CHAPTER IX.

CHESUNCOOK.

Chesuncook is a "bulge" of the Penobscot: so much for its topography. It

is deep in the woods, except that some miles from its opening there is

a lumbering-station, with house and barns. In the wilderness, man makes

for man by a necessity of human instinct. We made for the log-houses.

We found there an ex-barkeeper of a certain well-known New-York cockney

coffee-house, promoted into a frontiersman, but mindful still of

flesh-pots. Poor fellow, he was still prouder that he had once tossed

the foaming cocktail than that he could now fell the forest-monarch.

Mixed drinks were dearer to him than pure air. When we entered the long,

low log-cabin, he was boiling doughnuts, as was to be expected. In

certain regions of America every cook who is not baking pork and beans

is boiling doughnuts, just as in certain other gastronomic quarters

_frijoles_ alternate with _tortillas_.

Doughnuts, like peaches, must be eaten with the dew upon them. Caught as

they come bobbing up in the bubbling pot, I will not say that they are

despicable. Woodsmen and canoemen, competent to pork and beans, can

master also the alternative. The ex-barkeeper was generous with these

brown and glistening langrage-shot, and aimed volley after volley at our

mouths. Nor was he content with giving us our personal fill; into every

crevice of our firkin he packed a pellet of future indigestion. Besides

this result of foraging, we took the hint from a visible cow that milk

might be had. Of this also the ex-barkeeper served us out galore,

sighing that it was not the punch of his metropolitan days. We put our

milk in our tea-pot, and thus, with all the ravages of the past made

good, we launched again upon Chesuncook.

Chesuncook, according to its quality of lake, had no aid to give us with

current. Paddling all a hot August mid-day over slothful water would

be tame, day-laborer's work. But there was a breeze. Good! Come, kind

Zephyr, fill our red blanket-sail! Cancut's blanket in the bow became a

substitute for Cancut's paddle in the stern. We swept along before the

wind, unsteadily, over Lake Chesuncook, at sea in a bowl,--"rolled to

starboard, rolled to larboard," in our keelless craft. Zephyr only

followed us, mild as he was strong, and strong as he was mild. Had he

been puffy, it would have been all over with us. But the breeze only

sang about our way, and shook the water out of sunny calm. Katahdin to

the North, a fair blue pyramid, lifted higher and stooped forward

more imminent, yet still so many leagues away that his features were

undefined, and the gray of his scalp undistinguishable from the green of

his beard of forest. Every mile, however, as we slid drowsily over the

hot lake, proved more and more that we were not befooled,--Iglesias by

memory, and I by anticipation. Katahdin lost nothing by approach, as

some of the grandees do: as it grew bigger, it grew better.

Twenty miles, or so, of Chesuncook, of sun-cooked Chesuncook, we

traversed by the aid of our blanket-sail, pleasantly wafted by the

unboisterous breeze. Undrowned, unducked, as safe from the perils of the

broad lake as we had come out of the defiles of the rapids, we landed at

the carry below the dam at the lake's outlet.

The skin of many a slaughtered varmint was nailed on its shingle, and

the landing-place was carpeted with the fur. Doughnuts, ex-barkeepers,

and civilization at one end of the lake, and here were muskrat-skins,

trappers, and the primeval. Two hunters of moose, in default of their

fern-horned, blubber-lipped game, had condescended to muskrat, and were

making the lower end of Chesuncook fragrant with muskiness.

It is surprising how hospitable and comrade a creature is man. The

trappers of muskrats were charmingly brotherly. They guided us across

the carry; they would not hear of our being porters. "Pluck the

superabundant huckleberry," said they, "while we, suspending your firkin

and your traps upon the setting-pole, tote them, as the spies of Joshua

toted the grape-clusters of the Promised Land."

Cancut, for his share, carried the canoe. He wore it upon his head and

shoulders. Tough work he found it, toiling through the underwood, and

poking his way like an elongated and mobile mushroom through the thick

shrubbery. Ever and anon, as Iglesias and I paused, we would be aware of

the canoe thrusting itself above our heads in the covert, and a voice

would come from an unseen head under its shell,--"It's soul-breaking,

carrying is!"

The portage was short. We emerged from the birchen grove upon the river,

below a brilliant cascading rapid. The water came flashing gloriously

forward, a far other element than the tame, flat stuff we had drifted

slowly over all the dullish hours. Water on the go is nobler than water

on the stand; recklessness may be as fatal as stagnation, but it is more

heroic.

Presently, over the edge, where the foam and spray were springing up

into sunshine, our canoe suddenly appeared, and had hardly appeared,

when, as if by one leap, it had passed the rapid, and was gliding in the

stiller current at our feet. One of the muskrateers had relieved Cancut

of his head-piece, and shot the lower rush of water. We again embarked,

and, guided by the trappers in their own canoe, paddled out upon Lake

Pepogenus.

LOUIS LEBEAU'S CONVERSION.

Yesterday, while I moved with the languid crowd on the Riva,

Musing with idle eyes on the wide lagoons and the islands,

And on the dim-seen seaward glimmering sails in the distance,

Where the azure haze, like a vision of Indian-Summer,

Haunted the dreamy sky of the soft Venetian December,--

While I moved unwilled in the mellow warmth of the weather,

Breathing air that was full of Old-World sadness and beauty,

Into my thought came this story of free, wild life in Ohio,

When the land was new, and yet by the Beautiful River

Dwelt the pioneers and Indian hunters and boatmen.

Pealed from the campanile, responding from island to island,

Bells of that ancient faith whose incense and solemn devotions

Rise from a hundred shrines in the broken heart of the city;

But in my reverie heard I only the passionate voices

Of the people that sang in the virgin heart of the forest.

Autumn was in the land, and the trees were golden and crimson,

And from the luminous boughs of the over-elms and the maples

Tender and beautiful fell the light in the worshippers' faces,

Softer than lights that stream through the saints on the windows of

churches,

While the balsamy breath of the hemlocks and pines by the river

Stole on the winds through the woodland aisles like the breath of a

censer.

Loud the people sang old camp-meeting anthems that quaver

Quaintly yet from lips forgetful of lips that have kissed them:

Loud they sang the songs of the Sacrifice and Atonement,

And of the end of the world, and the infinite terrors of Judgment;

Songs of ineffable sorrow, and wailing compassionate warning

For the generations that hardened their hearts to their Saviour;

Songs of exultant rapture for them that confessed Him and followed,

Bearing His burden and yoke, enduring and entering with Him

Into the rest of His saints, and the endless reward of the blessed.

Loud the people sang: but through the sound of their singing

Brake inarticulate cries and moans and sobs from the mourners,

As the glory of God, that smote the apostle of Tarsus,

Smote them and strewed them to earth like leaves in the breath of the

whirlwind.

Hushed at last was the sound of the lamentation and singing;

But from the distant hill the throbbing drum of the pheasant

Shook with its heavy pulses the depths of the listening silence,

When from his place arose a white-haired exhorter and faltered:

"Brethren and sisters in Jesus! the Lord hath heard our petitions,

And the hearts of His servants are awed and melted within them,--

Even the hearts of the wicked are touched by His infinite mercy.

All my days in this vale of tears the Lord hath been with me,

He hath been good to me, He hath granted me trials and patience;

But this hour hath crowned my knowledge of Him and His goodness.

Truly, but that it is well this day for me to be with you,

Now might I say to the Lord,--'I know Thee, my God, in all fulness;

Now let Thy servant depart in peace to the rest Thou hast promised!'"

Faltered and ceased. And now the wild and jubilant music

Of the singing burst from the solemn profound of the silence,

Surged in triumph and fell, and ebbed again into silence.

Then from the group of the preachers arose the greatest among them,--

He whose days were given in youth to the praise of the Saviour,--

He whose lips seemed touched like the prophet's of old from the altar,

So that his words were flame, and burned to the hearts of his hearers,

Quickening the dead among them, reviving the cold and the doubting.

There he charged them pray, and rest not from prayer while a sinner

In the sound of their voices denied the Friend of the sinner:

"Pray till the night shall fall,--till the stars are faint in the

morning,--

Yea, till the sun himself be faint in that glory and brightness,

In that light which shall dawn in mercy for penitent sinners."

Kneeling, he led them in prayer, and the quick and sobbing responses

Spake how their souls were moved with the might and the grace of the

Spirit.

Then while the converts recounted how God had chastened and saved

them,--

Children whose golden locks yet shone with the lingering effulgence

Of the touches of Him who blessed little children forever,--

Old men whose yearning eyes were dimmed with the far-streaming

brightness

Seen through the opening gates in the heart of the heavenly city,--

Stealthily through the harking woods the lengthening shadows

Chased the wild things to their nests, and the twilight died into

darkness.

Now the four great pyres that were placed there to light the encampment,

High on platforms raised above the people, were kindled.

Flaming aloof, as if from the pillar by night in the Desert,

Fell their crimson light on the lifted orbs of the preachers,

On the withered brows of the old men, and Israel's mothers,

On the bloom of youth, and the earnest devotion of manhood,

On the anguish and hope in the tearful eyes of the mourners.

Flaming aloof, it stirred the sleep of the luminous maples

With warm summer-dreams, and faint, luxurious languor.

Near the four great pyres the people closed in a circle,

In their midst the mourners, and, praying with them, the exhorters,

And on the skirts of the circle the unrepentant and scorners,--

Ever fewer and sadder, and drawn to the place of the mourners,

One after one, by the prayers and tears of the brethren and sisters,

And by the Spirit of God, that was mightily striving within them,

Till at the last alone stood Louis Lebeau, unconverted.

Louis Lebeau, the boatman, the trapper, the hunter, the fighter,

From the unlucky French of Gallipolis he descended,

Heir to Old-World want and New-World love of adventure.

Vague was the life he led, and vague and grotesque were the rumors

Wherethrough he loomed on the people, the hero of mythical hearsay,--

Quick of hand and of heart, _insouciant_, generous, Western,--

Taking the thought of the young in secret love and in envy.

Not less the elders shook their heads and held him for outcast,

Reprobate, roving, ungodly, infidel, worse than a Papist,

With his whispered fame of lawless exploits at St. Louis,

Wild affrays and loves with the half-breeds out on the Osage,

Brawls at New-Orleans, and all the towns on the rivers,

All the godless towns of the many-ruffianed rivers.

Only she that loved him the best of all, in her loving,

Knew him the best of all, and other than that of the rumors.

Daily she prayed for him, with conscious and tender effusion,

That the Lord would convert him. But when her father forbade him

Unto her thought, she denied him, and likewise held him for outcast,

Turned her eyes when they met, and would not speak, though her heart

broke.

Bitter and brief his logic that reasoned from wrong unto error:

"This is their praying and singing," he said, "that makes you reject

me,--

You that were kind to me once. But I think my fathers' religion,

With a light heart in the breast, and a friendly priest to absolve one,

Better than all these conversions that only bewilder and vex me,

And that have made man so hard and woman fickle and cruel.

Well, then, pray for my soul, since you would not have spoken to save

me,--

Yes,--for I go from these saints to my brethren and sisters, the

sinners."

Spake and went, while her faint lips fashioned unuttered entreaties,--

Went, and came again in a year at the time of the meeting,

Haggard and wan of face, and wasted with passion and sorrow.

Dead in his eyes was the careless smile of old, and its phantom

Haunted his lips in a sneer of restless incredulous mocking.

Day by day he came to the outer skirts of the circle,

Dwelling on her, where she knelt by the white-haired exhorter, her

father,

With his hollow looks, and never moved from his silence.

Now, where he stood alone, the last of impenitent sinners,

Weeping, old friends and comrades came to him out of the circle,

And with their tears besought him to hear what the Lord had done for

them.

Ever he shook them off, not roughly, nor smiled at their transports.

Then the preachers spake and painted the terrors of Judgment,

And of the bottomless pit, and the flames of hell everlasting.

Still and dark he stood, and neither listened nor heeded:

But when the fervent voice of the while-haired exhorter was lifted,

Fell his brows in a scowl of fierce and scornful rejection.

"Lord, let this soul be saved!" cried the fervent voice of the old man;

"For that the shepherd rejoiceth more truly for one that hath wandered,

And hath been found again, than for all the others that strayed not."

Out of the midst of the people, a woman old and decrepit,

Tremulous through the light, and tremulous into the shadow,

Wavered toward him with slow, uncertain paces of palsy,

Laid her quivering hand on his arm and brokenly prayed him:

"Louis Lebeau, I closed in death the eyes of your mother.

On my breast she died, in prayer for her fatherless children,

That they might know the Lord, and follow Him always, and serve Him.

Oh, I conjure you, my son, by the name of your mother in glory,

Scorn not the grace of the Lord!" As when a summer-noon's tempest

Breaks in one swift gush of rain, then ceases and gathers

Darker and gloomier yet on the lowering front of the heavens,

So brake his mood in tears, as he soothed her, and stilled her

entreaties,

And so he turned again with his clouded looks to the people.

Vibrated then from the hush the accents of mournfullest pity,--

His who was gifted in speech, and the glow of the fires illumined

All his pallid aspect with sudden and marvellous splendor:

"Louis Lebeau," he spake, "I have known you and loved you from

childhood;

Still, when the others blamed you, I took your part, for I knew you.

Louis Lebeau, my brother, I thought to meet you in heaven,

Hand in hand with her who is gone to heaven before us,

Brothers through her dear love! I trusted to greet you and lead you

Up from the brink of the River unto the gates of the City.

Lo! my years shall be few on the earth. Oh, my brother,

If I should die before you had known the mercy of Jesus,

Yea, I think it would sadden the hope of glory within me!"

Neither yet had the will of the sinner yielded an answer;

But from his lips there broke a cry of unspeakable anguish,

Wild and fierce and shrill, as if some demon within him

Rent his soul with the ultimate pangs of fiendish possession,

And with the outstretched arms of bewildered imploring toward them,

Death-white unto the people he turned his face from the darkness.

Out of the sedge by the creek a flight of clamorous killdees

Rose from their timorous sleep with piercing and iterant challenge,

Wheeled in the starlight and fled away into distance and silence.

White on the other hand lay the tents, and beyond them glided the river,

Where the broadhorn[A] drifted slow at the will of the current,

And where the boatman listened, and knew not how, as he listened,

Something touched through the years the old lost hopes of his

childhood,--

Only his sense was filled with low monotonous murmurs,

As of a faint-heard prayer, that was chorused with deeper responses.

[Footnote A: The old-fashioned flat-boats were so called.]

Not with the rest was lifted her voice in the fervent responses,

But in her soul she prayed to Him that heareth in secret,

Asking for light and for strength to learn His will and to do it:

"Oh, make me clear to know, if the hope that rises within me

Be not part of a love unmeet for me here, and forbidden!

So, if it be not that, make me strong for the evil entreaty

Of the days that shall bring me question of self and reproaches,

When the unrighteous shall mock, and my brethren and sisters shall

doubt me!

Make me worthy to know Thy will, my Saviour, and do it!"

In her pain she prayed, and at last, through her mute adoration,

Rapt from all mortal presence, and in her rapture uplifted,

Glorified she rose, and stood in the midst of the people,

Looking on all with the still, unseeing eyes of devotion,

Vague, and tender, and sweet, as the eyes of the dead, when we dream

them

Living and looking on us, but they cannot speak, and we cannot:

Knowing only the peril that threatened his soul's unrepentance,

Knowing only the fear and error and wrong that withheld him,

Thinking, "In doubt of me, his soul had perished forever!"

Touched with no feeble shame, but trusting her power to save him,

Through the circle she passed, and straight to the side of her lover,--

Took his hand in her own, and mutely implored him an instant,

Answering, giving, forgiving, confessing, beseeching him all things,--

Drew him then with her, and passed once more through the circle

Unto her place, and knelt with him there by the side of her father,

Trembling as women tremble who greatly venture and triumph,--

But in her innocent breast was the saint's sublime exultation.

So was Louis converted; and though the lips of the scorner

Spared not in after-years the subtle taunt and derision,

(What time, meeker grown, his heart held his hand from its answer,)

Not the less lofty and pure her love and her faith that had saved him,

Not the less now discerned was her inspiration from heaven

By the people, that rose, and embracing, and weeping together,

Poured forth their jubilant songs of victory and of thanksgiving,

Till from the embers leaped the dying flame to behold them,

And the hills of the river were filled with reverberant echoes,--

Echoes that out of the years and the distance stole to me hither,

While I moved unwilled in the mellow warmth of the weather,--

Echoes that mingled and fainted and fell with the fluttering murmurs

In the hearts of the hushing bells, as from island to island

Swooned the sound on the wide lagoons into palpitant silence.

* * * * *

THE DEVELOPMENT AND OVERTHROW OF THE RUSSIAN SERF-SYSTEM.

Close upon the end of the fifteenth century, the Muscovite ideas

of Right were subjected to the strong mind of Ivan the Great, and

compressed into a code.

Therein were embodied the best processes known to his land and time: for

discovering crime, torture and trial by battle; for punishing crime, the

knout and death.

But hidden in this tough mass was one law of greater import than all

others. Thereby were all peasants forbidden to leave the lands they

were then tilling, except during the eight days before and after Saint

George's day. This provision sprang from Ivan's highest views of justice

and broadest views of political economy; the nobles received it with

plaudits, which have found echoes even in these days;[A] the peasants

received it with no murmurs which History has found any trouble in

drowning.

[Footnote A: See Gerebtzoff, _Histoire de la Civilisation en Russie_.]

Just one hundred years later, there sat upon the Muscovite throne, as

_nominal_ Tzar, the weakling Feodor I.; but behind the throne stood, as

_real_ Tzar, hard, strong Boris Godounoff.

Looking forward to Feodor's death, Boris makes ready to mount the

throne; and he sees--what all other "Mayors of the Palace," climbing

into the places of _fainéant_ kings, have seen--that he must link to

his fortunes the fortunes of some strong body in the nation; he breaks,

however, from the general rule among usurpers,--bribing the Church,--and

determines to bribe the nobility.

The greatest grief of the Muscovite nobles seemed to be that the

peasants could escape from their oppression by the emigration allowed at

Saint George's day.

Boris saw his opportunity: he cut off the privilege of Saint George's

day; the peasant was fixed to the soil forever. No Russian law ever

_directly_ enslaved the peasantry,[B] but, through this decree of Boris,

the lord who owned the soil came to own the peasants upon it, just as he

owned its immovable boulders and ledges.

[Footnote B: Haxthausen.]

To this the peasants submitted, but over this wrong History has not

been able to drown their sighs; their proverbs and ballads make Saint

George's day representative of all ill-luck and disappointment.

A few years later, Boris made another bid for oligarchic favor. He

issued a rigorous fugitive-serf law, and even wrenched liberty from

certain free peasants who had entered service for wages before his

edicts. This completed the work, and Russia, which never had the

benefits of feudalism, had now fastened upon her feudalism's worst

curse,--a serf-caste bound to the glebe.

The great waves of wrong which bore serfage into Russia seem to have

moved with a kind of tidal regularity, and the distance between their

crests in those earlier times appears to have been just a hundred

years,--for, again, at the end of the next century, surge over the

nation the ideas of Peter the Great.

The great good things done by Peter the world knows by heart. The world

knows well how he tore his way out of the fetichism of his time,--how,

despite ignorance and unreason, he dragged his nation after him,--how he

dowered the nation with things and thoughts which transformed it from a

petty Asiatic horde to a great European power.

And the praise due to this work can never be diminished. Time shall

but increase it; for the world has yet to learn most of the wonderful

details of his activity. We were present a few years since, when one of

those lesser triumphs of his genius was first unfolded.

It was in that room at the Hermitage--adjoining the Winter Palace--set

apart for the relics of Peter. Our companions were two men noted as

leaders in American industry,--one famed as an inventor, the other famed

as a champion of inventors' rights.

Suddenly from the inventor,[C] pulling over some old dust-covered

machines in a corner, came loud cries of surprise. The cries were

natural indeed. In that heap of rubbish he had found a lathe for turning

irregular forms, and a screw-cutting engine once used by Peter himself:

specimens of his unfinished work were still in them. They had lain there

unheeded a hundred and fifty years; their principle had died with Peter

and his workmen; and not many years since, they were reinvented in

America, and gave their inventors fame and fortune. At the late Paris

Universal Exposition crowds flocked about an American lathe for copying

statuary; and that lathe was, in principle, identical with this old,

forgotten machine of Peter's.

[Footnote C: The late Samuel Colt.]

Yet, though Peter fought so well, and thought so well, he made some

mistakes which hang to this day over his country as bitter curses. For

in all his plan and work to advance the mass of men was one supreme

lack,--lack of any account of the worth and right of the individual man.

Lesser examples of this are seen in his grim jest at Westminster

Hall,--"What use of so many lawyers? I have but two lawyers in Russia,

and one of those I mean to hang as soon as I return;"--or when, at

Berlin, having been shown a new gibbet, he ordered one of his

servants to be hanged in order to test it;--or, in his reviews and

parade-fights, when he ordered his men to use ball, and to take the

buttons off their bayonets.

Greater examples are seen in his Battle of Narva, when he threw away an

army to learn his opponent's game,--in his building of St. Petersburg,

where, in draining marshes, he sacrificed a hundred thousand men the

first year.

But the greatest proof of this great lack was shown in his dealings with

the serf-system.

Serfage was already recognized in Peter's time as an evil. Peter himself

once stormed forth in protestations and invectives against what he

stigmatized as "selling men like beasts,--separating parents from

children, husbands from wives,--which takes place nowhere else in the

world, and which causes many tears to flow." He declared that a law

should be made against it. Yet it was by his misguided hand that serfage

was compacted into its final black mass of foulness.

For Peter saw other nations spinning and weaving, and he determined that

Russia should at once spin and weave; he saw other nations forging

iron, and he determined that Russia should at once forge iron. He never

stopped to consider that what might cost little in other lands, as a

natural growth, might cost far too much in Russia, as a forced growth.

In lack, then, of quick brain and sturdy spine and strong arm of paid

workmen, he forced into his manufactories the flaccid muscle of serfs.

These, thus lifted from the earth, lost even the little force in the

State they before had; great bodies of serfs thus became slaves; worse

than that, the idea of a serf developed toward the idea of a slave.[D]

[Footnote D: Haxthausen, _Études sur la Situation Intérieure_, etc., _de

la Russie._]

And Peter, misguided, dealt one blow more. Cold-blooded officials were

set at taking the census. These adopted easy classifications; free

peasants, serfs, and slaves were often huddled into the lists under

a single denomination. So serfage became still more difficult to be

distinguished from slavery.[E]

[Footnote E: Gurowski,--also Wolowski in _Revue des Deux Mondes_.]

As this base of hideous wrong was thus widened and deepened, the

nobles built higher and stronger their superstructure of arrogance and

pretension. Not many years after Peter's death, they so over-awed the

Empress Anne that she thrust into the codes of the Empire statutes which

allowed the nobles to sell serfs apart from the soil. So did serfage

bloom _fully_ into slavery.

But in the latter half of the eighteenth century Russia gained a ruler

from whom the world came to expect much.

To mount the throne, Catharine II. had murdered her husband; to keep the

throne, she had murdered two claimants whose title was better than

her own. She then became, with her agents in these horrors, a second

Messalina.

To set herself right in the eyes of Europe, she paid eager court to

that hierarchy of skepticism which in that age made or marred European

reputations. She flattered the fierce Deists by owning fealty to "_Le

Roi Voltaire_;" she flattered the mild Deists by calling in La Harpe

as the tutor of her grandson; she flattered the Atheists by calling in

Diderot as a tutor for herself.

Her murders and orgies were soon forgotten in the new hopes for Russian

regeneration. Her dealings with Russia strengthened these hopes. The

official style required that all persons presenting petitions should

subscribe themselves "Your Majesty's humble serf." This formula she

abolished, and boasted that she had cast out the word serf from the

Russian language. Poets and philosophers echoed this boast over Europe,

--and the serfs waited.

The great Empress spurred hope by another movement. She proposed to

an academy the question of serf-emancipation as a subject for their

prize-essay. The essay was written and crowned. It was filled with

beautiful things about liberty, practical things about moderation,

flattering things about "the Great Catharine,"--and the serfs waited.

Again she aroused hope. It was given out that her most intense delight

came from the sight of happy serfs and prosperous villages. Accordingly,

in her journey to the Crimea, Potemkin squandered millions on millions

in rearing pasteboard villages,--in dragging forth thousands of wretched

peasants to fill them,--in costuming them to look thrifty,--in training

them to look happy. Catharine was rejoiced,--Europe sang paeans,--the

serfs waited.[F]

[Footnote F: For further growth of the sentimental fashion thus set, see

_Memoirs of the Princess Daschkaw_, Vol. I. p. 383.]

She seemed to go farther: she issued a decree prohibiting the

enslavement of serfs. But, unfortunately, the palace-intrigues, and the

correspondence with the philosophers, and the destruction of Polish

nationality left her no time to see the edict carried out. But Europe

applauded,--and the serfs waited.

Two years after this came a deed which put an end to all this

uncertainty. An edict was prepared, ordering the peasants of Little

Russia to remain forever on the estates where the day of publication

should find them. This was vile; but what followed was diabolic.

Court-pets were let into the secret. These, by good promises, enticed

hosts of peasants to their estates. The edict was now sprung;--in an

hour the courtiers were made rich, the peasants were made serfs, and

Catharine II. was made infamous forever.

So, about a century after Peter, there rolled over Russia a wave of

wrong which not only drowned honor in the nobility, but drowned hope in

the people.

As Russia entered the nineteenth century, the hearts of earnest men must

have sunk within them. For Paul I., Catharine's son and successor, was

infinitely more despotic than Catharine, and infinitely less restrained

by public opinion. He had been born with savage instincts, and educated

into ferocity. Tyranny was written on his features, in his childhood. If

he remained in Russia, his mother sneered and showed hatred to him; if

he journeyed in Western Europe, crowds gathered about his coach to jeer

at his ugliness. Most of those who have seen Gillray's caricature

of him, issued in the height of English spite at Paul's homage to

Bonaparte, have thought it hideously overdrawn; but those who have seen

the portrait of Paul in the Cadet-Corps at St. Petersburg know well

that Gillray did not exaggerate Paul's ugliness, for he could not.

And Paul's face was but a mirror of his character. Tyranny was wrought

into his every fibre. He insisted on an Oriental homage. As his carriage

whirled by, it was held the duty of all others in carriages to stop,

descend into the mud, and bow themselves. Himself threw his despotism

into this formula,--"Know, Sir Ambassador, that in Russia there is

no one noble or powerful except the man to whom I speak, and while I

speak."

And yet, within that hideous mass glowed some sparks of reverence

for right. When the nobles tried to get Paul's assent to more open

arrangements for selling serfs apart from the soil, he utterly refused;

and when they overtasked their human chattels, Paul made a law that no

serf should be required to give more than three days in the week to the

tillage of his master's domain.

But, within five years after his accession, Paul had developed into such

a ravenous wild-beast that it became necessary to murder him. This duty

done, there came a change in the spirit of Russian sovereignty as from

March to May; but, sadly for humanity, there came, at the same time, a

change in the spirit of European politics as from May to March.

For, although the new Tzar, Alexander I., was mild and liberal, the

storm of French ideas and armies had generally destroyed in monarchs'

minds any poor germs of philanthropy which had ever found lodgment

there. Still Alexander breasted this storm,--found time to plan for

his serfs, and in 1803 put his hand to the work of helping them toward

freedom. His first edict was for the creation of the class of "free

laborers." By this, masters and serfs were encouraged to enter into

an arrangement which was to put the serf into immediate possession

of himself, of a homestead, and of a few acres,--giving him time to

indemnify his master by a series of payments. Alexander threw his heart

into this scheme; in his kindliness he supposed that the pretended

willingness of the nobles meant something; but the serf-owning caste,

without openly opposing, twisted up bad consequences with good, braided

impossibilities into possibilities: the whole plan became a tangle, and

was thrown aside.

The Tzar now sought to foster other good efforts, especially those made

by some earnest nobles to free their serfs by will. But this plan, also,

the serf-owning caste entangled and thwarted.

At last, the storm of war set in with such fury that all internal

reforms must be lost sight of. Russia had to make ready for those

campaigns in which Napoleon gained every battle. Then came that peaceful

meeting on the raft at Tilsit,--worse for Russia than any warlike

meeting; for thereby Napoleon seduced Alexander, for years, from plans

of bettering his Empire into dreams of extending it.

Coming out of these dreams, Alexander had to deal with such realities

as the burning of Moscow, the Battle of Leipsic, and the occupation of

France; yet, in the midst of those fearful times,--when the grapple of

the Emperors was at the fiercest,--in the very year of the burning of

Moscow,--Alexander rose in calm statesmanship, and admitted Bessarabia

into the Empire under a proviso which excluded serfage forever.

Hardly was the great European tragedy ended, when Alexander again turned

sorrowfully toward the wronged millions of his Empire. He found that

progress in civilization had but made the condition of the serfs worse.

The newly ennobled _parvenus_ were worse than the old _boyars_; they

hugged the serf-system more lovingly and the serfs more hatefully.[G]

[Footnote G: For proofs of this see Haxthausen.]

The sight of these wrongs roused him. He seized a cross, and swore upon

it that the serf-system should be abolished.

Straightway a great and good plan was prepared. Its main features were,

a period of transition from serfage to personal liberty, extending

through twelve or fourteen years,--the arrival of the serf at personal

freedom, with ownership of his cabin and the bit of land attached to

it,--the gradual reimbursement of masters by serfs,--and after this

advance to _personal_ liberty, an advance by easy steps to a sort of

_political_ liberty.

Favorable as was this plan to the serf-owners, they attacked it in

various ways; but they could not kill it utterly. Esthonia, Livonia, and

Courland became free.

Having failed to arrest the growth of freedom, the serf-holding caste

made every effort to blast the good fruits of freedom. In Courland they

were thwarted; in Esthonia and Livonia they succeeded during many years;

but the eternal laws were too strong for them, and the fruitage of

liberty has grown richer and better.

After these good efforts, Alexander stopped, discouraged. A few

patriotic nobles stood apart from their caste, and strengthened his

hands, as Lafayette and Liancourt strengthened Louis XVI.; they even

drew up a plan of voluntary emancipation, formed an association for the

purpose, gained many signatures; but the great weight of that besotted

serf-owning caste was thrown against them, and all came to nought.

Alexander was at last walled in from the great object of his ambition.

Pretended theologians built, between him and emancipation, walls of

Scriptural interpretation,[H]--pretended philosophers built walls of

false political economy,--pretended statesmen built walls of sham

common-sense.

[Footnote H: Gurowski says that they used brilliantly "Cursed be

Canaan," etc.]

If the Tzar could but have mustered courage to _cut_ the knot! Alas for

Russia and for him, he wasted himself in efforts to _untie_ it. His

heart sickened at it; he welcomed death, which alone could remove him

from it.

Alexander's successor, Nicholas I., had been known before his accession

as a mere martinet, a good colonel for parade-days, wonderful in

detecting soiled uniforms, terrible in administering petty punishments.

It seems like the story of stupid Brutus over again. Altered

circumstances made a new man of him; and few things are more strange

than the change wrought in his whole bearing and look by that week of

agony and energy in climbing his brother's throne. The portraits of

Nicholas the Grand Duke and Nicholas the Autocrat seem portraits of two

different persons. The first face is averted, suspicious, harsh, with

little meaning and less grandeur; the second is direct, commanding, not

unkind, every feature telling of will to crush opposition, every line

marking sense of Russian supremacy.

The great article of Nicholas's creed was a complete, downright faith in

Despotism, and in himself as Despotism's apostle.

Hence he hated, above all things, a limited monarchy. He told De Custine

that a pure monarchy or pure republic he could understand; but that

anything between these he could _not_ understand. Of his former rule of

Poland, as constitutional monarch, he spoke with loathing.

Of this hate which Nicholas felt for liberal forms of government there

yet remain monuments in the great museum of the Kremlin.

That museum holds an immense number of interesting things, and masses

of jewels and plate which make all other European collections mean. The

visitor wanders among clumps of diamonds, and sacks of pearls, and a

nauseating wealth of rubies and sapphires and emeralds. There rise row

after row of jewelled scymitars, and vases and salvers of gold, and old

saddles studded with diamonds, and with stirrups of gold,--presents of

frightened Asiatic satraps or fawning European allies.

There, too, are the crowns of Muscovy, of Russia, of Kazan, of

Astrachan, of Siberia, of the Crimea, and, pity to say it, of Poland.

And next this is an index of despotic hate,--for the Polish sceptre is

broken and flung aside.

Near this stands the full-length portrait of the first Alexander; and at

his feet are grouped captured flags of Hungary and Poland,--some with

blood-marks still upon them.

But below all,--far beneath the feet of the Emperor,--in dust

and ignominy and on the floor, is flung the very Constitution of

Poland--parchment for parchment, ink for ink, good promise for good

promise--which Alexander gave with so many smiles, and which Nicholas

took away with so much bloodshed.

And not far from this monument of the deathless hate Nicholas bore that

liberty he had stung to death stands a monument of his admiration for

straightforward tyranny, even in the most dreaded enemy his house ever

knew. Standing there is a statue in the purest of marble,--the only

statue in those vast halls. It has the place of honor. It looks proudly

over all that glory, and keeps ward over all that treasure; and that

statue, in full majesty of imperial robes and bees and diadem and face,

is of the first Napoleon. Admiration of his tyrannic will has at last

made him peaceful sovereign of the Kremlin.

This spirit of absolutism took its most offensive form in Nicholas's

attitude toward Europe. He was the very incarnation of reaction against

revolution, and he became the demigod of that horde of petty despots who

infest Central Europe.

Whenever, then, any tyrant's lie was to be baptized, he stood its

godfather; whenever any God's truth was to be crucified, he led on

those who passed by reviling and wagging their heads. Whenever these

oppressors revived some old feudal wrong, Nicholas backed them in the

name of Religion; whenever their nations struggled to preserve some

great right, Nicholas crushed them in the name of Law and Order. With

these pauper princes his children intermarried, and he fed them with his

crumbs, and clothed them with scraps of his purple. The visitor can

see to-day, in every one of their dwarf palaces, some of his malachite

vases, or porcelain bowls, or porphyry columns.

But the _people_ of Western Europe distrusted him as much as their

rulers worshipped; and some of these same presents to their rulers have

become trifle-monuments of no mean value in showing that popular idea

of Russian policy. Foremost among these stand those two bronze masses

of statuary in front of the Royal Palace at Berlin,--representing fiery

horses restrained by strong men. Pompous inscriptions proclaim these

presents from Nicholas; but the people, knowing the man and his

measures, have fastened forever upon one of these curbed steeds the name

of "Progress Checked," and on the other, "Retrogression Encouraged."

And the people were right. Whether sending presents to gladden his

Prussian pupil, or sending armies to crush Hungary, or sending sneering

messages to plague Louis Philippe, he remained proud in his apostolate

of Absolutism.

This pride Nicholas never relaxed. A few days before his self-will

brought him to his death-bed, we saw him ride through the St. Petersburg

streets with no pomp and no attendants, yet in as great pride as ever

Despotism gave a man. At his approach, nobles uncovered and looked

docile, soldiers faced about and became statues, long-bearded peasants

bowed to the ground with the air of men on whose vision a miracle

flashes. For there was one who could make or mar all fortunes,--the

absolute owner of street and houses and passers-by,--one who owned the

patent and dispensed the right to tread that soil, to breathe that air,

to be glorified in that sunlight and amid those snow-crystals. And he

looked it all. Though at that moment his army was entrapped by military

stratagem, and he himself was entrapped by diplomatic stratagem, that

face and form were proud as ever and confident as ever.

There was, in this attitude toward Europe,--in this standing forth

as the representative man of Absolutism, and breasting the nineteenth

century,--something of greatness; but in his attitude toward Russia this

greatness was wretchedly diminished.

For, as Alexander I. was a good man enticed out of goodness by the baits

of Napoleon, Nicholas was a great man scared out of greatness by the

ever-recurring phantom of the French Revolution.

In those first days of his reign, when he enforced loyalty with

grape-shot and halter, Nicholas dared much and stood firm; but his

character soon showed another side.

Fearless as he was before bright bayonets, he was an utter coward before

bright ideas. He laughed at the flash of cannon, but he trembled at the

flash of a new living thought. Whenever, then, he attempted a great

thing for his nation, he was sure to be scared back from its completion

by fear of revolution. And so, to-day, he who looks through Russia for

Nicholas's works finds a number of great things he has done, but each is

single, insulated,--not preceded logically, not followed effectively.

Take, as an example of this, his railway-building.

His own pride and Russian interest demanded railways. He scanned the

world with that keen eye of his,--saw that American energy was the best

supplement to Russian capital; his will darted quickly, struck afar, and

Americans came to build his road from St. Petersburg to Moscow.

Nothing can be more complete. It is an "air-line" road, and so perfect

that the traveller finds few places where the rails do not meet on

either side of him in the horizon. The track is double,--the rails very

heavy and admirably ballasted,--station-houses and engine-houses are

splendid in build, perfect in arrangement, and surrounded by neat

gardens. The whole work is worthy of the Pyramid-builders. The

traveller is whirled by culverts, abutments, and walls of dressed

granite,--through cuttings where the earth on either side is carefully

paved or turfed to the summit. Ranges of Greek columns are reared as

crossings in the midst of broad marshes,--lions' heads in bronzed iron

stare out upon vast wastes where never rose even the smoke from a serf's

kennel.

All this seems good; and a ride of four hundred miles through such

glories rarely fails to set the traveller at chanting the praises of the

Emperor who conceived them. But when the traveller notes that complete

isolation of the work from all conditions necessary to its success, his

praises grow fainter. He sees that Nicholas held back from continuing

the road to Odessa, though half the money spent in making the road an

Imperial plaything would have built a good, solid extension to that

most important seaport; he sees that Nicholas dared not untie

police-regulations, and that commerce is wretchedly meagre. Contrary to

what would obtain under a free system, this great public work found the

country wretched and left it wretched. The traveller flies by no ranges

of trim palings and tidy cottages; he sees the same dingy groups of huts

here as elsewhere,--the same cultivation looking for no morrow,--the

same tokens that the laborer is _not_ thought worthy of his hire.

This same tendency to great single works, this same fear of great

connected systems, this same timid isolation of great creations from

principles essential to their growth is seen, too, in Nicholas's

church-building.

Foremost of all the edifices on which Nicholas lavished the wealth of

the Empire stands the Isak Church in St. Petersburg. It is one of the

largest, and certainly the richest, cathedral in Christendom. All is

polished pink granite and marble and bronze. On all sides are double

rows of Titanic columns,--each a single block of polished granite with

bronze capital. Colossal masses of bronze statuary are grouped over each

front; high above the roof and surrounding the great drums of the domes

are lines of giant columns in granite bearing giant statues in bronze;

and crowning all rises the vast central dome, flanked by its four

smaller domes, all heavily plated with gold.

The church within is one gorgeous mass of precious marbles and mosaics

and silver and gold and jewels. On the tabernacle of the altar, in

gold and malachite, on the screen of the altar, with its pilasters of

_lapis-lazuli_ and its range of malachite columns fifty feet high, were

lavished millions on millions. Bulging from the ceilings are massy

bosses of Siberian porphyry and jasper. To decorate the walls with

unfading pictures, Nicholas founded an establishment for mosaic work,

where sixty pictures were commanded, each demanding, after all artistic

labor, the mechanical labor of two men for four years.

Yet this vast work is not so striking a monument of Nicholas's luxury as

of his timidity.

For this cathedral and some others almost as grand were, in part, at

least, results of the deep wish of Nicholas to wean his people from

their semi-idolatrous love for dark, confined, filthy sanctuaries, like

those of Moscow; but here, again, is a timid purpose and half-result;

Nicholas dared set no adequate enginery working at the popular religious

training or moral training. There had been such an organization,--the

Russian Bible Society,--favored by the first Alexander; but Nicholas

swept it away at one pen-stroke. Evidently, he feared lest Scriptural

denunciations of certain sins in ancient politics might be popularly

interpreted against certain sins in modern politics.

It was this same vague fear at revolutionary remembrance which thwarted

Nicholas in all his battling against official corruption.

The corruption-system in Russia is old, organized, and respectable.

Stories told of Russian bribes and thefts exceed belief only until one

has been on the ground.

Nicholas began well. He made an Imperial progress to Odessa,--was

welcomed in the morning by the Governor in full pomp and robes and

flow of smooth words; and at noon the same Governor was working in the

streets, with ball and chain, as a convict.

But against such a chronic moral evil no government is so weak as your

so-called "_strong_" government. Nicholas set out one day for the

Cronstadt arsenals, to look into the accounts there; but before he

reached them, stores, storehouses, and account-books were in ashes.

So, at last, Nicholas folded his arms and wrestled no more. For, apart

from the trouble, there came ever in his dealings with thieves that

old timid thought of his, that, if he examined too closely their

thief-tenure, they might examine too closely his despot-tenure.

We have shown this vague fear in Nicholas's mind, thus at length and in

different workings, because thereby alone can be grasped the master-key

to his dealings with the serf-system.

Toward his toiling millions Nicholas always showed sympathy. Let news

of a single wrong to a serf get through the hedges about the Russian

majesty, and woe to the guilty master! Many of these wrongs came

to Nicholas's notice; and he came to hate the system, and tried to

undermine it.

Opposition met him, of course,--not so much the ponderous laziness of

Peter's time as an opposition polite and elastic, which never ranted and

never stood up,--for then Nicholas would have throttled it and stamped

upon it. But it did its best to entangle his reason and thwart his

action.

He was told that the serfs were well fed, well housed, well clothed,

well provided with religion,--were contented, and had no wish to leave

their owners.

Now Nicholas was not strong at spinning sham reason nor subtle at

weaving false conscience; but, to his mind, the very fact that the

system had so degraded a man that he could laugh and dance and sing,

while other men took his wages and wife and homestead, was the crowning

argument _against_ the system.

Then the political economists beset him, proving that without forced

labor Russia must sink into sloth and poverty.[I]

[Footnote I: For choice specimens of these reasonings, see Von Erman,

_Archiv für Wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland_.]

Yet all this could not shut out from Nicholas's sight the great black

_fact_ in the case. He saw, and winced as he saw, that, while other

European nations, even under despots, were comparatively active and

energetic, his own people were sluggish and stagnant,--that, although

great thoughts and great acts were towering in the West, there were in

Russia, after all his galvanizing, no great authors, or scholars, or

builders, or inventors, but only those two main products of Russian

civilization,--dissolute lords and abject serfs.

But what to do? Nicholas tried to help his Empire by setting right any

individual wrongs whose reports broke their way to him.

Nearly twenty years went by in this timid dropping of grains of salt

into a putrid sea.

But at last, in 1842, Nicholas issued his ukase creating the class of

"contracting peasants." Masters and serfs were empowered to enter into

contracts,--the serf receiving freedom, the master receiving payment in

instalments.

It was a moderate innovation, _very_ moderate,--nothing more than the

first failure of the first Alexander. Yet, even here, that old timidity

of Nicholas nearly spoiled what little good was hidden in the ukase.

Notice after notice was given to the serf-owners that they were not to

be molested, that no emancipation was contemplated, and that the ukase

"contained nothing new."

The result was as feeble as the policy. A few serfs were emancipated,

and Nicholas halted. The revolutions of 1848 increased his fear of

innovation; and, finally, the war in the Crimea took from him the power

of innovation.

The great man died. We saw his cold, dead face, in the midst of crowns

and crosses,--very pale then, very powerless then. One might stare at

him then, as at a serf's corpse; for he who had scared Europe during

thirty years lay before us that day as a poor lump of chilled brain and

withered muscle.

And we stood by, when, amid chanting, and flare of torches, and roll of

cannon, his sons wrapped him in his shroud of gold-thread, and lowered

him into the tomb of his fathers.

But there was shown in those days far greater tribute than the prayers

of bishops or the reverence of ambassadors. Massed about the Winter

Palace, and the Fortress of Peter and Paul, stood thousands on thousands

who, in far-distant serf-huts, had put on their best, had toiled wearily

to the capital, to give their last mute thanks to one who for years had

stood between their welfare and their owners' greed. Sad that he had not

done more. Yet they knew that he had _wished_ their freedom,--that he

had loathed their wrongs: for _that_ came up the tribute of millions.

The new Emperor, Alexander II., had never been hoped for as one who

could light the nation from his brain: the only hope was that he might

warm the nation, somewhat, from his heart. He was said to be of a weak,

silken fibre. The strength of the family was said to be concentrated in

his younger brother Constantine.

But soon came a day when the young Tzar revealed to Europe not merely

kindliness, but strength.

While his father's corpse was yet lying within his palace, he received

the diplomatic body. As the Emperor entered the audience-room, he seemed

feeble indeed for such a crisis. That fearful legacy of war seemed to

weigh upon his heart; marks of plenteous tears were upon his face;

Nesselrode, though old and bent and shrunk in stature, seemed stronger

than his young master.

But, as he began his speech, it was seen that a strong man had mounted

the throne.

With earnestness he declared that he sorrowed over the existing

war,--but that, if the Holy Alliance had been broken, it was not through

the fault of Russia. With bitterness he turned toward the Austrian

Minister, Esterhazy, and hinted at Russian services in 1848 and Austrian

ingratitude. Calmly, then, not as one who spoke a part, but as one who

announced a determination, he declared,--"I am anxious for peace; but if

the terms at the approaching congress are incompatible with the honor of

my nation, I will put myself at the head of my faithful Russia and die

sooner than yield."[J]

[Footnote J: This sketch is given from notes taken at the audience.]

Strong as Alexander showed himself by these words, he showed himself

stronger by acts. A policy properly mingling firmness and conciliation

brought peace to Europe, and showed him equal to his father; a policy

mingling love of liberty with love of order brought the dawn of

prosperity to Russia, and showed him the superior of his father.

The reforms now begun were not stinted, as of old, but free and hearty.

In rapid succession were swept away restrictions on telegraphic

communication,--on printing,--on the use of the Imperial Library,--on

strangers entering the country,--on Russians leaving the country. A

policy in public works was adopted which made Nicholas's greatest

efforts seem petty: a vast net-work of railways was commenced. A policy

in commercial dealings with Western Europe was adopted, in which

Alexander, though not apparently so imposing as Nicholas, was really far

greater: he dared advance toward freedom of trade.

But soon rose again that great problem of old,--that problem ever

rising to meet a new Autocrat, and, at each appearance, more dire than

before,--the serf-question.

The serfs in private hands now numbered more than twenty millions; above

them stood more than a hundred thousand owners.

The princely strength of the largest owners was best represented by a

few men possessing over a hundred thousand serfs each, and, above all,

by Count Scheremetieff, who boasted three hundred thousand. The luxury

of the large owners was best represented by about four thousand men

possessing more than a thousand serfs each. The pinching propensities

of the small owners were best represented by nearly fifty thousand men

possessing less than twenty serfs each.[K]

[Footnote K: Gerebtzoff, _Histoire de la Civilisation en

Russie_,--Wolowski, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_,--and Tegoborski,

_Commentaries on the Productive Forces of Russia_, Vol. I. p. 221.]

The serfs might be divided into two great classes. The first comprised

those working under the old, or _corvée_, system,--giving, generally,

three days in the week to the tillage of the owner's domain; the second

comprised those working under the new, or _obrok_, system,--receiving

a payment fixed by the owner and assessed by the community to which the

serfs belonged.

The character of the serfs has been moulded by the serf-system.

They have a simple shrewdness, which, under a better system, had made

them enterprising; but this quality has degenerated into cunning and

cheatery,--the weapons which the hopelessly oppressed always use.

They have a reverence for things sacred, which, under a better system,

might have given the nation a strengthening religion; but they now stand

among the most religious peoples on earth, and among the least moral. To

the besmutted picture of Our Lady of Kazan they are ever ready to burn

wax and oil; to Truth and Justice they constantly omit the tribute of

mere common honesty. They keep the Church fasts like saints; they keep

the Church feasts like satyrs.

They have a curiosity, which, under a better system, had made them

inventive; but their plough in common use is behind the plough described

by Virgil.

They have a love of gain, which, under a better system, had made them

hard-working; but it takes ten serfs to do languidly and poorly what

two free men in America do quickly and well.

They are naturally a kind people; but let one example show how serfage

can transmute kindness.

It is a rule well known in Russia, that, when an accident occurs,

interference is to be left to the police. Hence you shall see a man

lying in a fit, and the bystanders giving no aid, but waiting for the

authorities.

Some years since, as all the world remembers, a theatre took fire in St.

Petersburg, and crowds of people were burned or stifled. The whole story

is not so well known. That theatre was but a great temporary wooden

shed,--such as is run up every year at the holidays, in the public

squares. When the fire burst forth, crowds of peasants hurried to the

spot; but though they heard the shrieks of the dying,--separated from

them only by a thin planking,--only one man, in all that multitude,

dared cut through and rescue some of the sufferers.

The serfs, when standing for great ideas, will die rather than yield.

The first Napoleon learned this at Eylau,--the third Napoleon learned

it at Sevastopol; yet in daily life they are slavish beyond belief. On

a certain day in the year 1855, the most embarrassed man in all the

Russias was, doubtless, our excellent American Minister. The

serf-coachman employed at wages was called up to receive his discharge for

drunkenness. Coming into the presence of a sound-hearted American

democrat, who had never dreamed of one mortal kneeling to another, Ivan

throws himself on his knees, presses his forehead to the Minister's

feet, fawns like a tamed beast, and refuses to move until the Minister

relieves himself from this nightmare of servility by a full pardon.

The whole working of the system has been fearful.

Time after time, we have entered the serf field and serf hut,--have

seen the simple round of serf toils and sports,--have heard the simple

chronicles of serf joys and sorrows. But whether his livery were filthy

sheepskin or gold-laced caftan,--whether he lay on carpets at the door

of his master, or in filth on the floor of his cabin,--whether he gave

us cold, stupid stories of his wrongs, or flippant details of his

joys,--whether he blessed his master or cursed him,--we have wondered at

the power which a serf-system has to degrade and imbrute the image of

God.

But astonishment was increased a thousand fold at study of the reflex

influence for evil upon the serf-owners themselves,--upon the whole

free community,--upon the very soil of the whole country.

On all those broad plains of Russia, on the daily life of that

serf-owning aristocracy, on the whole class which is neither of serfs

nor serf-owners, the curse of God is written in letters so big and so

black that all mankind may read them.

Farms are untilled, enterprise deadened, invention crippled,

education neglected; life is of little value; labor is the badge of

servility,--laziness the very badge and passport of gentility.

Despite the most specious half-measures,--despite all efforts to

galvanize it, to coax life into it, to sting life into it, the nation

has remained stagnant. Not one traveller who does not know that the

evils brought on that land by the despotism of the Autocrat are as

nothing compared to that dark net-work of curses spread over it by a

serf-owning aristocracy.

Into the conflict with this evil Alexander II. entered manfully.

Having been two years upon the throne, having made a plan, having

stirred some thought through certain authorized journals, he inspires

the nobility in three of the northwestern provinces to memorialize him

in regard to emancipation.

Straightway an answer is sent, conveying the outlines of the Emperor's

plan. The period of transition from serfage to freedom is set at twelve

years; at the end of that time the serf is to be fully free, and

possessor of his cabin, with an adjoining piece of land. The provincial

nobles are convoked to fill out these outlines with details as to the

working out by the serfs of a fair indemnity to their masters.

The whole world is stirred; but that province in which the Tzar hoped

most eagerly for a movement to meet him--the province where beats the

old Muscovite heart, Moscow--is stirred least of all. Every earnest

throb seems stifled there by that strong aristocracy.

Yet Moscow moves at last. Some nobles who have not yet arrived at the

callous period, some Professors in the University who have not yet

arrived at the heavy period, breathe life into the mass, drag on the

timid, fight off the malignant.

The movement has soon a force which the retrograde party at Moscow dare

not openly resist. So they send answers to St. Petersburg apparently

favorable; but wrapped in their phrases are hints of difficulties,

reservations, impossibilities.

All this studied suggestion of difficulties profits the reactionists

nothing. They are immediately informed that the Imperial mind is made

up,--that the business of the Muscovite nobility is now to arrange that

the serf be freed in twelve years, and put in possession of homestead

and inclosure.

The next movement of the retrograde party is to _misunderstand_

everything. The plainest things are found to need a world of

debate,--the simplest things become entangled,--the noble assemblies

play solemnly a ludicrous game at cross-purposes.

Straightway comes a notice from the Emperor, which, stripped of official

verbiage, says that they _must_ understand. This sets all in motion

again. Imperial notices are sent to province after province, explanatory

documents are issued, good men and strong are set to talk and work.

The nobility of Moscow now make another move. To scare back the

advancing forces of emancipation, they elect as provincial leaders three

nobles bearing the greatest names of old Russia, and haters of the new

ideas.

To defeat these comes a miracle.

There stands forth a successor of Saint Gregory and Saint Bavon,--one

who accepts that deep mediaeval thought, that, when God advances

great ideas, the Church must marshal them, or go under,--Philarete,

Metropolitan of Moscow. The Church, as represented in him, is no longer

scholastic,--it is become apostolic. He upholds emancipation,--condemns

its foes; his earnest eloquence carries all.

The work having progressed unevenly,--nobles in different governments

differing in plan and aim,--an assembly of delegates is brought together

at St Petersburg to combine and perfect a resultant plan under the eye

of the Emperor.

The Grand Council of the Empire, too, is set at the work. It is a most

unpromising body,--yet the Emperor's will stirs it.

The opposition now make the most brilliant stroke of their campaign.

Just as James II. of England prated toleration and planned the

enslavement of all thought, so now the bigoted plotters against

emancipation begin to prate of Constitutional Liberty.

Had they been fighting Nicholas, this would doubtless have accomplished

its purpose. He would have become furious, and in his fury would have

wrecked reform. But Alexander bears right on. It is even hinted that

visions of a constitutional monarchy please him.

But then come tests of Alexander's strength far more trying. Masses of

peasants, hearing vague news of emancipation,--learning, doubtless, from

their masters' own spiteful lips that the Emperor is endeavoring to tear

away property in serfs,--take the masters at their word, and determine

to help the Emperor. They rise in insurrection.

To the bigoted serf-owners this is a godsend. They parade it in all

lights; therewith they throw life into all the old commonplaces on the

French Revolution; timid men of good intentions begin to waver. The Tzar

will surely now be scared back.

Not so. Alexander now hurls his greatest weapon, and stuns reaction in a

moment. He frees all the serfs on the Imperial estates without reserve.

Now it is seen that he is in earnest; the opponents are disheartened;

once more the plan moves and drags them on.

But there came other things to dishearten the Emperor; and not least of

these was the attitude of those who moulded popular thought in England.

Be it said here to the credit of France, that from her came constant

encouragement in the great work. Wolowski, Mazade, and other

true-hearted men sent forth from leading reviews and journals words of

sympathy, words of help, words of cheer.

Not so England. Just as, in the French Revolution of 1789, while yet

that Revolution was noble and good, while yet Lafayette and Bailly held

it, leaders in English thought who had quickened the opinions which

had caused the Revolution sent malignant prophecies and prompted foul

blows,--just as, in this our own struggle, leaders in English thought

who have helped create the opinion which has brought on this struggle

now deal treacherously with us,--so, in this battle of Alexander against

a foul wrong, they seized this time of all times to show all the

wrongs and absurdities of which Russia ever had been or ever might be

guilty,--criticized, carped, sent plentifully haughty advice, depressing

sympathy, malignant prophecy.

Review-articles, based on no real knowledge of Russia, announced desire

for serf-emancipation,--and then, in the modern English way, with

plentiful pyrotechnics of antithesis and paradox, threw a gloomy light

into the skilfully pictured depths of Imperial despotism, official

corruption, and national bankruptcy.

They revived Old-World objections, which, to one acquainted with the

most every-day workings of serfage, were ridiculous.

It was said, that, if the serfs lost the protection of their owners,

they might fall a prey to rapacious officials. As well might it

have been argued that a mother should never loose her son from her

apron-strings.

It was said that "serfism excludes pauperism,"--that, if the serf owes

work to his owner in the prime of life, the owner owes support to his

serf in the decline of life. No lie could be more absurd to one who had

seen Russian life. We were first greeted, on entering Russia, by a

beggar who knelt in the mud; at Kovno eighteen beggars besieged the

coach,--and Kovno was hardly worse than scores of other towns; within a

day's ride of St. Petersburg a woman begged piteously for means to keep

soul and body together, and finished the refutation of that sonorous

English theory,--for she had been discharged from her master's service

in the metropolis as too feeble, and had been sent back to his domain,

afar in the country, on foot and without money.

It was said that freed peasants would not work. But, despite volleys

of predictions that they _would_ not work if freed, despite volleys of

assertions that they _could_ not work if freed, the peasants, when set

free, and not crushed by regulations, have sprung to their work with an

earnestness, and continued it with a vigor, at which the philosophers

of the old system stand aghast. The freed peasants of Wologda compare

favorably with any in Europe.

And when the old tirades had grown stale, English writers drew copiously

from a new source,--from "La Vérité sur la Russie,"--pleasingly

indifferent to the fact that the author's praise in a previous work had

notoriously been a thing of bargain and sale, and that there was in full

process of development a train of facts which led the Parisian courts to

find him guilty of demanding in one case a "blackmail" of fifty thousand

roubles.[L]

[Footnote L: _Procès en Diffamation du Prince Simon Worontzoff contre le

Prince Pierre Dolgornokow_. Leipzig, 1862]

All this argument outside the Empire helped the foes of emancipation

inside the Empire.

But the Emperor met the whole body of his opponents with an argument

overwhelming. On the 5th of March, 1861, he issued his manifesto making

the serfs FREE. He had struggled long to make some satisfactory previous

arrangement; his motto now became, Emancipation first, Arrangement

afterward. Thus was the _result_ of the great struggle decided; but,

to this day, the after-arrangement remains undecided. The Tzar offers

gradual indemnity; the nobles seem to prefer fire and blood. Alexander

stands firm; the last declaration brought across the water was that he

would persist in reforms.

But, whatever the after-process, THE SERFS ARE FREE.

The career before Russia is hopeful indeed; emancipation of her serfs

has set her fully in that career. The vast mass of her inhabitants are

of a noble breed, combining the sound mind of the Indo-Germanic races

with the tough muscle of the northern plateaus of Asia. In no other

country on earth is there such unity in language, in degree of

cultivation, and in basis of ideas. Absolutely the same dialect is

spoken by lord and peasant, in capital and in province.

And, to an American thinker, more hopeful still for Russia is the

patriarchal democratic system,--spreading a primary political education

through the whole mass. Leaders of their hamlets and communities

are voted for; bodies of peasants settle the partition of land and

assessments in public meetings; discussions are held; votes are taken;

and though Tzar's right and nobles' right are considered far above

people's right, yet this rude democratic schooling is sure to keep

bright in the people some sparks of manliness and some glow of free

thought.

In view, too, of many words and acts of the present Emperor, it is

not too much to hope, that, ere many years, Russia will become a

constitutional monarchy.

So shall Russia be made a power before which all other European powers

shall be pigmies.

Before the close of the year in which we now stand, there is to be

celebrated at Nijnii-Novogorod the thousandth anniversary of the

founding of Russia. Then is to rise above the domes and spires of that

famed old capital a monument to the heroes of Russian civilization.

Let the sculptor group about its base Rurik and his followers, who in

rude might hewed out strongholds for the coming nation. Let goodly

place be given to Minime and Pojarski, who drove forth barbarian

invaders,--goodly place also to Platov and Kutusov, who drove forth

civilized invaders. Let there be high-placed niches for Ivan the Great,

who developed order,--for Peter the Great, who developed physical

strength,--for Derjavine and Karamsin, who developed moral and mental

strength. Let Philarete of Moscow stand forth as he stood confronting

with Christ's gospel the traffickers in flesh and blood. In loving care

let there be wrought the face and form of Alexander the First,--the

Kindly.

But, crowning all, let there lord it a noble statue to the greatest of

Russian benefactors in all these thousand years,--to the Warrior who

restored peace,--to the Monarch who had faith in God's will to make

order, and in man's will to keep order,--to the Christian Patriot who

made forty millions of serfs forty millions of _men_,--to Alexander the

Second,--ALEXANDER THE EARNEST.

* * * * *

MR. AXTELL.

PART IV.

I said that the afternoon sunlight poured its rain into the church-yard.

It was four of the clock when Aaron left me.

The dream that I had received impression of still dwelt in active

remembrance, and a little fringe from the greater glory mine eyes had

seen went trailing in flows of light along the edge of earth, as if

saying unto it, "Arise and behold what I am!"

One child habiting earth dared to lift eyes into the awful arch of air,

wherein are laid the foundation-stones of the crystalline wall, and,

beholding drops of Infinite Love, garnered one, and, walking forth with

it in her heart, went into the church-yard,--a regret arising that the

graves that held the columns fallen from the family-corridor had found

so little of place within affection's realm. The regret, growing into

resolution, hastened her steps, that went unto the place devoted to

the dead Percivals. It was in a corner,--the corner wherein grew the

pine-tree of the hills.

"A peaceful spot of earth," I thought, as I went into the hedged

inclosure, and shut myself in with the gleaming marble, and the

low-hanging evergreens that waved their green arms to ward ill away from

those they had grown up among. "It is long since the ground has been

broken here," I thought,--"so long!" And I looked upon a monumental

stone to find there recorded the latest date of death. It was eighteen

hundred and forty-four,--my mother's,--and I looked about and sought

her grave. The grass seemed crispy and dry. I sat down by this grave. I

leaned over it, and looked into the tangled net-work of dead fibres held

fast by some link of the past to living roots underneath. I plucked some

of them, and in idlest of fancies looked closely to see if deeds or

thoughts of a summer gone had been left upon them. "No! I've had enough

of fancies for one day; I'll have no more to-night," I thought; and I

wished for something to do. I longed for action whereon to imprint my

new impress of resolution. It came in a guise I had not calculated upon.

"It's very wrong of you to sit upon that damp ground, Miss Percival."

The words evidently were addressed to me, sitting hidden in among the

evergreens. I looked up and answered,--

"It is not damp, Mr. Axtell."

He was leaning upon the iron railing outside of the hedge.

"Will you come away from that cold, damp place?" he went on.

"I'm not ready to leave yet," I said, and never moved. I asked,--

"How is your sister since morning?"

I thought him offended. He made no reply,--only walked away and went

into the church close by.

"One can never know the next mood that one of these Axtells will take,"

I said to myself, in the stillness that followed his going. "He might

have answered me, at least." Then I reproached Anna Percival for

cherishing uncharity towards tried humanity. There's a way appointed

for escape, I know, and I sought it, burying my face in my hands, and

leaning over the stillness of my mother's heart. I heard steps drawing

near. Looking up, I saw Mr. Axtell entering the inclosure. He had

brought one of the church pew-cushions.

"Will you rise?" he asked.

He did not bring the cushion to where I was; he carried it around and

spread it in a vacant spot between two graves, the place left beside

my mother for my precious father's white hairs to be laid in. Having

deposited it there, he looked at me, evidently expecting that I would

avail myself of his kindness. I wanted to refuse. I felt perfectly

comfortable where I was. I should have done so, had not my intention

been intercepted by a shaft of expression that crossed my vein of

humor unexpectedly. It was only a look from out of his eyes. They were

absolutely colorless,--not white, not black, but a strange mingling of

all hues made them everything to my view,--and yet so full of coloring

that no one ray came shining out and said, "I'm blue, or black, or

gray;" but something said, if not the mandate of color, "Obey!"

I did.

"Sacrilege!" I said. "It is a place for worship."

"Whose grave is this?" Mr. Axtell asked, as he bent down and laid his

hand upon the sod. It was upon the one next beyond my mother's; between

the two it was that he had placed the cushion.

"The head-stone is just there. You can read, can you not?" I asked, with

a spice of malice, because for the second time this barbaric gentleman

had commanded me to obey.

He lifted himself up, leaned against the towering family-monument, and

slowly said,--

"Miss Percival, it is very hard for an Axtell to forgive."

I thought of the face in the Upper Country, and asked,--

"Why?"

"Because the Creator has almost deprived them of forgiving power. Don't

tempt one of them to sin by giving occasion for the exercise of that

wherein they mourn at being deficient."

I pulled dead grassy fibres again, and said nothing.

The second time he bent to the mound of earth, and said,--

"Please tell me now, Miss Anna, whose grave this is;" and there were

tears in his eyes that made them for the moment grandly brown.

"Truly, Mr. Axtell, I do not know. I've been so busy with the living that

I've not thought much of this place. It long since all these died, you

know;" and I looked about upon the little village closed in by the iron

railing. "I do not know that I can tell you one, save my mother's, here.

I remember her; the others I cannot."

I arose to walk around to the headstone and see.

"No," he said. "Will you listen to me a little while?"

"If you'll sing for me."

"Sing for you?"--and there was a world of reproach in his meaning. "Is

this a place for songs? or am I a man to sing?"

"Why not, Mr. Axtell? Aaron told me that you could sing, if you would;

he has heard you."

"I will sing for you," he said, "if, after I am done, you choose to hear

the song I sing."

I thought again of Miss Lettie, and put the question, once unheeded,

concerning her.

"She is better. Your sister is a charming nurse."

A long quiet ensued; in it came the memory of Dr. Eaton's interest in

the young girl's face.

"Is Mr. Axtell an artist?" I asked, after the silence.

"Mr. Axtell is a church-sexton," was the response.

"Cannot he be both sexton and artist?"

"How can he?"

"You have a strange way of telling me that I ought not to question you,"

I said, vexed at his non-committal words and manner.

He changed the subject widely, when next he spoke.

"Have you the letter that you picked up last night?" he asked.

"Yes, Mr. Axtell."

"Give it to me, please."

"Did Miss Lettie commission you to ask?"

"She did not."

"Then I cannot give it to you."

"Cannot give me my sister's letter?"

"It was to _me_ that it was intrusted."

"And you are afraid to trust me with it?"

"I am afraid to break the trust reposed in myself."

Again the black roll of silent thunder gloomed on his brow; as once his

sister's eyes had been, his now were coruscant.

"Do you refuse to give it to me?" he demanded.

"I do," I said, "now, and until Miss Lettie says, 'Give.'"

"You've learned the contents, I presume," he said, with untold sarcasm.

"Woman's curiosity digs deeply, when once aroused."

"You've been taught of woman in a sad school, I fear. I'll forgive the

faults of your education, Mr. Axtell. Have you any more remarks to me?

I'm waiting."

"Do you know the contents of the letter that made Lettie so anxious?"

"You accused me before questioning formerly, or I should have given you

truth. I have no knowledge of what is in the letter."

He had resumed his former position, leaning against the monument, where

I had mine. He changed it now, drawing nearer for an instant, then went

to the side of the grave that he had asked me concerning, kneeled there,

laid two hands above it, and said,--

"Letty was right, Miss Anna. God has made you well,--made you after the

similitude of her who sleeps underneath this sod. Will you forgive my

rudeness?"

And he looked down as I had done, ere he came, into the tangled, matted

fibres, then out into the great all-where of air, as if some mysterious

presence encompassed him.

Very lowly I said,--

"Forgiveness is of God;" and I remembered the vision that came in my

dream. The little voice that steals into hearts crowded with emotions,

and tells tiny nerves of wish which way to fly, went whispering through

the niches of my mind, "Tell the dream."

Mr. Axtell went back to his monumental resting-place. I said,--

"I have had a wonderful dream to-day;" and I began to tell the opening

thereof.

The first sentence was not told when I stopped, suddenly. I could not go

on. He asked me, "Why?" I only re-uttered what I felt, that I could not

tell it.

"Oh! I have had a dream," he said,--"one that for eighteen years has

been hung above my days and woven into my nights,--a great, hopeless

woof of doom. I have tried to broider it with gold, I have tried to hang

silver-bells upon the drooping corners thereof. I have tried to fold it

about me and wear it, as other men wear sorrows, for the sun of heaven

and the warmth of society to draw the wrinkled creases out. I have

striven to fold it up, and lay it by in the arbor-vitae chest of memory,

with myrrh and camphor, but it will not be exorcised. No, no! it hangs

firm as granite, stiff as the axis of the sun, unapproachable as the

aurora of the North. Miss Percival, could you wear such a vestment in

the march of life?"

"Your dream is too mystical; will you tell me what it has done for you?

As yet, I only know what you have not done with it."

"What it has done for me?"--and he went slowly on, thinking half aloud,

as if the idea were occurring for the first time.

"It touched me one soft summer day, before the earth became mildewed and

famine-stricken. I was a proud, wilful Axtell boy; all the family traits

were written with a white-hot pen on me. My will, my great high will,

went ringing chimes of what I would do through the house where I was

born, where my mother has just died, and I swung this right arm forth

into the air of existence, and said, 'I will do what I will; men shall

say I am a master in the land.'

"My father sent me away from home for education. I walked with intrepid

mind through the course where others halted, weary, overladen, unfit for

burden.

"To gain the valedictory oration was one goal that I had said I would

attain to. I did. That was nineteen years ago. I came home in the soft,

hot, August-time. It was the close of the month. The moon was at its

highest flood of light. I was at the highest tide of will-might. That

night, if any one had told me I could not do that which I had a wish to

accomplish, I would have made my desire triumphant, or death would have

been my only conqueror. Oh! it is dreadful to have such a nature handed

down from the dark past, and thrust into one's life, to be battled with,

to be hewn down at last, unless the lightning of God's wrath cleaves

into the spirit and wakes up the volcano, which forever after emits only

fire and sulphur. There's yet one way more, after the lightning-stroke

comes,--something unutterable, something that canopies the soul with

doom, and forever the spirit tries to raise its wings and fly away, but

every uplifting strikes fire, until, singed, scorched, burnt, wings grow

useless, and droop down, never more to be uplifted."

Mr. Axtell drooped his arms, as if typical of the wings he had

described. Borne away by the excitement of his words, he stood straight

up against the far-away sky, with the verdure of Norway-evergreens

soothingly waving their green around him. There was a magnificence of

mien in the man, that made my spirit say--

"The Deity made that man for great deeds."

He glanced down at the grave once more, and resumed:--

"I came home that August night. The prairie of Time rolled out limitless

before my imagination. I built pyramids of fame; I laid the foundation

of Babel once more, in my heart,--for I said, 'My name shall touch the

stars,--my name! Abraham Axtell!' It is only written in earth, ground to

powder, to-day."

"An atom of earth's powder may be a star to eyes vast enough to see the

fulness that dwells therein, until to angelic vision our planet stands

out a universe of starry suns, each particle of dust luminous with

eternities of limitless space between," I said, as he, pausing, stooped,

and stirred the crisp grass, to outline his name there.

"All things are possible," he murmured, "but the rending of my mantle of

doom."

He looked from the tracing of his name to the west.

"The sun is going down once more," he said, and bowed his head, as one

does, waiting for pastoral benediction. His eyes were fixed now, as I

had seen his sister's held, but his lips poured out words.

"The moonlight sheened the earth, hot and heavy and still, that night.

My father, mother, and Lettie were in the home where you have seen

sorrow come. Up from the sea came the low, hollow boom of surges rising

over the crust of land.

"'To the sea, to the sea, let us go!' I cried; 'it is the very night to

tread the hall of moonbeams that leads to palace of pearls!'

"My mother was weary; she would have stayed at home, but I was her pearl

of price; she forgot herself. You know the stream that comes down from

the mountain and empties into the ocean. It was in that stream that

my boat floated, and a long walk away. Lettie left us. Just after we

started, I missed her, and asked where she had gone.

"'You'll see soon,' replied my mother; and even as I looked back, I

saw Lettie following, with a shadow other than her own falling on the

midsummer grass. She did not hasten; she did not seek to come up with

us. My mother was walking beside me.

"Thus we came to the river, at the place where it wanders out into the

ocean. I saw my boat, my River-Ribbon, floating its cable-length, but

never more, and undulating to the throbs of tide that pulsated along

the blue vein of water, heralding the motion of the heart outside. We

stopped there. The moon was set in the firmament high and fast, as when

it was made to rule the night. The hall of light, lit up along the

twinkling way of waters, looked shining and beckoning in its wavy ways

of grace, a very home for the restless spirit. I wanted to thread its

labyrinth of sparkles; I wanted to cool my wings of desire in its

phosphorescent dew. I said,--

"'I am going out upon the sea.'

"My mother seemed troubled.

"' Abraham, the boat is unsafe; the water comes through. See! it is half

full now'; and she pointed to where it lay in the stream, lined with a

mimic portraiture of the endless corridor of moonlight that went playing

across the bit of water it held.

"'This is childish, this is folly,' I thought, 'to be stayed on such a

_spirit_ mission by a few cups of water in a boat! What shall I ever

accomplish in life, if I yield thus?--and without waiting to more than

half hear, certainly not to obey, my father's stern 'Stay on shore,

Abraham,' I went down the bank, stepped into a bit of a bark, and pushed

it into the stream, where my boat was now rocking on the strengthened

flow of ocean's rise.

"I came to the boat, bailed out the water with a tin cup that lay

floating inside, and calling back to land, 'Go home without me; do

not wait,' I took the oars, and in my River-Ribbon, set free from its

anchorage, I commenced rowing against the tide. I looked back to the

bank I was fast leaving. I saw figures standing there.

"'They'll go home soon,' I said, and I turned my eyes steadfastly toward

the sheeny track, all crimpled and curled with fibrous net-work, and

rowed on.

"It was a glorious night,--a night when one toss of a mermaid's hair,

made visible above the waters, as she flew along the track I was

pursuing, would have been worth a life of rowing against this incoming

tide.

"You have never tried to row, Miss Anna. You don't know how hard it is

to push a boat out of a river when the sea sends up full veins to course

the strong arms she reaches up into the land."

For one moment, as he addressed me, his eyes lost their rapt look; they

went back to it, and he to his story.

"I saw the fin of a shark dancing in the waves. Sharks were nothing

for me. I did not look down into my boat. No, men never do; they look

_beyond where they are_. They're a sorry race, Miss Anna.

"The shark went down after some bit of prey more delicious than I. My

will would have been hard for him to manage. I forgot the shark. I

forgot the figures standing, waiting on the shore that I had left, ere

Lettie and the shadow that walked with her, whatever it was, had come to

it. I forgot everything but the phosphorescent dew that would cool my

spirit, athirst for what I knew not, ravenous for refreshment, searching

for manna where it never grew. The plaudits of yesterday were ringing in

my ears, the wavelets danced to their music, my oars kept time to the

vanity measure of my beating mind. Still I was not content. I wanted

something more. A faded flower, an althea-bud, was still pendent from my

coat. I had taken it out from the mass of flowers with which I had been

honored. I noticed it now. The moon dewed it over with its yellowness.

'An offering to the sea-nymphs!' I said, and I cast it forth into the

wide field. It did not go down, as I had fancied it would. No, it went

on, whither the movement of the ceaseless dance of motion carried it. I

leaned upon my oars and watched it until it went out of the illuminated

track. I was now in the bay, outside the river. I looked once more

shoreward. I had threaded the curve of the stream, and could not see

around the point. No living human thing was in sight. I was alone with

Nature in the night, when she looks down glories, and spreads out fields

where we long to walk, and our footsteps are fast in clay. I was not far

from shore; it lay dark behind me; it was only before that I could see.

As I paused in my rowing to watch the althea-bud set afloat, I heard a

tiny splash in the waters.

"'A school of fish flashing up a moment,' I thought, and did not further

heed it."

The man looked as if he were now out at sea. He turned his head the

least bit: the effect against the sky was fine. He had an attitude of

watching and listening.

"I saw an object before me moving on the waters. I looked down. The

water was rising in my own boat. I could not heed it just now.

"'In a moment,' I thought, 'I would stop to bail it out.'

"It was a boat that I saw. It moved on so swiftly,--the chime of the

oars, tiny oars they were, was so sweetly, softly musical, the very

drippling drops fell so like globules of silver, that I forgot my

mission. I held my oars and waited. At last--how long it seemed!--I saw

the boat come into the bridge of light. I saw fair, golden hair let

loose to the sea-breezes that began to blow. I saw two hands striving

with the oars. I saw the owner of the hair and of the hands, a young

girl, sitting in that boat, coming right across the way where I ought

to be going. "'Does she mean to stay me?' I said, and even then my will

rose up.

"I bent to the oars; but whilst I had watched her, my boat had been

rapidly filling. I was forced to stay. My feet were already in the

waves. Right across my pathway she came, close up to my filling boat.

"Her eyes were in the shadow, the moon being behind, but her voice rang

out these words:--

"'Mr. Axtell, you're committing a great sin. You're putting your own

life in peril. You're killing your mother. I have come to stay you. Will

you come on shore?'

"I only looked at her. When I found voice, it was to ask,--

"'Who are you?'

"'Who I am doesn't matter now. Drowning men mustn't ask questions'; and,

putting one oar within my boat, now more than half filled, she drew her

own to its side, and said,--"'Come in.'

"'Conquered by a woman,' I thought. 'Never!'--and I began to search for

the cup, that I might give back to the sea its intruding contents.

"I had left it in the other boat.

"'Conquered by thine own sin,' said the young girl, still holding fast

to my boat.

"'Not so easily, fairy, or whoe'er thou art,' I said; for I saw that her

boat was well furnished with both bailing-bowl and sponge, and I reached

out for them, saying, 'I'm going on the track, farther out.'

"She divined my intent, and quick as was my thought were her two hands;

she cast both bowl and sponge into the sea.

"'Mr. Axtell,' she said; 'there's a power in the world greater than your

own. The sooner you yield, the less you'll feel the thorns. Your mother,

on the shore, is suffering agonies for you. Will you come into this

boat, now?'

"The boats had floated around a little, and had changed places. I looked

into her eyes; there was nothing there that said, 'I'm trying to conquer

you.' There was something in them that I had never seen made visible on

earth before,--something radiant, with a might of right, that made me

yield. She saw that I was coming. I lifted my feet out of the inches of

water that had nearly filled it, put my oars across her tiny boat, and,

leaving my own River-Ribbon to its fate, I entered that wherein my

preserver had come out. I took the oars from her passive hands; she went

to the front of the boat and left me master of the small ship. I turned

its prow homeward. My preserver sat motionless, her eyes in the moon,

for aught of notice she took of me. I was going toward the river; she

bade me keep to the bay-shore, at the right. I obeyed. No more words

were spoken until we were almost to land. I saw a little bulb afloat.

The boat went near. I put out my oar and drew it in. It was the

althea-bud that I had offered to the sea-nymphs.

"'The mermaids refuse my offering,' I said; 'will you accept it?'--and

I handed it, dripping with salt-water, to the fairy who sat so silently

before me.

"She took it, pointed to a little sheltered cove between two outstanding

ledges of rock, and said,--

"'This is boatie's home,--see if you can guide her safely in.'

"The keel grated on the gravelly beach, the boat struck home. The young

girl did not wait for me, she landed first, and, handing me a tiny key,

said,--

"'Draw my boat up out of reach of the tide, make it fast, please,'--and

she sped away into the dreamy darkness of the land, whose shadows the

moon did not yet reach, leaving me alone on the shore.

"I obeyed her orders implicitly, and then followed. It was not far from

this sheltered cove that I met those with whom I had come. My mother was

sitting upon one of the sea-shore rocks, passive, but stony. The young

girl had just been speaking to her, she must have been saying that 'I

was come back,' but my mother had not heeded. It was only in sight that

her reason came, but, oh! such a deluge of gladness came to her when she

saw me!

"'I was dying,' she said; 'you've come back to save me, Abraham.'

"My father did not speak then, he lifted my mother from off the stone,

and together we three walked home. Lettie lingered, the shadow with her.

Was that the young girl? I could not quite discern."

Mr. Axtell stopped in his narration, walked out of the village of Dead

Percivals, and to his mother's new-made grave. He came back soon.

"Miss Percival," he said, "two days ago you said, 'it was the strangest

thing that ever you saw man do, to dig his mother's grave.' It was a

work begun long ago; the first stroke was that August night; it is

nearly nineteen years ago. What do you think of it now?"

"As I thought then, Mr. Axtell."

He stood near me now. He went on.

"That young girl saved my life that night, Miss Percival. Ere we reached

home, a violent, sudden thunder-storm came down, with wind and rain, and

terrible strokes of lightning. We took shelter in another house than

home. Lettie and my preserver followed."

Another long pause came, a gathering together of the forces of his

nature, typical of the still hotness of the August night of which he

spoke, and after the ominous rest he emitted ponderous words. They came

like crackles of rattling electricity. I could taste it.

"Miss Percival, look at me one moment."

I obeyed.

"Do I look like a murderer?"

"I don't know."

"Don't turn your eyes away; do you know what certain words in this world

mean?"

"Signal one, and I will answer."

He looked so leonic that I felt the least bit in the world like running

away, but decided to stay, as he was just within my pathway of escape.

"Do you know what it is, what it means, when a human soul calls out from

its highest heights to another mortal, 'Thou art mine'?"

I do not think he expected an answer, but I answered a round, full,

truthful, "No."

"Then let it be the theme of thanksgiving," he said. "That fair young

girl is here now. I feel her sacred presence. She does not save me from

my imperious will.

"Do you know, Miss Percival," he suddenly resumed, "do you know that you

are here with Abraham Axtell, a man who has destroyed two lives: one

slowly, surely, through years of suffering; the other, oh! the other--by

a flash from God's wrath, and for eighteen years my soul has cried out

to her, 'Thou art mine,' and yet there is no response on earth, there

can be none? Would you know the name of my preserver that night,

come,"--and, bending down, he offered his hand to assist me in rising.

I had no faith in this man's murderousness, whatever he might have done.

He led me around to the head-stone of the grave which he had asked my

knowledge of. Before I could see, he passed his hand across my eyes: how

cold it was!

"When you see the name recorded here," he said, "you will know who saved

me that August night, whom my terrible will destroyed, drinking her

young life up in one fell cup."

His hand was withdrawn for one moment; my sight was blinded with the

cold pressure on my eyes; then I read,--

MARY,

DAUGHTER OF

JULIUS AND MARY PERCIVAL,

DIED

AUGUST 30th, 1843,

AGED

17 YEARS.

"My sister," I said

"Your sister, whom I killed."

"Ere I was old enough to know her."

"Have you one drop of mercy for him who destroyed your sister?" he

asked,--and his haughty will was suffused in pleading.

I thought of the third figure in the celestial picture, as it gazed upon

the outstretched hand, and I said,--

"God hath not made me your judge; why should I refuse mercy?"

A flash of intuition came. The young girl, whose portrait was in the

house of the Axtells, whose face had been next my mother's, who asked me

to do something for her on the earth,--could they all be manifestations

of Mary?

"Who painted the portrait in your house?" I asked.

"My will," he said; "I am no artist."

"Is it like Mary?"

"Yes."

"Then I have this day seen her."

He looked up, great tears falling from his eyes, and asked,--

"Where?"

I took him to the gallery of the clouds, and showed him my vision, and

repeated the words spoken to me up there, the words for him only,--the

others were full of mystery still. He held seemingly no part therein.

"Will a murderer's prayer add one ray of joy to the angel who has come

out on the sea to save me,--me, twice saved, oh! why?"--and Mr. Axtell

laid his hand upon my head in blessing.

"Twice saved," I said, "that the third salvation may be Christ's."

Solemnly came the "Amen" from his lips, tremulous as the bridge of light

he had once passed over.