K. Paulding and William 322
Irving Paulding,
History of the Roman Republic. By J. Michelet. 322
Translated by Wm. Hazlitt,
Spaniards and their Country. By R. Ford, 323
Hyperion. By H. W. Longfellow, 323
Froissart Ballads. By P. Pendleton Cook, 323
Past and Present. By Thomas Carlyle, 379
The Constitutional History of England from the Accession 379
of Henry VII. to the Death of George II. By Henry
Hallam,
MUSIC.
I’ve Been upon the Briny Deep. A New Song. Composed by 140
Charles E. Cathrall,
General Taylor’s Gallop. Composed and respectfully 260
dedicated to the Ladies of Miss Carpenter’s Dancing
Assembly. By A. J. R. Conner
ENGRAVINGS.
The Departure, engraved by J. Sartain, Esq.
Title Page for 1847, designed and engraved by E. Tucker,
Esq.
Paris Fashions, from Le Follet,
Josh Educating a Pig.
The Gleaner, engraved by Rawdon, Wright & Hatch.
Herds of Bisons and Elks, engraved by Rawdon, Wright &
Hatch.
Paris Fashions, from Le Follet.
Saukie and Fox Indians, engraved by Rawdon, Wright &
Hatch.
Falls of the Towalaga, engraved by Smillie.
Paris Fashions, from Le Follet.
Saratoga and Stillwater Battle-Ground, engraved by
Smillie.
Pittsburg, engraved by A. W. Graham.
Paris Fashions, from Le Follet.
Mandan Women, engraved by Rawdon, Wright & Hatch.
Lover’s Leap, engraved by Smillie.
Colored Flower, executed by E. Quarré.
The Home-Bird, engraved by A. L. Dick.
Paris Fashions, from Le Follet.
Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _PAINTED BY HORACE VERNET._ ENGRAVED BY JOHN
SARTAIN._
DEPARTING FOR THE CHASE.
Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine.]
* * * * *
GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
VOL. XXX. PHILADELPHIA, JANUARY, 1847. NO. 1.
* * * * *
THE OATH OF MARION.
A STORY OF THE REVOLUTION.
BY CHARLES J. PETERSON.
[PRIZE STORY—for which the Premium of $200 was awarded by the Committee.]
CHAPTER I.
Every man knows best how to buckle his own belt.
FALSTAFF.
“Did you get the pass, Macdonald?” said a young man, looking up, as his
servant entered the room of a lodging-house in Charleston, in the latter
part of the year 1780.
“Yes, sir, and the baggage and horses are ready,” was the reply of a
stalwart youth, whose dress betokened a condition removed from that of
an ordinary menial, and partaking rather of that of a familiar, though
humble companion. “I think we can give them the slip, sir—Lord! how I
wish for a crack at these fellows! and once with Marion, we’ll not long
want an opportunity.”
“Be in waiting for me at midnight, then,” said the first speaker; and,
as Macdonald retired, he threw himself back again in his chair, and
fixing his eyes on the floor, resigned himself to the abstraction out of
which he had been roused.
Howard Preston, the hero of our story, had just returned from Europe,
where he had been fulfilling the injunctions of his father’s will, by a
course of study and travel until his twenty-fourth year. The first great
sorrow of his life had been his parting, at sixteen, with the only child
of his guardian, Kate Mowbray, then a lovely little girl, who for years
had been his pet and playmate. Many were the tears she also shed at the
separation, and faithfully did she promise not to forget her boy lover.
Such childish preferences usually end with youth; but it was not so in
the present instance. With every letter from abroad came a gift for
Kate, which she requited with some trifle worked by her own hands. But
as years elapsed, and Kate approached womanhood, these presents were no
longer returned, and Preston, piqued at what he thought neglect,
gradually came to confine himself, in his letters home, to a cold
inquiry after her health, instead of devoting, as heretofore, two-thirds
of the epistle to her. Yet he never thought of America without also
thinking of Kate; and when he landed at Charleston, a month before our
tale begins, he was wondering into what kind of a woman she had grown
up.
Still his old feeling of pique was uppermost when shown into her
father’s magnificent parlor; and this, combined with his astonishment at
seeing a graceful and high bred woman announced as his old playmate,
lent an air of coldness and embarrassment to his greetings. Whether it
was this or some other cause, Kate, who was advancing eagerly, suddenly
checked herself, colored, and put on all her dignity. The interview, so
inauspiciously begun, was short and formal, and to Preston, at least,
unsatisfactory. He had expected, in spite of their tacit
misunderstanding, that Kate would meet him as rapturously as of old,
forgetting that the child had now become a woman. He overlooked, also,
the effect his own restraint might have produced. Thus he returned to
his lodgings, dissatisfied and angry, half disposed to dislike, yet half
compelled to admire, the beautiful and dazzling creature from whom he
had just parted. The truth was, Preston, though hitherto ignorant of it,
had loved his old playmate from boyhood. This had made him feel her
neglect so acutely, and this had led him secretly to hope that her
welcome on his return would heal the past. No wonder he went home angry,
yet quite as much in love as ever!
Preston and Kate often met after this, but they seemed destined to
misunderstand each other. Kate was really ignorant of the mischief she
had done. She had come down to meet him with a heart full of the
memories of other days, and, if truth must be told, a little nervous and
anxious how he, of whom she had so often thought in secret, would
receive her. His proud demeanor had chilled her. Nor on subsequent
occasions were their interviews more satisfactory. Indeed Kate was
puzzled and vexed at Preston’s manner. No one could, at times, be more
interesting; yet no one was so often haughty and disagreeable. Kate
sighed to think how changed he had become; then she was angry at herself
for sighing.
Kate was accordingly as wayward as Preston—and who, indeed, had greater
excuse? Rich and well born, beautiful and high-spirited, she was
positively the reigning belle in Charleston during the whole of that gay
winter. To a complexion delicately fair, and a person of the most
exquisite proportions, she united those graces of mind and manner,
which, in that courtly day, were considered the unerring accompaniments
of high breeding. Report awarded to her numbers of unsuccessful suitors;
but all had tacitly resigned their claims in favor of Major Lindsay, an
English officer of noble blood, between whom and an earldom there was
only a single life. Gay and splendid in person and equipage, the Major
no sooner laid siege to the heart of the heiress, than her less favored
suitors gave over in despair; and what between lounging most of his
mornings away in her parlor, and attending her abroad on all occasions,
he speedily came to have the field nearly altogether to himself.
The arrival of the major anticipated that of Preston about a month, and
when our hero returned, he found his rival almost domesticated at Mr.
Mowbray’s house. Jealousy soon revealed to Preston the secret of his own
long hidden love; but it made him heartily hate the major. The two
gentlemen seemed perfectly to understand each other. But the Englishman
knew better than his rival how to suppress his feelings, and accordingly
possessed every advantage over him in superior ease and self-command.
Had Kate wished otherwise, she could not but have given the larger share
of her attention to the graceful, brilliant and composed man of fashion,
rather than to his more irritable and wayward rival, whom a fancied
slight, in word or look, was sufficient to make dumb for a whole
evening. Depend on it, the worst possible use to which a lover can put
himself is to be sulky.
Perhaps it was the enmity he nourished against his more successful
rival; perhaps it was the natural indignation of a frank and noble heart
against oppression; perhaps, which is more natural, it was both
combined, but Preston had not been long at home before he formed the
resolution to take part with his countrymen in the war then going on;
and the sudden appearance of General Marion on the Santee, where he
began a partisan conflict with the invaders, opened to him a favorable
way for carrying out his design, which he only postponed until he could
part from Kate on better terms. He flattered himself that she herself
was secretly on the side of the colonists, for her father had once held
a commission under the provisional government, although since the fall
of Charleston and the apparent conquest of the colony, he, like many
others, had been induced to take a royal protection, and ground his arms
as a neutral.
One morning Preston found Kate alone in her little parlor. It was rare
that she was without visiters, for Major Lindsay, at least, was usually
at her side. Kate wore a pretty morning-dress, and was sewing, her
little tiny foot, that rested on a cushioned stool, peeping provokingly
out beneath the snowy muslin. A woman one admires never looks lovelier
than when occupied in this truly feminine employment; and as Kate made
room for Preston beside her, with her sweetest smile, he thought she had
never seemed half so charming. Lovers can imagine how happy Preston soon
was. He and Kate talked of old times, she busily plying her needle, but
every now and then looking up with animation into his face. His heart
beat quicker, and he longed to tell her how he loved her; it would, I
fear, have set your head or mine, reader, topsy-turvy at once. A dozen
long forgotten incidents were called to mind: how Preston had once
rescued Kate from the river, how they both wept when her old nurse died,
and a score of other things. The color of both heightened, and Preston
felt every instant as if he could snatch the dear girl to his arms. In
the eagerness of conversation, all at once Kate placed her hand
familiarly on his.
“And do you remember,” she said, gazing up with sparkling eyes into his
face, “do you remember when the pony ran away with you? Oh! I was half
dead with fright, and screamed lustily. Those were happy days—I wonder
if we are ever as happy as in childhood. I sometimes wish we were back
again on that old lawn.” And she sighed.
“Do you, indeed?” said Preston, his whole face lighting up, and he took
her hand by an impulse he could no longer resist.
At that moment the words which would have decided his fate were rising
to Preston’s lips, and Kate, as if secretly forewarned, began to tremble
and be confused, when the door was flung open and the servant in a loud
voice announced Major Lindsay.
If any of my readers has ever been interrupted when about to declare
himself, and had to come plump down from rapture to foolishness, he can
imagine Preston’s chagrin at the entrance of the visiter. However, he
had tact enough to think of Kate’s embarrassment, and as he rose to make
his bow, adroitly placed himself so as to conceal her for a moment, and
allow her time to recover from her confusion. The major gave both
parties, on the instant, a suspicious glance, but his softest smile
immediately succeeded, and with easy assurance taking the seat Preston
had vacated, he glided into a strain of brilliant small talk, such as
would have done honor to any gallant of the day, incomparable at
compliments and snuff-boxes. Preston was angry at this unceremonious
supplanting, but even more angry to see how quickly Kate recovered
herself, and dashed out into the strife of repartee, with a spirit and
ease superior even to the major’s. Preston chafed, and thought she might
have been a little less interested. At first he was silent and reserved,
then he began to be uneasy, and once or twice he yielded to his
irritability in words. He cursed his folly for imagining, as he did five
minutes before, that she thought more of him than she did of others. He
fixed his eyes half frowningly, half contemptuously on Kate. She colored
immediately, he thought with conscious guilt. The next instant she
turned haughtily away and addressed the major. Now, for the first time,
Preston became convinced of the existence of the engagement respecting
which he had heard so much. Burning with mortification, after sitting a
few seconds, during which Kate did not once address him, he arose and
abruptly took his leave.
“She loves him,” he exclaimed bitterly. “Dazzled by the glitter of a
coronet, she casts aside her old and tried friend like a worn-out
trinket. Oh! God, was it for this I hastened home? was it for this I
treasured her memory through long years?”
For hours he remained alone, now pacing his chamber with rapid strides,
now burying his face moodily in his hands. He recalled all his various
interviews with Kate, and strove to remember her every word and look:
the result was to curse himself for his egregious folly in fancying for
a moment that she loved him. But after awhile his feelings grew less
exasperated. He reflected on Kate’s manner that morning, before the
arrival of Major Lindsay, and hope once more dawned in his bosom.
“I will lose no time,” he said, “in learning my fate decisively. I shall
see Kate at her aunt’s ball, and her manner there will determine my
suspense. If she is cold and haughty I will understand that she wishes
to rebuke my presumption this morning. In that case, I will trifle here
no longer, but at once join Gen. Marion. Macdonald, my foster-brother,
loves me too well to desert me, but he has been crazy to be gone this
fortnight past. I will order him to get a pass and have every thing
ready in case of the worst, which my heart forebodes.”
It was after arriving at this determination, and receiving Macdonald’s
message, that Preston gave himself up to his melancholy, nor did he rise
from his desponding position until it was time to dress for Mrs.
Blakeley’s ball.
The sound of gay music, the flashing of diamonds and the twinkling of
light forms met his sight as he entered the ball-room; but he had eyes
only for one object: and he soon sought out Kate amid her crowd of
admirers. Never had she looked so transcendently lovely. It is thought a
mark of taste and fashion now-a-days to laugh at the enormous hoops and
powdered hair of our grandmothers: but let us tell you, good reader,
that a belle of the present age, with her deformed tournure and Dutch
amplitude of skirt, though she may create a sort of matter-of-fact
sensation, very suitable perhaps for this money-making generation, never
awakens that deep sentiment of adoration, that respectful, awe-struck,
Sir Charles Grandison feeling, bestowed on the beauty of the last
century, august in silver tissue and high-heeled shoes. The veriest
stickler for modern ease would have given up the point at sight of Kate.
She wore, as was then the custom, a petticoat of rich brocade, a single
yard of which cost more than the twenty ells of lute-string flaunted by
a beauty now. Over this was a robe of white satin, made high on the
shoulders, but opening in front so as partially to reveal the swelling
bust, and expose the richly-gemmed stomacher and glittering petticoat.
The edge of this robe from the neck down was trimmed with a quilling of
blue ribbon, which was also continued around the bottom. The tight
sleeve, with bands like the trimming of the robe, reached to the elbow:
and the deep ruffle of Valenciennes lace which nearly hid the round
white arm, heightened with rare art the beauties it affected to conceal.
Her hair was gathered back from the forehead, richly powdered, and
trimmed coquettishly with blue ribbon. Now, if there be any heretical
repudiator of the past, denying the brilliancy that powder gave a fair
complexion, we wish he would go and look at one of Copley’s portraits,
or—what is better!—could have seen Kate then! We trow his mouth would
have watered. We doubt if justice is done to those good old times. Ah!
those were the days of courtly dames and high-bred cavaliers—when the
stately minuet still held sway—when gentlemen bowed reverently over the
hand they scarcely dared to kiss—and when it was the crowning felicity
of a whole evening’s devotion to hand a partner to the table by the tips
of the fingers. Now-a-days people bounce through frisky quadrilles,
while gallants tuck the arm of a mistress under their own as cozily as
an old codger does his umbrella.
Preston was advancing toward Kate, when a buzz of admiration announced
that Major Lindsay was about to lead her forth to the minuet. He won
accordingly only a hasty curtsey in reply to his bow. He was meanwhile
subjected to the mortification of hearing from a dozen bystanders the
rumor of Kate’s engagement to the major; and one or two officiously
applied to him to confirm the rumor, knowing his intimacy with the
family. When the dance was concluded, which attracted general
admiration, Major Lindsay still remained at Kate’s side. Never before
had Preston noticed such meaning and delicate assiduity in his
attentions. Between the incidents of the morning and those of the
evening, no wonder Preston’s anger continued unabated. Still he made
several attempts to obtain a moment’s _tête-à-tête_ with Kate: but the
crowd of her admirers frustrated this. At length, toward the close of
the ball, he approached her.
“I come to bid you farewell,” he said abruptly; “to-morrow I leave
Charleston.”
“Leave Charleston!” repeated a dozen voices in dismay. “What shall we do
without you?” Kate alone betrayed neither surprise nor emotion. “Ah!
indeed,” was her unconcerned reply.
Preston turned pale with suppressed mortification at this indifference;
mere friendship, he said to himself, demanded some expression of regret
at least. His feelings were not allayed by what followed.
“You’re not going to join Marion, are you?” said Major Lindsay, in a
tone of triumphant banter, little imagining how near he was to the
truth. “Has he frightened you by the great oath he has sworn to revenge
his nephew, who was shot for a rebel? I hear he threatens some mighty
deed. Only think of his doing any thing with that brigade of invincible
tatterdemalions—Falstaff’s ragged regiment over again!”
“Take care that you are not one of those to pay the penalty of Marion’s
oath,” retorted Preston, stung by the insolence of his successful rival,
and reckless what he said. “It was a foul deed, and will be terribly
revenged.”
Major Lindsay flushed to the brow, and his hand mechanically sought his
sword hilt; but he controlled himself immediately, and said with a
sneer—
“That might be called sedition, only we know you are a man of peace, Mr.
Preston. But he is certainly Marion-bit, is he not?” and he turned to
Kate.
Now Kate felt piqued at this unceremonious leave of her lover, as well
as at his haughty conduct in the morning. She fancied herself trifled
with, and answered cuttingly,
“Never fear Mr. Preston’s joining Marion. Our American gentlemen, on
both sides, are but carpet knights of late. They resemble Sancho Panza,
who, good soul, would not stir a step till a rich island was promised
for his share.”
Preston tingled in every vein at this speech, which he regarded as aimed
at himself. He bowed sarcastically to Kate, and glanced angrily at Major
Lindsay, as he replied,
“One might almost be tempted to join Marion after this, in order to
raise the reputation of American courage, since just now British bravery
has it dead hollow.”
“Oh! pray,” said Kate, laughingly, “play the Atlas for the patriots
then. That’s a good man: Be the St. George to destroy this British
dragon.”
Major Lindsay looked for a moment as if he thought there was more in
this than met the ear; but he contented himself with retorting on
Preston.
“Do, by all means,” he said, “and, if you take Bobadil’s plan, you may
defeat a whole army yourself. You know he proposed to challenge a single
enemy and slay him by duello: then challenge a second, and slay him:
then a third, and dispose of him also: and so on until the whole army
was annihilated.”
Kate, as well as the rest, laughed at this sally. Preston needed but
this to complete his anger and disgust. The field, he saw, was his
rival’s, and he was glad when other persons approached and broke up the
colloquy, which, to tell the truth, was growing too personal. But Kate
was piqued and Preston enraged: and as for the major, seeing there was a
quarrel between his rival and mistress, he had striven to widen the
breach.
Preston hurried from the ball-room, and taking time only to change his
dress, repaired to the rendezvous where Macdonald awaited him. Without a
word he flung himself into the saddle, and his companion imitating his
example, they were soon without the city. They had passed the outposts
for some time, when Macdonald, pushing his horse close to Preston’s,
opened the conversation.
“We’re clear of that confounded town at last, thank Heaven!” he said,
“and I, for one, aint sorry. Them Englishmen are as saucy as princes,
and think nobody has any courage but themselves. But I know one stout
fellow that can snuff a candle with his rifle at two hundred yards, and
before a week we’ll have a rap at ’em, for I s’pose you go direct, sir,
to Marion’s camp?”
Preston nodded a gloomy assent, for buried in his own thoughts he cared
not to be disturbed. Macdonald saw this, and, defeated in his attempt to
open a conversation, dropped back, but when out of hearing muttered,
“I see how it is. Them women’s always getting a man into trouble. For my
part I’ll be a bachelor. Marrying’s like getting tipsy, very pleasant
except for the after repentance.”
CHAPTER II.
Grave men there are by broad Santee,
Grave men with hoary hairs,
Their hearts are all with Marion,
With Marion are their prayers.
BRYANT.
The period of which we write was one that will ever be memorable in the
annals of our country. Never had the fortunes of the patriots been at so
low an ebb in the south, as between the defeat of Gates, at Camden, and
the inroad of Cornwallis into North Carolina. After the fall of
Charleston no time had been lost in overrunning the colony. All
organized resistance being at an end, a proclamation was published,
inviting the citizens to return to his majesty’s government, and
stipulating for little more on their part than neutrality. Large
numbers, even of the Whigs, accepted these terms: and had Cornwallis
adhered to his promises, then indeed might liberty have been despaired
of. But the royal leader soon threw off the mask, and required all who
had accepted the protection, as it was called, to declare themselves
openly on the royal side, in the further prosecution of the war. Finding
themselves thus basely deceived, many flew to arms; but such, whenever
captured, were executed as rebels. The fate of Col. Hayne, who was put
to death at Charleston under these circumstances, was but a type of that
of hundreds of lesser note, who perished often without a trial.
The war, meanwhile, was carried on with savage ferocity against the
Whigs. Their plantations were laid waste, their negroes carried off,
their houses given to the flames. The seven vials of wrath were
literally poured out on South Carolina. Instances of cruelty without
number are left on record. One may suffice. An innocent Quaker who took
care of a sentry’s musket for a few minutes, while the soldier went on
an errand, was seized for this pretended crime and thrown into prison.
His wife hurried to the jail to see him. She was told to wait a few
minutes and she should be conducted to him. With this brutal jest on
their lips, the royal myrmidons hurried to the man’s cell, dragged him
forth and hung him at the jail window: then, returning to his wife, they
led her into the yard, and showed her husband to her quivering in the
agonies of death. But God at last raised up an avenger for these and
other atrocities. Suddenly, in the very heart of the oppressed district,
there arose a defender, bitter, sleepless, unforgiving—seemingly
endowed with miraculous powers of intelligence—whose motions were quick
as lightning—who dealt blows now here, now there, at points least
expected—and who, by a series of rapid and brilliant successes, soon
made his name a terror to the British. Volunteers flocked in crowds to
his standard. His boldness and gallantry filled the colony with
astonishment and rejoicing. Wherever a surprise took place—wherever a
convoy was cut off—wherever a gallant deed was unexpectedly done, men
said that Marion had been there.
Preston had succeeded in raising a troop, for his name was an
influential one in his neighborhood, and he was soon one of Marion’s
most trusted adherents. A man who is willing to throw his life away on
every occasion, speedily acquires the reputation of daring and bravery.
The country around the Santee, which was the chief scene of his
exploits, rung with the name of our hero. Nor was his foster-brother,
now a serjeant in Preston’s troop, and one of Marion’s acutest scouts,
without his share of renown.
Meantime the gay society of Charleston had suffered considerable
diminutions. Many of the royal officers were absent with their commands,
and a large portion of the gentry had retired to their estates. Among
these was Mr. Mowbray, who secretly meditated joining the continental
side again. Kate, too, was absent with her aunt, at the estate of the
latter.
To this place the course of our story now carries us. Mrs. Blakeley’s
mansion had heretofore escaped the visitation of war, but within a few
days a detachment under Col. Watson had halted there on its march to
Camden. With him came Major Lindsay, still an eager suitor for Kate. But
scarcely had Col. Watson encamped on the plantation, when a body of
Marion’s men, conspicuous among whom was Capt. Preston, made their
appearance, and daily harassed the British officer, by cutting off his
communications, assailing his pickets, and sometimes even beating up his
camp.
One evening Kate was sitting sewing with her aunt in the parlor,
conversing with Col. Watson, and several of his officers, who were their
guests, when the servant came in to light the candles. Old Jacob, as he
was called, filled the office of butler in the family, and was quite a
character. He was a Whig at heart, and cordially disliked his mistress’s
compulsory visiters. Having been his deceased master’s personal servant,
he had thus acquired a footing of familiarity which allowed him to have
his joke even at the table where he waited. He piqued himself moreover
on what he thought his breeding and fine diction. He was a source of
constant amusement to the British officers, who, however, found him
sometimes their overmatch in repartee.
“Well, Jacob, what news?” said Major Lindsay. “Any more rebels
captured?”
Old Jacob turned, bowed his head profoundly, and showing his teeth in a
broad grin, said—
“Dare is no news yet, sar, dat I know on; but ’spose dare will be some
afore mornin’; for, sartain, Capt. Preston will beat up your quarters as
usual: and den, how de red-coats run!”
Kate looked up archly, yet colored when she caught the major’s eye. That
personage bit his lip, and remarked—
“Never mind Capt. Preston, Jacob: he’ll be our prisoner very soon. Has
the flag of truce come back?”
“Oh! yes, sar,” said old Jacob, his face radiant with delight. “Habn’t
you heard? Dat great news, sar. ’Spose you know Sargent Macdonald?”
“What of him?” said the major, beginning to suspect he was making a
ridiculous figure. “He’s a savage. Why he shot Lieut. Torriano yesterday
three hundred yards off.”
“Dat he did,” said the old butler, waxing grandiloquent, “he hit de
leftenant judgematically, I insure you. But dat is not de news. You
knows Sargent Macdonald sent in word, toder day, dat if his baggage,
took in de sally, was not recorded immediately to him again, he would
kill eight of your men. You know dat? To-day de baggage was sent back,
for dat sargent be de berry debbil, and now he send word dat, since his
baggage be recorded punctiliousy, he will only kill four of your men!”
And the speaker, though too well-bred to laugh at what he considered so
good a joke, grinned from ear to ear.
“The cannibal!” said Lindsay, shrugging his shoulders, “but what can be
expected of the men when their leaders countenance the firing on
pickets.”
“Yet you hang them for rebels,” said Kate, with spirit.
“They shoot down officers,” continued Lindsay, not thinking it advisable
to reply to her palpable hit, “as if this Mr. Marion paid for them at so
much a head. I never saw such unchristian fighting. They are a set of
boors; and cowards at heart, all of them, I’ll be sworn.”
“Cowards they are not,” said Kate, her eyes flashing to hear her
countrymen thus stigmatized. “At least you did not seem to think them
such when Capt. Preston, at the head of his troop, dashed up to your
lines, and challenged you to fight singly, or otherwise. I heard myself
the alarm with which the soldiers cried, ‘Here comes Preston again!’”
“He well knew no one would accept his challenge: so his bravado cost him
nothing.”
“Go meet him when he comes again, and see whether he meant it for
bravado!” retorted Kate; then, all at once remembering the enthusiasm
into which she had been hurried, she colored, and resumed her work in
some embarrassment.
Major Lindsay stifled a muttered execration on his American rival, for
he began to fear, from the spirit which Kate had shown, that the
chivalric exploits of Capt. Preston were making a decided impression on
her heart. The desperate daring which the rebel officer had shown within
the last few days, Major Lindsay had attributed, in his own mind, to a
desire on the part of Preston to dazzle his mistress; but Kate’s
behavior toward himself had been so flattering, in comparison to that
bestowed on others, that, until this moment, he had consoled himself
that these exploits had been thrown away. He sat, therefore, silent and
moody; and the conversation ceased.
Gradually, one by one, the visiters thinned off and returned to their
quarters, until only Col. Watson and himself were left. The Colonel and
Mrs. Blakeley had sat down to a game of cards in a distant corner of the
apartment. Here was an opportunity to decide his fate. It might be the
last time he would find Kate alone, for the camp was expected to move in
a few days. The occasion was not to be neglected, and, doubtful as he
felt of the issue, he arose, and leaning over her, said, in a low voice,
“I fear, my dear Miss Mowbray, that I offended you by what I said of
Capt. Preston. I forgot, for a moment, that he was an old playmate of
yours. You cannot tell how pained I am that any thing I said should
displease you.”
“It matters little—I am not at all displeased,” said Kate, keeping her
eyes on her work, her heart beating violently. “Capt. Preston needs no
defender in me, nor asks one. I but spoke generally in behalf of my
countrymen.”
Major Lindsay saw her embarrassment, and, misinterpreting the cause,
drew a favorable omen from it.
“You relieve my heart from a load,” he said. “I could bear any thing
rather than your displeasure. Indeed you must long have seen how I loved
you. Nay, do not rise from the table. I worship the very ground you
tread on—my life itself is bound up in your smiles—all I have, heart,
fortune, reputation, I lay at your feet—”
He would have continued in the same impassioned strain, but Kate,
summoning up all her self-command, rose with dignity.
“It pains me to hear this, Major Lindsay,” she said. “I will be frank.
That you sought my society, I saw, but that you loved me I never
believed.”
The face of Major Lindsay flushed, but he controlled his features, and
detained her as she would have moved away.
“Do not bid me despair,” he said. “In time I may be allowed to hope. Let
me fancy that my devotion may at last win me this fair hand.”
“No time can alter my sentiments,” said Kate, coldly.
“I will serve for you as for a second Rachel,” and the major still
detained her.
“Nay! I can listen to this no more. You forget yourself!” said Kate,
severely.
At this instant, and before Major Lindsay could reply, Kate saw that her
aunt had finished the game of cards, and was coming toward her. The
major with chagrin turned away. He would have given worlds if the
_tête-à-tête_ could have been protracted, for then he would have
endeavored to discover if Kate really loved Preston, or was indifferent
to all.
“Rejected, by George!” he muttered. “But I must have her, however,” he
soliloquized. “She is too lovely, too charming altogether, to be
sacrificed on a provincial—what a sensation she would create at court!
Then she is heiress to one of the best properties in this colony, and
since my cousin has married again, there is no telling how many new
lives may come in between impoverished me and the earldom. By Jove! I
wish this Preston had remained abroad a little longer, or that he would
get knocked over in some skirmish. I wouldn’t hesitate to give him his
_coup de grâce_ myself, if I had a chance. But he shan’t foil me. I’ll
have Kate in spite of him. What a delicious creature she is! What
eyes!—what an arm!”
Major Lindsay met Kate the ensuing day with an unruffled brow and
without embarrassment. If there was any change in his demeanor, it was
perceptible only in the assumption of greater deference toward her than
before. Not Lord Orville himself, the _preux chevalier_ of Evelina,
could have shown more tact and delicacy in bestowing those thousand
little attentions which go so far toward winning the female heart. Kate
was annoyed. She saw that Major Lindsay, in spite of her decided
language, still cherished the hope of winning her favor; but his conduct
was so guarded as to forbid maiden modesty again alluding to the
subject. She could only, therefore, endeavor, by a cold though polite
behavior, to show that her sentiments were unchanged, hoping that in
time he would tire of the pursuit. She little knew the pertinacity and
unscrupulousness of the man with whom she had to deal.
Kate dared not, meanwhile, too closely to examine her own heart. She
could not forget the exquisite pleasure which attended her last
_tête-à-tête_ with Preston, and her bosom thrilled whenever she thought
of what might have been his words if Major Lindsay had not come in. The
subsequent coldness and suspicion of Preston had piqued her, and she had
resolved to punish him for his want of confidence and jealousy, by a
little innocent coquetry with Major Lindsay in the evening. Fatal error!
When she heard of his speedy departure from his own lips, she regretted
for a moment her revenge; but her second feeling was that of anger at
his conduct, and hence her assumed indifference. And yet, after the
lapse of months, she felt herself the aggrieved party. Preston ought not
to have been so jealous. He had no right to be offended at the show of
only ordinary courtesy to a visiter. If he chose to be suspicious and
proud, he ought to be taught better by neglect. He had trifled with her,
else he would have called again, and sought an explanation. But perhaps
he did not love her, perhaps he had meant nothing by his words. She
usually ended her reveries at this point with a sigh, and a haughty
resolution to discard him from her heart. She would love no one who did
not love her.
In a few days Col. Watson left his encampment for Georgetown, where he
arrived, harassed by constant attacks, Major Lindsay accompanying him.
CHAPTER III.
And there was arming in hot haste.
BYRON.
The war meanwhile went on with increased ferocity. The tide of battle,
which at first ran in Marion’s favor, had now turned, and his enemies
were everywhere in the ascendant. The army of Greene was in North
Carolina, occupied in watching Cornwallis. Lord Rawdon held Camden with
a strong force. All the other important posts were in the hands of the
British. Marion, for the first time disheartened, talked of retiring
behind the mountains. Armed bodies of Tories, in the mean time,
traversed the country, plundering at will, and hanging, without even the
form of a trial, those of their unfortunate prisoners they had found in
arms.
Mr. Mowbray had long contemplated rising in favor of his country again,
and no time seemed to him so proper as the present, when all others were
becoming disheartened. His daughter he knew to be in safety with her
aunt, who had always maintained a strict neutrality: so there was
nothing to withhold him longer from his purpose. He had accordingly
secretly exerted himself to raise a troop among the young men of his
neighborhood, and his recruiting had been attended with such success,
that their rising only waited the removal of a large body of armed
Tories who had lately infested the vicinity. On the first signal from
Mr. Mowbray, they were to rendezvous at the Hall.
Mowbray Hall was one of those fine old mansions a few of which linger in
South Carolina, fast fading monuments of the departing splendors of her
old provincial nobility. The building stood at the head of a long avenue
of trees, and was a large double house, with an immense hall in the
centre. The outhouses had suffered considerably since the war began, and
many of the fields lay bare and uncultivated; but the mansion itself was
still in a remarkably fine state of preservation, and the architectural
boast of the county.
It was a fine, clear morning when Mr. Mowbray stood on the steps of his
house, to welcome the recruits who, in obedience to his long expected
signal, were on that day to repair to the rendezvous. His feelings, as
one stout yeoman after another rode up, were those of exultation, dashed
a little perhaps with regret for having ever despaired of his country.
“How fortunate that Capt. Ball, with his Tories, has moved up the
river,” said his lieutenant, who stood beside him. “We shall have time
to discipline our men, and rally a greater number to our ranks. Our
twenty tall fellows, though brave enough, could scarcely make head
against his hundred troopers. We have a good week before us.”
“Very true; and we have assurances of nearly thirty more, provided we
display our banner. Three days of quiet is all I ask. Then, I hope, we
shall be able to give a good account of ourselves even if Ball’s Tories
return,” said Mr. Mowbray.
“If we are gone when he comes back, my dear sir, he will wreak his
vengeance, I fear, on our homes,” said the other, with something of a
sigh.
“I hope you do not think of drawing back,” replied Mr. Mowbray. “In this
cause a man must be willing to sacrifice father and mother, house and
land, good repute, and all else he holds dear in the world. God help
us!”
“I am with you till death,” said the lieutenant, thinking at that moment
how much more his superior had to lose than himself: and affected by
such heroic and self-sacrificing patriotism.
At this instant a horseman was seen galloping furiously down the avenue,
and as he came onward, he waved his cap as if desirous to call their
attention to something in the road which he had left. Mr. Mowbray looked
in that direction, but a clump of woodland shut out the highway from
sight; however, after a moment’s delay, the voice of one of the recruits
called his attention to what seemed a cloud of dust rising above the
tree tops. Almost at the same instant a number of troopers appeared at
the head of the avenue. The approaching horseman now had reached the
lawn.
“We are betrayed,” he cried, almost exhausted. “Ball’s Tories are
behind, and have chased me for two miles. To arms—to arms!”
The time was too short to allow of barricading the house; but the great
hall was speedily turned into a fortification. The doors at either end
were closed, barred, and further defended by chairs and tables piled
against them; while the entrances into the parlors were closed
effectually in the same way. The great window at the head of the
staircase, and the one at the other extremity of the upper hall were
guarded by a proper force. These dispositions had scarcely been
completed when the Tories galloped up to the lawn, on which they
dismounted with loud shouts, and began instant preparations for the
attack.
When Mr. Mowbray’s scanty troop was mustered, it was found to contain
but ten exclusive of himself, for nearly half of the expected recruits
had not yet had time to arrive. It was evident there had been treachery
somewhere among them; for none but those who had enlisted knew of this
rendezvous; and the sudden disappearance of the enemy two days before,
it was now apparent, had been a feint. However, nothing remained but to
sell their lives as dearly as possible.
Mr. Mowbray walked around among his men, and himself saw that every
thing was ready. He exhorted them, in a few words, to do their duty
manfully. His short harangue was brought to a speedy conclusion by a
loud cheer on the part of the assailants, and by a shower of bullets
aimed at the hall window, as they advanced to the attack.
“Fire coolly—and waste no shot!” he said, sternly, himself handling a
musket.
Four men fell at that first discharge; and, mad with rage and shame, the
assailants strove to climb up the pilasters of the hall door; but they
were beaten thence by the butts of the defenders’ muskets. The men,
however, who achieved this were severely wounded by the rifles of the
Tories, who, keeping watch, aimed wherever a head appeared. An effort
was now made to break in the hall door. An axe was brought, and, after
several blows, one of the heavy panels gave way. But the moment the wood
fell crashing in, a volley poured through the aperture drove back the
assailants, who, thus foiled at every point, retreated to the cover of
the outhouses, as if to hold a consultation.
The little garrison was now mustered. One of its members had been shot
dead at the great hall window, and several were wounded. The hurts were
bandaged as well as possible, and the stock of ammunition was
distributed more equally. Their slight successes had inspirited the men;
they began now to talk of foiling the enemy; and when notice was again
given of his approach they repaired to their posts with alacrity and
exultation.
The Tories now seemed to have resolved trying a combined attack on all
parts of the house. One party advanced toward the hall door in
front—another made the circuit of the mansion to assail the one in the
rear—and a third remained at one angle, as if contemplating an assault
on the side when the rest should be fully engaged. Mr. Mowbray’s heart
forewarned him of the result when he saw these preparations.
“They are breaking into the parlors,” exclaimed one of the men, rushing
up the staircase, at the very instant that a new volley was discharged
on the house from the assailants.
Mr. Mowbray listened and heard the dull crash of an axe, followed by the
breaking of glass. The parlor shutters had merely been barred, and the
parlors once gained it was only necessary to break down the doors
leading to the entry, which were comparatively weak, and slightly
barricaded. To desert the hall up stairs would be to seduce the Tories
in front and rear from their cover, and throw open an entrance to them
by the way they had first essayed. It became necessary, therefore, to
divide his already small force, and, leaving a few to maintain the old
positions, defend the threatened door with two or three trusty arms.
“We must sell our lives dearly,” he said, as he took his station behind
the door, posting a man on each side.
The enemy was now heard leaping into the parlor, and simultaneously a
general attack began on all sides. The bullets rattled against the wall;
shouts and cries of encouragement rose on both sides. From the quick
firing overhead Mr. Mowbray knew that his men in that quarter were
actively engaged. The axe was now heard against the parlor door before
him, and the frail wood quivered under every blow. Another stroke and
the panel gave way. Instantly the musket of Mr. Mowbray was aimed
through the aperture at the man who wielded the axe, who fell dead at
the explosion. But another promptly seized the instrument, and, posting
himself with more caution at the side of the opening, dealt such
vigorous strokes that the door speedily fell in. As the planks crashed
to the floor there was a general rush on the part of the Tories in the
parlor, toward the aperture.
“Meet them bravely!” shouted Mr. Mowbray. “Strike home, and we drive
them back.”
He fired a pistol as he spoke at the foremost assailant; but the Tory
knocked up the weapon, and the ball lodged in the ceiling.
“Hurrah! we have them now,” shouted this man, who was their leader.
“Revenge your comrades!”
“Stand fast!” cried Mr. Mowbray, the lion of his nature aroused.
For a few seconds the melee was terrific. Now that the foe had effected
an entrance, the defence of the other posts was no longer necessary, and
the followers of Mr. Mowbray crowded to his assistance. On the other
hand the Tories poured into the parlor, and thence struggled to make
their way into the hall. Inch by inch they fought their road with
overpowering numbers; and inch by inch, with desperate but unavailing
courage, the Whigs gave ground. The clash of swords, the explosion of
pistols, the shouts of either party were mingled in wild disorder with
the oaths and shrieks of the wounded and dying. Swaying to and fro, now
one party, now the other giving ground, the combat raged with increasing
fury. But numbers at last prevailed. When most of his followers had
fallen, Mr. Mowbray, however, still remained, wounded yet erect,
struggling like a noble stag at bay.
“Surrender, and we give quarter!” shouted the Tory leader, who,
throughout the conflict, had seemed desirous rather of taking him
prisoner than slaying him.
Mr. Mowbray thought of his child and faltered: but remembering that the
enemy never showed clemency he said, striking at his adversary,
“Never, so help me God!”
But that moment of indecision sealed his fate. The Tory leader made a
sign to his followers, two of whom rushed in on the old man; and, as he
spoke, his sword was knocked from his hand, and himself overthrown and
bound.
Two days after he was led in triumph into the streets of Georgetown, nor
was it concealed from him that his life had been spared only that he
might expiate his rebellion on the scaffold.
His captor immediately repaired to Major Lindsay’s quarters, where he
remained for nearly an hour. When left alone, Major Lindsay exclaimed,
“My information was true, then; he has been caught with arms in his
hands. So far all goes well. That proud beauty is now mine, for she will
marry me to save her father’s life.”
[_To be continued._
* * * * *
MIRIAM.
BY KATE DASHWOOD.
Oh Harp of Judah! long thy thrilling strain
Hath slumbered ’mid the gloom of centuries—
Save when some master-spirit woke again
Thy silent chords of thousand symphonies.
Not thine, his swelling anthems loudly ringing—
Oh Maid of Judah! with thy prophet-song,
And sounding timbrel’s voice, all proudly flinging
Thy warrior-notes Judea’s hills among!
Oh voiceless harp! fain would my soul-wrapt ear
Catch some faint echo from thy silent strings.
And, as these trembling fingers half in fear
Sweep o’er thy slumbering chords—lo! there up-springs
Strange spirit-music, tremulous and low
As half-breathed sigh—to fitful silence hushing
Those thrilling strains my unskilled fingers know
Not to control. But hush! again their gushing
Swells like loud battle-peal on fierce blasts rushing.
Night! o’er thy mountains, oh Gilboa! where
The mighty spear of Saul was rent in twain.
And haughty Israel’s curse was branded there—
The blood of her first king—dark as the curse of Cain!
Night—on Mount Moriah! o’er his solemn brow
Those sentinels that guard the halls of Heaven
As brightly keep their wakeful vigils now
As when He knelt ’neath their pure beams at even,
And prayed in agony that we might be forgiven.
Moonlight o’er Galilee! the sparkling wave
That bounded as the sunbeams kissed its breast,
Are now all motionless and silent, save
Their low, hushed murmurs where the soft winds rest.
Night o’er lone Samaria! thy dark hill’s crest
Fades proudly into gloom. Still linger there
Thy maidens at “The Well” His feet have prest;
Still floats their broken music on the air
At eve, blent with the wave’s low murmured prayer.
Thy moon rides slowly o’er thy hills, oh Galilee!
Proud Queen of Heaven! bound to her far-off throne
Behind the Syrian mountains—and thy sea,
Oh lone Tiberias! where of late she shone,
Mirrors the stars upon thy bosom—stars of voiceless Night.
The dark Chaldean, from his cloud-hung tower,
Keeps his lone vigils by thy waning light,
For Israel keepeth Feast of solemn power,[1]
When thy bright beams shall fade at morning hour.
The stern Chaldean turns him from his lore
Where he hath writ the mighty destiny
Those stars revealed. Now seeks he thy dim shore,
Tiberias! the spirit-minstrelsy
Of unborn Ages breathes upon his lyre
In soul-wrapt flame. But hush! the far-off notes
Of timbrel-echoes ’mong the hills expire,
As ’twere some seraph’s song o’er earth that floats
And fades away in air—when lo! proud Miriam stands
Before him and his prophecy commands.
-----
[1] The “Feast of Tabernacles,” which lasted seven days.
THE CHALDEAN’S PROPHECY.
“Daughter of Judah! on thy brow
Thy kingly line is proudly blent
With Israel’s faith, and woman’s vow—
Now love, now pride—each lineament.
Thine is the faith thy fathers bore—
A heritage despised, contemned—
The fearful curse still lingers o’er
Israel’s outcast tribes condemned.
Thine is their faith—but dost thou deem
_Thy soul is with the Nazarene_?”
“False Prophet! had Ben Ezra’s ear
But heard thy lying prophecy,
Thou stand’st not, Heaven-daring here,
To mock our Faith thus impiously!
For Israel’s Lord is still our God!
And Israel’s outcast tribes shall turn
Back to these hills our fathers trod,
And fallen Judah cease to mourn.
False Seer! thy words I heed them not—
Those stars are dim thine eyes have sought.”
. . . . . .
Darkness o’er the Eternal City!—gloom
O’er her thousand palaces! and Night,
Deep, solemn Night! broods ever o’er the tomb
Of her vast temples, fallen in their might.
Still to their broken shrines worn pilgrims come—
And ’neath their mighty columns, sunken low,
The fierce Bedouin seeks his midnight home,
And treacherous lurks where footsteps chance to go.
Proud Rome! thy thousand hills are silent now—
Where waved the “Imperial Eagle” o’er their brow.[2]
Yet o’er her mighty temples’ fallen shrines
Still sleeps the sunshine ’mid the shadows there;
There many a wearied pilgrim-wanderer finds
A peaceful rest from Life’s dark toil and care.
And there awaiteth many a scattered one
Of Israel’s people—till the joyful day
Shall see the long “lost tribe of Judah” come
Once more to thy blest land, oh Palestine! for aye,
And here, ’mid fallen Rome, Ben Ezra bides—
_Miriam is not_—earth hath no joy besides.
. . . . . .
America the blest! all proudly to thy shore
Fled Rome’s _imperial eagle_! thy fair land
Sleeps e’er ’mid bloom and sunshine; evermore
Thy Freedom’s holy cause shall firmly stand.
Our noble sires! their true hearts’ incense rose
Here upon God’s free altars; _let us keep_
_Their memories holy!_ Room at our shrines for those
Who seek, like them, a rest from bondage deep.
And Miriam! was that prophecy a dream?
_Thy soul—thy faith is with the Nazarene._
-----
[2] The emblem banner of Rome.
* * * * *
THE NIGHT WATCH.
A TALE.
News, fitted to the night.
Black, fearful, comfortless and horrible.
KING JOHN.
On a cold December night, in the winter of 183-, four persons were
assembled in an upper chamber of an old out-house in one of the crooked
streets at the “North End” of Boston. This was in former times the most
fashionable part, the court end, as it were, of the town, and the house
of which I speak had been the residence of one of the old colonial
governors, and bore traces of its former magnificence, now almost
effaced by the ravages of time and neglect.
It was a dark and tempestuous night. The wind howled mournfully through
the narrow streets and around the tall houses of the “North End,” and
the few passengers who were abroad wrapped their garments tighter about
them, and hurried to seek shelter from the cutting blast. Within doors
the aspect of things was more cheerful. An old-fashioned wood fire
burned brightly on the hearth; the heavy folds of the crimson curtains
excluded every breath of cold air, and the usual conveniences of comfort
and luxury were distributed through the apartment. The company,
consisting of myself and three female friends, were drawn closely up to
the cheerful blaze, apparently as comfortable as possible. The cause of
our meeting here was this. A neighbor, one Mr. Helger, had died very
suddenly the day before. He had formerly been engaged largely in trade,
but meeting with reverses which soured his disposition, and cast a shade
of gloom over his character, he had withdrawn entirely from the world,
and lived all alone by himself in this large house. We, being neighbors,
had offered our services to watch with the corpse, as was the custom.
The room in which we were had been the apartment of the deceased, and
was fitted up with much taste, and even luxury, but all the rest of the
house was bare and unfurnished, and was said by the neighbors to be
haunted. The corpse was placed in a room just across the entry, so that
we could hear a noise or disturbance if there should be any.
Refreshments had been provided, and we had nothing to do but to make
ourselves comfortable, and amuse ourselves until morning should release
us from our duty.
The time flew by very quickly in pleasant chat, and when, during a lull
of the storm, we heard the neighboring clock on the steeple of the North
church strike the hour of twelve, we were all surprised at the lateness
of the hour.
“’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When church-yards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to the world,”
said I; “can’t some of you ladies tell a genuine, old-fashioned,
terrific ghost-story for our edification? Surely, Mrs. Johnstone, you
must know one; you always have plenty of interesting stories.”
The lady addressed thought a moment in silence, and then replied, “I can
tell you a ghost-story, and what is more, vouch for its reality, for the
incident happened to myself. It was a good many years ago, but it is as
distinctly imprinted on my memory as if it took place yesterday.” A
ghost-story, told by one of the actors in it, could not fail to be
interesting; so we drew our chairs nearer the fire, assumed a listening
attitude, and the lady began.
“You must know, in the first place, that I was married at a very early
age, and a year or two after, left my native place, and went with my
husband to live in the interior of Vermont. The country was little
settled at that time, being mostly covered with unbroken forests. I felt
the change of situation very strongly. I had lived all my life in the
midst of a large city, surrounded by a numerous family of brothers and
sisters. We had gone into society a good deal, and had been in the habit
of seeing many people, and engaging in all the amusements of the day. My
present residence was in the midst of dense forests, the next neighbor
lived two miles off, and the nearest town was on the Connecticut, more
than ten miles from our farm. The house stood on one corner of the
clearing, not more than a hundred yards from the woods, through which,
on stormy nights, the winds howled in mournful and sad tones. In winter
the deep snows cut off all communication with the other parts of the
country, and sometimes we did not see a stranger for months. To this
lonely spot I had removed, after having always been accustomed to the
noise and bustle of a city, and it was not strange that it should seem
gloomy to me.
“One day in autumn, in the month of November I think it was, my husband
told me that he was going to take his men and go over to the next town
for some necessary articles, and he was afraid that he should not be
able to get home that night. So away he went, and left me alone in the
house, with the exception of my infant child. I had brought a black
woman with me from home, but the change of situation did not agree with
her. She had been taken ill, and had died about a fortnight before the
time of which I speak. On account of the difficulty of procuring
servants, I had not been able to get another woman to supply her place,
so I was entirely alone.
“After supper I sat by the kitchen fire some time, till at last I
dropped asleep in my chair. I was awakened by the shrill sound of the
tall, old-fashioned clock, striking the hour of ten. The candle had
burned low in its socket, and the expiring embers diffused a faint glow
through the room. I jumped up, rubbed my eyes, and prepared to go to
bed. I took the light and was leaving the room, when somebody knocked at
the outside door of the house. I was a little startled that any one
should knock at the door at that time of night, but presently I thought
that my husband had changed his mind and returned home after all. I went
and opened the door, but nobody was there. I shut the door, rather
surprised, and sat down by the fire.
“To understand my story clearly, you must know the arrangement of the
room in which I was. On one side was the door leading into the open air,
on the opposite side, the doors leading to the parlors, etc. On the
third side of the room was the fireplace, and on the fourth, the door of
a bed-room in which black Charlotte had slept, and where, as I have
said, she died a fortnight before. This door was a little way open. I
went and shut it, and had hardly done so, when the knocking was repeated
with startling distinctness, and a moment after I saw the door of the
bed-room slowly open, and remain ajar. I went again to the door and
looked out, but, as before, I could see no one. I then shut the door of
the bed-room and latched it fast. I began to feel frightened, for I
could find no one who could have knocked at the door, nor could I
account for the mysterious opening of the bed-room door. All the stories
of ghosts and witches that I had ever heard came into my head, and
hundreds of imaginary horrors beside. I made up my mind, however, that
if I should hear the knocking again, I would go into the bed-room and
see if any thing was there. I listened. All was quiet, and I could hear
nothing but the beating of my own heart. A third time the knocking was
repeated, slowly and distinctly, and a third time the haunted door
slowly opened. I seized the candle and rushed in. I looked every where,
but nothing was to be seen. I came out, shut the door behind me, and
then went out into the open air. No one was in sight. There was a storm
coming up, and the wind howled mournfully through the branches of the
tall trees. To my excited fancy every thing looked strangely and
differently from its usual appearance. By the dim light of the waning
moon, which was half obscured by the driving clouds that shrouded her
disk, I fancied I saw something moving in the deep shadow of the trees.
I shuddered and closed the door. I went up stairs and looked at my
child. He lay calmly sleeping in his cradle, and his deep breathing was
the only sound that disturbed the stillness of the house. I felt more
assured after looking at the innocent face of the little boy. I felt
that even if God should permit an evil spirit to work its will for a
time, he would never allow it to harm a thing so holy and innocent as
that little child. I endeavored to calm my mind by the reflection that I
had always treated the dead woman with kindness, and if it was really
her ghost that was haunting the house, it would have no reason to injure
me. But my heart grew sick within me when I heard again—‘Knock! knock!
knock!’ and saw the door of the haunted room slowly open as before.”
Here Mrs. Johnstone stopped talking, and listened intently, as if she
was trying to catch some distant sound.
“I certainly heard it,” at length she said. “I hear it now—I certainly
hear a noise as of some one moving in the death-chamber. Let us go in
and see if any thing is there.”
So saying she arose, took a candle in her hand, and went across the
entry to the neighboring apartment. Presently she shrieked and ran back
into the room where we were, with her face as pale as death, and said,
in a very excited tone—
“Oh! such a sight as I have seen! The corpse sat upright in his coffin,
and seemed as if trying to speak to me.”
“You want to frighten us, Mrs. Johnstone,” said I. “First you tell an
awful story about a mysterious knocking, and then, to increase the
effect, you come in and tell us this. I am sorry to say that I don’t
believe a word of it.”
“It is no time for jesting now, young man,” rejoined she. “God forbid
that I should sport with such an awful thing as death. But as true as I
hope for salvation I saw Mr. Helger sitting erect in his coffin, and
such a look as he gave me—it will haunt me till my dying day. But, if
you don’t believe me, go and look for yourself.”
I hastily seized a candle, and went to the room where the corpse was
laid. The rest of the company followed at a little distance. Just as I
approached the door I thought I heard a step in the inside of the room,
as of one coming to meet me. I said nothing, however, and took hold of
the door-handle to open the door—but to my horror it was grasped on the
inside and violently turned. I seized the door and held it to with all
my strength, while it was pulled strongly against me by whatever
infernal shape was in the room. The women screamed dreadfully and
dropped the lights, which went out, leaving us only the dim light from
the fire in the opposite room. The storm without howled round the old
house with redoubled fury. It was a fearful scene. I felt faint and
sick—my strength gave way—I let go the door. Mr. Helger, in his
grave-clothes, stood in the door-way, deathly pale, his face streaming
with blood, and his features distorted by a ghastly grin. We turned and
ran frantically down stairs, tumbling over each other in our haste.
Just as we were running out of the house we heard Mr. Helger behind us.
We ran up the street all the faster, the women screaming at the top of
their voices. The noise and hubbub at last woke up a watchman, who had
been peaceably slumbering in a sheltered corner. That functionary,
wrathful at being disturbed from his nap, arrested our farther progress
with his hook.
“An’ what the divil wud yees be doin’ wid yerselves here, the night?”
inquired he, in a decided brogue.
This pertinent question brought me to my senses. I pulled some money
from my pocket, and told the son of Erin to come back with us and he
should be well paid for his services. We went back toward the house, and
there, near the door, we found Mr. Helger, lying exhausted and fainting
on the ground.
We raised him up and carried him back into the house, and put him into
bed; and then I despatched Pat for a physician. He soon returned,
bringing one whom he had roused from his slumbers. The physician took
out his lancet and bled the patient, and, having administered the usual
remedies, I had the satisfaction of hearing him say that he thought it
probable in a few days Mr. Helger would recover, and be as well as ever.
He advised us to remain with him, however, that night, and give him hot
drinks from time to time. I paid the physician and the watchman for
their trouble and dismissed them.
It was understood that Mr. Helger’s death had been very sudden, and it
turned out that instead of really dying, he had only fallen into a deep
trance, and on arousing from it had frightened us so dreadfully. We were
all put in excellent spirits by this happy termination of our
adventure—this restoration of the dead to life.
“Supposing you let us hear the rest of your ghost story now, Mrs.
Johnstone,” said one of the ladies—“if that awful interruption hasn’t
taken away all your desire to finish it.”
“Oh, no,” replied Mrs. Johnstone, “I will tell you the rest with much
pleasure—perhaps it may turn out as well as our present adventure has.
“I believe I left off where the knocking was again repeated at the door.
Well—the mysterious door again opened, but nobody was there. I felt
desperate. I felt that my reason would give way if I should remain quiet
any longer without doing something, and I determined that, if the
knocking was repeated, I would take my child in my arms and run round
the house, and see if any thing was there which could have produced
these unaccountable sounds. I waited patiently till the knocking was
repeated, and then went out of doors and ran round the house. The
mystery was solved.
“The sheep had come down from the woods, through fear of bears, and were
collected in a crowd behind the house. I stood looking at them, and
presently one raised his fore-leg and knocked against the house. It is
done with the bent joint of the fore-leg, and those who are acquainted
with the habits of sheep know that it produces a sound exactly like the
knocking of a human being at a door. I went back into the house, and in
a few moments I heard the sheep knock, and saw the door open a moment
afterward. The house, built in a hurry, as is usual in a newly settled
country, had not been clap-boarded, so that the jarring of the knock was
easily communicated to the bed-room door, and the latch being worn, it
opened a little way by its own weight, and then remained fixed.
“Thus was the mystery cleared up, and you may conceive what a load was
taken off of my heart. I went to bed and slept soundly till morning,
when the glorious sun with his cheerful beams effectually dispelled all
the phantoms and terrors of the preceding night.
“Next day my husband returned home, and I related to him all the
circumstances of my fright. He praised me for the courage I had shown in
going out to investigate the cause of the sounds, and said that he
thought that few men would have been as brave as I was. And sure enough,
on the very next night, my husband and I were sitting in the parlor,
when suddenly the man-servant, a great strapping fellow, came running
in, as white as a sheet, and cried out,
“‘Oh, Lord! we’re haunted! we’re haunted! Charlotte’s ghost has come to
haunt us!’
“‘What do you mean, you foolish fellow?’ said my husband, ‘go back into
the kitchen, and don’t let me hear any more such nonsense.’
“He went back again, somewhat abashed, but soon returned, almost
frightened to death.
“‘I wouldn’t go back into that room again if you’d give me fifty
dollars,’ said he; ‘it’s haunted. There was a dreadful knocking, but
nobody was at the door, and then I saw Charlotte’s ghost open the door
of the bed-room. Oh, Lord! what will become of us! what will become of
us!’
“My husband took pity on him, seeing that he was so much alarmed, and
showed him the cause of the phenomena. He was very much ashamed of his
fright, and we heard no more of Charlotte’s ghost after that.”
Here Mrs. Johnstone finished her story, which we all declared was an
excellent one, and praised not a little the courage she had shown. By
this time the morning had dawned;
“Aurora’s harbinger,
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,
That in cross-ways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone.”
* * * * *
TO THE HUSBAND.
Speak kindly to her, little dost thou know
What utter wretchedness, what hopeless wo
Hang on those bitter words—that stern reply—
The cold demeanor and reproving eye;
The death-steel pierces not with keener dart
Than _unkind words_ in woman’s _trusting_ heart.
The frailer being by thy side
Is of a finer mould—keener her sense
Of pain—of wrong—greater her love of
Tenderness. How delicately tuned her heart!
Each ruder breath upon its strings complains
In lowest notes of sadness, not _heard_ but
_Felt_. It wears away her life like a deep
Under current, while the fair mirror of
The changeless surface gives not _one sign_
_Of wo_.
ELLA.
* * * * *
SENSE AND SYMPATHY.
BY F. E. F.
CHAPTER I.
Use every man after his desert, and who shall escape whipping.
HAMLET.
“Did you ever hear a man talk so like a fool as Mr. Barton did
yesterday, Sarah?” said Mary Minturn to Miss Gorham. “I declare, I
pitied his wife—did not you?”
“No, certainly not,” replied her friend. “Why should I? Mr. Barton does
not talk more like a fool now than he did before his marriage. Fanny
chose him with her eyes or rather ears open, and if she could put up
with his folly then, she may now.”
“True enough,” answered Mary. “And how she came to fall in love with him
passes my comprehension. I would not have believed it had it not
actually happened.”
“Really, Mary,” said Sarah laughing, “your sympathies and compassions
often pass my comprehension. Here you are pitying Fanny for having
married a man, who, by your own account, she is in love with.”
“No, Sarah,” replied Mary, “I am not pitying her for marrying the man
she is in love with, but for being ashamed of the man she loves.”
“Ashamed of the man she loves!” repeated Miss Gorham with infinite
contempt. “Now, really, Mary, you had better reserve your compassion for
a more deserving object. If Fanny has married a man she is ashamed of,
she should be ashamed of herself.”
“Did you see how painfully she colored as she caught the glance you gave
me, when he was attempting an account of Dr. H’s lecture? I could not
help feeling for her.”
“I did not remark it,” replied Miss Gorham, “and I have no sympathy for
a woman who has so little feeling or principle, I care not which, as to
marry a man she despises. She probably does not feel for herself, and I
do not know why we should put ourselves to the pain of feeling for her.
I remember the time when Fanny Jones used to laugh at Tom Barton as much
as either you or I.”
“So do I,” replied Mary. “She little thought then she would ever have
him.”
“But finding she could get nobody better, she has thought it as well to
marry him, and that is what you call falling in love, Mary.”
“Not at all,” rejoined her friend warmly. “But remember it is three
years since Mr. Barton first addressed Fanny, and although she ridiculed
him then, she has become attached to him since. His devotion and
constancy have really won her.”
“If then she is in love with him,” said Sarah, “she should be satisfied
with him; and if she is not she should not have married him; so arrange
it any way you will, Mary, I do not see that she is deserving of much
pity. If she fancies he has grown wiser during the last three years, so
much the better for her; and if she knows he has not, so much the worse.
Either way I have no sympathy to bestow upon her, Mary.”
“Well, I have,” replied Mary. “I always pity a sensible person who does
a silly thing. It is laying up themselves such a store of suffering for
the future.”
“’Pon my word, Mary, you amuse me,” said Sarah, laughing. “Now I might
possibly feel for a fool who was committing a folly, as I would for a
blind man who walked into the fire, but as to wasting my compassion on
those who do such things with their eyes open, is really more than I can
undertake. But then,” she continued, half contemptuously, “I have not
your stock of sensibilities to go upon, and consequently, perhaps, do
well to economize mine, or I certainly should exhaust them before they
were called upon for a really deserving object.”
“I consider all suffering as deserving pity,” replied Mary quietly.
“That is more than I do,” returned Sarah with spirit. “Sin and suffering
may go together, but I do not consider them equally deserving of
compassion, or I should go to the jails and work-houses to bestow my
sympathies.”
“And if you did,” replied Mary, “I believe you would go to the places of
all others where they would be most called forth. I never pass the city
prison without thinking of the many unwritten tragedies it contains.
Could we but know the true history of every heart, and the real anguish
of every crime that have peopled its walls, I believe we should feel
more sorrow than indignation for its unhappy inmates.”
“Then,” replied Sarah, almost angrily, “I think it is well we do not. If
in your fine sensibilities we are to lose all sense of right and wrong,
I think your ‘unwritten tragedies’ had better remain ‘unwritten’ and
unread. They would do infinitely more harm than good. ‘Sorrowing for the
unhappy inmates of prisons and work-houses!’ Who would imagine you were
talking of jail-birds and vagrants! This is the sickly sentimentality of
the day, and I am sorry to see you falling into it, Mary. Let sin meet
with its due punishment, and crime call forth the righteous indignation
it merits, and then we may hope to see them somewhat diminished.”
“That sin meets with its punishment, even in this world, there can be no
doubt, Sarah,” said Mary.
“Does it?” said Sarah, with some bitterness. “And roguery is never
successful, nor dishonesty prosperous, I suppose. I think some of our
broken institutions and flourishing directors might tell a different
story! However, that it will be punished in the next,” she added, in a
tone that implied she would be much disappointed if it were otherwise,
“is certain, but in this sin and impudence decidedly carry the day. You
have only to look around you to see the truth of what I say.”
The discussion, which was growing rather warm, was here fortunately
interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Eldon, a married sister of Sarah’s,
who as usual had much to hear and to say when she had not seen Sarah for
several days, as happened to be the case on the present occasion. A
lively and somewhat satirical description of the dinner at Mrs. Barton’s
formed the chief topic of conversation for some time, which highly
amused Mrs. Eldon, and even Mary could not help joining in the laugh,
although she could not always agree with her quick-witted and rather
merciless friend. In fact they seldom did agree, for two more opposite
characters than Mary and Sarah could scarcely be met; and what the bond
of attraction could be that rendered them so intimate, would have
puzzled most people to determine. Sarah was endowed with more than an
ordinary share of sense, but it was that kind of good clear _hard_ sense
that seldom attracts, although it often amuses. Her chief virtue was her
justice, on which she prided herself, and she valued principle, while
she placed little faith on feeling. Sensibility and imagination she
utterly despised.
Mary, on the contrary, was full of quick sympathies and bright theories,
and though often wrong in her premises, was always amiable in her
conclusions.
Notwithstanding that they seldom thought alike on any subject, Sarah
loved Mary, and, moreover, loved to put her down, which, being easily
done, was perhaps a charm in itself; and then she could take liberties
with Mary’s good temper, which she could not do with every body’s. And
Mary respected Sarah’s mind and relied upon her integrity, although she
was somewhat afraid of the severity of her judgments. And besides, they
had grown up together, and had got _used_ to each other, which, after
all, explains more attachments than any theory of sympathies and
associations we have yet met with.
Mrs. Eldon was often amused with the opposite accounts the young friends
gave of the same occurrence, and would frequently say, as she laughed,
“One would really suppose, girls, you had been at different places.”
Sarah boasted that she told things just as she saw them, and was very
fond of what she called “the plain English of the case;” while Mary
perhaps arrived quite as nearly at the truth in making some allowance
for human weakness, and in having some compassion for its
inconsistencies.
“Why did you not come to tea last evening, Charlotte?” said Sarah,
addressing Mrs. Eldon. “I kept the table waiting almost an hour for
you.”
“My dear child, I was in such a fright and agitation at that time, that
I forgot all about you and your tea-table. Master Georgey escaped from
his nurse, and we could not find him for hours. I was almost wild with
anxiety and alarm.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed her sister, with much interest; “and where did you
find him?”
“Nearly a mile and a half from home. I don’t know how he managed to
wander so far, for you know he is not quite two years old yet.”
“And what did you do to him when you found him?” inquired Miss Gorham.
“Do to him? poor little soul; why I gave him his supper and put him to
bed,” replied Mrs. Eldon. “The child was exhausted with crying, besides
being half dead with fright and fatigue.”
“You don’t mean to say that you did not punish him for his excursion?”
exclaimed Sarah, almost incredulously.
“Punish him! No, certainly not,” replied her sister; “but I did what was
much wiser. I had a padlock put upon the gate through which the little
dog made his escape; so it cannot happen again, and that, you know, is
all that is wanted.”
But upon that point Sarah did not at all agree with her sister. She
wanted a little summary justice besides, and she said,
“Well, if that is not spoiling children, I do not know what is. And this
is the way you let Georgey disobey with impunity, is it?”
“I am sure even you would have been satisfied if you had seen the state
the poor little fellow was in when he was brought home,” replied Mrs.
Eldon. “You would have thought him quite punished enough. She will not
be so hard-hearted by and by, Mary, when she has children of her own,”
continued Mrs. Eldon, smiling.
But Sarah was far from satisfied, and was disposed to contend the point,
when her sister, rising, said,
“It is time for me to be going home. Is there any thing you want, or
that I can do for you?”
“Nothing,” replied Sarah.
“Without,” said Mary, laughing, “you will give Georgey a whipping as
soon as you get home. Now acknowledge, Sarah, that you would feel better
if Mrs. Eldon would promise to act upon the suggestion.”
“I think Georgey would be the better, if I am not,” replied Sarah. “It
is of great importance that he learns early that no misdemeanor will be
overlooked.”
“When I can prevent the recurrence of a fault, I am satisfied,” replied
Mrs. Eldon.
But Sarah was not. She was always for punishing the past, whether it had
reference to the future or not.
Her sister bade her good morning, and Sarah remarking that “Charlotte
would ruin her children if she persisted in her present system,” the
subject dropped, and the friends soon after parted.
“Do you think Sarah will ever marry, Mrs. Eldon?” Mary asked one day; to
which she replied,
“No, Mary, I fear she never will. Sarah, from having been placed so
young, I suppose, at the head of my father’s house, has acquired an
independence both of manner and temper, that, I think, will prevent her
marrying. With her quick insight into character, and satirical turn of
mind, too, she is not easily interested,” and, Mrs. Eldon might have
added, was not interesting; for Sarah was now two-and-twenty, and never
had had a lover, nor any thing that approached to one.
She was not handsome, and had no charm of manner that supplied the
attraction of beauty. It is true she had more mind and information than
usually falls to the lot of women, but though she often amused, she
never won. She was upright, true, sincere, but there was a hardness in
her uprightness, a brusquerie in her truths, and a downrightness in her
sincerity, that rendered them any thing but attractive; and, in fact,
she was not popular, and never had been admired. The few young men who
from time to time visited at her father’s house she ridiculed without
mercy, and Mrs. Eldon soon gave up all hope of ever seeing her married.
She consoled herself for the fact by saying that Sarah was one of the
few women to whose happiness it was not necessary, and that though with
her strong mind and active habits she would have made an admirable head
of a family, yet, as it was, she would probably become what is termed a
“society woman,” and as such be a most useful member of the community.
And, in fact, she seemed gradually falling into the course her sister
had in her own mind marked out for her. There was so much good sense in
all her views, and so much efficiency in carrying them out, that when
once she fell into the class just indicated, she was found too useful to
be readily relinquished. Nor was the occupation distasteful to her. Her
high sense of duty forbade her living for her own pursuits alone, and
watching over the poor, and correcting the idle, and directing and
dictating generally, suited not less with her tastes than her
principles. It was wonderful how much good she did, and how little
gratitude she got for it. No one detected an impostor as quickly as she
did, and all doubtful and difficult cases were turned over to her
management, and every department that fell to her share was directed
with vigilance and understanding, but at the same time many of her poor
feared, and some of them hated her. She relieved their necessities while
she scolded their recklessness, and most of them, as she turned away,
said with bitterness, “that she was a _hard_ lady,” while they blessed
Mary’s bonny face when she accompanied her, and never failed to call her
“a sweet spoken young lady,” for though she seldom went among them, and
gave little, she listened kindly, and felt for their trials and
distresses. The difference was, that Sarah’s charity was that of
principle, Mary’s of feeling, and to the latter the poor and ignorant
always respond, while they shrink from the former.
“Sarah,” said Mary one day, with some embarrassment, “I have a secret to
tell you.”
“A secret,” said Sarah, “well, what is it?”
Mary colored as she answered, “Perhaps it may surprise you, and yet it
seems to me you must half suspect it.”
“I am sure I do not know what you mean,” replied Sarah, “but if it is a
long story give me that flannel petticoat I was making. There,” said
she, threading her needle, “begin, I am ready.”
But it did not seem so easy to begin as Sarah supposed, for Mary cleared
her throat and then said with an effort,
“I am going to be married.”
“You!” exclaimed Sarah, with extreme surprise. “Why, who to?”
“Oh, Sarah!” said Mary with some disappointment, “how can you ask? To
Frank Ludlow, to be sure.”
“To Frank Ludlow!” repeated Sarah.
“Yes; you suspected it before, did you not?”
“Not I, indeed,” replied Sarah, so decidedly that Mary saw the surprise
was perfect. “I have noticed that he was attentive to you, but I never
dreamt of your liking him.”
“And why not?” asked Mary, not without a little mortification.
“Oh! I don’t know,” answered Sarah carelessly. Her manner seemed to
imply that she saw nothing in Frank Ludlow to like particularly.
“You are not pleased,” said Mary presently, in a low voice. “I hope you
don’t dislike Frank, Sarah?”
“Who! I dislike him?” said Sarah, looking up from her sewing with
surprise. “Not at all. I don’t care about him either one way or the
other. But that is not the point in question. If you are in love with
him, that is enough, provided,” she added with a smile, “you do not
require all your friends to be the same.”
Mary smiled faintly as she said, “Oh no!” for there was something in
Sarah’s manner that disappointed and chilled her. She made an effort to
say something about her long knowledge of his character and principles,
to which Sarah replied,
“I dare say he is a very nice young man, Mary,” while she inwardly
wondered what Mary could see in him, to think him worth all the
sacrifices she must make if she married him.
Mary could say no more. There was something so slighting in the phrase
“nice young man,” and it was so evident that Sarah did not think much of
him, that her spirits sunk, and she soon after left her friend, more
dejected than she had been since her engagement had taken place.
Mary soon after married, and Sarah was left more to herself and her
independent ways than ever, and what with her societies and
Sunday-schools, and the many occupations she contrived to make for
herself, time rolled quietly on, and Sarah continued very much
fulfilling the destiny her sister had long since predicted would be her
fate.
“Charlotte,” said Mr. Eldon to his wife one day about this time, “what
is Allen doing forever at your father’s? It seems to me that I never go
there that I do not meet him.”
“I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Eldon carelessly. “Yet, now that you speak
of it, I remember that he is there a good deal. He is such a quiet,
silent person that one sees him without thinking of him. I wonder what
does take him there. I suppose it is a habit he has fallen into. You
know young men will sometimes visit at a house without any particular
object.”
“That may be,” replied her husband, “but I do not think it is so in the
present instance. I think Allen admires Sarah.”
“Do you?” said his wife with surprise, for the idea of Sarah’s exciting
particular admiration was new to her. “I should be sorry for him if it
were so,” she added.
“Why so?” inquired Mr. Eldon.
“Because,” she replied, “he seems an amiable young man, and I should be
sorry for his disappointment.”
“But I am not so sure he will be disappointed,” pursued Mr. Eldon.
“My dear husband!” exclaimed Mrs. Eldon almost indignantly, “you surely
do not suppose that Sarah would have a man so inferior to herself as
Allen—he is a gentlemanly, amiable person, but decidedly weak.”
“Sarah would not be the first clever woman who has married a fool,”
continued Mr. Eldon.
“But he must be younger than herself,” pursued Mrs. Eldon.
“About the same age, I imagine,” said her husband. “However, if the idea
has not occurred to you before, look to it now. If I am not much
mistaken, Sarah is interested in him. It would not be a bad match for
her, though certainly not one we would have expected her to make.”
And, strange as it may seem, Mr. Eldon’s observations had not deceived
him. Weak men generally admire clever women. Not having the capacity to
entertain themselves, they like somebody who can do it for them. Sarah
was now upon the point of doing what she had ridiculed others for all
her life, viz., falling in love with one who was not her equal. She had
often wondered before where the charm, where even the flattery could be,
of the admiration of an inferior. But Sarah had reached her
twenty-seventh year without even exciting that admiration, and
consequently did not understand the charm, and it is wonderful what a
difference the thing’s being personal makes in these matters. We often
refuse with the utmost sincerity for our friends somebody who, perhaps,
would be accepted for ourselves. So it proved with Sarah. She would not
have hesitated had Mr. Allen proposed for Mary, but the case was changed
when she found herself the object of his humble and devoted attentions,
her sayings admired, her opinions adopted, her looks watched, as they
had never been admired, adopted, or watched before. Flattery is
certainly bewitching, and few can withstand genuine admiration. But when
they come with the freshness of novelty, and the charm of
unexpectedness, the head must be very sound, or the heart very cold that
can altogether repel them. Sarah had abandoned herself to their
influence before she was aware of it. She did not yield gracefully,
however, nor without a struggle; and she had been engaged several weeks
before she could summon courage to communicate the intelligence to Mrs.
Eldon. It was in vain she repeated to herself that she “had only her own
happiness to consult,” and that “she cared not what others said.” Her
usual independence almost deserted her, and for the first time in her
life she dreaded a smile, and shrank from hearing “plain English.”
“Dear, dear Sarah!” exclaimed Mrs. Ludlow, as she embraced her friend
most affectionately, “how could you keep me so long in the dark? But I
am come to congratulate, and not scold you. And now tell me all about
it;” and the how, and the when, and the where, followed in quick
succession, and was listened to with such animated interest and cordial
sympathy, and all that Mary knew or thought, or had ever heard, that was
favorable to Mr. Allen, was poured forth so kindly, that Sarah’s spirits
rose, and, as she parted with her friend, she felt an elasticity and
joyousness of heart that she had not experienced since her engagement.
“Heaven bless her kind nature!” said Sarah, with a degree of enthusiasm
that was unusual to her; “I always feel better after I have been with
her.”
Had the same observation ever been made on parting with Sarah? We doubt
it.
CHAPTER II.
It made me laugh to hear Jock skirl in the chimney. “Now,” said
I, “you know what hanging is good for.” HEART OF MID
LOTHIAN.
“Mr. Allen looks feeble, Sarah,” said Mrs. Eldon to her sister, some
time after her marriage—“Is he well?”
“Yes, perfectly,” replied Sarah. “Pray don’t put it into his head that
he is not, or you will make him more indolent than ever. He wants
exercise, that is all. I wish him to ride on horseback before
breakfast.”
“At what hour do you breakfast?” inquired Mrs. Eldon.
“At six,” replied her sister.
“At six at this season!” exclaimed Mrs. Eldon. “Why it can scarcely be
light. Does Mr. Allen like such early hours?”
“No,” answered Mrs. Allen, laughing, “he would greatly prefer nine, I
believe. But such indolent habits destroy all order and regularity in a
household.”
“Now, Mrs. Eldon, I appeal to you,” said her brother-in-law,
good-humoredly, “if there is any use in being up at candle-light. I tell
Sarah we have the twenty-four hours before us. I do not see the use of
hurrying so. It appears to me I hardly get asleep before the bell rings
for breakfast.”
“The use of early rising,” replied Sarah, “is that we need never hurry.
There is time for every thing, and unless the master and mistress are
up, every thing stands still. And, after all, it only depends upon habit
whether we dislike it or not;” and there was something in her tone and
manner that implied it was a habit her husband must acquire.
Now in fact Mr. Allen was not strong; but Sarah, who had never been ill
for an hour, and scarcely knew what it was to be fatigued, had no more
comprehension of the languor of a feeble frame, than she had mercy for a
weak mind, and, consequently, the breakfast bell rang as pitilessly at
break of day, as if Mr. Allen had been endowed with her own “steel and
whalebone constitution.” Strong health makes one sometimes unfeeling,
and so it was with Sarah. She thought a good walk or long ride a panacea
for all the ills flesh is heir to, and that if sickness was not sin, it
was what she considered next to it—laziness.
“And now, Sarah,” said Mrs. Eldon, “I want a favor of you. I want you to
ask young Brandon and his wife to your party next week.”
“Which one?” inquired Mrs. Allen. “I did not know Frank was married, for
I don’t suppose you mean the other.”
“Yes I do,” replied her sister.
“Not the one who was implicated in that affair some years since?”
pursued Mrs. Allen.
“The same,” continued Mrs. Eldon. “He was almost a boy when that
happened, and he has quite redeemed himself since. And now that he is
married, his friends wish to make an effort to bring him forward again;
and I promised to ask you to invite him. It will be of service to him to
be seen here.”
“Never!” said Sarah, with decision; “I never will countenance any one
who could be guilty of such conduct. I am astonished you could ask it.”
“My dear Sarah, remember what a lad he was at the time,” urged Mrs.
Eldon.
“He was old enough to know better,” replied Mrs. Allen.
“Undoubtedly,” resumed her sister—“but, Sarah, if you had a family of
boys growing up around you, as I have, you would learn to look with more
leniency upon their errors.”
“If I countenance such young men as Brandon,” replied Sarah, “I don’t
know what right I should have to look for better things in my own sons.
When society overlooks such acts, we may as well abandon all principle
and order at once.”
“As a general rule, I agree with you,” returned Mrs. Eldon; “but
situated as we are with regard to the Brandon family, I should wish here
to make an exception. They were my mother’s earliest friends, and we are
under many obligations to them.”
“Any thing that I could do for them but this, I would do cheerfully,”
replied Sarah.
“But there is nothing else you can do, Sarah,” persisted Mrs. Eldon.
“They want nothing else; and it seems to me that friendship is but a
name, if we are not willing to make a sacrifice for our friends.”
“Any but that of principle I am willing to make for them,” replied Mrs.
Allen, resolutely.
When Sarah took it up as a matter of principle, her sister desisted at
once, as she knew the business to be hopeless. She only sighed, and
hoped Sarah might never know some of the trials of a mother’s heart, to
teach her mercy and compassion.
Sarah continued, as a married woman, to be very much what she had been
as a girl, for marriage does not modify the character as much as people
think it does. Her active and energetic nature, which had formerly been
expended on societies and paupers, was now devoted to her household,
husband and children, and all were managed with the same upright
principle and relentless decision which she had ever shown in all her
undertakings.
The attachment between herself and husband was strong, although the
perfect harmony did not always exist between them that might have been
expected, from the sense on her side and the good temper on his.
Mr. Allen, like most weak men, was obstinate, and when he wanted to do a
thing, generally did it, and only showed his consciousness of Sarah’s
disapprobation by not telling her of what he had done; and many a time
was she bitterly provoked to find that projects which she had opposed,
and supposed abandoned, had long since been quietly effected. Her heart
was often in a “lime kiln,” though perhaps about trifles. Yet upon the
whole she enjoyed as much of happiness, probably, as her nature was
capable of. Her children were pattern children, orderly, correct and
obedient. No act of rebellion had ever been known in the little circle,
but one, and that was in her eldest boy, which had been so severely
punished that it had become a matter of fearful tradition with the rest.
In fact, Sarah was a stern mother, more feared than loved by her
children, yet they were generally looked upon as a “remarkably well
brought up family,” and Mrs. Allen received no small praise for her
admirable management of her young flock.
“Who do you think was suspended to-day?” said Charles Eldon, as he threw
down his books on his return from college.
“Who? who?” exclaimed his young brothers and sisters.
“Tom Allen!”
“What, Tommy good-shoes!” exclaimed the children, with shouts of
merriment. “Oh, that is too good! Mamma, only think, Tom Allen is
suspended!”
“Hush, hush, my dear!” said Mrs. Eldon, gravely, “I am sorry to hear
it.”
“That is more than I am,” said Fanny, in a low voice. “It is the best
news I have heard this many a day. Aunt Sarah made such a fuss when
Lewis got into that scrape, and it was not much after all.”
“What has been the matter, my son?” inquired Mrs. Eldon.
“Nothing of much consequence—only Tom has lagged behind the class
almost ever since he has been in it, so now the Puts have suspended him,
and he must take a tutor, and try and pull up.”
“To think of one of those pattern children being suspended!” said Frank,
laughing. “It is the best joke I ever heard.”
And in spite of all their mother’s proper admonitions and grave looks,
the news was matter of perfect jubilee with the young Eldons. Not that
they had positively unkind feelings toward their young cousins, but they
disliked their aunt heartily, and, in short, pattern children always
incur a certain share of unpopularity among juveniles of their own
standing. Free and spirited natures will not brook the superiority which
is often accorded by their elders to the tame and correct inferiority of
such children. Then, too, the sins of the parents are often visited
heavily on their offspring under similar circumstances; and “Aunt
Sarah’s lectures,” and “the fuss Aunt Sarah made on such and such an
occasion,” “and now Aunt Sarah need not make big eyes at Charley any
more,” and “let Aunt Allen shut up about Lewis now,” and many more such
reminiscences and ejaculations of the kind, broke forth on all sides. In
fact, if the whole truth were known, Mrs. Eldon herself, in spite of her
efforts to maintain the proprieties, did not feel, at the bottom of her
heart, the sorrow for her sister’s mortification she assumed. “It will
do her good,” she said to herself. “Sarah is too hard upon other
people’s children. The thing is not a matter of importance in itself,
but it is enough to show her that her boys are like other boys.”
“I thought your sister was wrong when she insisted upon that boy’s
taking a collegiate education,” remarked Mr. Eldon. “He resembles his
father in mind: that is to say, he has none, and besides, is naturally
indolent. He showed a disposition to enter the counting-house, and he
would have done better there.”
“Sarah thinks it great weakness in parents to yield to what she calls
the whims of young people.”
“Undoubtedly; but, at the same time, not to study and make allowances
for their natural capacities and dispositions, is equally unwise. Nature
is to be guided, but not controlled.”
“You would find it difficult to persuade Sarah that she could not
control all events falling within the sphere of her domestic circle,”
replied Mrs. Eldon.
“Then probably she has a bitter lesson yet to learn,” replied Mr.
Eldon—and so the conversation dropped.
The summer coming on, Mrs. Eldon left the city early with her family,
and consequently did not see Mrs. Allen for several months. When she
did, she was much struck with the change in her appearance.
“Are you well, Sarah?” she asked.
“No, I am not,” replied Mrs. Allen. “I have heard people talk of being
weak and miserable, but I never knew what they meant before. I saw they
were not really ill, and I thought it was only imagination or indolence.
I now feel that I was wrong. For the first time in my life, I know what
it is to be oppressed with languor. Every thing is a burden to me; and
when I try to rouse myself and shake it off, my limbs refuse to obey my
will.”
“My dear sister,” said Mrs. Eldon, “don’t attempt that. You need
repose—If you overtask yourself now, you may feel the ill effects all
your life.”
“That is what my dear, kind husband says,” replied Mrs. Allen. “And oh,”
she continued, with much emotion, “you don’t know, Charlotte, how my
conscience reproaches me for my former want of consideration—for my
unkindness, in fact, to him. You always told me he was not strong, but I
thought it was only one of your notions, and I laughed at his dislike of
early rising, and had, in short, no sympathy for much that I now am
convinced was bodily indisposition. Formerly, I could not comprehend
what possible good it could do him, _even_ supposing, according to you,
that he was not well, to rise an hour later in the morning. The idea
seemed to me absolutely absurd. And now when I wake so languid, I feel
that an hour’s rest is of such infinite importance, and I ask myself,
‘Where is the use in getting up?—what matters it whether the household
commences its daily routine an hour earlier or later?’ Charlotte, I
sometimes feel that this breaking down of my health is sent as a
punishment, and a lesson to teach me sympathy and mercy for those of a
naturally different constitution from my own.”
When Mrs. Eldon repeated this observation of Mrs. Allen’s to her
husband, he dryly remarked that, “it was a pity the lesson had not come
earlier.”
Pecuniary losses, too, fell heavily upon the Allens about this time. A
public institution failed, in which Mr. Allen had invested much of his
wife’s property. It had never been an institution in which she had much
confidence, and when he had consulted her on the subject, she decidedly
objected to the changing certain for what she considered uncertain
property. But Mr. Allen, as we have said, was a weak man, who, when he
had once got a notion in his head, never rested until he had executed
it. He was just sufficiently under his wife’s influence to make him
conceal the fact when it was done. If circumstances discovered it, he
would only reply to her remonstrances, which were not always of the
gentlest, “Well, well, it is done now, and there is no use in talking
about it.” Sarah was not often to be pacified in that way, and if any
thing could have provoked her more than the facts themselves, it would
have been the quiet, meek, yet obstinate air withal, with which he
listened to her lectures on the subject.
Either Sarah was not the woman she once had been, or the magnitude of
the present offence seemed to stun her into silence, for she bore with
dignity and fortitude what she felt to be a serious misfortune.
What was grief to her, was matter of gossip, however, to the circle of
her immediate acquaintance, and that, too, not always in the most
sympathizing and good-natured spirit.
“Are you not sorry for the Allens?” inquired one of her set. “It is said
they have lost the greater part of their fortune in this company that
has just failed.”
The lady thus addressed was one who prided herself on her frankness, and
she answered, with a spirit and promptness that caused the other to
laugh,
“No, I can’t say I am. Mrs. Allen has hitherto thought that every body
else’s misfortunes were their faults. Let her now bring the matter
home.”
The other seemed to enjoy the remark, although hardly daring to say as
much herself, and she only replied, with an affectation of amiability
that her gratified looks denied—
“But it is a hard lesson to learn.”
“My dear Mrs. Binney,” replied her friend, “we have all of us hard
lessons to learn in our experience through life. But I have no sympathy
for those who _need_ them before they can feel for others.”
“She certainly has been rather hard upon those who fell into
misfortune,” gently resumed Mrs. Binney.
“_Rather_ hard!” ejaculated the other—“I never shall forget when my
brother failed—” and then came a stored up host of bitter remembrances
and old offences against Mrs. Allen, speeches long forgotten, that had
rankled deep, to rise up in judgment when her turn came to call for
public sympathy and general discussion.
Mr. Allen seemed to escape without either sympathy or animadversion. If
alluded to, he was called “a poor, weak fool,” by the men, and “oh, he
is nobody,” was all the consideration deigned him by the women. But Mrs.
Allen was canvassed and talked over according to the feelings of the
speakers, as if she were both master and mistress of the establishment.
Mrs. Ludlow, her early friend, was still her friend, and sympathized,
from the bottom of her heart, in all her trials.
Prosperity often seems to mark certain families for its own for
years—but when the tide changes, misfortune frequently clings as
obstinately to those who have hitherto seemed the favorites of fortune.
To most of us, life is as an April day, checkered by clouds and
sunshine; but there are others whose brilliant morning and calm noonday
suddenly darken into clouds and storm. A certain portion of sorrow is
the lot of all, whether it comes drifting through life, or is compassed
within any particular period of existence. Come, however, it must to
all.
Sarah’s life had hitherto been blessed above that of most women. But
youth, health and wealth had now passed from her, and her proud, stern
spirit had yet to undergo trials she had never dreamed within the scope
of possibility as falling to her lot. Her eldest boy, the “Tommy
good-shoes” of former days, was now the source of an anguish a mother’s
heart alone can know. Forced upon a course of education for which he had
no taste and scarcely any capacity, the four years allotted to
collegiate studies were to him four years of unbroken idleness. The same
easy, docile nature that had made him the “Tommy good-child” of early
years, rendered him still pliant to the influences about him. These,
unhappily, as is generally the case in idleness, were not good. College
suspensions and remonstrances were the commencement of a course of which
little bills soon followed in the wake. When these fell into his
father’s hands, they were often paid without a word, for he had learned
to dread, scarce less than the boy, the bitterness of his wife’s
indignation when they reached her knowledge.
To his mother’s keen reproaches, Tom listened in silence, the same kind
of frightened, meek, obstinate silence with which his father had endured
many a harangue before him. But they did not mend his ways.
Mrs. Eldon had heard from time to time rumors that “Tom Allen was very
wild,” but she had thought that “boys will be boys,” and her husband
said “young men will be young men,” and thus they had both attributed
the rumors they had heard to the indiscretions of a youthful spirit. But
here they were mistaken. Tom’s were not the errors of a youthful but of
a weak nature. The influence abroad was bad, and the conduct at home
injudicious. If Mr. Allen’s children did not exactly say with the world,
“Oh! he is nobody,” they yet felt the fact; while their mother was to
them “the everybody” they feared and looked up to. Consequently, if Tom
got into a scrape there was nothing he so much dreaded as his mother’s
hearing of it. There was scarcely any public opprobrium he would not
rather have endured than her anger. In fact, the sort of Coventry in
which he was put, the sad, severe looks that were bestowed upon him at
home were slight inducements to a weak and timid spirit to reveal
difficulties, pour forth confession and implore relief, and thus what
had begun in weakness ended in disgrace.
A debt which, though not large in itself, yet of considerable magnitude
in the eyes of a youth, had been contracted almost unconsciously, and
which he had not courage to avow at home. Harassed, tormented,
terrified, he made use of funds which were not his own, and which his
situation in a counting-house, where he had at last been placed, put
within his reach. Weak, timid and reserved, he neither revealed his
situation, nor asked for aid from either his young companions or natural
friends—but when he found detection could no longer be warded
off—fled.
Public disgrace was the consequence; and the insignificance of the sum
and the magnitude of the offence were alike the theme of general
discussion. Mingled commiseration and blame were bestowed upon the
unhappy parents. People generally love to think that a faulty education
is the root of the evil. Some, therefore, censured the system that had
restricted him in means; others thought a too ample allowance had been
the origin of the sin.
The affair was canvassed in every possible spirit, and though
commiseration could not be refused to the heart-stricken parents, yet
the tone of it was often qualified by the personal sentiments of the
speakers, for it is wondrous how unpopularity will cling to those who
have incurred it, even under calamities which one would suppose were
enough to bury all old griefs.
“I cannot but feel sorry for any mother under such circumstances,” had
been said, “but I feel as little for Mrs. Allen as I could feel for any
one so situated. She meets with more sympathy now than she ever would
have given to another.”
“Had it been any one else’s son but Sarah Allen’s,” exclaimed another,
“I should have been sorry indeed. But hers is a hard temper. Now,
however, she knows what trials are.”
“I am sorry for any one so situated, but if such things will happen, I
had rather it had fallen on Mrs. Allen than on any one else I know.”
The Brandons breathed a deeper but silent comment upon the blow that had
fallen on the haughty and unfeeling woman whose early slight they never
had forgiven.
“My early, only friend,” cried Mrs. Allen, as she threw herself into
Mary Ludlow’s arms, who, ever true to her in sorrow as in joy, was with
her now in her hour of bitterest anguish, “you, you alone feel for one
who did not feel for others. The heart that was hardened by prosperity
deserved to be broken by sorrow.” And then the full tide of anguish, and
repentance, and confession, gushed forth with a freedom and humility
that wells up alone from a broken and a contrite heart.
The stern lesson had been taught, and received in a spirit that shows
that where there is Sense, experience must teach Sympathy. The rock had
been smitten, and the waters that gushed forth were pure and
regenerating.
* * * * *
“OH MOTHER OF A MIGHTY RACE.”
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
Oh mother of a mighty race,
Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!
The elder dames, thy haughty peers,
Admire and hate thy blooming years.
With words of shame
And taunts of scorn they join thy name.
For on thy cheek the glow is spread
That tints thy morning hills with red;
Thy step—the wild deer’s rustling feet
Within thy woods are not more fleet;
Thy hopeful eye
Is bright as thine own sunny sky.
Aye, let them rail—those haughty ones—
While safe thou dwellest with thy sons.
They do not know how loved thou art,
How many a fond and fearless heart
Would rise to throw
Its life between thee and the foe.
They know not, in their hate and pride,
What virtues with thy children bide;
How true, how good, thy graceful maids
Make bright, like flowers, the valley shades;
What generous men
Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen.
What cordial welcomes greet the guest
By thy lone rivers of the west;
How faith is kept and truth revered,
And man is loved and God is feared
In woodland homes,
And where the solemn ocean foams.
There’s freedom at thy gates, and rest,
For earth’s down-trodden and opprest,
A shelter for the hunted head,
For the starved laborer toil and bread—
Power, at thy bounds,
Stops, and calls back his baffled hounds.
Oh fair young mother! on thy brow
Shall sit a nobler grace than now.
Deep in the brightness of thy skies
The thronging years in glory rise,
And, as they fleet,
Drop strength and riches at thy feet.
Thine eye, with every coming hour,
Shall brighten, and thy form shall tower,
And when thy sisters, elder born,
Would brand thy name with words of scorn,
Before thine eye
Upon their lips the taunt shall die.
* * * * *
CAIUS MARIUS.
BY MRS. E. J. EAMES.
“Man—darest thou slay Caius Marius?”
Semblance of him who at three-score-and-ten,
Bleeding and stark, chained in a dungeon lay—
Yet all untamed—whose eye flashed fire as when
The stormy fight he led in war array;
Well might the Cimbrian slave in awe start back,
Oh! fearful Roman, when he met thine eye!
Well might the Gaul, though bold, the courage lack
To consummate thy purposed destiny.
For through the dim and solemn twilight burnt
That eye—in stern and awful grandeur flashing
Its warning light on one who ne’er had learnt
Pale fear till then. Well might his sword fall clashing
At that dread voice—“Man, darest thou slay _me_?”
So didst thou look, and speak, and wert made free!
* * * * *
ONE OF THE “UPPER TEN THOUSAND,” AND ONE OF THE PEOPLE.
BY MRS. J. C. CAMPBELL.
CHAPTER I.
At the annual commencement of one of our colleges, the youth who
delivered the valedictory had, by the vigor and beauty of thought
displayed in his address, and by his polished and graceful elocution,
drawn down the applause of the large audience assembled on that
occasion. Not a few eyes were moistened as he bade farewell to the
venerable men under whose care and tuition he had gained the highest
honors, and to the schoolmates with whom he had passed so many happy
hours, and who now, like barques again put forth to sea that had long
been safely moored in one quiet haven, were each to stem alone on life’s
great deep.
“He! he! he! that’s Bobby Dunning, his father keeps a grocery-store,”
said a foppish-looking stripling who wore the academic gown, as he
pointed with his finger to the speaker on the platform, and at the same
time seated himself beside a young lady in the gallery.
“He! he!” echoed his companion, “I dare say he has weighed many a pound
of sugar in his time. A grocery-store! What queer associates you have at
college, Gus.”
“Associates! No indeed, Sophy, when Bob first entered I thought him a
fine, generous fellow, and was just about to ask him to our house, when
I found out who his father was. A lucky escape, by Jupiter! I soon cut
his acquaintance, and made him feel by my cool, contemptuous manner that
the son of a grocer was no fit associate for the son of a gentleman.”
Again the young lady tittered, “That’s just like you, Gus, you are
always so high spirited.”
“So my father says; he often calls me his ‘gallant Hotspur,’ and laughs
heartily when he hears of my waggish pranks.”
Many honors were that day borne away by the ambitious youths who had
late and early sought to win them, but none had been awarded to Gus, or
as he liked best to write himself, Gustavus Adolphus Tremaine.
“Why, Gus, you’re a lazy dog,” said his father on their return home;
“come, you must do better next time. And so Bob Dunning, the grocer’s
son, graduated to-day, and carried away more honors than any of the
other students; rather strange that!”
“There was nothing strange about it, father. Bobby knew he had to get
his living somehow or other, and as Latin and Greek smacked more of
gentility than brown paper and pack-thread, he abandoned the latter, and
took to the former with such avidity, that he has grown thin and pale as
a shadow. A capital village pedagogue Bob will make, to be sure! But
something more manly than poring over musty old books, or flogging
ragged little boys, must be my occupation through life. I say, father,
when does that race come off between Lady Helen and Bluebeard?”
“Next week,” answered Mr. Tremaine, who was a member of a jockey
club—“next week. Well remembered, Gus.—I dine with the club to-day,
and this devilish college concern had nearly driven the engagement out
of my head. We are to have splendid arrangements on the race ground for
the accommodation of the ladies—a fine stand erected, covered with an
awning—wines, ices, patés, and I don’t know what all. Sarah,” turning
to his wife, “I expect you to be there; mind, none of your vapors—and,
Gus, do you bring Sophy Warren; she is a spirited creature, and would
make a capital jockey herself.” And with this equivocal compliment to
Miss Sophia Warren, the elder Tremaine left the house.
A tyrant at home, a capital fellow abroad, was Oscar Tremaine. Over his
wife, a mild, gentle creature, he had exercised his authority until she
had become a perfect cipher in her own house; and, unnatural as it may
appear, he had encouraged their son to flout his mother’s opinions and
scorn her advice. It was not strange, then, that Mrs. Tremaine had
remained silent while her husband and son were speaking, but now,
looking on the boy with tenderness, she said,
“I regret, my dear Gustavus, that you have not been more successful in
your studies; how happy and how _proud_ I should have been had you
brought home some token of reward, some prize, on which I might have
looked, and said, ‘My child has won it!’”
“Fudge! this is all nonsense, mother. What do you know about such
matters? Father has more money than I can ever spend, and why should I
be compelled to mope away my lifetime over the _midnight oil_, as they
call it? I’d rather have a canter on Fancy in the afternoon, and then to
the theatre or opera at night—that is the life for me;” and, humming a
fashionable air, he turned from the room.
His mother gazed after him sorrowfully. “God help thee, my child!—alas!
I fear the worst; God help thee!” she repeated in anguish, and, feeling
how “sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,”
she bowed her head on her hands, and wept bitterly.
In less than a month after the commencement, Robert Dunning began the
study of the law, and Gustavus Adolphus Tremaine was expelled from
college.
CHAPTER II.
“Confound the fellow! I can’t take up a newspaper without having his
name staring me in the face. Eminent lawyer, superior
talents—_superior_—nonsense; I don’t believe a word of it. I always
hated him;” and the speaker flung the offending paper on the floor,
apparently unconscious that that very hatred made him blind to the
merits of the man whom he so berated.
“What’s the matter now, Gus?—angry again? Was there ever such a man!”
exclaimed an ultra-fashionable lady, who swept into the apartment “with
all her bravery on.” “Come, I want you to go with me this morning, to
select a new jewel-case. I saw a superb one the other day for a few
hundred dollars; but it is no matter what it may cost.”
“It is a matter, and a serious one, too, Sophia. I told you, six months
ago, we should be ruined by your extravagance, and, by heaven! you must
put a stop to it.”
“And I told _you, twelve_ months ago, Mr. Tremaine, that if you did not
quit betting at the race ground and the gambling table, we should
_certainly_ be ruined. You spend thousands, for no earthly good
whatever, while I only make use of hundreds, to purchase things
absolutely necessary for one holding my position in society. Once for
all, let me tell you, Mr. Tremaine, I will have whatever I want;” and,
turning to the piano, the amiable lady ran her fingers over the keys,
with the most provoking indifference.
“Mrs. Tremaine, you are enough to drive a man mad. Do you think I’m a
fool, that I will bear to be treated thus?”
“Oh no, Gussy dear, I should be sorry to suppose such a thing; but you
know the lesson by which I profited was learned in your home. There I
saw how well your father could enact the tyrant, and how your gentle
mother was treated like a slave; and I silently resolved, that from the
hour we were married, I would be mistress in my own house.”
“Where is the use of repeating that nonsense continually? I have heard
the same story a dozen times before.”
“And shall hear it a dozen times again, or at least as often as I hear
the word _must_ from your lips, Mr. Tremaine. But come, you have not yet
told me why you were so angry when I came in. Let me see,” she
continued, taking up the newspaper, “let me see whether this will not
solve the mystery. Ah, now I have it—Robert Dunning, Esq.!”
“Yes, now you have it—that upstart, whom I so hate—to see his name
paraded in this manner before the public, is enough to drive me mad.”
“No wonder you hate him, Gus. Only to think of his being retained as
counsel for the heirs of old Latrobe, and gaining the suit by which you
lost one hundred thousand dollars! Now this reminds me of what I heard
yesterday, that Dunning was about to be married to Fanny Austin.”
“Nonsense, Sophia, the Austins move in the first circles.”
“So they do, my dear, but Fanny has strange ideas, and there is no
knowing what freak she may perform. However, I shall drive there today,
and ask her about it. I ordered the carriage at one—ah! there it
is—will you assist me with my cloak, Mr. Tremaine, or shall I ring for
my maid? Thank you—thank you—I don’t know when I shall return.”
“And I don’t care,” muttered her husband as she drove from the door. For
a few moments he stood under the heavy crimson curtains at the window,
looking listlessly in the direction in which the carriage had gone, and
then taking his hat and cane left the house.
Just one little year had passed since Gustavus Tremaine and Sophia
Warren were wedded—but one little year since he had promised to love
and cherish her as his wife, and she had vowed to love and obey him as
her husband, and yet such scenes as the one above related were daily
occurring. The mother of young Tremaine had long since sunk
broken-hearted to her grave, and his father had died in consequence of
injuries received by falling from a staging erected on a race-course.
Shortly before the death of the elder Tremaine, the law-suit had
terminated, by which he lost one hundred thousand dollars, and on the
settlement of his affairs it was found that but a comparatively small
fortune would be possessed by his heir. Sophia Warren, “the capital
jockey,” prided herself on her marriage, with being wife to one of the
richest men (that was to be) in the city, and it was a bitter
disappointment when she found her husband’s income would not be
one-third of what she had anticipated.
As the union had not been one of affection—where heart and soul unite
in uttering the solemn and holy vows—where “for richer for poorer” is
uttered in all sincerity—as it had not been such a union, but one of
eligibility—a question of mere worldly advantage, no wonder the peevish
word, and the angry retort, were daily widening the breach between a
spendthrift husband and an arrogant wife—no wonder each sought refuge
in the world, from the _ennui_ and the strife that awaited them at
home—no wonder that the wife was recklessly whirling through the giddy
maze of fashion, while the husband was risking health, honor, reputation
on the hazard of a die.
When Mrs. Tremaine reached Mr. Austin’s, young Dunning was just leaving
the house, so here was a fine opportunity for bantering Fanny Austin.
“Ah! I’ve caught you, my dear, and Madam Rumor is likely to speak truth
at last—ha! blushing! well this is confirmation strong—and it is
really true that Mr. Dunning and Miss Austin are engaged.”
Too honest-hearted to prevaricate, too delicate-minded not to feel hurt
at the familiar manner in which Mrs. Tremaine alluded to her engagement,
Fanny remained silent, her cheek glowing, and her bright eye proudly
averted from the face of her visiter.
A woman of more delicate feeling than Mrs. Tremaine would have hesitated
on witnessing the embarrassment caused by her remarks, but she had no
such scruples, and continued,
“I contradicted the statement; for it was impossible to believe any
thing so absurd.”
Fanny Austin looked up inquiringly, and the glow on her cheek deepened
to crimson as she said,
“Absurd! may I ask your meaning, Mrs. Tremaine?”
“Why, I mean that you would not render yourself so ridiculous in the
eyes of society. _You_ marry Bob Dunning—the son of a grocer—_you_,
who belong to the first families, and who ought to make a most
advantageous match! Why, Fanny dear, no wonder I contradicted it.”
“I regret that you took the trouble.”
“Oh! it was none at all, and our families had been so long on friendly
terms, that I thought it but right to say you would not throw yourself
away.”
“Allow me to ask why you speak in this manner,” said Miss Austin, now
fully roused, and recovering her self-possession, “if I should marry Mr.
Dunning, how could I be thought to throw myself away?”
“What a question! Why the man has neither family nor fortune to boast
of, while you have both.”
“As far as money is concerned, I grant you I have the advantage; but as
for family, few of us republicans can boast on that score. My
grandmother, and yours too, Mrs. Tremaine, superintended their own
dairies, made butter and cheese with their own hands, and sent them to
market to be sold, nor did I ever hear that the good ladies were ashamed
of their domestic employments. Your father and mine commenced life with
naught save probity and perseverance; they were first clerks, then
junior partners, and at last great capitalists, and we their children
have thus been placed at the head of society.”
“I know nothing at all of this nonsensical grandmother story about
butter and cheese. I never heard of such a thing in our family.”
“No, I suppose you did not. You have been taught to look on praiseworthy
industry as derogatory to your ideas of gentility; but my father has
always delighted in recurring to those days of boyhood, and he venerates
the memory of his mother, whom he regarded while living as a pattern of
domestic virtue.”
“Oh, it is all nonsense talking in this way, Fanny. I wonder what Baron
d’Haut-ton will say when he hears that the lady he wooed so
unsuccessfully has been won by the heir of a man in the ‘sugar line?’”
“Pardon me, Mrs. Tremaine, if I say you are forgetting yourself, or at
least that you are presuming too far on your long acquaintance. My
parents have no such ideas as yours, about fortune and family, and with
their approval my heart is proud of its choice—proud, too, that it has
been the chosen of the gifted, the noble-minded Dunning.”
“Well, Fanny,” persisted Mrs. Tremaine, nothing abashed by the gentle
rebuke which had been given—“well, Fanny, depend upon it you will place
yourself in a false position. The friends who are now eager to court the
society of Miss Austin, will stand aloof when invited to the house of
Mrs. Dunning.”
“Friends! did you ever know a true friend do aught that would depreciate
the husband in the eyes of his wife, or lessen the wife in the esteem of
her husband? For such of my so-called friends as would not honor the man
I had chosen, when he was well worthy of their highest regard, I can but
say the sooner we part company the better. It is not the long array of
names upon my visiting list of which I am proud, but the worth of those
who proffer me their friendship.”
“Two o’clock!” said Mrs. Tremaine, glancing at the _pendule_ on the
chimney-piece—“two o’clock! Good morning, Miss Austin. How surprised
Tremaine will be to hear that you are really going to marry Bob
Dunning.”
And Robert Dunning and Fanny Austin were married—and never was there a
happier home than theirs. The wife watched for her husband’s step as the
maiden watches for that of her lover. Daily she met him with smiles,
while her heart throbbed with a love as warm and as pure as that she had
vowed at the altar. And Robert Dunning idolized his wife, and his fine
endowments drew around him a host of admirers and friends, until Fanny’s
former acquaintances, including Mrs. Tremaine, contended for the honor
of an invitation to the gifted circle, which weekly met at the house of
Mrs. Dunning.
CHAPTER III.
“So it has come at last—ruin, final, irretrievable ruin—every thing
gone—the very house I’m in mortgaged. Confusion! But I’ll not give up
yet—no, not yet! I’ll see Browne to-night—what if we should fail? But
that is impossible. Browne has been too long engaged in getting his
living from the dear public to let it scrutinize very closely the
process by which the needful is obtained. If I thought I could win any
thing at play—but I have had such an infernal run of ill luck lately
that there is no chance in that quarter. Well—well! There appears to be
no alternative—and when it is once done, then ho! for England!”
Thus soliloquized Gustavus Tremaine, as he sat at a late hour in the
morning sipping his coffee in his room, for his wife and he had long
ceased to take their meals together. Separate rooms and separate tables
had served to complete the estrangement which caprice and ill temper had
begun, and they now exhibited that pitiable spectacle of a house divided
against itself. And what is more pitiable than to see those who should
mutually encourage and support each other, who should bear one another’s
burdens, and in the spirit of blessed charity endure all things, and
hope all things—what is more pitiable than to see them unkind,
self-willed, bandying bitter sarcasms and rude reproaches?
Oh, that the duties, the responsibilities, the self-sacrifices of wedded
life were better understood, their sacred character more fully
appreciated, how would each home become a temple of love, each fireside
an altar, on which was daily laid an offering of all the amenities, all
the sweet charities of social life. How would the child who, in his
early home, had heard none save kind words, had seen none other than
heart-warm deeds, who had been trained to habits of submission, and
taught to yield the gratification of his own wishes for the good or the
pleasure of others, taught to do this even as a child may be taught, in
the meek spirit of the gospel—how would such an one grow up a crown of
glory to the hoary hairs of his parents, and a blessing to society. But,
alas! the spirit of insubordination is rife in the world. The child
spurns the yoke of domestic discipline, sets at naught the counsels of
his father, and hearkens not to the voice of his mother—and the man
disregards the voice of conscience, sets the laws of his country at
defiance, and becomes an outcast and a felon!
It was a cold winter evening, and the heavy clouds were looming up in
broad masses over the troubled sky, while the wind howled through every
cranny, and sent the snow-mist, which began rapidly to descend, into the
faces of the stray pedestrians who were either hardy enough to venture
abroad in search of pleasure, or wretched enough to be obliged from dire
necessity to leave their homes. Mr. Tremaine was among the few who were
braving the fury of the storm. He had left his elegant but cheerless
mansion in the upper part of the city, and sped onward, regardless alike
of wind and snow, to the place of his destination.
It was the haunt of vice, but in no dark alley nor out-of-the-way nook
did it seek to hide itself from public contempt. No—it reared its front
unblushingly in the public thoroughfare—within sound of the
church-going bell—it was fitted up with every luxury; silver and gold,
polished marble, and costly hangings, in lavish profusion, adorned the
place which fostered every malignant and evil passion, and made human
beings, endowed with immortal souls, ripe for deeds of desperation. The
man who robbed his employer, the defaulter, the forger, the destroyer of
female virtue, the murderer, the suicide, each and all of these had been
within its walls—each and all of these had taken their first lessons in
iniquity in that place, so truly and emphatically called a _hell_. And
it was to this place of pollution that Tremaine was hastening. Here he
had staked, and lost, and cursed his ill luck; yet, with the desperate
infatuation of a confirmed gamester, he had staked again and again,
until all was gone. On entering he looked round with a furtive and eager
glance, and, evidently disappointed, sauntered toward a roulette table
round which a crowd was standing.
“Do you play to-night?” The speaker was a tall, slender young man,
scarcely past his minority, but with a wan, sickly countenance, and the
premature stoop of old age. “Do you play to-night?” he repeated.
“I—I believe not,” answered Tremaine, again glancing round the room.
“You are a foolish fellow; the fickle goddess may even now be turning
the wheel in your favor. Come,” he continued, laughing, “if you have not
been at your banker’s to-day, I have, and can accommodate you with a few
hundreds;” and he took a roll of bills from his pocket, and handed them
to Tremaine.
“But when shall I return this, Gladsden?”
“Oh, a fortnight hence will be time enough.”
Tremaine turned to the table and staked the money—he won; staked the
whole amount—won again; the third time. “You had better stop now,”
whispered a voice in his ear. He turned, and saw the person for whom, a
short time before, he had been looking so eagerly; but he was elated
with success, and paid no heed to the speaker. The fourth—the fifth
time, he won. Such a run of luck was most extraordinary; he trembled
with excitement, and now determined that he would try but once more,
and, if successful, he might yet retrieve the past.
“Are you mad, Tremaine?—you surely will not risk all?” again whispered
the voice.
“All or nothing. I am fortune’s chief favorite to-night. All or
nothing,” repeated the gamester, as if communing with himself, “all or
nothing!”
The bystanders looked on earnestly; for a few moments there was a dead
silence—then Tremaine’s face became livid, his brow contracted, and his
lips compressed. He had risked all; he had gained—nothing!
“What a fool you have made of yourself!” once more whispered the ominous
voice.
“Not a word, Browne; perhaps it needed this to make me wholly yours,”
replied Tremaine, as he walked through the crowd, which opened to let
him and his companion pass. When in the street, the two walked on for a
time in moody silence, which was first broken by Browne.
“Well, Tremaine, that last was a bad stake of yours, and may cost one of
us the halter.”
“Why, I thought you told me there would be no blood spilt?”
“Well, blood _is_ rather ugly looking, I must confess; but if the man
should wake?”
“Did you not say you would have him well drugged?”
“I did, but by the slightest possible chance, I find it cannot be done!”
“How so?”
“You know it was expected that he would sail in the packet from this
port, but I find he has determined on going by the steamer, and will
start to-morrow morning by the Long Island railroad; so that we must do
it now or never.”
“Now or never be it, then. I am a ruined man, and ripe for mischief.”
Again the two walked on in silence, until they reached a fine looking
house in the vicinity of the Battery. Here Browne applied his key to the
night latch, and in a few moments he and Tremaine had entered one of the
upper rooms and locked the door.
“Where does he sleep?” abruptly inquired Tremaine.
“In the opposite room.”
“And you are sure that you can effect an entrance without arousing any
of the boarders?”
“_Sure!_ I wish I was as sure that he would not wake,” and Browne smiled
contemptuously. “But you are not growing faint-hearted, eh, Tremaine?
Come, here is something will give you courage, man;” and, taking a
bottle from a side closet, he placed it on the table before them, and
continued—“fifty thousand dollars! I saw him count it over this
afternoon. What fools some men are! Because I flattered him, and
pretended to take an interest in his love affair, he opened his whole
heart, and, what was of far more value, his purse, and displayed its
contents before me. But it grows late, and we must to business.
Remember, when I have secured the money, you are to take it and make
your escape out of the house, while I shall return quietly to bed to
lull suspicion, and to-morrow evening will meet you where we met
to-night. Now do you hold this dark lantern while I open the lock. That
will do—put it in my room again—so—all right; come in a little
farther,” continued he, in a low whisper, “we must be cautious—the
money is under his pillow.”
Stealthily approaching the bed of the unconscious sleeper, Browne put
his hand softly under the pillow and drew forth a wallet. Thus far they
were successful, but in groping their way out of the room, Browne
stumbled and fell; the noise awoke the sleeping man, and the cries of
“Help!—robbers!—help!” rang through the house. In one moment Browne
was on his feet, in another in his room, where the money was given to
Tremaine, and in the noise and confusion of hastily opening and shutting
doors, the latter escaped.
It is unnecessary to detail the causes which led to the suspicion and
arrest of Browne, and the implication of Tremaine. Suffice it that on
the following evening, when entering the place in which he had appointed
to meet his accomplice and divide the booty, Tremaine was taken into
custody, and the money found in his possession.
Sophia was dressing for the opera. It was the first night on which she
had laid aside the mourning worn for the loss of her parents, and,
determined on appearing in a style of almost regal magnificence, she had
placed a circlet of jewels on her brow, and a diamond bracelet was seen
flashing on her arm amid the rich lace of a demi-sleeve as she reached
out her hand to receive a note brought in by the servant. On opening it
her agitation was extreme, and, hastily dismissing her attendants, she
read over word by word the news of her husband’s crime, and subsequent
imprisonment.
And now was she tortured by conflicting emotions. She had never believed
that her husband’s affairs were in the ruinous state in which he had
represented them to be—but she could no longer doubt. Crime had been
committed—disgrace had fallen upon them—and then came the thought,
“Have not I helped to goad him on to ruin?” and pity for him brought a
momentary forgetfulness of self—the woman was not wholly dead within
her!
The next day the hateful news was bruited abroad that Tremaine, the
dashing Tremaine, was imprisoned for robbery! His fashionable friends
wisely shook their heads, and raised their hands, and uttered sundry
exclamations. But they stood aloof—not one offered to go forward as
bail for the unfortunate man. Not one of Mrs. Tremaine’s gay lady
visiters went to speak a word to the humbled woman as she sat writhing
under her disgrace. But we forget—there was _one_! Fanny Dunning, like
a ministering angel, strove to soothe and comfort her, promised that her
husband would do his utmost to aid Mr. Tremaine, and, when the mortgage
on the house was foreclosed, took the weeping Sophia to her own home and
was to her as a sister.
CHAPTER IV.
It was not in human nature to forget the repeated slights and insults
with which Tremaine had sought to wound the feelings of his old
school-mate; but it was in human nature to imitate the divine exemplar,
to forgive injuries, and to return good for evil, and Robert Dunning
promised Sophia that he would do all in his power to effect the
liberation of her husband. For this purpose it became necessary that he
should visit Tremaine in prison. But the culprit obstinately refused to
see him, until at length, finding the time draw near when he would be
publicly arraigned at the bar, he consented to his admittance. Dunning
gave him to understand that he must know the facts of the case, at the
same time assuring him that he would plead his cause with pleasure, and
that there was no doubt of his acquittal.
“The thing can be easily managed,” said Tremaine, doggedly—“I intend to
plead an alibi.”
Dunning started.
“Is this necessary, Mr. Tremaine? I thought the charge could not be
proven against you?”
“Nor can it, if you are the expert lawyer you are said to be.”
“Mr. Tremaine, let us understand each other. Is it important that you
should plead an alibi?”
“It is.”
“Then I regret that I cannot undertake your cause. I was still under the
impression that you were innocent.”
“And who dares say I am not? Did you, sir, come here to entrap me in my
words? Who will dare say I am not innocent, when the most famous lawyer
in town shall have proven that I was far from here on the night of the
robbery?”
The last words were said in a sneering and almost contemptuous manner.
“I must repeat my regret that I cannot undertake your cause, while at
the same time I assure you that I shall be silent as to what has
transpired between us.”
“Puppy!” exclaimed Tremaine, thoroughly enraged. “Who asked you to
undertake it? Who asked you to come and thrust yourself upon me?
Puppy—plebeian! did I seek advice or assistance from you?”
“Mr. Tremaine,” replied Dunning, with a calm and gentlemanly
dignity—“Mr. Tremaine, it is vain talking in this manner. I came to you
in the spirit of kindness—but my errand has been a fruitless one.”
Before Tremaine had time to reply the door was opened by the keeper, and
Dunning passed out of the cell.
It was with a heavy heart Fanny heard from her husband that he could not
undertake to plead for the accused, and, gently as she could, she broke
the sad news to Sophia. Browne and Tremaine were tried, convicted and
sentenced to the State prison. And now the hand which had sinfully
lavished thousands—the hand that had been kept so daintily white and
soft—the hand of the “son of a gentleman” was roughly manacled, and
linked to the brown, hard, weather-beaten hand of a fellow convict. He
who had been the pampered heir of luxury was now to be the partaker of
coarse fare—the daily companion of all that was base and vile—and the
nightly dweller in the lone dark cell of a prison. He, the once
flattered, courted and caressed, was to pass shamefully from the haunts
of his fellow-man, and, after a few exclamations of wonder and reproach,
was finally to be forgotten.
But there was one secretly at work, one who had been spurned, one whose
noble hand had been flung aside with contempt—and that one was now
busily employed in writing petitions, in traveling to and fro, and doing
all in his power to obtain the liberation of the man who had ever
treated him with insult and scorn. At length he was successful, and
Tremaine was pardoned on condition of his leaving the State. But for
Browne, who had been recognized as an old offender, there were no
attempts made to procure his release.
It was with mingled feelings of shame and defiance that Tremaine
ungraciously received the assurance of his freedom from the mouth of
Dunning; for, the better to avoid observation, the latter went himself
for the prisoner, brought him from his convict cell, and conveyed him to
the warm hospitalities of a happy home, where he was received by Mrs.
Dunning with that refined delicacy and unobtrusive kindness which soon
placed him comparatively at ease in their society.
A strange and embarrassed meeting was that of Tremaine and his wife.
Sophia’s first impulse was to break out into invective against him who
had thus brought disgrace and ruin, not only upon himself, but upon her.
Better feelings, however, prevailed, for she had learned many a lesson
of late, and had already begun to catch the kind and forgiving spirit of
those with whom she dwelt; so, after a few moments’ hesitation, a few
moments’ struggle between pride, anger and womanly tenderness, she drew
near to her husband, laid her head upon his bosom, and sobbed in very
grief and sorrow of heart. “Sophia!” “Tremaine!” were the only words
uttered during that first outburst of anguish. But soon the fountain of
thought was unsealed, when, instead of taunts and mutual upbraidings,
the bitter lessons learned in the school of adversity made them
self-accusing, and willing to excuse each other.
But little time was given to make arrangements for the departure of
Tremaine, who had determined not only on leaving the State, but the
country. Mr. and Mrs. Dunning wished Sophia to remain with them, at
least until her husband had procured some situation which might afford
him a competent support. But Sophia would not listen to this—she would
go with him—“she could do many things,” she said, “to aid him.” Fanny
Dunning smiled, but she knew that Sophia was right in thus fulfilling
her wifely duties, and both herself and her husband prepared every thing
necessary for the comfort of the voyagers.
It was a bright morning in May, when these true and tried friends
accompanied Tremaine and his wife in the noble ship which bore them down
the bay, and with many a warm tear and repeated blessing wished them a
prosperous voyage to England, and returned to the city.
And now we cannot better conclude their story than by giving an extract
from a letter, written some time after the occurrence of the events
already related, by Mr. Tremaine to his friend _Judge_ Dunning.
“I must congratulate you, my dear Dunning, on your elevation to the
bench; but I must not allow myself to utter all the praises that are
swelling at my heart, nor does it require words to convey to you my
respect, my esteem, my gratitude, and my love—ay, my love—for I do
love you as a brother.
“Sophy bids me haste and tell you our good fortune—softly, dear wife, I
will do so in a moment or two. You may perhaps recollect, my dear
friend, that I wrote you how difficult it was for me to procure
employment on my first arrival in Liverpool, and that this was mainly
owing to my total ignorance of any kind of business. Indeed, had it not
been for the few valuables belonging to my wife, which she cheerfully
parted with, and had it not been for her kind and encouraging words, I
should have yielded to despair. You know, too, my dear Dunning, that,
glad to do any thing in honesty, I at last obtained a situation as clerk
in a grocery store.
“How often has my cheek burned with shame, at the recollection of my
silly contempt for trades-people, when I was worse than idling away my
time at college? How often has my heart smote me when I thought of my
conduct toward you, my noble-minded, my best earthly friend? But why
repeat all this? You have long since forgiven me, and yet I never can
forgive myself. And now for my good fortune. My employer has enlarged
his business and taken me into partnership, so that I am in a fair way
of being once more a rich man, (and may I not add a wiser one?) and your
little namesake here, Robert Dunning, who is standing at my knee, is in
an equally fair way of remaining what he now is—_the son of a grocer_.
Heaven grant that he may in every thing resemble the man to whom his
father once used the words as a term of reproach. This is now my highest
earthly ambition for my boy, and I pray that my own lessons in the
school of adversity may enable me to teach him to place a juster
estimate on the empty distinctions of society, and to learn how true are
the words of the poet—
“Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well thy part, there all the honor lies.”
* * * * *
LOVE.
BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR.
A fading, fleeting dream!
That blinds awhile with bright and dazzling ray,
Until the heart is wildered by its beam,
And wanders from its lofty path away,
While meteors wild like holy planets gleam,
To tempt our steps astray!
A creature of the brain!
Whom poets painted with a hue divine—
That, bright embodied in their thrilling strain,
Makes the soul drunken, as with mental wine,
While the heart bows in longing and in pain
Before its mystic shrine!
The shadow of a bliss!
That flies the spirit hastening to enjoy—
That seems to come from fairer climes than this,
To throw its spells around the dreaming boy,
But steals his quiet with its siren-kiss,
And robs his soul of joy!
Is this that power unknown
That rules the world with curbless, boundless sway,
Binding the lowest cot and loftiest throne
In golden fetters, which resist decay,
And breathing o’er each cold and rugged zone
The balminess of May?
No! By the soul’s high trust
On Him whose mandate bade the planets move!
Who, kind and merciful, though sternly just,
Gave unto man that loftiest boon of love,
To bless the spirit till his form is dust,
Then soar with it above!
’Tis no delusive spell,
Binding the fond heart in its shadowy hall;
But ’neath its power the purer feelings swell,
Till man forgets his thraldom and his fall,
And bliss, that slumbers in the spirit’s cell,
Wakes at its magic call.
Where’er its light has been,
But for a moment, twilight will remain;
Before whose ray, the night-born thoughts of sin
Cease from their torture of the maddened brain.
The spirit, deepest fallen, it can win
To better thoughts again!
’Tis for the young a star,
Beckoning the spirit to the future on—
Shining with pure and steady ray afar,
The herald of a yet unbroken dawn,
Where every fetter that has power to bar
In its warm glow is gone!
Who ne’er hath oped his heart
To that dove-messenger on life’s dark sea,
Binds down his soul, in cold, mistaken art,
When vainly hoping he has made it free!
In earth’s great family he takes no part—
He has not learned _to be_!
Who longs to feel its glow,
And nurtures every spark unto him given,
Has instincts of the rapture he shall know
When from its thralling dust the soul is riven.
He breathes, so long it blesses him below,
The native air of Heaven!
* * * * *
SOLITUDE.
BY ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.
Oh! what a solitude doth mind create!
A solitude of deep and holy thought—
Alone with that Ideal good and great,
Which never yet companionship hath sought;
E’en as the eagle, when he highest soars,
Leaves the dim earth and shadows all behind—
Alone, the thunder-cloud around him roars,
And the reft pinion flutters in the wind—
Alone, he soars where higher regions sleep,
And the calm ether knows nor storm nor cloud—
And thus the soul its heavenward way must keep,
Despite the tempest raging long and loud;
Alone, to God bear up its earthly weight
Of human hope and fear, nor feel all desolate.
* * * * *
MUSA; OR THE PILGRIM OF TRUTH.
BY JAMES K. PAULDING, AUTHOR OF “THE DUTCHMAN’S FIRESIDE,” ETC.
In the famous city of Bagdad there lived a rich merchant, named
Abdallah, of whose numerous offspring the youngest alone survived in the
person of Musa, an ingenuous and sprightly youth, in whom all the hopes
and affections of the father were centered. He often pondered on the
course of life to which he should direct the attention of his beloved
son, and at length consulted the sage dervise Motalleb, celebrated for
his learning, wisdom and virtue above all the inhabitants of that
renowned city, where the Kaliph Haroun Al Raschid once reigned amid the
splendors of oriental magnificence. Motalleb answered in few words,
after the manner of wise men, “Thy son will be rich without the labor of
acquiring wealth. Make him good, and, for that purpose, let him be
taught to distinguish what is true from what is false; for I say unto
thee, O Abdallah! that the knowledge and the love of Truth is the
foundation of all virtue.”
At the earnest solicitation of Abdallah, the dervise consented to
superintend the education of his son, and Musa was accordingly committed
to his care. His first lesson was never to depart from the truth,
whatever might be the danger or temptation. This was continually
repeated, until one day Musa, with all the simplicity of youth, asked,
“What is Truth?”
“Truth,” replied the dervise, “is that which is confirmed by the
evidence of the senses, or sanctioned by the assent of the
understanding. What thou seest, hearest, and feelest, thou mayst be
certain is true; and what is sustained by thy reason, or understanding,
though it may not be true, thou mayest assert, and believe, without
being guilty of falsehood.”
Musa pondered on these definitions until his young and tender intellect
became involved in a maze of mystery; and the next time Motalleb
repeated his daily injunction, he again asked, “What is truth?” “Have I
not already told thee?” replied Motalleb. “True,” answered the other,
“but I confess I cannot comprehend what I heard. I may believe what is
not true, and if I assert it to be the truth, surely I speak falsely?”
“But,” replied the dervise, “thou wouldst not commit a crime, since it
is the wilful violation of Truth that constitutes the guilt.”
Just at that moment a great crowd passed, with loud shouting and tumult,
outside the garden where Musa received his instructions, and, with the
curiosity natural to youth, he climbed up the wall to see what caused
the uproar. “What seest thou, my son?” asked the dervise. “I see a man
with his hands tied behind him, followed by an enraged multitude,
pulling his beard, spitting in his face, and beating him with staves and
stones, while he is staggering toward the river. What means all this, O
wise Motalleb?” “Allah be praised!” cried Motalleb, who had been tempted
by these details to look over the wall, “Allah be praised! it is the
recreant Mussulman, who, incited by the spirit of darkness, the other
day renounced the Koran and the true Prophet, for the Bible and the
false prophets of the Christian dogs. He is going to suffer the penalty
of his crime by being impaled alive.”
Musa fell into a profound reverie, from whence suddenly rousing himself,
he asked, “If the follower of Mahomet is convinced by the evidence of
his senses, or the dictates of his reason, that the religion of the
Christian dogs is the true faith, is he guilty of a crime in forsaking
that which he believes to be false?” “But,” rejoined Motalleb, “he is
deceived by the angel of darkness, or more probably only affects to
believe in his accursed creed.” “Methinks, then,” said Musa, with
perfect simplicity, “that he must be a great fool either to suffer
himself to be deceived, or to sacrifice his life for that in which he
does not believe.” “But if his belief in the creed of the Christian dogs
should be serious, what then, my son?” asked Motalleb. “Then,” replied
Musa, “he ought not to die, for you have often told me, that what is
sanctioned by our reason may be adopted without being guilty of
falsehood or committing a crime.”
Motalleb hereupon fell into a long dissertation, involving various nice
distinctions between wilful and involuntary errors of opinion, owing, in
a great measure, sometimes to the influence of early education, habits
and example; sometimes to the seduction of the passions, and at others
to the weakness or perverseness of the understanding. When he thought he
had made the subject quite clear to the comprehension of his pupil, the
latter, after reflecting a few moments, asked him how he could
distinguish those opinions which were adopted through the influence of
education, passion, habit and example, from those derived from the
convictions of pure impartial reason. “That is impossible,” said
Motalleb; “Allah alone can see into the human heart, and detect the
secret springs by which it is directed.” “It seems to me, then,” said
the youth, doubtingly, “that to Allah alone should be left the
punishment of errors of opinion, since none other can know whether they
are wilful or involuntary. But,” continued he, after another pause of
deep reflection, “surely there must be some standard of truth, equally
invariable and universal, to which mankind may appeal, instead of
sacrificing each other, as this poor man is about to be, for a
difference of opinion.” “Thou art right, my son, there is such a
standard. Thou shalt study the Koran, for that is the fountain of truth,
the only exposition of the wisdom of Allah himself.”
Motalleb placed the Koran in the hands of his pupil, who studied it with
equal ardor and intelligence, the dervise having, by his repeated
exhortations, inspired him with a fervent admiration of truth, as well
as a longing desire to obtain its possession. But there were many
portions of the book which neither corresponded with the evidence of his
senses nor the dictates of his reason. When he read that the Prophet
had, according to his own assertions, ascended to the seventh heaven in
company with the angel Gabriel, on the back of a white camel, and
advanced alone so near the throne of the Almighty as to be touched on
the shoulder by his hand; and that he had, in less than the tenth part
of a single night, thus performed a journey of at least a thousand
years—these and other miraculous tales confounded his understanding,
and contradicted not only the lessons of past experience, but the
evidences of his senses. He tried to believe, but found it impossible;
and when his preceptor, after allowing him sufficient time to study the
great work of the Prophet, asked him whether he had not at length drank
at the pure fountain of truth, he frankly expressed his doubts as to the
miraculous journey. The dervise stroked his long beard, and frowned
indignantly. “What!” cried he, “dost thou disbelieve the revelations of
the Prophet himself?”
“I am compelled to do so,” replied Musa, “since they neither accord with
the evidence of my senses nor are confirmed by the assent of my reason.”
Motalleb grew angry, and cried out with a loud voice, “What hath the
evidence of the senses or the assent of reason to do with that which is
beyond the reach of the senses or the comprehension of reason? Know,
foolish youth, that these things are miracles, and that neither the
understanding nor the reason of mortals can comprehend them. Dost thou
doubt the testimony of him who communed with angels, and was inspired by
Allah himself?”
“I am neither learned nor wise as thou art, O! Motalleb,” answered Musa,
bowing his head, and touching his forehead reverently, “but it seemeth
to me that thy words do not exactly accord with the definition of truth
which was one of my earliest lessons, and which thou hast repeated to me
every day. Thou didst tell me that truth was the evidence of the senses,
confirmed by the assent of the understanding. Now thou sayest otherwise,
and I am to believe what neither my reason can comprehend, nor my senses
realize as possible, because it contradicts all my experience.”
“Thy reason! thy experience!” answered Motalleb, contemptuously. “Thy
beard is not yet grown; thou hast as yet read little and seen nothing.
When thou hast mastered all the learning of Arabia, and traversed the
distant regions of the earth, thou mayest then found thy belief on the
evidence of thy senses, the dictates of reason, and the results of
experience. Go thy ways, my son. Thou art already too wise for me, since
thou doubtest the miracles of the Prophet.” Saying this, he dismissed
his pupil, who bent his way homeward, thoughtful and depressed.
Abdallah received him with his usual affection, and being told of the
dismissal of Musa by his preceptor, straightway went forth and purchased
great store of costly manuscripts, containing all the learning, science
and philosophy of the East, together with many translations from the
Grecian sages and poets. To these Musa applied himself with such zeal
and perseverance for several years, that he at length possessed himself
of all the wisdom they contained. Every step, however, that he proceeded
in his search after truth, only seemed to render its existence more
doubtful. Scarcely any two of those illustrious wise men agreed in their
religious, moral or political opinions, and he counted among the
philosophers upwards of three hundred different definitions of the
_summum bonum_—that is, the great constituent of human happiness.
“Strange,” thought Musa; “surely that which leads to happiness can be
only the truth; and yet, in this most important of all concerns, these
sages almost invariably dissent from each other. I will henceforth see
with my own eyes, instead of those of others. Surely truth must exist
somewhere in this world. I will traverse the earth, according to the
advice of Motalleb, until I find it, or perish in the search.”
At this moment he heard a loud cry at the door which opened toward the
street, and going hastily forth, encountered four slaves bringing in the
body of his father, who had been suddenly smitten by the angel of death,
while drinking from a cool fountain in one of the public gardens of the
city. Musa fell on the body and wept, and mourned a long while with all
the depth and sincerity of filial love. But when time had assuaged his
sorrows, he recalled to mind the anxious wishes of his parent, that he
should seek and find out the truth; and being now rich, and his own
master, he resolved to set out on his pilgrimage without delay. Placing
the management of his affairs in the hands of a discreet friend of his
father, he one morning, just at the dawning of day, mounted his Arabian
steed, and turned his back on the once splendid capital of the Kaliphs.
In the course of twenty years, Musa visited a great portion of the
habitable globe, with the exception of the new world, which was not then
discovered. He sojourned among the Persians, whom he found almost
equally divided between the worshippers of fire and the followers of the
sect of Ali, abhorred by all the faithful. Each believed in the truth of
their faith, and were ready to die in its defence. He then joined a
caravan of merchants, and bent his way toward Hindostan, where, having
safely arrived, he quitted his companions, and pursued his journey
alone. The first thing that attracted his attention was a party of young
people of both sexes bathing promiscuously together, who seemed to be
utterly unconscious of any impropriety, and laughed and gamboled with
all the hilarity of innocence. To a disciple of Mahomet, accustomed to
the jealous seclusion of females, the spectacle was revolting in the
extreme, and he turned away in bitter disgust, exclaiming against such a
violation not only of decency, but the law of the Prophet.
Proceeding onward, he observed several persons with a piece of fine
muslin or gauze before the mouth, and others walking slowly, with
brooms, carefully brushing away the dust before they ventured to take a
step forward. On inquiring the reason, he was told that the former
method was adopted lest they might accidentally swallow some insect, and
the latter to prevent their treading on some living thing, and thus
depriving it of life—a crime which subjected them to severe penance and
mortification, as being against one of the fundamental principles of
their faith. On hearing this, Musa pursued his way laughing, though a
grave Mussulman; and, having crossed a river, encountered a person
uttering the most horrid execrations against an evil spirit, who, it
seems, had, in the shape of a dragon or serpent, raised a great thunder
storm, which laid waste his fields and destroyed his crop of rice.
“Head of Mahomet!” said Musa, “what a set of ignorant barbarians are
these! There is no use in seeking for truth among them. I will visit
their wise men, and hear what they have got to say for themselves.”
Learning, on inquiry, that the sect or caste of the Brahmins were
considered the most wise and enlightened of all the people of Hindostan,
he sought and obtained the society of some of the chief bonzes, under
the character of a traveler in search of the truth. From these he
learned, with no little surprise, that their religion was a perfect
mystery, confined altogether to the priests, and that so far from
wishing to make proselytes of strangers, none could be admitted among
them but by hereditary succession. “Strange,” thought Musa, “that people
should be so selfish. If they believe their faith the only true one, it
is cruel to keep it from the knowledge of others.”
Passing away from these exclusives, he came to a temple, where he beheld
a number of persons undergoing a variety of the most extraordinary
tortures, to which they were voluntarily submitting. Some of these had
held up one arm in the same position till it became fixed and
inflexible, and so remained during the rest of their lives. Others had
clenched their fists with such force, and kept them thus so long, that
the nails had grown through the palms, and projected from the back of
the hand. Others had turned their faces over one shoulder, until they
were irrevocably fixed in that direction. Others were suspended, by iron
hooks fixed in the shoulder-blade, to a beam which turned round with
great velocity on a pivot at the top of a long pole, while the penitent
sometimes sung a song, or blew a trumpet, as he whirled around, to the
great admiration of the spectators. On inquiring the meaning of all
this, he was told that they were celebrating their religious rites, and
exemplifying the sincerity of their devotion.
Musa turned away from this exhibition with mingled feelings of pity and
contempt, and pursued his way pondering on the strange diversities of
human opinion, most especially on subjects involving not only the
temporal but eternal welfare of mankind.
“All cannot be true,” exclaimed he, “and yet one must be the truth. I
will not be discouraged, but continue my pilgrimage until I find the
fountain of truth, or become involved in endless, inextricable doubt,
and believe nothing.”
Continuing his journey, he entered the great empire of China, where he
found three hundred millions of people, divided into the followers of
Loo Tsee, Fokè, and Confucius, or Confutsee, each equally convinced of
the truth of their creed, and each equally despising the others. Thence
he proceeded to Japan, where he arrived at the period of celebrating a
great religious festival, and saw them trampling the cross under foot,
and sacrificing human beings to a great idol, which resembled neither
beast, bird, fish, nor man, but exhibited a monstrous combination of the
deformities of almost every species of animal.
It would be tedious to follow him throughout his various peregrinations
through Asia and Africa. Suffice it to say, that he everywhere
encountered the strangest diversities of manners, habits, opinions and
modes of faith, and every day became more hopeless of gaining the object
of his weary pilgrimage. The course of his wanderings at length brought
him to Cairo in Egypt, where he accidentally fell into the company of a
learned European traveler, who had visited the country to unravel the
mystery of the pyramids, and decipher hieroglyphics. On learning from
Musa the object of his journeyings, he turned up his nose somewhat
scornfully and exclaimed—
“Pooh! what is the use of seeking for Truth among the barbarians of the
East? You should visit enlightened Europe, the seat of learning,
philosophy and true religion. I have completed the purposes which
brought me hither, and am about to return home, where, I flatter myself,
I shall prove to the satisfaction of all reasonable people that the
whole tribe of travelers who preceded me are no better than a parcel of
ignorant blockheads. You shall accompany me to Europe, where alone is to
be found true religion and true philosophy.”
Musa caught at the proposal. They embarked together in a vessel destined
for Marseilles, where in good time they arrived without accident. On the
night of his first sojourn in that city he was suddenly roused from a
sweet sleep by a series of heart-rending shrieks and groans, mingled
with loud imprecations and shouts of triumph, that seemed to come from
all quarters of the city. Starting from his bed, he ran to the window,
where he beheld bodies of armed ruffians raging through the streets,
massacring men, women and children without mercy, breaking open the
houses, tearing forth their wretched inmates, whom they slaughtered with
every species of barbarous ingenuity, and committing their bodies to the
flames of their consuming habitations. While shivering at this
exhibition of barbarity, and meditating an escape from its horrors, he
was interrupted by his friend, and addressed him in a voice trembling
with apprehension,
“In the name of the Prophet!” cried he, “what does all this mean? Is the
city become a prey to banditti or hostile barbarians, who spare neither
sex nor age, and riot in blood and fire?”
“It is nothing,” answered the other, coolly. “They are only punishing
the heretics for not believing in the Pope.”
“And is that the name of your God?” asked Musa, with perfect simplicity.
“No—he is only his vicar on earth.”
“But do not these poor people believe in your Bible, which you have told
me is the great volume of Truth, and in that Supreme Being who you say
is the only true God?”
“Yes—but they deny the supremacy of the Pope, and deserve to be
punished with fire and sword.”
“Then the Pope must be greater than your God,” said Musa.
His friend turned away with a gesture of impatient contempt, and
muttered something of which he could only distinguish the
words—“Ignorant barbarians!”
At dawn of day he left the city in disgust, but wherever he came he
found the country smoking with the blood of helpless innocence and
unresisting weakness, and was told by the priests in tones of triumph
that in one night all the heretics of the kingdom had been exterminated.
He asked then what these poor people had done, whether they were thieves
and robbers, traitors or rebels, that they should be cut down in one
single night without discrimination and without mercy. But all the
answer he received was—
“They deny the supremacy of the Pope!”
“Strange!” thought Musa. “But I am among true believers and enlightened
philosophers, and no doubt shall find the Truth at last.”
He, however, determined to leave the country as soon as possible, and
bending his course to the seaside, embarked in a vessel destined for
England, but which was driven by stress of weather into a port of
Ireland. Here he found every thing in confusion. People were setting
fire to the churches, pulling down stately abbeys and convents, and
driving their inmates before them with every species of violence and of
opprobrium.
“Who are these people?” asked he—“and what have they done—most
especially those poor women and children, whom I see fleeing from their
pursuers, pale with affright, and crying out in despair?”
“They are heretics and believe in the Pope,” was the cool reply.
“That is very strange,” said Musa—“I am just from a land where they
were massacring men, women and children because they did not believe in
the Pope. How is this?”
“We are only retaliating their persecutions. When they had the upper
hand they oppressed us, and it is but just that they should suffer in
turn.”
“But does not your religion inculcate forgiveness of enemies?”
Before Musa could receive a reply, an aged, bald-headed friar ran
tottering past, with a nun holding by his hand, and pursued by several
people who seemed half mad with hate and eagerness, and assailed them
with missiles of every kind. His companion joined the throng, and left
him without an answer. He inquired of another what the old man, and
especially the poor woman, had done to merit such unworthy treatment,
and was told that one was a friar of the Order of Mercy, and the other a
Sister of Charity.
“And what are their occupations?” inquired Musa.
“One is employed in the redemption of captives among the infidels—the
other passes her life attending the bedside of the sick, relieving their
wants, administering to their comfort, without fee or reward, and
devoting herself to charity and devotion. But they both believe in the
Pope, and that is the great original sin.”
“Head of the Prophet!” exclaimed Musa—“and yet you persecute these
people! Surely that cannot be the true religion which deals thus with
the votaries of mercy and charity.”
The man, instead of answering, stooped down and seizing a stone, threw
it at Musa with such good aim that it grazed his turban, and began
crying out—“A Papist!—A Papist!” whereupon Musa made the best of his
way to the ship, where he sought shelter from an angry crowd that was
shouting and shrieking in his rear. He continued his journey through
England, Spain, Holland, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and wherever he
went perceived such strange diversities and contrasts in the standard of
morals and religion, that in despair he at length resolved to return
home, having come to the conclusion that there was no such thing as
truth in this world. With this intention he arrived at Rome, on his way
to Venice, whence it was his purpose to embark for Smyrna, and thence to
proceed by land through Asia Minor to Constantinople, on his way to
Bagdad. At Rome he saw the Pope, a feeble, decrepit old man, who had, in
order to give more imposing dignity to the ceremony, consented to
preside at the burning of a heretic, who was convicted before the
Inquisition of having pulled off his hat and made a bow to the statue of
Hercules and the Centaurs. The poor victim, who was an ignorant peasant,
solemnly declared that he mistook Hercules for a saint; but all would
not do. He perished at the stake, after which Te Deum was sung, and high
mass celebrated throughout the ancient capital of the world.
Sickened and disgusted with Europe, he embarked for Smyrna, and crossing
Mount Sipylus on his way to Constantinople, was benighted and lost his
way. He wandered about amid the deep recesses, until at length he
descried a light at a distance, which, on approaching, was found to
proceed from a cave, where Musa beheld an aged man, with a long white
beard, reading by the light of a lamp. So deeply was he engaged, that
the lost traveler entered the cave and stood beside him ere he was aware
of his presence. He was not, however, in the least startled when he
perceived the stranger, but courteously requesting him to be seated,
closed the manuscript volume in which he had been reading, and kindly
inquired into his wants and desires.
Musa related to the old man how he had lost his way in returning
homeward, after an absence of twenty years, and requested his
hospitality. The old man assured him he was welcome, and having provided
a frugal repast of milk, dates and bread, they sat and conversed
together, making mutual inquiries of each other. The aged hermit
informed his guest that he was of the sect of the Maronites, and had
many years ago sought refuge from the persecutions of his fellow
Christians in this spot, where he could alone enjoy liberty of
conscience. “But thou,” continued he, “hast just informed me that thou
art returning home after twenty years of travel. Thou must have gathered
vast stores of wisdom and many truths during thy long pilgrimage.”
“I did indeed set forth in search of the truth,” replied Musa, “but am
returning only more in doubt than before. I have sought for some
standard of manners, morals and religion, by which all mankind might
regulate their opinions and conduct, for such a standard can be only the
truth.”
“And didst thou find it?” asked the hermit, smiling.
“Alas! no, venerable father,” replied Musa. “I found no two nations
agreeing in one or the other. A river, a mountain, or even an imaginary
line of separation, not only produced a contrast in all these, but a
bitter feeling of hostility, the parent of broils and bloodshed, seeming
to proceed from mere differences in opinion, of which a great portion
knew neither the grounds of their belief nor the source of their
convictions. Even in matters involving their eternal welfare, I found no
standard of truth, for millions differ with millions on the subject, and
shed each other’s blood for a diversity in creeds which are alike
derived from the great book in which they all believe.”
“And to what conclusion has all this travel, study and experience
brought thee at last?” asked the hermit.
“I scarcely dare tell thee, O! venerable father. But if I have formed a
decided opinion on any one thing, it is that there is no such virtue as
truth on earth, and no Supreme Being in Heaven, since there are so many
different opinions with regard to one, and so many modes of worshiping
the other. Surely where such diversities exist, it is the height of
presumption for men to persecute each other for not believing alike.
“But,” asked the hermit, “amid these endless varieties of faith, didst
thou ever encounter, in all thy pilgrimage, a people who believed not in
a Supreme Being, either by himself or his ministers, presiding over the
government of the universe?”
Musa reflected awhile, and then answered, “No; however different might
be their faith, in their modes of manifesting it, I do not recollect
ever to have found a people, civilized or barbarous, where I could not
distinctly perceive, even among the darkest clouds of ignorance, a
recognition, more or less distinct, of a Supreme Intelligence, in some
shape or other. Even where they worshiped beasts or idols, I thought I
could always trace their devotion, step by step, to a Supreme Being.”
“Then,” said the old man, “thou mightest have found in thy long search,
hadst thou made a wise use of thine experience, at least one great
truth, of more importance to the welfare of mankind than all the
conclusions of learning and philosophy. Instead of drawing, from the
various modes in which religion manifests itself, the conclusion that
there is no God, thou shouldst have gathered, from the universal belief
of all mankind, that there is assuredly such a Being, since neither the
most wise nor the most ignorant deny his existence.
“This is one great truth thou mightest have learned in thy twenty years
of travel. A second, scarcely less important, at least to the temporal
happiness of mankind, is, that since almost all nations and communities
differ in a greater or lesser degree in their modes of worship, and
there is no earthly standard to which all are willing to submit, it
becomes us short-sighted, erring beings, instead of persecuting each
other by fire, sword and defamation, to be tolerant of that which we
call error of opinion in morals or religion. However we may differ in
the modes by which these are manifested, we may be assured that though
we may be mistaken in abstract points of faith or morality, still there
is one great universal truth which all may comprehend, namely—that
charity for human errors must be the bounden duty of all, since without
such charity on the part of the Most High, the gates of Heaven would be
forever closed against his sinful creatures.”
Musa remained several days in the cave of the hermit, during which time
the old man often repeated the lesson he had given, and then bent his
way toward Bagdad, which he reached without any adventure. Here he
passed the remainder of his life in practising the precepts of the wise
hermit of Mount Sipylus. He became the friend of the ignorant, the
benefactor of the needy; nor did he ever inquire, ere he relieved them,
to what sect they belonged, or pamper the pride of superior wisdom by
despising their inferiority. And when, after many years of happy repose
and wide-spread benevolence, he was smitten by the angel of death, he
died in the full conviction that he had found the truth, and that it
consisted in reverence for the Creator of the world, and charity toward
all his creatures—charity not only for their wants, but their errors
and opinions.
* * * * *
THREE ERAS OF DESTINY
IN THE LIFE OF THE PAINTER ANGELICA KAUFFMANN.
BY MISS H. B. MACDONALD.
PART I.
There is perhaps no scenery in the world so ravishingly beautiful as
that offered by those vast plains of northern Italy situated at the base
of the Rhætian Alps. A champaign elaborately tilled, and laid out into
those regular divisions of meadow, corn-field, and vineyard, which make
so much of the beauty of cultivated landscape; groves and belts of trees
so disposed as to be productive of the highest effect; classic looking
villas, villages and towns, with their surrounding orchards and
pleasure-grounds; bright rivers winding their way through all this
beauty till they lose themselves in those magic lakes, which, with their
green banks kissed by the waters, and bordered on every winding
promontory and inlet by belts of overshadowing trees, reflect the sunset
splendors of the Alps, and seem, in every rainbow grotto and crystal
palace mirrored in their lucid depths, meet homes for those genii of the
waters with which a graceful superstition peoples their enchanted
caverns. All these, with the back ground of gigantic mountains, pile on
pile, that seem to raise a barrier from earth to heaven between this
Paradise and a ruder world beyond, fill us with the idea of wandering
amid some remnant of the scenery of the Golden Age, where of old, as the
fables tell, the primeval deities used to dwell with a purer humanity,
and in a younger and lovelier earth.
From a village situated at a considerable elevation on the surface of
the slopes into which these smiling plains incline themselves as they
approach the mountains, one bright spring evening, a troop of young
girls might have been seen issuing, apparently as if broken loose from
school, so joyous were their gestures, so wild their mirth, as with the
vivacious grace belonging to the children of the South they bounded over
the grass, some gliding in imitation of the motions of a dance, some
skipping, some chasing others with the speed of the wind, till at a call
from one, “to the water—to the water!” echoed by a dozen voices, they
descended a hollow leading to the bed of the bright Ticino, and in a few
moments were plunging and gliding in the stream.
One of them, apparently between fourteen and fifteen years of age,
instead of following the example of her companions, had, in the
excitement attending this operation, slipped away unperceived, and
wandering listlessly along the windings of the river soon found herself
out of hearing and sight. Proceeding on her way, and picking up a pebble
or a flower just as it suited her, and stopping to observe every
effective point of view in the landscape, with a narrowness of
observation and sense of its beauty uncommon in one so young, she came
to a ravine leading up from the side of the stream, which she ascended,
till arriving on a high point that overlooked the channel of the river,
she witnessed one of the most superb sunsets that ever gladdened an
enthusiast’s eye. Amidst an array of purple clouds, fringed with silver,
the sun was descending, gold colored, behind a peak of Mount Rosa, and
suffusing the surrounding Alpine masses with a dim violet vapor. At her
feet, and flowing in a direction opposite to the eye, was the river, now
transformed into a stream of rich ruddy amber, with its sloping and
picturesque banks and wooded islands, that diversified its brilliance
with emerald shadows, taking its way in a hundred windings, whose
succession she could trace, curve beyond curve, as it clove its course
through the opening hills—far away, till, in the termination of the
vista, gleamed the shining roofs of the Pania, with the white spire of
its cathedral seeming to lose itself in the gold of the evening sky. To
the left, immediately at the foot of the eminence where she stood, was
the little white village, with its orchards and trim vineyards, and,
beyond, those vast slopes on which the mountains lose themselves in the
Italian plains. To the right, arose perpendicularly from the river a
wall of sparkling granite rocks, now of the deepest vermilion in the
alchemy of evening; and behind, towered grandly into the sky those white
wildernesses of Julian Alps, receiving from their brethren, the
Rhætians, the reflections of the opposite sunset in a thousand tints of
lingering rose.
A singular effect was produced on the girl by the contemplation of this
scene. Her bosom heaved, her cheeks flushed, her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh! for the voice of a poet,” said she, speaking to herself, “to
celebrate these splendors in some immortal song! Or the hand of a
painter, to retain them in undying hues, for a joy to the worshipers of
beauty forever. Alas! they are fading—they shall soon be lost to the
universe; and there is none here who, with the power of inhaling them
into his spirit as I, hath the happier gift of reproducing them in some
diviner form. Alas! I am weak, with no power but to _feel_; as when
gazing on some noble statue—some magic scene—some surpassing human
form—an irrepressible emotion seizes me, which, when I would invest
with expression, my heart dies away in utter impotence!”
Ah! innocent soul, thou didst not then know that the first power of an
artist is to _feel_; that in his susceptibility for emotion lie his
strength and the spirit of his calling; and that the achievement of the
painter, the poet, or the sculptor, is but the expression of that
emotion which our common language is too weak to supply, and only
acquired, like any other language, through practice and experience. The
girl who mused thus was very beautiful, now rendered more so by the
freshness and vivacity of her extreme youth. Long tresses of chestnut
hair, braided across her temples and slightly twisted up behind, were
then suffered to fall in ringlets over her neck. Her complexion was
brilliantly fair, with that rather deep carmine tinge on cheek and lip
common to the Teutonic race, on the confines of whose clime she was
born; while her slender figure and regular features betrayed the
vicinage of classic Italy. But the most remarkable feature were the
eyes; they were large and of the deepest black, in whose serious,
melting, intellectual expression we could read all the soul of Angelica
Kauffmann.
Throwing herself on the grass, she gave way to a delicious reverie on
the enchantments of the scene, which the twilight, the fading colors and
the silence soon deepened into a sort of dream. She thought herself in
the midst of a vast temple, whose dome expanded into the skyey concave
above her head, lamp-lighted with its thousand stars. Its area, whose
termination on any side she could not descry, seemed to extend into an
interminable space, lost amid a wilderness of surrounding columns. By
degrees she became aware of the presence of groups of majestic statues,
that seemed, by some enchantment, one after another to strike her view,
like the scenery of a diorama. Watching them attentively, she saw that
though raised on pedestals, in the attitudes and repose of statuary,
they were endowed with all the features of animated life, but a life
more than human—it seemed immortal, divine; and she recognized in these
forms the presence of that gifted and glorious company enshrined in the
temple of the immortal heart of man. Amidst the group in whose immediate
vicinity she found herself, stood “Rafaelle the Divine,” with that
countenance of his so expressive of the spirit of the sainted religion
whose attributes he has embodied in glorious painting, and his
melancholy eyes filled with the presentiment of his early death. Angelo,
grand and majestic like his own Moses, and a brow worthy of the
conception of that great St. Peter’s—the temple of the Christian world.
Murillo, glorifying in his aspect the stolid simplicity of that humble
life whence he drew his origin, and the delineation of which he made
peculiarly the subject of his design. Carracci, with that forsaken look
when the child of genius, like, alas! too many of his calling, lay down
to die of a broken heart. Titian, beautiful as his own Apollos—and many
more. But among these her attention was directed in surprise to a
conspicuous pedestal, deficient of its statue, whereon was engraven in
large letters, on the granite of its base, the name of “Angelica
Kauffmann.” Looking up at the same moment to the vast sky-blue dome
above her head, she saw blazing directly over the vacant pedestal a
large, bright, solitary star, that lighted the whole temple with its
radiance. After a long riveted gaze toward it, she became slowly
sensible of looking on the true sky, from which the sunset and the
twilight had now quite faded, abandoning it to the deep cobalt blue of
the approaching darkness. The statues had vanished; the pillars had
resolved themselves into the surrounding trees of the landscape; and,
instead of the temple, were the familiar features of the scenery, though
now almost lost in the darkness, she had gazed upon before falling into
slumber. Every thing had vanished except that bright, solitary star,
which, though now restored to complete consciousness, she continued to
gaze upon with eyes riveted by wonder and delight. Familiar with the
geography of the heavenly world, she was wholly unable to account to
herself for the appearance of this particular star, which differed in
position and lustre from any of the heavenly bodies she had hitherto
been familiar with. It was evidently some new comer, and the girl
thought to herself of those presiding stars that were of old said to
arise over the destinies of the great ones of the earth, and
dreamed—who can tell in that hour—wild dreams to herself of future
glory and renown.[3]
-----
[3] This seemingly supernatural orb was probably one of those since
classed under the catalogue of “Variable Stars,” which disappear for
stated periods, and then become visible again, to blaze for a short time
with extraordinary lustre.
PART II.
There were preparations for a festival in the halls of the “Royal
Academy” of London. A distinguished foreign member of the profession was
expected to be present, and the first individual not a native on whom
the fellowship of the Academy had hitherto been conferred. The king and
royal family had promised the honor of their attendance, and the prize
medals of the exhibition were to be presented, of which the eminent
foreign artist alluded to had carried off the first. The saloons were
gorgeously lighted. All the pictures of the exhibition had been removed
from the walls, except those few favored masterpieces obtaining the
award of the prizes—and one surpassing work of art that hung by itself
at the head of the principal saloon, with a delicate wreath of laurel
suspended above it, betokening it the first in honor as in place. It
consisted of two figures, of which the most conspicuous was that of a
shrinking, prostrate female, expressing the highest ideal of loveliness
and grace, joined to utter abandonment, contrition and shame; appearing
as if the whole soul had imbued itself through every muscle and
lineament of the frame, for the delineation of these emotions, that none
could mistake that model of penitential sorrow, afterward so celebrated
as “The Weeping Magdalene.” The face was completely buried in her hands,
but so far from the absence of this most essential tablet of female
beauty being felt as a defect, it was rather an adjunct to the effect,
inasmuch as it left to the imagination’s heightening conception the
modeling of a countenance meet for such a form, and such magic tones of
color—burning with blushes—we know it from the roseate tint that
almost seemed reflected from it along the pearly edges of the
enshrouding hands—and drowned in tears, that fell like liquid diamonds
over the snow of the Redeemer’s feet. The accompanying figure was
somewhat inferior, yet it expressed that union of majesty and sweetness
joined to godlike compassion, in as great a degree as human art has ever
been able to embody in its ideas of the Divine man. On the side of the
hall opposite the picture was erected a pavilion, emblazoned with the
royal arms of England, and surmounted by a crown, under which George the
Third had just seated himself, habited in his usual dress of a marshal’s
uniform, with the rather vulgar, squat figure of his queen, the German
Charlotte, surrounded by their _suite_, who gazed, with curious though
certainly not very connoisseur like eyes, occasionally through their
opera glasses at the divine picture suspended in front of them on the
opposite wall.
The Academicians had severally arrived in their badges; there were
gentlemen in the splendid Windsor uniform—officers glittering in
epaulettes and gold lace—collars and grand crosses of
knighthood—ladies in coronets and plumes. The music played, and the
festival was begun. The _élite_ of England’s ennobled by birth and
ennobled by mind were there, and mingled in conversation—some in
animated groups round the pictures and statuary—some promenading the
halls, when suddenly the buzz of conversation ceased, and an expression
of eagerness pervaded the assembly, greater than that which had greeted
the entrance of royalty itself, and there entered through the yielding
crowds, conducted by a gentlemanly looking person in the badge of the
Academy, a young slender girl—a child indeed no more, but still
retaining the chestnut ringlets and glorious black eyes of Angelica
Kauffmann. Conducting the young Academician, and the first woman ever
invested with such a distinction, toward the pavilion, Sir Joshua
Reynolds presented her to their majesties; when the peasant girl of the
Alps, as she knelt before them, told that high-born and high-bred throng
of a grace derived from the sense of the beautiful in the soul, and
which the atmosphere of a court could neither add to nor bestow. Raising
her hastily, George the Third, after a few words addressed to her, and
graciously made in German by his queen, conducted her, leaning on his
arm, through the saloons, rendering her the envied of all the envious.
“Such amiable condescension! But his majesty has such a passion for
foreigners—beside his patronage of the Fine Arts—quite indeed
auspicious of their restoration to the age.”
“It is whispered,” said another, “that she has been commanded to paint
the royal family.”
“By no means,” interposed a gentleman in plain clothes. “My information
came from an individual who had it from a high quarter, that such a
report is incorrect. I understood that this honor was in contemplation
for the signora, but no positive orders have been yet issued on the
subject.”
It is to be doubted whether the object of these remarks was so highly
sensible of these distinctions as a refined education would have taught
her; and we have even a suspicion that she might have gone so far as to
wish to escape from the gracious condescension of the conversation with
which George honored her, as promenading round the hall she found
herself obliged to stand _answer_ to the abrupt and sometimes ridiculous
questions originating in the royal mind, after the catechumenical method
of conversation then in vogue in intercourse with majesty.
But higher honors awaited the young artist. Sir Joshua Reynolds, then
President of the Academy, having mounted the chair, proceeded to descant
upon the excellencies of the several productions distinguished by the
Society’s prizes—but there was one, he said, which he could not pass
over without some more especial notice.
“Need I direct attention,” said he, “to that noble work at the head of
the hall, whose magic beauties, as they shine from the canvas, have
enchained the admiration of the most distinguished connoisseurs, and
evidence stronger reasons for the decision we have come to in its favor
than any words of mine could adduce. Although the age and sex of the
artist invested the work with an interest in our eyes it would not
otherwise perhaps so strongly possess, we would not for a moment have it
supposed that they exercised the smallest influence upon our suffrages.
We adore beauty, womanhood and youth, but we adore Art more, and have
too high a sense of its dignity to permit any extrinsic consideration,
however fascinating to the imagination, to divert us from our undivided
homage toward it. It is to the solid excellence of the work itself—the
new principles which it involves—principles, for the acquirement of
which, I am not ashamed to say that I myself, as well as many others
grown old in honors as in years, are not unwilling to descend into the
character of pupilage—and not the less that we sit at the feet of a
genius and a woman. While awarding in this direction the highest
distinction, we can speak for our brethren of Art that have come forward
in competition for the honors of this day, that they will feel satisfied
in withdrawing into an inferior place before her who, from a distant
land, chose to throw her merits upon our judgment, and her talents into
the service of the British nation. Therefore I bestow the First Prize of
the Institution upon the ‘Weeping Magdalene,’ property of the Academy,
and executed by the Signora Angelica Kauffman, of the Grisons, whom I
have great pleasure in investing with the medal.”
So saying, the President descended, and presented to Angelica, who stood
up to receive him, a massive gold medal and chain. There was neither
bashfulness nor awkwardness in her demeanor as she stood up amid that
vast assembly, whose shouts and plaudits now shook the building to its
foundation—only a vivid blush passed over her face as she gazed round
the assembly for a moment with an almost bewildered look; but it seemed
of some higher emotion than vanity—as if the consciousness and the
exultation of genius—the satisfaction of having achieved something for
Art—the experienced realization of the hopes and the labors of
years—and the knowledge of having won for herself a place among the
Immortals, and in the sympathies of her race, which is, perhaps, the
principal ingredient in a woman’s passion for fame—were all crowded
into the emotion which gave it birth. The simplicity of her appearance
contrasted strangely with the splendor of her reputation—young looking
for her years, which then amounted to no more than twenty-two, her
dress, too, plain and unadorned, and as much after the modest form of
the antique as conformity with modern usage would allow without the
charge of being particular or fantastic—no less added to this effect,
contrasted, as it was, with the gauds and superfluity of hoop and
head-dress then in vogue; her arms were bare nearly to the shoulder—and
her hair, confined by a bandeau of pearls made to imitate a pointed
coronet, was braided over her temples, and twisted up into a loose knot
behind, as in times long ago, from which a few rich tresses escaping,
fell over a neck possessing the contour and graceful set of an antique
statue.
Fatigued and excited, she was glad to escape from the glare of the rooms
into an adjoining balcony, to cool her eyes in the dim gleam of the
stars—in all moments of excitement or passion, still the same bright,
unchanging stars, ever ready to tranquilize us with thoughts of that
world where passion and excitement cannot enter. A young man, who had
watched her unceasingly all the evening with a deeper interest in his
glance than mere curiosity, followed her hastily and in a moment was by
her side. She did not attempt to conceal her pleasure at his appearance.
“Where have you been, Alexander?” she said; “I often looked for you, but
could not recognize yours among the bewildering crowd of faces that
swarm in these busy halls.”
“And you thought of me, amid honors and applause, and the caresses of
the enlightened, and the smiles of a king!—but oh! Angelica, they may
give you praise, they may give you wealth; they may elevate you to a
lofty place in the world’s view, where thy beauty and thy worth being
recognized, may command the homage of the great and good; they may
appoint you to a high rank among the hierarchy of genius that minister
in the temple of fame—but I, only I, love thee! Poor in circumstances,
poor in dignity, with no other advantage to offer you but a heart rich
in affection, I have chosen this moment to lay it at your feet, in
homage to a nobleness which, if my thought mistakes not, knows how to
esteem such above all other gifts the world else can bestow.” And with
many more impassioned words and adoring glances did he woo her, she
responding in tones and looks as endearing as his own. Just then, in the
midst of her triumphs of art, honors, and of love, she looked up toward
the heavens, and saw shining above her that bright, still, solitary
star—the same that had risen above the fantasies of her childhood, when
she dreamed amid the sunny hills of Italy, far away! Many a strange
experience, many a scene had passed before her since it first met her
gaze; and now they all seemed to be crowded, as bestirred from her
memory, into one moment of review. Her progress from the child to the
woman—the strange intervening changes—the same, as she felt herself,
yet not the same;—the vistas of fame opened to her with the first
appearance of that star—her early struggles, and the space between, to
the exulting consciousness of the pinnacle where she now stood, loftier
than even her visions had conceived.
“The star triumphs!” thought she; “I am not superstitious,” she
continued, aloud, “but, Alexander, I have seen that orb _once_ before,
and feel as if I should see it but _once_ again. With every hour of joy
does there not mingle a pang?—that telling of the dark reverse, which,
in this unstable scene, must sooner or later await the most fortunate.”
“Hush! dear Angelica,” said her lover, laying his finger on her lips;
“to-night let us only think of being happy.”
“You are right,” replied she, and, seizing his arm, they were soon
mingling and jesting with the crowds of the saloon.
PART III.
It had been a day of clouds and heavy rain, and now the night was
closing over a dreary and scantily furnished apartment in one of those
ruined palaces of Florence, which, like so many objects in Italy, are
invested with the romantic prestige of grandeur passed away. A single
rushlight threw into view the dilapidated marble walls, on which were
the tattered remains of what might once have been gorgeous tapestry, and
a large oriel window, in whose immediate vicinity stood a mean
uncurtained bed, where lay a woman apparently dying. A single female,
sitting near her to administer such assistance as she needed, and a
cold, indifferent looking man, who had his chair drawn up in an opposite
corner of the room, and evidently stationed there more from duty or
necessity than any feeling of interest, were the sole occupants beside.
Low murmuring sounds broke from the lips of the dying woman. She was
talking incessantly, as in that thronging of indistinct, though perhaps
not undelightful images that often flit across the brain of the
departing, her thoughts seemed to be wandering over many varied scenes,
and her consciousness of existence to be quickened as it was about to be
closed forever. Her speech was of flowers and of sunshine, and of every
thing fullest of life. Distant, happy years seemed to be restored to
her, for her imagination transported her back to the era of her
childhood, and she talked of wandering in old familiar places with her
companions, many of them dead and gone—for by some subtle process of
association, those of them mainly seemed present to her visions—and of
“bounding,” as she said, “fast, fast” after something she could not
detain. “Let me rest!” she would murmur, “I am breathless with
running—let me rest!” The passionless placidity of the countenance was
in strange contrast with this—and the helplessness of the limbs, which,
cold and nearly motionless, began to assume the semblance of that clay
to which they were fast returning. Suddenly she opened her eyes,
restored to the full consciousness of her situation. The eyes—those
mirrors of the soul which neither time nor sorrow can rob of their
magic, as long as they are the reflection of that which is
immortal—were all that told of Angelica Kauffmann—and the long
chestnut hair, which, though now hard and icy to the touch, still clung
round her temples with some of the old luxuriance of those days when she
dreamed inspired visions by the Alpine streams, or shone, the star of
genius, in metropolitan saloons. For the rest, her features were faded
and pale, their classic outline vanished in the hollows of time and the
sharpness of death—haggard, too, but bearing that pathetic expression
which told it might be the result more of suffering than years. And that
cold, almost repulsive looking man!—can he be the same who knelt beside
her beneath the stars and talked of unperishing love? Yes, such is life!
In those worldly reverses which are too often the doom of the mentally
gifted, poverty and neglect arrived—years of indifference followed, the
character of the lover soon merging into that of the selfish and
somewhat exacting husband—and now it had come to this. Calling him
toward her, he took her proffered hand with a look of cold compassion.
“I have been dreaming strangely to-night, Alexander,” said she, “and
have the strangest sensations, as if all past life were passing in
review before me, and its experiences crowded into a few fleeting
hours—circumstances which I had believed long since forgotten, and
feelings which I had thought to have outlived or crushed into oblivion.
Yet there is none that return to me with a more vivid consciousness than
my old feeling for you; and even now I seem to leap back over long,
weary years of coldness, indifference, and estrangement, and the sad
imprints with which they have dimmed your features, and to see you stand
before me, ardent and beautiful as when I dreamed that Heaven had no
brighter reflection than the fondness of your eyes. You will pardon
this,” said she, on perceiving that such sympathies moved him not; “I
have no wish to recall you to the past, nor too late to revive an
extinguished affection, which can so seldom be brought into review
without pain—far less with a thought of reproach for any, except for
myself. It is but to testify to you in parting, that with the life I
have led, happy as it was before I knew you—spent amid dreams of
beauty, and the caresses of a family that sympathized with the delights
of my calling, and were proud of my fame, honored as it afterward became
when my achievements as an artist, extolled in every country in Europe,
drew me forth from my retreat to receive that brief and brilliant
homage, less intoxicating to me on the score of my individual self, than
as a tribute to the success of that art to which I had consecrated the
energies of my existence—yet there is no part of it I would willingly
live over again but the early, too brief moments spent near you—no part
of it than this I more fervently hold to my heart, as the true gold
hoarded from what else appears, in this hour whose solemnity dispels all
illusions, the dross and scum of existence. Does not this prove that
love is immortal? And now a thought has struck me, that that sweet,
bright blossoming which, alas! for us yielded so little fruit, may yet
offer a harvest to be reaped in some other world. Will you think of
this, Alexander?—let us part forgiving each other—our next meeting
will be happier—and brighter!”
She turned her eyes toward the window, which had been thrown open to
admit the cool air of the evening, for the wind had died away, and the
heavens were clear—and there, conspicuous amongst its fiery brethren,
shone that bright, still, solitary star—still fair and tranquil, when
life with all its excitements and hopes was passing away, as when
shining above the passion of her young life. It spoke to her of the
glory of other worlds contrasted with the vapidity of this, which she
had weighed in the balance and found wanting—a high and unchangeable
emblem of that _which is above us_ amid all the storms, treacherous
calms, and exulting yet bewildering spring-tides of life—the star of
her destiny, indeed, if it pointed to Heaven as the haven where her
hopes should at last find rest! Her soul passed away in that gaze; they
could not tell the exact moment when, but by the dull fixture of the
eye, and the dead weight of the hand which lay in his, Alexander knew
that he gazed upon the dead.
That oracle spoke truth, which told there is nothing stable in the
universe but Heaven and Love!
* * * * *
THE PAST.
In her strange, shadowy coronet she weareth
The faded jewels of an earlier time;
An ancient sceptre in her hand she beareth—
The purple of her robe is past its prime.
Through her thin silvery locks still dimly shineth
The flower-wreath woven by pale mem’ry’s fingers.
Her heart is withered—yet it strangely shineth
In its lone urn, a light that fitful lingers.
With her low, muffled voice of mystery,
She reads old legends from Time’s mouldering pages;
She telleth the present the recorded hist’ry,
And change perpetual of by-gone ages.
Her pilgrim feet still seek the haunted sod
Once ours, but _now_ by naught but memory’s footsteps trod.
E. J. E.
* * * * *
SLY LOVE.
OR COUSIN FRANK.
BY MRS. CAROLINE H. BUTLER.
CHAPTER I.
HUSBAND AND WIFE.
Back and forth, up and down—creak, creak, creak, strides Mr. Hazleton.
From the back parlor to the front, from the front to the back—his head
down, his lips firmly compressed, his arms crossed behind his back,
while, by the knitting of his brows and the occasional jerk he gives his
head, it is very easy to see that the mind of Mr. Hazleton is crossed
also.
And how perfectly unconscious sits the lady in black satin upon the
sofa! With what a nonchalant air she beats the time with her foot, upon
the little _brioche_, to the air she is humming. The spirit of the
storm—yet herself how calm! Nothing vexes an angry man more, perhaps,
than indifference to his anger. Mrs. Hazleton knew her advantage, and
she also knew she was idolized, as young and pretty wives are apt to be,
whose husbands, like poor Mrs. ——, are a “score of years too old.”
Pretty sure, therefore, of carrying her point in the matter under
debate, she highly enjoyed this unwonted ebullition of anger in her
usually placid husband. By degrees the features of Mr. Hazleton
softened—his step became slower and lighter, and then approaching the
sofa, he said, in a tone which was evidently meant to be conciliatory,
“Come, come, this is all very foolish. I think I know your goodness of
heart too well, my dear Anna, to believe you serious, or that you will
receive so ungraciously the child of my only sister.”
“Mr. Hazleton, I tell you again,” replied the lady, carelessly playing
with her eye-glass, “you are demanding a most unheard-of thing! Were she
only coming here for a few days, to see the _lions_ and be off to the
woods again, I assure you I would be the most attentive chaperone. I
would escort her from one end of the city to the other with the greatest
pleasure, and load her off with ribbons, gew-gaws, and the latest novel,
when the joyful moment came for my release. But a fixture for the
winter—and that, too, my dear Julia’s first winter—O, heavens!”
Something very like an oath whistled through the teeth of Mr. Hazleton.
“Madam—Mrs. Hazleton—let me tell you I consider your remark as
reflecting upon myself. No relative of mine, madam, can ever disgrace
either yourself or your daughter, in any society.”
“Indeed!” was the cool reply.
“And I insist upon your treating my niece, Alice Churchill, not only
with politeness, but with kindness—and your daughter also must be
schooled to meet her as her equal.”
“Her equal, indeed!” and now the ire of Mrs. Hazleton was fast kindling
to a flame. “Her equal! I would ask you, Mr. Hazleton, if the Ninnybrain
blood flows in her veins?—the Ninnybrains, Mr. Hazleton, one of whom
was maid of honor to a queen—another—”
“Pish!” interrupted Mr. Hazleton, “and confound all the Ninnybrains!”
“Confound the Ninnybrains! Very pretty, really—yes, so much for
marrying beneath me! Confound all the Ninnybrains, I think you said!”
“Yes, and I repeat, confound them all! What have they to do with my poor
little Alice?”
It was now Mrs. Hazleton’s turn to sail majestically from room to room,
muttering,
“_Hem!_ very pretty treatment—very pretty, indeed!”
While her husband, throwing himself into the seat she had just occupied
upon the sofa, very coolly knocked his heels upon the unfortunate
footstool. At length the lady paused in her walk, and turning to her
husband, said,
“My dear,” (and when Mrs. Hazleton said “my dear,” it was no idle word,)
“I think you misjudge my motives entirely for what I have said. It is
only for the good of your dear niece, for of course she must be very
dear to you, and no doubt she is a very sweet girl, that I have raised
any objections to her becoming a member of our happy family—no doubt,
my love, she would prove a great acquisition—but—_hem_—but I think I
have heard you say your sister, our sister Churchill, was in rather
limited circumstances, and has been obliged to use great economy in
bringing up her family. Now I ask you, my dear, if—if—we should not be
doing wrong, very wrong, to vitiate the simple, happy tastes of Alice,
and render dull and uncongenial the home of contentment in which she has
ever so peacefully dwelt? This surely would be the case were we to
introduce her into the gay world. So perfectly unsophisticated as she
is, she would the more easily be led astray by the frivolities of
fashionable life. Would it not be better for her, then, better for her
dear mother, that this visit should not take place?”
“No, I tell you no!—she shall come, she shall go everywhere, she shall
see every thing the city has to boast.”
“That can easily be done, love, in a few days,” replied the plausible
lady. “Some pleasant morning you can go with her to the Museum, and
Girard College, and the Water-Works. When I spoke of her going out, I
meant to parties—”
“And I mean to parties, and to theatres, and concerts, and—”
“You are absurd, Mr. Hazleton!”
“Go on!”
“You have no regard for my feelings!”
“Go on.”
“You would willingly mortify me, and embarrass my sweet Julia, by
linking her in companionship with this uncultivated hoyden!”
“Go on.”
“And also ruin the girl!”
“What next?”
“No, let me tell you, Mr. Hazleton, it must not, shall not be. Julia
shall not be put to the blush continually for the solecisms this niece
of yours will commit upon the rules of etiquette!”
“Little dear!”
“And, and—and, Mr. Hazleton—Lord, I wish I had never married!” and
Mrs. Hazleton burst into tears.
Mr. Hazleton walked out.