"Good-bye, Mr. Axtell; I shall fulfil Mary's wish for you, if you will

let me;" and I offered him my hand for this second parting: the first

had been when he went out alone to his mother's burial.

He looked at it, as he then had done, uncomprehending, and said only,--

"Will I let you?"

He gathered up the cushion, and carried it to the church. I closed the

gate that shut in this silent city, and went to the parsonage.

* * * * *

The sun had gone down,--the night was coming on. I found Aaron pacing

the verandah with impatient steps. He asked where I had been. I told

him.

"It is very well that you are going so soon," he said,--"you are getting

decidedly ghostly. Will you take a walk with me?"

I was thankful for the occasion. As might have been expected, Aaron

chose the way that led to the solemn old house. I was amused.

"Where are you going?" I questioned.

"To inquire after our early-morning patient," he said.

"And not to see Mrs. Aaron Wilton?"

Aaron looked the least mite retributive, as he said,--

"Anna, there are mysteries in life."

"As, why Aaron was chosen before Moses," I could not help suggesting.

Sophie had had an opportunity of being Mrs. Moses, instead of Mrs.

Aaron.

"Sophie's wise; you are not, Anna, I fear."

"Your fear may be the beginning of my wisdom, Aaron: I hope so."

With the exception of a return to the subject on which Aaron had

questioned me at breakfast, and on which he elicited no further

information from me, nothing of interest occurred until we were within

the place that held Sophie's pearly self.

She had been a shower of sunshine, letting fall gold and silver drops

through all the house. I saw them, heard their sweet glade-like music

rippling everywhere, the moment that I went in.

Mr. Axtell was pacing the hall in the evening twilight, and the little

of lamp-lustre that was shed into it.

He looked passively calm, heroically enduring, as we went past him. From

his eyes came scintillations of a joy whose root is not in our planet.

He simply said,--

"Mrs. Wilton is with my sister; she will be glad to see you."

We went on. Sophie had made a very nest of repose in the sick-room. Miss

Axtell looked so comfortable, so untired of life, so changed from the

first glimpse I had had of her, when I thought her face might be such as

would be found under Dead-Sea waves. There was no more of the anxious

unrest. She spoke to Mr. Wilton, thanking him for the "good gift," she

named Sophie, that he had lent to her.

Miss Lettie called me to her. She wished to say something to me only. I

bent my head to listen.

"I am ill," she said,--"better just now, but I feel that it will be

weeks before I shall leave this place; it is good for me to be here, but

this troubles me,--I don't like to think that I must take care of it;

will you guard it sacredly for me?--and the letter of last night, add it

to the others."

She gave me a small package, carefully closed, and I saw that it was

sealed.

From her manner, I fancied it was to be known to me alone, and,

concealing it, I said,--

"I will keep it securely for you."

Sophie came playfully up, and said,--

"Now, Anna, I'm empress here; no secret negotiations to overthrow my

power."

"I'm just going to say good-bye to Miss Axtell," I said, "for I am going

home to-morrow;" and I told her of the letter from father, that I had

received.

Sophie got up a charming storm of regret and wrath, neither at my father

for sending for me, nor at myself for going, but for the mysterious

third personality that created the need for my departure.

Miss Lettie seemed to regret my coming absence still more than Sophie.

"I wanted you so much," she said; "if I had only had you long ago, life

would have been changed," she whispered again, as Sophie turned to

listen to some pretty nonsense that the grave minister poured into her

ears through those windings of softly purplish hair.

"Will you make me one promise, only one?" said Miss Axtell.

I hesitated,--for promises are my religious fear, I do not like to

make promises. They are like mile-stones to a thunder-storm. They note

distances when the spirit is anxious only to cycle time and space.

She looked so earnest, so persuasive, that I yielded, and said that

"consistency should be my only requirement."

"It is not so immensely inconsistent, my Anemone; it is only that I want

you to come back again. Two weeks will satisfy your father. Will you

come to me on the twenty-fifth of March?"

"What for?" with my awkward persistency in questioning, I asked.

"Why, because I want to see you,--I wish you to write a letter for

me,--and more than all, I want an advocate."

I, smiling at the triplet of occasions, promised to come, if consistent.

Sophie was going home. She came up to drop a few last cheery words, to

fall into the coming hours of night.

"You see how you've spoiled me by kindness, Mrs. Wilton," Miss Lettie

said. "I presume still further: I would like to see old Chloe; it is a

long, long time since I've seen her. Would you let her come?" Sophie

said that "it would renew Chloe's youth; she certainly would send her."

Good-byes were spoken, and we went down. Mr. Axtell was still treading

the hall below. He thanked Sophie for her kindness to Miss Lettie, shook

hands genially with Aaron, looked at me, and we were gone.

I carried Miss Lettie's message to Chloe. She lifted up those great

African orbs of hers as she might have done to the Mountains of the Moon

in her native land.

"Now the heavens be praised!" said the honest soul,--"what for can that

icy lady want to see old Chloe?"

I had carried the message under cover of one from my own heart. I knew

that Chloe had lived with my mother until she died. I knew that she must

know something regarding Mary, my sister, to whom, in all my life, I had

scarcely given one thought, who died ere I was wise enough to know her.

And so I began by asking,--

"Am I like my sister who died, Chloe?"

She brought back her eyes from gazing upon the lunar mountains.

"I don't know's you are 'xactly; but somehow you _did_ look like her,

up-stairs to-day, when you had them white things tied on your head."

"Were you here when she died?" I asked.

"Oh, yes!"--old Chloe closed her eyes,--"it is one of the blessed things

Chloe's Lord will let her 'member, up there;" and Chloe wiped her eyes,

_in memoriam_.

"I don't remember her," I said.

"No, how should you? you were wee little then."

"What made her die, Chloe?"

"I reckon 't was because the angels wanted her more 'n me, Miss Anna."

"Was she sick, Chloe?"

"How queer you questions, Miss Anna! Of course she was sick; she drooped

in the August heat; they didn't think she was very sick; the master gave

her some medicine one night, and left her sleeping, quiet as a lamb, and

before morning came she went to heaven."

"Who was the master, Chloe?"

"Why, you _is_ getting stupid-like, child! Honey darling, don't you

know that Master Percival, your father, was my master ever so many

years?"--and she began notating them upon her fingers.

I interrupted the mathematical calculation by telling Chloe that three

people were waiting for their tea.

"Two of 'em is my dear childers," said Chloe,--who never would accept

Aaron, even with all his goodness, into her heart; and she moved about

with accelerated velocity in her daily orbit.

What could Mr. Axtell have meant by saying that he had killed Mary,

who, Chloe had assured me, died peaceably in her father's house? After

disturbing the equilibrium of thought-realm, and nearly giving my mind a

new axis of revolution, I decided to think no more of it. I could

not, would not, believe that Abraham Axtell had gone up any Moriah of

sacrifice, and been permitted to let fall the knife upon his victim. His

life must have been a dream, an illusion; he only wanted awakening to

existence. And the memory of my Sabbath-morning's vision dwelt with me,

and the voice that speaketh, filling the soul "as a sea-shell is with

murmuring," said, "Your finger will awaken him." And I looked down at

my two passive hands, and asked, "Which one of them?" And the murmuring

voice startled me with the answer, "Two are required,--one of

reconciliation, the other of forgiveness." Whereupon I lifted up the ten

that Nature gave, and said, "Take them all, if need be."----

"Tea is ready," said Aaron, peeping in, his face alive with satisfied

muscles, playing too merry a tune of joy, I thought, for a grave

minister.

"Sophie's a magician," I thought for the thousandth time, as, for the

millionth, Aaron looked at her sitting so demurely regal at his spread

table.

"What would these two good people say," I asked myself, in thinking,

"if they knew all that I have learned in my visit, not yet a week

long?"--and I ran up and down in the scale of semibreves and minims that

I had heard, with the one long, sweet trill transfusing life on earth

into heavenly existence, and I felt very wingy, very much as if I could

take up the tower, standing high and square out there, and carry it,

"like Loretto's chapel, through the air to the green land," where my

spirit would go singing evermore. I could not tell what my joy was like:

not unto anything that I had seen upon the earth; under the earth I had

not yet been; only once above it, and they were calmly celestial there.

I was turbulently joyous, and so I winged a little while around Sophie

and Aaron, hummed a good-night in Chloe's ears, and found that the canny

soul was luxuriating in the idea that the icy lady was to be thawed into

the acceptance of sundry confections which she was basketing to carry

with her when I went out.

"Call me early," I said; "you know I leave at seven o'clock."

"I shall be up ever so early, Miss Anna; never fear for Chloe's sleeping

late to-morrow in the morning; you get ever so much,--'nuff for Chloe

and you too; good-night, honey!"--and Chloe went on her mission, whilst

Aloes and Honey went up-stairs, past Aaron's study, and into a room

where the mysterious art of packing must be practised for a little.

I thought of the "breadths of silver and skirts of gold" that I had seen

the Day pack away; and, inspired with the thought, fell to folding less

amberous raiment, until, my duty done, I pressed the cover down, and

locked my treasures in, for the journey of the morrow. Then I took out

my sacred gift to guard, and, laying it before me, looked at it. It was

of dimensions scarcely larger than the moon,--that is, extremely variant

and uncertain: to one, a planet, larger than Jupiter, moons and all; to

another, scarcely more than a bridal ring. So my packet was of uncertain

size: _undoubtedly_ the tower was packed away in it, Herbert too,--and I

couldn't help agreeing with my thought, and confessing that this was a

better form for conveyance than that I so lately had planned; so I put

it safely away, with myself, until the day should come. The day-star had

arisen in my heart. Would it ever go down? Not whilst He who holdeth the

earth in the hollow of His hand hath me there too. Reaching out, once

more, for the strong protective fibres that had so blessed me, I

wandered forth with it into the land whose mural heights are onychites

and mocha-stones of mossy mystery.

How long I might have lingered there I know not,--so delicious was the

fragrance and so fair the flowers,--had not Chloe's voice broken the

mocha-stones, scattering the mosses like autumn-leaves.

"Honey, I thought I'd waken ye,--the day is just cracking," said Chloe,

at the door, and she asked me to open it one moment.

When I had done so, there she stood, just as I had seen her when I bade

her good-night,--save that her basket was void of contents.

"Master Abraham didn't know you was going home," Chloe said, "or he'd

have told you good-bye; and I guesses he sent what he didn't tell, for

he asked me to give you this."

When Chloe was gone, I opened the small package. It was a pretty casket,

made of the margarite of the sea. Within it lay a faded, fallen,

fragmentary thing. At first, I knew not what it could be. It was the

althea-bud that grew in the summer-time of eighteen years ago, that

had been Mary's,--and my heart beat fast as I looked upon the silent

voicefulness that spake up to me, and said, "To you, who have restored

him to himself, he offers the same tribute;" and I lifted up the

iridescent, flashing cradle of margarite, and reverently touched

the ashes of althea it held with my lips. Afterwards they were

salt,--whether with the saltness of the sea the bud had been baptized

in, or of the tears that I let fall, I knew not.

I folded up my good-bye from Mr. Axtell in the same precious package

that was his sister's, and, side by side, the two journeyed on with me.

* * * * *

It was seven of the clock on Monday morning when she who said the

naughty words, and the grave minister, came out to say farewell to me.

The day's great round was nearly done ere I met my father's flowery

welcome.

"My Myrtle-Vine, I knew you'd come," said Dr. Percival; and his long

gray hair floated out to reach me in, and his eyes, wherein all love

burned iridescent, drew me toward his heart.

My father put his arms around me, and said the sweetest words of welcome

that ever are spoken.

"How I've missed you, Anna!" as he drew me toward his large arm-chair,

and folded me, his latest child, to his heart.

As thus we were sitting in the silence of the heart that needs no

language, little Jeffy, my ebony-beauty boy, darted his black head

in, and reposing it for one instant against the scarcely lighter-hued

mahogany of the door, jingled out, in shells of sound,--

"He's mighty fur'ous. It's real fun. I guess you'd better come right up,

Dr. Percival;" and the ebon head darted off, without one word for me.

Why was it that this little omission of Jeffy's, the African boy, should

create a vacancy? Oh! it is because Nature made me so exacting. I wanted

everybody to welcome me.

I lifted my head from my father's shoulder, and asked, in some dismay,--

"What is it, father?"

"I've gotten myself in trouble, Anna. I've let chaos into my house. I

wanted you to help me."

"What is it? what has happened?" I hastened to inquire.

"Only a hospital patient that I was foolish enough to bring away. I

heartily wish that he was back again," said my father; and he put me

from him to go, in obedience to the summons.

I was about to follow him, but he waved me back as I went into the hall,

and he went on. I heard the ring of a low, frenzied laugh, as I began

unwrapping from my journey. My casket of treasures I had committed to

bands for keeping. Now I laid it down, and, folding up my protective

robes, I had just gone to try my father's easy-chair, alone, when

Jeffy's ebon head struck in again.

"I didn't see ye afore, Miss Anna. I'so mighty glad you've come;" and

Jeffy atoned for his former omission by his present joy.

"How is he?" I questioned Jeffy, as if I knew all the antecedents of the

case perfectly.

"Oh, he's jolly to-night. I think Master Percival might have let me stay

to see the fun;" and Jeffy's eyes rolled to and fro in their orbits, as

if anxious to strike against some wandering comet.

"Is tea over?" I asked.

"No, miss. Master said he'd wait for you. I'll go and tell that you're

here;" and Jeffy took himself off, eager for action.

He was not long gone.

"It's all ready, waiting a bit for master. He can't come down just this

minute," said Jeffy. "Look a here, Miss Anna,--isn't it vastly funny

master's bringing a crazy man here? They say down in the kitchen, that

as how it wouldn't 'a' been, if you'd been home. It's real good, though.

It's the splendidest thing that's happened. Wait till you see him

perform. Ask him to sing. It's frolicky to hear him."

The boy went on, and I did not stop him. I was as anxious for

information as he to impart it. When he paused for breath, in the width

of detail that he furnished, I asked,--

"When was this stranger brought here?"

"Three days ago, Miss Anna, I hope he'll stay forever and ever;" and

Jeffy darted off at a mellifluous sound that dropped down from above.

"There! he has thrown the poker at the mirror again, I do believe," said

another voice in the hall, and I recognized the housekeeper.

Staid Mrs. Ordilinier came in to greet me, with the uniform greeting of

her lifetime. I verily believe that she has but one way of receiving.

Electricity and bread-and-butter would meet the same recognitory

reception.

"Did you hear that noise, Miss Anna?" she said, as another sound came,

that was vastly like the shivering of glass.

"What was it, Mrs. Ordilinier?"

I gave her the question to gain information. I sought it,--but she, not

disposed to gratify me at the moment, slowly ascended to ascertain the

state of mirrors above. She met my father's silver hairs coming down. He

did not say one word to her. He met me in the hall, took me back to the

room, and, reseating me in my olden place, put his hand upon my head,

and said,--

"This must help me, Anna."

"It will, papa; what is it?"

"I've a crazy man up-stairs. He can't do very much harm, for he is badly

injured."

"How?" I asked.

"Railroad accident. Four days ago, locomotive and two passenger-cars off

the track, down forty feet upon the rocks and stones, and all there was

of a river," my father replied, with evident regret that the company had

been so unfortunate, as well as his individual self.

"Who is it?" was my next question.

"Don't know, darling; haven't the least idea. He has the softest brown,

curling hair of his own, with a wig over it. Can't find out his name, or

anything about him. I like him, though, Anna. He's like somebody! used

to know. I brought him here from the hospital, several days ago, but he

hasn't given me much peace since, and the people down below think I'm as

crazy as he; but I cannot help it; I will not turn him out now."

"Of course you wouldn't, father. We'll manage him superbly. I'll chain

him for you."

My father rose up, comforted by my words, and said "it was time for

tea." We went down. I was the Sophie of Aaron's home, at my father's

table.

"Papa," I said, as if introducing the most ordinary topic of

conversation, "what was the occasion of sister Mary's death? She was

only seventeen. How young to die!"

My father sighed, and said,--

"Yes, it was young. She had fever, Anna. One of those long, low fevers

that mislead one. I did not think she would die."

"Was Mary engaged to be married, father?"

Dr. Percival looked up at his daughter Anna with the look that says,

"You're growing old," although she was twenty-three, and never had gone

so far in life as his eldest daughter at seventeen.

"She was, Anna."

"To whom, father?"

"Perhaps you've seen him, Anna. I hear that he is come home. His name is

Axtell,--Abraham Axtell."

I told my father of the first words,--where we had found him, tolling

the bell,--and of his mother's death, and his sister's illness.

"Incomprehensible people!" was my father's sole ejaculation, as he went

to look after the deranged patient.

I occupied myself for an hour in picking up the reins of government that

I had thrown down when I went to Redleaf. Looking into "our room,"

and not finding father there, I went on, up to my own room. A warm,

welcoming fire burned within the grate. I thought, "How good father is

to think for me!" and with the thought there entered in another. It came

in the sudden consciousness that the room was prepared for some one else

than me. I glanced about it, and saw the strange, wild man, with eyes

all aglow, looking at me from out the depths of my wonted place of rest.

No one else was in the room. I turned around to leave, but, dropping my

precious box of margarite, I stooped to pick it up.

"It is a good harbor to sail into. I'm content," said the voice from the

corner, before I could escape.

I met father coming in.

"Why, how is this?" he said to me.

"You didn't tell me you had given up my room," I said.

"Didn't I? Well, I forgot. We couldn't take him higher."

"Is he so much hurt?" I asked.

"Three broken bones," my father replied. "It will be weeks, it may be

months, before he will be well;" and he sighed hopelessly at the good

deed, which, being done, pressed so heavily. "Don't look so sadly about

it, Myrtle-Vine," he added; "take my room, if you like."

"That was not my thought," I said. "I do not mind the change of room."

The visit to Redleaf, which I had made to dawn in my horizon, was

eclipsed by three broken bones, that suddenly undermined the arch of

consistency.

Soothingly came the words that were spoken unto me. My father was

all-willing to relinquish his cherished room,--his for sixteen years,

and opening into that mysterious other room,--to give it up to me, his

Myrtle-Vine; and a momentary pang that any interest in existence should

be, except as circling around him, flew across the future, "the science

whereof is to man but what the shadow of the wind might be,"--and I

looked up into his eyes, and, twining his long white hair around my

fingers, for a moment felt that forever and forever he should be the

supreme object of earthly devotion. In my wish to evince the sentiment

in action, I requested permission to assist in the care of the hospital

patient.

"Oh, no, Anna! he is too wild now. When the excitement of the fever is

gone, then will be your time."

Another of those many-toned, circling peals of laughter came from my

room. My father went in. I went past the place that mortal eyes were not

permitted to fathom, and, for the first time in my life, was curious to

know its contents, and why I had never seen the interior thereof, I had

grown up with the mystery, until I had accepted it, unquestioning, as a

thing not for my view, and therefore out of recognition. It was as far

away from me as the open sea of the North, and might contain the mortal

remains of all the navigators of Hope that ever had wandered into the

sea of Time for him who so holily guarded it.

"One far-away Indian-summery day, four years agone," "while yet the day

was young," Dr. Percival, my father, had led an azure-eyed maiden in

through the mysterious entrance, and shown unto her the veiled temple,

its altar and its shrine, and she had come thence with the dew of

feeling in her eyes and a purple haze around her brow, which she has

worn there until it has tangled its pansy-web into an abiding-place,

unto such time as the light is shut out forever, or the waves from the

silver sea curl their mist up thither. I had much marvel then concerning

the hidden mysteries; but Sophie so soon thereafter spake the naughty "I

will," that the silent room forgot to speak to me. I have never heard

sound thence since that morning-time.

"Why does not my father take me in? Am I not his child, even as Sophie?"

I asked these questions of Anna Percival, the while she stood at an

upper window, and looked out over New York's surging lines of life.

The roar of rolling wheels came muffled by distance and the shore of

dwelling-places over which I looked. I counted the church-spires that

threaded the vault of night a little of the upward way. How angels, that

have lived forever in heaven, and souls just free from material things,

must reach down to touch these towering masts, that tell which way the

sails of spirit bend! These city churches, dedicated with solemn service

unto the worship of the great I AM, the Lord God of Adam, the Jehovah

Jireh of Israelites, the Holy Redeemer of Christians,--may the Lord of

heaven and earth bless them _every one_! I looked forth upon them with

tears. There never comes a time, in the busiest hurry of human ways,

that I do not sprinkle a drop of love upon the steps as I pass,--that I

do not wind a tendril of holy feeling up to height of tower or summit of

spire for the great winds to waft onward and upward. God pity the heart

that does not involuntary reverence to God's templed places, made sacred

a thousand fold by every penitential tear, by every throb of devotion,

by every aspiration after the divine existence, from which let down a

little while, we wander, for what we know not! God doth not tell, save

that it is to "love first Him, Sole and Individual," and then the

fragments, the crumbs of Divinity that dwell in Man.

I had not lighted the gas. The street-lamps sent up their rays, making

the room semi-lucent. I took out my tower-key. What matter, if I held

the cold iron thereof to my lips awhile? there was no frost in the March

air then. I sent my restless fingers in and out of the wards, prisoning

them often therein. As thus I stood, with cheek pressed against the

windowpane, looking out upon the city, set into a rim of darkness, from

out of which it flashed its million rays, papa came up.

"I didn't say good-night," he said, coming in, and to the window where

I was. "But how is this, Anna? what has happened to my child? "--and he

pointed to shining drops that glistened on the window-glass.

They must have come from my eyes; I could not deny their authorship, and

so I confessed to tears of gladness at seeing him once more.

He looked fondly down at me through the dim light. I asked him after the

tenant of my premises. He shook his head as one does in great doubt,

said "life was uncertain," and repeated several other axioms, that were

quite apart from his original style, and excessively annoying to me.

"Papa," I said, "why not tell me truly? will this man recover?"

"'Man proposes, God disposes,' my child," he said.

"I don't dispute the general truth," I replied,--"but, particularly, is

this man's life in danger?"

He began to quote somebody's psalm or hymn about "fitful fevers and

fleeting shadows."

My father has a fine, rich, variant power of sound with which to charm

such as have ears to hear, and Anna Percival has been so endowed.

Therefore she listened and waited to the end. When it came, she looked

up into her father's face and said,--

"Papa, I am not a child, to be coaxed into forgetfulness; why will you

not trust me? I am older than Sophie was when you took her in where I

have not been; why will you not make me your friend?"--and some sudden

collision of watery powers among the window-drops, whether from

accretion or otherwise, sent a glistening rivulet down to the barrier of

the sash.

Papa folded his arms, and looked at me. I could not bear to be thus shut

out. I said so.

"Could you bear to be shut in?" he thought, and asked it.

"I think I could. I could bear anything that you gave me; I could keep

anything that you intrusted to my keeping."

Papa looked at me as one does at a cherished vine the outermost edges of

which are just frost-touched; then he folded me to his heart. I felt the

throbbings thereof, and mine began to regret that I had intruded into

the vestibule of his sacred temple; but a certain something went

whispering within me, "You can feed the sacred fire," and I whispered to

the whispering voice, and to my father's ear,--

"You'll take me in, won't you?"

"Come," was the only spoken word.

The room was not cheery; he felt it, and said,--

"You see what the effect is when my Myrtle-Vine is off my walls;" and he

tossed aside books and papers that had evidently been astray for days,

and lay now in his way.

Papa took a key (he wears it too, it seems: that is even more than I do

with my tower's) from a tiny chain of gold about his neck, and unlocked

the door connecting this silent room with his own. He went in, leaving

me outside. He lighted a candle and left it burning there. He came, took

my hand, and, with the leading whereby we guide a child, conducted me in

thither. Then he went out and left me standing, bewildered, there.

I had anticipated something wonderful. What was here? It was a silent

room. The carpet had a river-pattern meandering over its dark-blue

ground: it must have been years since a broom went over it. Strange

medley of furniture was here. I looked upon the walls. Pictures that

must have come from another race and generation hung there. There were

many of them. One side of the room held one only. It was a portrait. I

remembered the original in life. "My mother," I exclaimed. In the room's

centre, surrounded by various articles, was the very boat that I knew

Mary Percival had guided out to sea to save Abraham Axtell. Two tiny

oars lay across it. The paint was faded; the seams were open; it would

hold water no longer. A sense of worship filled me. I looked up at the

portrait. My mother smiled: or was it my fancy? Fancy undoubtedly; but

fancies give comfort sometimes. I looked again at the boat. On its

stern, in small, golden letters, was the name, "Blessing of the Bay,"

the very name given to the first boat built after the Mayflower's keel

touched America's shore. "The name was a good omen," I thought. An

armchair stood before the portrait. A shawl was spread over it. I lifted

up the fringe to see what the shawl covered. Papa had come in.

"Don't do that, Anna," he said.

"Is it any harm, papa?"

"Your mother died sitting in that chair; her hands spread the shawl over

it; it was the last work they did, Anna; it has never since been taken

off."

I dropped the fringe; my touch seemed sacrilegious.

Near the chair was a small cabinet; it looked like an altar, or would

have done so, had my father been a devotee to any religion requiring

visible sacrifice. He opened it.

"Come hither, Anna,"--and I went.

Long, luxuriant bands of softly purplish hair lay within, upon the place

of sacrifice.

"Sophie's is like this," I said.

"And Sophie wears one like unto this," said my father; and he took up

a circlet of shining gold that lay among the tresses. "Sophie's

marriage-ring was hallowed unto her. I gave it the morning she went out

from me." He uttered these words with slow reverence of voice.

Why did self come up?

"You gave Sophie _our_ mother's marriage-ring," I said, "and I"--

"Shall wear this," said my father. "I laid it here, with hers;" and he

gently lifted the sacred hair, and, freeing the ring, put it upon my

finger.

"This is not my marriage-day," I said. "Papa, I don't want it. Besides,

gentlemen don't wear marriage-rings: how came you to?"

"Perhaps I have not worn this one; but will you wear it to please me?"

"Why will it please you? It is not symbolical, is it?"

"It makes you doubly mine," he said; and he led me back to outside life,

with this strange sort of marriage-ring circling with its planet weight

around my finger.

Did my father mean to keep me forever? And with the question came an

answer that left sweet contentment in its pathway; it accorded with the

intent of my heart.

"Father, have you made me your friend?" I asked, in the room that was

terribly tossed, as I restored to place chairs that seemed to have been

in a deplorably long dance, and to have forgotten their home at its

close.

"You wear my ring, you have come into my orbit," he answered.

"That being true, I am as much interested in the flying comet in there

as you are,--for if it strikes you, it hurts me;" and I waited his

answer.

After a moment of pause, it came.

"My poor patient is very ill; his life will burn out, if the fever is

not stayed;" and as the frenzied laugh reached us, Dr. Percival forgot

my presence; he passed his hand slowly across his brow, as if to retouch

memory, and then taking down a volume, he began to read. I waited long.

At last he closed the book suddenly, said to himself, "I'll try it," and

in half a moment my father's white hairs were separated from me by the

impassable barrier of the sick-room.

I waited; he did not come. The chairs were not the only articles that

had lost the commodity of order in my absence. I went to the table upon

which were kept the papers, etc., that lingered there a little while,

and then were thought no longer of. Idly I turned them over. What a

chaos on a small scale! all the elements of literature were represented.

I listened for coming footsteps; none came. "I may as well arrange this

table," I thought, "as wait for the morrow;" and I made a beginning by

sweeping the chaos at once upon the carpet. Then slowly I began picking

them up, one by one, and appointing them stations. My task was nearly

done, when, in turning over some magazines, I came upon a pile of papers

that had been laid between the leaves of one, and ere I was aware of

their presence, they slid down and scattered. I remember having felt

a little surprise that my father should have left them there, but I

hastened to gather them together. The last one of the number, I noticed,

was torn; it had a foreign look. "Father has some new correspondent," I

thought, as I looked at the number of mail-marks upon it. "He doesn't

think much of it, though, or it would have received better treatment;"

and I took a second look at it. A something in the feel of the paper

seemed familiar. "It is good for nothing," I said aloud, and I tossed

it toward the grate, put the pile of papers where I had found them,

surveyed my work with satisfaction, and stood thinking whether or not I

should wait to see my father again--it was more than an hour since

he went up--to say good-night to me. "I will wait a half-hour; if he

doesn't come then, I'll go," I said to the housekeeper, who came to see

that all was right for the night, and to remind me that Redleaf had not

proved very advantageous to my complexion, and to recommend early hours

as a restorative.

In accordance with my promise, I drew a chair forward, placed my feet

upon the fender, and began to study the dying embers that were slowly

falling through the grate-bars. One, larger than usual, burned its way

down. It lighted up, for an instant, the bit of paper, that had not

fallen into the coals. Strange fancy it was that led me to imagine

that I saw a capital A, followed immediately by that unknown quantity

represented by x. I made an effort to gain it, scorched my face, and

burned my fingers; for I touched the grate, in rescuing that which I had

cast into the place of burning.

"This bit of paper, found in New York, had once been integral with that

I had found within the church-yard tower in Redleaf," some inner

voice assured me. "Yes, it is a part of it," I said, for I distinctly

remembered the fragment whose possession I had so rejoiced over. Some

one had written a letter to Miss Axtell; the envelope was torn,--one

part there, another here. The letter itself I had found in the gloom of

the passage-way; for it Miss Axtell had gone out to search, ill, and in

the night; what must its contents have been, to have been worthy of such

effort?--and for the time I quite forgot to connect this man, ill in my

father's house, with the Herbert whose far-out-at-sea voice I had heard

winding up at me through the very death-darkness of the tower. Suddenly

the consciousness scintillated in my soul, and wonderful it was; but the

picture of my dream came in with it, and I said again, "I am ready for

the work which is given me to do," and I waited for its coming till

I grew very weary, holding this fragment of envelope fast, as a ship

clings to its anchor in mild seas. I ventured to knock at the entrance

of my own room. All was silent within. I tried the second time. There

came no answer. I dared not venture on the conquering third.

* * * * *

AT SYRACUSE.

All day my mule with patient tread

Had moved along the plain,

Now o'er the lava's ashen bed,

Now through the sprouting grain,

Across the torrent's rocky lair,

Beneath the aloe-hedge,

Where yellow broom makes sweet the air,

And waves the purple sedge.

Lone were the hills, save where supine

The dozing goatherd lay,

Or, at a rude and broken shrine,

The peasant knelt to pray;

Or where athwart the distant blue

Thin saffron clouds ascend,

As Carbonari, hid from view,

Their smouldering embers tend.

Luxuriant vale or sterile reach,

A mountain temple-crowned

Or inland curve of glistening beach,

The changeful scene surround;

While scarlet poppies burning near,

And citrons' emerald gleam,

Make barren intervals appear

Dim lapses of a dream.

How meekly o'er the meadows gay

The azure flax-blooms spread!

What fragrance on the breeze of May

The almond-blossoms shed!

Wide-branching fig-trees deck the fields

Or round the quarries cling,

And cactus-stalks, with thorny shields,

In wild contortions spring.

Here groves of cork dusk shadows throw,

There vine-leaves lightsome sway,

While chestnut-plumes serenely glow

Above the olives gray;

Tall pines upon the sloping meads

Their sylvan domes uprear,

And rankly the papyrus-reeds

Low cluster in the mere.

And Syracuse with pensive mien,

In solitary pride,

Like an untamed, but throneless queen,

Crouched by the lucent tide;

With honeyed thyme still Hybla teemed,

Its scent each zephyr bore,

And Arethusa's fountain gleamed

Pellucid as of yore.

Methought, upstarting from his bath,

Old Archimedes cried,

"Eureka!" in my silent path,

Whose echoes long replied;

That Pythias, in the sunset-glow,

Rushed by to Damon's arms,

While from the Tyrant's Cave below

Moaned impotent alarms.

And where upon a sculptured stone

The ruined arch beside,

A hoary, bronzed, and wrinkled crone

The twirling distaff plied,--

Love with exalted Reason fraught

In Plato's accents came,

And Truth by Paul sublimely taught

Relumed her virgin flame.

The ancient sepulchres that rose

Along the voiceless street

Time's myriad vistas seemed to close

And bid life's waves retreat,--

As if intrusive footsteps stole

Beyond their mortal sphere,

And felt the awed and eager soul

Immortal comrades near.

The moss-grown ramparts loom in sight

Like warders of the deep,

Where, flushed with evening's amber light,

The havened waters sleep;

Unfurrowed by a Roman keel

Or Carthaginian oar,

The speared and burnished galleys now

Their slumber break no more.

But when the distant convent-bell,

Ere Day's last smiles depart,

With mellow cadence pleading fell

Upon my brooding heart,--

And Memory's phantoms thick and fast

Their fond illusions bred,

From peerless spirits of the past,

And wrecks of ages fled,--

Joy broke the spell; an emblem blest

That lonely harbor cheered:

As if to greet her pilgrim guest,

My country's flag appeared!

Its radiant folds auroral streamed

Amid that haunted air,

And every star prophetic beamed

With Freedom's triumph there!

* * * * *

METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY.

All important changes in the social and political condition of man,

whether brought about by violent convulsions or effected gradually, are

at once recognized as eras in the history of humanity. But on the broad

high-road of civilization along which men are ever marching, they pass

by unnoticed the landmarks of intellectual progress, unless they chance

to have some direct bearing on what is called the practical side of

life. Such an era marked the early part of our own century; and though

at the time a thousand events seemed more full-freighted for the world

than the discovery of some old bones at the quarry of Montmartre, and

though many a man seemed greater in the estimation of the hour than the

professor at the Jardin des Plantes who strove to reconstruct these

fragments, yet the story that they told lighted up all the past, and

showed its true connection with the present. Cuvier, as one sees him in

a retrospective glance at the wonderful period in which he lived, and

which brought to the surface all its greatest elements,--one among a

throng of exceptional men, generals, soldiers, statesmen, as well as

men of commanding intellect in literary and scientific pursuits,--seems

always standing at the meeting-point between the past and present. His

gaze is ever fixed upon the path along which Creation has moved, and, as

he travels back, recovering step by step the road that has been lost to

man in apparently impenetrable darkness and mystery, the light brightens

and broadens before him, and seems to tempt him on into the dim regions

where the great mystery of Creation lies hidden.

Before the year 1800, men had never suspected that their home had been

tenanted in past times by a set of beings totally different from those

that inhabit it now; still farther was it from their thought to imagine

that creation after creation had followed each other in successive ages,

every one stamped with a character peculiarly its own. It was Cuvier

who, aroused to new labors by the hint he received from the bones

unearthed at Montmartre, to which all his vast knowledge of living

animals gave him no clue, established by means of most laborious

investigations the astounding conclusion, that, prior to the existence

of the animals and plants now living, this globe had been the theatre of

another set of beings, every trace of whom had vanished from the face of

the earth. To his alert and active intellect and powerful imagination a

word spoken out of the past was pregnant with meaning; and when he had

once convinced himself that he had found a single animal that had no

counterpart among living beings, it gave him the key to many mysteries.

It may be doubted whether men's eyes are ever opened to truths which,

though new to them, are old to God, till the time has come when they

can apprehend their meaning and turn them to good account. It certainly

seems, that, when such a revelation has once been made, light pours in

upon it from every side; and this is especially true of the case in

point. The existence of a past creation once suggested, confirmation

was found in a thousand facts overlooked before. The solid crust of the

earth gave up its dead, and from the snows of Siberia, from the soil of

Italy, from caves of Central Europe, from mines, from the rent sides of

mountains and from their highest peaks, from the coral beds of ancient

oceans, the varied animals that had possessed the earth ages before man

was created spoke to us of the past.

No sooner were these facts established, than the relation between the

extinct world and the world of to-day became the subject of extensive

researches and comparisons; innumerable theories were started to account

for the differences, and to determine the periods and manner of the

change. It is not my intention to enter now at any length upon the

subject of geological succession, though I hope to return to it

hereafter in a series of papers upon that and kindred topics; but I

allude to it here, before presenting some views upon the maintenance of

organic types as they exist in our own period, for the following reason.

Since it has been shown that from the beginning of Creation till the

present time the physical history of the world has been divided into

a succession of distinct periods, each one accompanied by its

characteristic animals and plants, so that our own epoch is only the

closing one in the long procession of the ages, naturalists have been

constantly striving to find the connecting link between them all, and to

prove that each such creation has been a normal and natural growth

out of the preceding one. With this aim they have tried to adapt the

phenomena of reproduction among animals to the problem of creation, and

to make the beginning of life in the individual solve that great mystery

of the beginning of life in the world. In other words, they have

endeavored to show that the fact of successive generations is analogous

to that of successive creations, and that the processes by which

animals, once created, are maintained unchanged during the period to

which they belong will account also for their primitive existence.

I wish, at the outset, to forestall any such misapplication of the facts

I am about to state, and to impress upon my readers the difference

between these two subjects of inquiry,--since it by no means follows,

that, because individuals are endowed with the power of reproducing and

perpetuating their kind, they are in any sense self-originating. Still

less probable does this appear, when we consider, that, since man has

existed upon the earth, no appreciable change has taken place in the

animal or vegetable world; and so far as our knowledge goes, this would

seem to be equally true of all the periods preceding ours, each one

maintaining unbroken to its close the organic character impressed upon

it at the beginning.

The question I propose to consider here is simply the mode by which

organic types are preserved as they exist at present. Every one has

a summary answer to this question in the statement, that all these

short-lived individuals reproduce themselves, and thus maintain their

kinds. But the modes of reproduction are so varied, the changes some

animals undergo during their growth so extraordinary, the phenomena

accompanying these changes so startling, that, in the pursuit of the

subject, a new and independent science--that of Embryology--has grown

up, of the utmost importance in the present state of our knowledge.

The prevalent ideas respecting the reproduction of animals are made

up from the daily observation of those immediately about us in the

barn-yard and the farm. But the phenomena here are comparatively simple,

and easily traced. The moment we extend our observations beyond our

cattle and fowls, and enter upon a wider field of investigation, we are

met by the most startling facts. Not the least baffling of these are

the disproportionate numbers of males and females in certain kinds

of animals, their unequal development, as well as the extraordinary

difference between the sexes among certain species, so that they seem as

distinct from each other as if they belonged to separate groups of the

Animal Kingdom. We have close at hand one of the most striking instances

of disproportionate numbers in the household of the Bee, with its one

fertile female charged with the perpetuation of the whole community,

while her innumerable sterile sisterhood, amid a few hundred drones,

work for its support in other ways. Another most interesting chapter

connected with the maintenance of animals is found in the various ways

and different degrees of care with which they provide for their progeny:

some having fulfilled their whole duty toward their offspring when they

have given them birth; others seeking hiding-places for the eggs they

have laid, and watching with a certain care over their development;

others feeding their young till they can provide for themselves, and

building nests, or burrowing holes in the ground, or constructing earth

mounds for their shelter.

But, whatever be the difference in the outward appearance or the habits

of animals, one thing is common to them all without exception: at some

period of their lives they produce eggs, which, being fertilized, give

rise to beings of the same kind as the parent. This mode of generation

is universal, and is based upon that harmonious antagonism between the

sexes, that contrast between the male and the female element, that at

once divides and unites the whole Animal Kingdom. And although this

exchange of influence is not kept up by an equality of numeric

relations,--since not only are the sexes very unequally divided in some

kinds of animals, but the male and female elements are even combined

in certain types, so that the individuals are uniformly

hermaphrodites,--yet I firmly believe that this numerical distribution,

however unequal it may seem to us, is not without its ordained accuracy

and balance. He who has assigned its place to every leaf in the thickest

forest, according to an arithmetical law which prescribes to each its

allotted share of room on the branch where it grows, will not have

distributed animal life with less care.

But although reproduction by eggs is common to all animals, it is only

one among several modes of multiplication. We have seen that certain

animals, besides the ordinary process of generation, also increase their

number naturally and constantly by self-division, so that out of one

individual many individuals may arise by a natural breaking up of

the whole body into distinct surviving parts. This process of normal

self-division may take place at all periods of life: it may form an

early phase of metamorphosis, as in the Hydroid of our common Aurelia,

described in the last article; or it may even take place before the

young is formed in the egg. In such a case, the egg itself divides into

a number of portions: two, four, eight, or even twelve and sixteen

individuals being normally developed from every egg, in consequence of

this singular process of segmentation of the yolk,--which takes place,

indeed, in all eggs, but in those which produce but one individual is

only a stage in the natural growth of the yolk during its transformation

into a young embryo. As the facts here alluded to are not very familiar

even to professional naturalists, I may be permitted to describe them

more in detail.

No one who has often walked across a sand-beach in summer can have

failed to remark what the children call "sand saucers." The name is not

a bad one, with the exception that the saucer lacks a bottom; but the

form of these circular bands of sand is certainly very like a saucer

with the bottom knocked out. Hold one of them against the light and you

will see that it is composed of countless transparent spheres, each of

the size of a small pin's head. These are the eggs of our common Natica

or Sea-Snail. Any one who remembers the outline of this shell will

easily understand the process by which its eggs are left lying on the

beach in the form I have described. They are laid in the shape of a

broad, short ribbon, pressed between the mantle and the shell, and,

passing out, cover the outside of the shell, over which they are rolled

up, with a kind of glutinous envelope,--for the eggs are held together

by a soft glutinous substance. Thus surrounded, the shell, by its

natural movements along the beach, soon collects the sand upon it, the

particles of which in contact with the glutinous substance of the eggs

quickly forms a cement that binds the whole together in a kind of paste.

When consolidated, it drops off from the shell, having taken the mould

of its form, as it were, and retaining the curve which distinguishes the

outline of the Natica. Although these saucers look perfectly round, it

will be found that the edges are not soldered together, but are simply

lapped one over the other. Every one of the thousand little spheres

crowded into such a circle of sand contains an egg. If we follow the

development of these eggs, we shall presently find that each one divides

into two halves, these again dividing to make four portions, then the

four breaking up into eight, and so on, till we may have the yolks

divided into no less than sixteen distinct parts. Thus far this process

of segmentation is similar to that of the egg in other animals; but, as

we shall see hereafter, it seems usually to result only in a change in

the quality of its substance, for the portions coalesce again to form

one mass, from which a new individual is finally sketched out, at first

as a simple embryo, and gradually undergoing all the changes peculiar to

its kind, till a new-born animal escapes from the egg. But in the case

of the Natica this regular segmentation changes its character, and at a

certain period, in a more or less advanced stage of the segmentation,

according to the species, each portion of the yolk assumes an

individuality of its own, and, instead of uniting again with the rest,

begins to subdivide for itself. In our _Natica heros_, for instance, the

common large gray Sea-Snail of our coast, this change takes place when

the yolk has subdivided into eight parts. At that time each portion

begins a life of its own, not reuniting with its seven twin portions; so

that in the end, instead of a single embryo growing out of this yolk,

we have eight embryos arising from a single yolk, each one of which

undergoes a series of developments similar in all respects to that by

which a single embryo is formed from each egg in other animals. We have

other Naticas in which the normal number is twelve, others again in

which no less than sixteen individuals arise from one yolk. But this

process of segmentation, though in these animals it leads to such a

multiplication of individuals, is exactly the same as that discovered

by K.E. von Baer in the egg of the Frog, and described and figured by

Professor Bischof in the egg of the Rabbit, the Dog, the Guinea-Pig,

and the Deer, while other embryologists have traced the same process in

Birds, Reptiles, and Fishes, as well as in a variety of Articulates,

Mollusks, and Radiates.

Multiplication by division occurs also normally in adult animals that

have completed their growth. This is especially frequent among Worms;

and strange to say, there are species in this Class which never lay eggs

before they have already multiplied themselves by self-division.

Another mode of increase is that by budding, as in the Corals and many

other Radiates. The most common instance of budding we do not, however,

generally associate with this mode of multiplication in the Animal

Kingdom, because we are so little accustomed to compare and generalize

upon phenomena that we do not see to be directly connected with one

another. I allude here to the budding of trees, which year after year

enlarge by the addition of new individuals arising from buds. I trust

that the usual acceptation of the word _individual_, used in science

simply to designate singleness of existence, will not obscure a correct

appreciation of the true relation of buds to their parents and to the

beings arising from them. These buds have the same organic significance,

whether they drop from the parent stock to become distinct individuals

in the common acceptation of the term, or remain connected with

the parent stock, as in Corals and in trees, thus forming growing

communities of combined individuals. Nor will it matter much in

connection with the subject under discussion, whether these buds start

from the surface of an animal or sprout in its interior, to be cast off

in due time. Neither is the inequality of buds, varying more or less

among themselves, any sound reason for overlooking their essential

identity of structure. We have seen instances of this among Acalephs,

and it is still more apparent among trees which produce simultaneously

leaf and flower-buds, and even separate male and female flower-buds, as

is the case with our Hazels, Oaks, etc.

It is not, however, my purpose here to describe the various modes of

reproduction and multiplication among animals and plants, nor to discuss

the merits of the different opinions respecting their numeric increase,

according to which some persons hold that all types originated from a

few primitive individuals, while others believe that the very numbers

now in existence are part of the primitive plan, and essential to the

harmonious relations existing between the animal and vegetable world. I

would only attempt to show that in the plan of Creation the maintenance

of types has been secured through a variety of means, but under such

limitations, that, within a narrow range of individual differences, all

representatives of one kind of animals agree with one another, whether

derived from eggs, or produced by natural division, or by budding; and

that the constancy of these normal processes of reproduction, as well as

the uniformity of their results, precludes the idea that the specific

differences among animals have been produced by the very means that

secure their permanence of type. The statement itself implies a

contradiction, for it tells us that the same influences prevent and

produce change in the condition of the Animal Kingdom. Facts are all

against it; there is not a fact known to science by which any single

being, in the natural process of reproduction and multiplication, has

diverged from the course natural to its kind, or in which a single kind

has been transformed into any other. But this once established, and

setting aside the idea that Embryology is to explain to us the origin as

well as the maintenance of life, it yet has most important lessons for

us, and the field it covers is constantly enlarging as the study

is pursued. The first and most important result of the science of

Embryology was one for which the scientific world was wholly unprepared.

Down to our own century, nothing could have been farther from the

conception of anatomists and physiologists than the fact now generally

admitted, that all animals, without exception, arise from eggs. Though

Linnaeus had already expressed this great truth in the sentence so often

quoted,--"Omne vivum ex ovo,"--yet he was not himself aware of the

significance of his own statement, for the existence of the Mammalian

egg was not then dreamed of. Since then the discoveries of von Baer and

others have shown not only that the egg is common to all living beings

without exception, from the lowest Radiate to the highest Vertebrate,

but that its structure is at first identical in all, composed of the

same primitive elements and undergoing exactly the same process of

growth up to the time when it assumes the special character peculiar

to its kind. This is unquestionably one of the most comprehensive

generalizations of modern times.

In common parlance, we understand by an egg something of the nature of a

hen's egg, a mass of yolk surrounded with white and inclosed in a shell.

But to the naturalist, the envelopes of the egg, which vary greatly in

different animals, are mere accessories, while the true egg, or, as it

is called, the ovarian egg, with which the life of every living being

begins, is a minute sphere, uniform in appearance throughout the Animal

Kingdom, though its intimate structure is hardly to be reached even with

the highest powers of the microscope. Some account of the earlier stages

of growth in the egg may not be uninteresting to my readers. I will

take the egg of the Turtle as an illustration, since that has been the

subject of my own especial study; but, as I do not intend to carry my

remarks beyond the period during which the history of all vertebrate

eggs is the same, they may be considered of more general application.

It is well known that all organic structures, whether animal or

vegetable, are composed of cells. These cells consist of an outside bag

inclosing an inner sac, and within that sac there is a dot. The outer

bag is filled with semi-transparent fluid, the inner one with a

perfectly transparent fluid, while the dot is dark and distinct. In the

language of our science, the outer envelope is called the Ectoblast, the

inner sac the Mesoblast, and the dot the Entoblast. Although they are

peculiarly modified to suit the different organs, these cells never lose

this peculiar structure; it may be traced even in the long drawn-out

cells of the flesh, which are like mere threads, but yet have their

outer and inner sac and their dot,--at least while forming.

In the Turtle the ovary is made up of such cells, spherical at first,

but becoming hexagonal under pressure, when they are more closely packed

together. Between these ovarian cells the egg originates, and is at

first a mere granule, so minute, that, when placed under a very high

magnifying power, it is but just visible. This is the incipient egg,

and at this stage it differs from the surrounding cells only in being

somewhat darker, like a drop of oil, and opaque, instead of transparent

and clear like the surrounding cells. Under the microscope it is found

to be composed of two substances only: namely, oil and albumen. It

increases gradually, and when it has reached a size at which it requires

to be magnified one thousand times in order to be distinctly visible,

the outside assumes the aspect of a membrane thicker than the interior

and forming a coating around it. This is owing not to an addition from

outside, but to a change in the consistency of the substance at the

surface, which becomes more closely united, more compact, than the

loose mass in the centre. Presently we perceive a bright, luminous,

transparent spot on the upper side of the egg, near the wall or outer

membrane. This is produced by a concentration of the albumen, which

now separates from the oil and collects at the upper side of the egg,

forming this light spot, called by naturalists the Purkinjean vesicle,

after its discoverer, Purkinje. When this albuminous spot becomes

somewhat larger, there arises a little dot in the centre,--the germinal

dot, as it is called. And now we have a perfect cell-structure,

differing from an ordinary cell only in having the inner sac, inclosing

the dot, on the side, instead of in the centre. The outer membrane

corresponds to the Ectoblast, or outer cell sac, the Purkinjean vesicle

to the Mesoblast, or inner cell sac, while the dot in the centre answers

to the Entoblast. When the Purkinjean vesicle has completed its growth,

it bursts and disappears; but the mass contained in it remains in the

same region, and retains the same character, though no longer inclosed

as before.

At a later stage of the investigation, we see why the Purkinjean

vesicle, or inner sac of the egg, is placed on the side, instead of

being at the centre, as in the cell. It arises on that side along which

the axis of the little Turtle is to lie,--the opposite side being that

corresponding to the lower part of the body. Thus the lighter, more

delicate part of the substance of the egg is collected where the upper

cavity of the animal, inclosing the nervous system and brain, is to

be, while the heavy oily part remains beneath, where the lower cavity,

inclosing all the organs of mere material animal existence, is

afterwards developed. In other words, when the egg is a mere mass of

oil and albumen, not indicating as yet in any way the character of the

future animal, and discernible only by the microscope, the distinction

is indicated between the brains and the senses, between the organs of

instinct and sensation and those of mere animal functions. At that stage

of its existence, however, when the egg consists of an outer sac, an

inner sac, and a dot, its resemblance to a cell is unmistakable; and,

in fact, an egg, when forming, is nothing but a single cell. This

comparison is important, because there are both animals and plants

which, during their whole existence, consist of a single organic cell,

while others are made up of countless millions of such cells. Between

these two extremes we have all degrees, from the innumerable cells that

build up the body of the highest Vertebrate to the single-celled Worm,

and from the myriad cells of the Oak to the single-celled Alga.

But while we recognize the identity of cell-structure and egg-structure

at this point in the history of the egg, we must not forget the great

distinction between them,--namely, that, while the cells remain

component parts of the whole body, the egg separates itself and assumes

a distinct individual existence. Even now, while still microscopically

small, its individuality begins; other substances collect around it, are

absorbed into it, nourish it, serve it. Every being is a centre about

which many other things cluster and converge, and which has the power to

assimilate to itself the necessary elements of its life. Every egg is

already such a centre, differing from the cells that surround it by

no material elements, but by the principle of life in which its

individuality consists, which is to make it a new being, instead of a

fellow-cell with those that build up the body of the parent animal and

remain component parts of it. This intangible something is the subtile

element that eludes our closest analysis; it is the germ of the

immaterial principle according to which the new being is to develop. The

physical germ we see; the spiritual germ we cannot see, though we may

trace its action on the material elements through which it is expressed.

The first change in the yolk, after the formation of the Purkinjean

vesicle, is the appearance of minute dots near the wall at the side

opposite the vesicle. These increase in number and size, but remain

always on that half of the yolk, leaving the other half of the globe

clear. One can hardly conceive the beauty of the egg as seen through the

microscope at this period of its growth, when the whole yolk is divided,

with the dark granules on one side, while the other side, where the

transparent halo of the vesicle is seen, is brilliant with light. With

the growth of the egg these granules enlarge, become more distinct, and

under the microscope some of them appear to be hollow. They are not

round in form, but rather irregular, and under the effect of light they

are exceedingly brilliant. Presently, instead of being scattered equally

over the space they occupy, they form clusters,--constellations, as it

were,--and between these clusters are clear spaces, produced by the

separation of the albumen from the oil.

At this period of its growth there is a wonderful resemblance between

the appearance of the egg, as seen under the microscope, and

the firmament with the celestial bodies. The little clusters or

constellations are unequally divided: here and there they are two and

two like double stars, or sometimes in threes or fives, or in sevens,

recalling the Pleiades, and the clear albuminous tracks between are like

the empty spaces separating the stars.

This is no fanciful simile: it is simply true that such is the actual

appearance of the yolk at this time; and the idea cannot but suggest

itself to the mind, that the thoughts which have been at work in the

universe are collected and repeated here within this little egg, which

offers us a miniature diagram of the firmament. This is one of the first

changes of the yolk, ending by forming regular clusters with a sort

of net-work of albumen between, and then this phase of the growth is

complete.

Now the clusters of the yolk separate, and next the albumen in its turn

concentrates into clusters, and the dark bodies, which have been till

now the striking points, give way to the lighter spheres of albumen

between which the clusters are scattered. Presently the whole becomes

redissolved: these stages of the growth being completed, this little

system of worlds is melted, as it were: but while it undergoes this

process, the albuminous spheres, after being dissolved, arrange

themselves in concentric rings, alternating with rings of granules,

around the Purkinjean vesicle. At this time we are again reminded of

Saturn and its rings, which seems to have its counterpart here. These

rings disappear, and now once more out of the yolk mass loom up little

dots as minute as before; but they are round instead of angular, and

those nearest the Purkinjean vesicle are smaller and clearer, containing

less of oil than the larger and darker ones on the opposite side. From

this time the yolk begins to take its color, the oily cells assuming a

yellow tint, while the albuminous cells near the vesicle become whiter.

Up to this period the processes in the different cells seem to have been

controlled by the different character of the substance of each; but now

it would seem that the changes become more independent of physical or

material influences, for each kind of cell undergoes the same process.

They all assume the ordinary cell character, with outer and inner

sac,--the inner sac forming on the side, like the Purkinjean vesicle

itself; but it does not retain this position, for, as soon as its wall

is formed and it becomes a distinct body, it floats away from the side

and takes its place in the centre. Next there arise within it a number

of little bodies crystalline in form, and which actually are wax or oil

crystals. They increase with great rapidity, the inner sac or mesoblast

becoming sometimes so crowded with them, that its shape is affected by

the protrusion of their angles. This process goes on till all the cells

are so filled by the mesoblast, with its myriad brood of cells, that

the outer sac or ectoblast becomes a mere halo around it. Then every

mesoblast contracts; the contraction deepens, till it is divided across

in both directions, separating thus into four parts, then into eight,

then into sixteen, and so on, till every cell is crowded with hundreds

of minute mesoblasts, each containing the indication of a central dot or

entoblast. At this period every yolk cell is itself like a whole yolk;

for each cell is as full of lesser cells as the yolk-bag itself.

When the mesoblast has become thus infinitely subdivided into hundreds

of minute spheres, the ectoblast bursts, and the new generations of

cells thus set free collect in that part of the egg where the embryonic

disk is to arise. This process of segmentation continues to go on

downward till the whole yolk is taken in. These myriad cells are in

fact the component parts of the little Turtle that is to be. They will

undergo certain modifications, to become flesh-cells, blood-cells,

brain-cells, and so on, adapting themselves to the different organs they

are to build up; but they have as much their definite and appointed

share in the formation of the body now as at any later stage of its

existence.

We are so accustomed to see life maintained through a variety of

complicated organs that we are apt to think this the only way in which

it can be manifested; and considering how closely life and the organs

through which it is expressed are united, it is natural that we should

believe them inseparably connected. But embryological investigations

have shown us that in the commencement none of these organs are formed,

and yet that the principle of life is active, and that even after they

exist, they cannot act, inclosed as they are. In the little Chicken, for

instance, before it is hatched, the lungs cannot breathe, for they

are surrounded by fluid, the senses are inactive, for they receive no

impressions from without, and all those functions establishing its

relations with the external world lie dormant, for as yet they are not

needed. But they are there, though, as we have seen in the Turtle's egg,

they were not there at the beginning. How, then, are they formed? We may

answer, that the first function of every organ is to make itself. The

building material is, as it were, provided by the process which divides

the yolk into innumerable cells, and by the gradual assimilation and

modification of this material the organs arise. Before the lungs

breathe, they make themselves; before the stomach digests, it makes

itself; before the organs of the senses act, they make themselves;

before the brain thinks, it makes itself; in a word, before the whole

system works, it makes itself; its first office is self-structure.

At the period described above, however, when the new generations of

cells are just set free and have taken their place in the region where

the new being is to develop, nothing is to be seen of the animal whose

life is beginning there, except the filmy disk lying on the surface of

the yolk. Next come the layers of white or albumen around the egg, and

last the shell which is formed from the lime in the albumen. There is

always more or less of lime in albumen, and the hardening of the last

layer of white into shell is owing only to the greater proportion of

lime in its substance. In the layer next to the shell there is enough of

lime to consolidate it slightly, and it forms a membrane; but the white,

the membrane, and the shell have all the same quality, except that the

proportion of lime is more or less in the different layers.

But, as I have said, the various envelopes of eggs, the presence or

absence of a shell, and the absolute size of the egg, are accessory

features, belonging not to the egg as egg, but to the special kind of

being from which the egg has arisen and into which it is to develop.

What is common to all eggs and essential to them all is that which

corresponds to the yolk in the bird's egg. But their later mode of

development, the degree of perfection acquired by the egg and germ

before being laid, the term required for the germ to come to maturity,

as well as the frequency and regularity of the broods, are all features

varying with the different kinds of animals. There are those that lay

eggs once a year at a particular season and then die; so that their

existence may be compared to that of annual plants, undergoing their

natural growth in a season, to exist during the remainder of the year

only in the form of an egg or seed. The majority of Insects belong to

this category, as do also our large Jelly-Fishes; many others have a

slow growth, extending over several years, during which they reach their

maturity, and for a longer or shorter time produce broods at fixed

intervals; while others, again, reach their mature state very rapidly,

and produce a number of successive generations in a comparatively short

time, it may be in a single season.

I do not intend to enter upon the chapter of special differences of

development among animals, for in this article I have aimed only to show

that the egg lives, that it is itself the young animal, and that

the vital principle is active in it from the earliest period of its

existence. But I would say to all young students of Embryology that

their next aim should be to study those intermediate phases in the life

of a young animal, when, having already acquired independent existence,

it has not yet reached the condition of the adult. Here lies an

inexhaustible mine of valuable information unappropriated, from which,

as my limited experience has already taught me, may be gathered the

evidence for the solution of the most perplexing problems of our

science. Here we shall find the true tests by which to determine the

various kinds and different degrees of affinity which animals now living

bear not only to one another, but also to those that have preceded them

in past times. Here we shall find, not a material connection by which

blind laws of matter have evolved the whole creation out of a single

germ, but the clue to that intellectual conception which spans the whole

series of the geological ages and is perfectly consistent in all its

parts. In this sense the present will indeed explain the past, and the

young naturalist is happy who enters upon his life of investigation now,

when the problems that were dark to all his predecessors have received

new light from the sciences of Palaeontology and Embryology.

* * * * *

BLIND TOM.

Only a germ in a withered flower,

That the rain will bring out--sometime.

Sometime in the year 1850, a tobacco-planter in Southern Georgia

(Perry H. Oliver by name) bought a likely negro woman with some other

field-hands. She was stout, tough-muscled, willing, promised to be a

remunerative servant; her baby, however, a boy a few months old, was

only thrown in as a makeweight to the bargain, or rather because Mr.

Oliver would not consent to separate mother and child. Charity only

could have induced him to take the picaninny, in fact, for he was but

a lump of black flesh, born blind, and with the vacant grin of idiocy,

they thought, already stamped on his face. The two slaves were

purchased, I believe, from a trader: it has been impossible, therefore,

for me to ascertain where Tom was born, or when. Georgia field-hands

are not accurate as Jews in preserving their genealogy; _they_ do

not anticipate a Messiah. A white man, you know, has that vague hope

unconsciously latent in him, that he is, or shall give birth to, the

great man of his race, a helper, a provider for the world's hunger: so

he grows jealous with his blood; the dead grandfather may have presaged

the possible son; besides, it is a debt he owes to this coming Saul to

tell him whence he came. There are some classes, free and slave, out of

whom society has crushed this hope: they have no clan, no family-names

among them, therefore. This idiot-boy, chosen by God to be anointed with

the holy chrism, is only "Tom,"--"Blind Tom," they call him in all the

Southern States, with a kind cadence always, being proud and fond

of him; and yet--nothing but Tom? That is pitiful. Just a

mushroom-growth,--unkinned, unexpected, not hoped for, for generations,

owning no name to purify and honor and give away when he is dead. His

mother, at work to-day in the Oliver plantations, can never comprehend

why her boy is famous; this gift of God to him means nothing to her.

Nothing to him, either, which is saddest of all; he is unconscious,

wears his crown as an idiot might. Whose fault is that? Deeper than

slavery the evil lies.

Mr. Oliver did his duty well to the boy, being an observant and

thoroughly kind master. The plantation was large, heartsome, faced the

sun, swarmed with little black urchins, with plenty to eat, and nothing

to do.

All that Tom required, as he fattened out of baby- into boyhood, was

room in which to be warm, on the grass-patch, or by the kitchen-fires,

to be stupid, flabby, sleepy,--kicked and petted alternately by the

other hands. He had a habit of crawling up on the porches and verandas

of the mansion and squatting there in the sun, waiting for a kind word

or touch from those who went in and out. He seldom failed to receive it.

Southerners know nothing of the physical shiver of aversion with which

even the Abolitionists of the North touch the negro: so Tom, through his

very helplessness, came to be a sort of pet in the family, a playmate,

occasionally, of Mr. Oliver's own infant children. The boy, creeping

about day after day in the hot light, was as repugnant an object as the

lizards in the neighboring swamp, and promised to be of as little use to

his master. He was of the lowest negro type, from which only field-hands

can be made,--coal-black, with protruding heels, the ape-jaw,

blubber-lips constantly open, the sightless eyes closed, and the head

thrown far back on the shoulders, lying on the back, in fact, a habit

which he still retains, and which adds to the imbecile character of

the face. Until he was seven years of age, Tom was regarded on the

plantation as an idiot, not unjustly; for at the present time his

judgment and reason rank but as those of a child four years old. He

showed a dog-like affection for some members of the household,--a son

of Mr. Oliver's especially,--and a keen, nervous sensitiveness to the

slightest blame or praise from them,--possessed, too, a low animal

irritability of temper, giving way to inarticulate yelps of passion when

provoked. That is all, so far; we find no other outgrowth of intellect

or soul from the boy: just the same record as that of thousands of

imbecile negro-children. Generations of heathendom and slavery have

dredged the inherited brains and temperaments of such children tolerably

clean of all traces of power or purity,--palsied the brain, brutalized

the nature. Tom apparently fared no better than his fellows.

It was not until 1857 that those phenomenal powers latent in the boy

were suddenly developed, which stamped him the anomaly he is to-day.

One night, sometime in the summer of that year, Mr. Oliver's family were

wakened by the sound of music in the drawing-room: not only the simple

airs, but the most difficult exercises usually played by his daughters,

were repeated again and again, the touch of the musician being timid,

but singularly true and delicate. Going down, they found Tom, who had

been left asleep in the hall, seated at the piano in an ecstasy of

delight, breaking out at the end of each successful fugue into shouts of

laughter, kicking his heels and clapping his hands. This was the first

time he had touched the piano.

Naturally, Tom became a nine-days' wonder on the plantation. He was

brought in as an after-dinner's amusement; visitors asked for him as the

show of the place. There was hardly a conception, however, in the minds

of those who heard him, of how deep the cause for wonder lay. The

planters' wives and daughters of the neighborhood were not people

who would be apt to comprehend music as a science, or to use it as a

language; they only saw in the little negro, therefore, a remarkable

facility for repeating the airs they drummed on their pianos,--in a

different manner from theirs, it is true,--which bewildered them. They

noticed, too, that, however the child's fingers fell on the keys,

cadences followed, broken, wandering, yet of startling beauty and

pathos. The house-servants, looking in through the open doors at the

little black figure perched up before the instrument, while unknown,

wild harmony drifted through the evening air, had a better conception

of him. He was possessed; some ghost spoke through him: which is a fair

enough definition of genius for a Georgian slave to offer.

Mr. Oliver, as we said, was indulgent. Tom was allowed to have constant

access to the piano; in truth, he could not live without it; when

deprived of music now, actual physical debility followed: the gnawing

Something had found its food at last. No attempt was made, however, to

give him any scientific musical teaching; nor--I wish it distinctly

borne in mind--has he ever at any time received such instruction.

The planter began to wonder what kind of a creature this was which he

had bought, flesh and soul. In what part of the unsightly baby-carcass

had been stowed away these old airs, forgotten by every one else,

and some of them never heard by the child but once, but which he now

reproduced, every note intact, and with whatever quirk or quiddity of

style belonged to the person who originally had sung or played them?

Stranger still the harmonies which he had never heard, had learned from

no man. The sluggish breath of the old house, being enchanted, grew into

quaint and delicate whims of music, never the same, changing every day.

Never glad: uncertain, sad minors always, vexing the content of the

hearer,--one inarticulate, unanswered question of pain in all, making

them one. Even the vulgarest listener was troubled, hardly knowing

why,--how sorry Tom's music was!

At last the time came when the door was to be opened, when some

listener, not vulgar, recognizing the child as God made him, induced his

master to remove him from the plantation. Something ought to be done for

him; the world ought not to be cheated of this pleasure; besides--the

money that could be made! So Mr. Oliver, with a kindly feeling for Tom,

proud, too, of this agreeable monster which his plantation had grown,

and sensible that it was a more fruitful source of revenue than

tobacco-fields, set out with the boy, literally to seek their fortune.

The first exhibition of him was given, I think, in Savannah, Georgia;

thence he was taken to Charleston, Richmond, to all the principal cities

and towns in the Southern States.

This was in 1858. From that time until the present Tom has lived

constantly an open life, petted, feted, his real talent befogged by

exaggeration, and so pampered and coddled that one might suppose the

only purpose was to corrupt and wear it out. For these reasons this

statement is purposely guarded, restricted to plain, known facts.

No sooner had Tom been brought before the public than the pretensions

put forward by his master commanded the scrutiny of both scientific

and musical skeptics. His capacities were subjected to rigorous tests.

Fortunately for the boy: for, so tried,--harshly, it is true, yet

skilfully,--they not only bore the trial, but acknowledged the touch

as skilful; every day new powers were developed, until he reached his

limit, beyond which it is not probable he will ever pass. That limit,

however, establishes him as an anomaly in musical science.

Physically, and in animal temperament, this negro ranks next to the

lowest Guinea type: with strong appetites and gross bodily health,

except in one particular, which will be mentioned hereafter. In the

every-day apparent intellect, in reason or judgment, he is but one

degree above an idiot,--incapable of comprehending the simplest

conversation on ordinary topics, amused or enraged with trifles such

as would affect a child of three years old. On the other side, his

affections are alive, even vehement, delicate in their instinct as a

dog's or an infant's; he will detect the step of any one dear to him in

a crowd, and burst into tears, if not kindly spoken to.

His memory is so accurate that he can repeat, without the loss of a

syllable, a discourse of fifteen minutes in length, of which he does

not understand a word. Songs, too, in French or German, after a single

hearing, he renders not only literally in words, but in notes, style,

and expression. His voice, however, is discordant, and of small compass.

In music, this boy of twelve years, born blind, utterly ignorant of a

note, ignorant of every phase of so-called musical science, interprets

severely classical composers with a clearness of conception in which

he excels, and a skill in mechanism equal to that of our second-rate

artists. His concerts usually include any themes selected by the

audience from the higher grades of Italian or German opera. His

comprehension of the meaning of music, as a prophetic or historical

voice which few souls utter and fewer understand, is clear and vivid: he

renders it thus, with whatever mastery of the mere material part he may

possess, fingering, dramatic effects, etc.: these are but means to him,

not an end, as with most artists. One could fancy that Tom was never

traitor to the intent or soul of the theme. What God or the Devil meant

to say by this or that harmony, what the soul of one man cried aloud to

another in it, this boy knows, and is to that a faithful witness. His

deaf, uninstructed soul has never been tampered with by art-critics who

know the body well enough of music, but nothing of the living creature

within. The world is full of these vulgar souls that palter with eternal

Nature and the eternal Arts, blind to the Word who dwells among us

therein. Tom, or the daemon in Tom, was not one of them.

With regard to his command of the instrument, two points have been

especially noted by musicians: the unusual frequency of occurrence of

_tours de force_ in his playing, and the scientific precision of his

manner of touch. For example, in a progression of augmented chords, his

mode of fingering is invariably that of the schools, not that which

would seem most natural to a blind child never taught to place a finger.

Even when seated with his back to the piano, and made to play in that

position, (a favorite feat in his concerts,) the touch is always

scientifically accurate.

The peculiar power which Tom possesses, however, is one which requires

no scientific knowledge of music in his audiences to appreciate.

Placed at the instrument with any musician, he plays a perfect bass

accompaniment to the treble of music _heard for the first time as

he plays_. Then taking the seat vacated by the other performer, he

instantly gives the entire piece, intact in brilliancy and symmetry, not

a note lost or misplaced. The selections of music by which this power

of Tom's was tested, two years ago, were sometimes fourteen and sixteen

pages in length; on one occasion, at an exhibition at the White House,

after a long concert, he was tried with two pieces,--one thirteen, the

other twenty pages long, and was successful.

We know of no parallel case to this in musical history. Grimm tells us,

as one of the most remarkable manifestations of Mozart's infant genius,

that at the age of nine he was required to give an accompaniment to an

aria which he had never heard before, and without notes. There were

false accords in the first attempt, he acknowledges; but the second was

pure. When the music to which Tom plays _secondo_ is strictly classical,

he sometimes balks for an instant in passages; to do otherwise would

argue a creative power equal to that of the master composers; but when

any chordant harmony runs through it, (on which the glowing negro soul

can seize, you know,) there are no "false accords," as with the infant

Mozart. I wish to draw especial attention to this power of the boy, not

only because it is, so far as I know, unmatched in the development of

any musical talent, but because, considered in the context of his

entire intellectual structure, it involves a curious problem. The mere

repetition of music heard but once, even when, as in Tom's case, it

is given with such incredible fidelity, and after the lapse of years,

demands only a command of mechanical skill, and an abnormal condition of

the power of memory; but to play _secondo_ to music never heard or seen

implies the comprehension of the full drift of the symphony in its

current,--a capacity to create, in short. Yet such attempts as Tom has

made to dictate music for publication do not sustain any such inference.

They are only a few light marches, gallops, etc., simple and plaintive

enough, but with easily detected traces of remembered harmonies: very

different from the strange, weird improvisations of every day. One would

fancy that the mere attempt to bring this mysterious genius within him

in bodily presence before the outer world woke, too, the idiotic nature

to utter its reproachful, unable cry. Nor is this the only bar by which

poor Tom's soul is put in mind of its foul bestial prison. After any

too prolonged effort, such as those I have alluded to, his whole bodily

frame gives way, and a complete exhaustion of the brain follows,

accompanied with epileptic spasms. The trial at the White House,

mentioned before, was successful, but was followed by days of illness.

Being a slave, Tom never was taken into a Free State; for the same

reason his master refused advantageous offers from European managers.

The highest points North at which his concerts were given were Baltimore

and the upper Virginia towns. I heard him sometime in 1860. He remained

a week or two in the town, playing every night.

The concerts were unique enough. They were given in a great barn of

a room, gaudy with hot, soot-stained frescoes, chandeliers, walls

splotched with gilt. The audience was large, always; such as a

provincial town affords: not the purest bench of musical criticism

before which to bring poor Tom. Beaux and belles, siftings of old

country families, whose grandfathers trapped and traded and married with

the Indians,--the savage thickening of whose blood told itself in high

cheekbones, flashing jewelry, champagne-bibbing, a comprehension of

the tom-tom music of schottisches and polkas; money-made men and their

wives, cooped up by respectability, taking concerts when they were given

in town, taking the White Sulphur or Cape May in summer, taking beef for

dinner, taking the pork-trade in winter,--_toute la vie en programme_;

the _débris_ of a town, the roughs, the boys, school-children,--Tom was

nearly as well worth a quarter as the negro-minstrels; here and there

a pair of reserved, homesick eyes, a peculiar, reticent face, some

whey-skinned ward-teacher's, perhaps, or some German cobbler's, but

hints of a hungry soul, to whom Beethoven and Mendelssohn knew how

to preach an unerring gospel. The stage was broad, planked, with a

drop-curtain behind,--the Doge marrying the sea, I believe; in front, a

piano and chair.

Presently, Mr. Oliver, a well-natured looking man, (one thought of

that,) came forward, leading and coaxing along a little black boy,

dressed in white linen, somewhat fat and stubborn in build. Tom was

not in a good humor that night; the evening before had refused to play

altogether; so his master perspired anxiously before he could get him

placed in rule before the audience, and repeat his own little speech,

which sounded like a Georgia after-dinner gossip. The boy's head, as

I said, rested on his back, his mouth wide open constantly; his great

blubber lips and shining teeth, therefore, were all you saw when

he faced you. He required to be petted and bought like any other

weak-minded child. The concert was a mixture of music, whining, coaxing,

and promised candy and cake.

He seated himself at last before the piano, a full half-yard distant,

stretching out his arms full-length, like an ape clawing for

food,--his feet, when not on the pedals, squirming and twisting

incessantly,--answering some joke of his master's with a loud "Yha!

yha!" Nothing indexes the brain like the laugh; this was idiotic.

"Now, Tom, boy, something we like from Verdi."

The head fell farther back, the claws began to work, and those of his

harmonies which you would have chosen as the purest exponents of passion

began to float through the room. Selections from Weber, Beethoven, and

others whom I have forgotten, followed. At the close of each piece,

Tom, without waiting for the audience, would himself applaud violently,

kicking, pounding his hands together, turning always to his master

for the approving pat on the head. Songs, recitations such as I have

described, filled up the first part of the evening; then a musician from

the audience went upon the stage to put the boy's powers to the final

test. Songs and intricate symphonies were given, which it was most

improbable the boy could ever have heard; he remained standing,

utterly motionless, until they were finished, and for a moment or two

after,--then, seating himself, gave them without the break of a

note. Others followed, more difficult, in which he played the bass

accompaniment in the manner I have described, repeating instantly the

treble. The child looked dull, wearied, during this part of the trial,

and his master, perceiving it, announced the exhibition closed, when the

musician (who was a citizen of the town, by-the-way) drew out a

thick roll of score, which he explained to be a Fantasia of his own

composition, never published.

"_This_ it was impossible the boy could have heard; there could be no

trick of memory in this; and on this trial," triumphantly, "Tom would

fail."

The manuscript was some fourteen pages long,--variations on an inanimate

theme. Mr. Oliver refused to submit the boy's brain to so cruel a test;

some of the audience, even, interfered; but the musician insisted, and

took his place. Tom sat beside him,--his head rolling nervously from

side to side,--struck the opening cadence, and then, from the first note

to the last, gave the _secondo_ triumphantly. Jumping up, he fairly

shoved the man from his seat, and proceeded to play the treble with more

brilliancy and power than its composer. When he struck the last octave,

he sprang up, yelling with delight:--

"Um's got him, Massa! um's got him!" cheering and rolling about the

stage.

The cheers of the audience--for the boys especially did not wait to

clap--excited him the more. It was an hour before his master could quiet

his hysteric agitation.

That feature of the concerts which was the most painful I have not

touched upon: the moments when his master was talking, and Tom was left

to himself,--when a weary despair seemed to settle down on the distorted

face, and the stubby little black fingers, wandering over the keys,

spoke for Tom's own caged soul within. Never, by any chance, a merry,

childish laugh of music in the broken cadences; tender or wild, a

defiant outcry, a tired sigh breaking down into silence. Whatever

wearied voice it took, the same bitter, hopeless soul spoke through all:

"Bless me, even me, also, O my Father!" A something that took all the

pain and pathos of the world into its weak, pitiful cry.

Some beautiful caged spirit, one could not but know, struggled for

breath under that brutal form and idiotic brain. I wonder when it will

be free. Not in this life: the bars are too heavy.

You cannot help Tom, either; all the war is between you. He was in

Richmond in May. But (do you hate the moral to a story?) in your own

kitchen, in your own back-alley, there are spirits as beautiful, caged

in forms as bestial, that you _could_ set free, if you pleased. Don't

call it bad taste in me to speak for them. You know they are more to be

pitied than Tom,--for they are dumb.

KINDERGARTEN--WHAT IS IT?

What is a Kindergarten? I will reply by negatives. It is not

the old-fashioned infant-school. That was a narrow institution,

comparatively; the object being (I do not speak of Pestalozzi's own,

but that which we have had in this country and in England) to take

the children of poor laborers, and keep them out of the fire and the

streets, while their mothers went to their necessary labor. Very good

things, indeed, in their way. Their principle of discipline was to

circumvent the wills of children, in every way that would enable their

teachers to keep them within bounds, and quiet. It was certainly better

that they should learn to sing _by rote_ the Creed and the "definitions"

of scientific terms, and such like, than to learn the profanity and

obscenity of the streets, which was the alternative. But no mother who

wished for anything which might be called the _development_ of her child

would think of putting it into an infant-school, especially if she lived

in the country, amid

"the mighty sum

Of things forever speaking,"

where any "old grey stone" would altogether surpass, as a stand-point,

the bench of the highest class of an infant-school. In short, they

did not state the problem of infant culture with any breadth, and

accomplished nothing of general interest on the subject.

Neither is the primary public school a Kindergarten, though it is

but justice to the capabilities of that praiseworthy institution, so

important in default of a better, to say that in one of them, at the

North End of Boston, an enterprising and genial teacher has introduced

one feature of Froebel's plan. She has actually given to each of her

little children a box of playthings, wherewith to amuse itself

according to its own sweet will, at all times when not under direct

instruction,--necessarily, in her case, on condition of its being

perfectly quiet; and this one thing makes this primary school the best

one in Boston, both as respects the attainments of the scholars and

their good behavior.

_Kindergarten_ means a garden of children, and Froebel, the inventor of

it, or rather, as he would prefer to express it, _the discoverer of the

method of Nature_, meant to symbolize by the name the spirit and plan

of treatment. How does the gardener treat his plants? He studies their

individual natures, and puts them into such circumstances of soil and

atmosphere as enable them to grow, flower, and bring forth fruit,--also

to renew their manifestation year after year. He does not expect to

succeed unless he learns all their wants, and the circumstances in which

these wants will be supplied, and all their possibilities of beauty and

use, and the means of giving them opportunity to be perfected. On the

other hand, while he knows that they must not be forced against their

individual natures, he does not leave them to grow wild, but prunes

redundancies, removes destructive worms and bugs from their leaves and

stems, and weeds from their vicinity,--carefully watching to learn what

peculiar insects affect what particular plants, and how the former can

be destroyed without injuring the vitality of the latter. After all the

most careful gardener can do, he knows that the form of the plant is

predetermined in the germ or seed, and that the inward tendency must

concur with a multitude of influences, the most powerful and subtile of

which is removed in place ninety-five millions of miles away.

In the Kindergarten _children_ are treated on an analogous plan. It

presupposes gardeners of the mind, who are quite aware that they have as

little power to override the characteristic individuality of a child, or

to predetermine this characteristic, as the gardener of plants to say

that a lily shall be a rose. But notwithstanding this limitation on

one side, and the necessity for concurrence of the Spirit on the

other,--which is more independent of our modification than the remote

sun,--yet they must feel responsible, after all, for the perfection of

the development, in so far as removing every impediment, preserving

every condition, and pruning every redundance.

This analogy of education to the gardener's art is so striking, both as

regards what we can and what we cannot do, that Froebel has put every

educator into a most suggestive Normal School, by the very word which he

has given to his seminary,--Kindergarten.

If every school-teacher in the land had a garden of flowers and fruits

to cultivate, it could hardly fail that he would learn to be wise in his

vocation. For suitable preparation, the first, second, and third thing

is, to

"Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher."

The "new education," as the French call it, begins with children in the

mother's arms. Froebel had the nurses bring to his establishment, in

Hamburg, children who could not talk, who were not more than three

months old, and trained the nurses to work on his principles and by his

methods. This will hardly be done in this country, at least at present;

but to supply the place of such a class, a lady of Boston has prepared

and published, under copyright, Froebel's First Gift, consisting of six

soft balls of the three primary and the three secondary colors, which

are sold in a box, with a little manual for mothers, in which the true

principle and plan of tending babies, so as not to rasp their nerves,

but to amuse without wearying them, is very happily suggested. There

is no mother or nurse who would not be assisted by this little manual

essentially. As it says in the beginning,--"Tending babies is an art,

and every art is founded on a science of observations; for love is not

wisdom, but love must act _according to wisdom_ in order to succeed.

Mothers and nurses, however tender and kind-hearted, may, and oftenest

do, weary and vex the nerves of children, in well-meant efforts to amuse

them, and weary themselves the while. Froebel's exercises, founded on

the observations of an intelligent sensibility, are intended to amuse

without wearying, to educate without vexing."

Froebel's Second Gift for children, adapted to the age from one to two

or three years, with another little book of directions, has also been

published by the same lady, and is perhaps a still greater boon to every

nursery; for this is the age when many a child's temper is ruined,

and the inclination of the twig wrongly bent, through sheer _want of

resource and idea_, on the part of nurses and mothers.

But it is to the next age--from three years old and upwards--that the

Kindergarten becomes the desideratum, if not a necessity. The isolated

home, made into a flower-vase by the application of the principles set

forth in the Gifts[A] above mentioned, may do for babies. But every

mother and nurse knows how hard it is to meet the demands of a child

too young to be taught to read, but whose opening intelligence and

irrepressible bodily activity are so hard to be met by an adult, however

genial and active. Children generally take the temper of their whole

lives from this period of their existence. Then "the twig is bent,"

either towards that habit of self-defence which is an ever-renewing

cause of selfishness, or to the sun of love-in-exercise, which is the

exhaustless source of goodness and beauty.

[Footnote A: These Gifts, the private enterprise of an invalid lady, the

same who first brought the subject of Kindergartens so favorably before

the public in the _Christian Examiner_ for November, 1858, can be

procured at the Kindergarten, 15 Pinckney Street, Boston.]

The indispensable thing now is a sufficient society of children. It is

only in the society of equals that the social instinct can be gratified,

and come into equilibrium with the instinct of self-preservation.

Self-love, and love of others, are equally natural; and before reason

is developed, and the proper spiritual life begins, sweet and beautiful

childhood may bloom out and imparadise our mortal life. Let us only give

the social instinct of children its fair chance. For this purpose, a few

will not do. The children of one family are not enough, and do not

come along fast enough. A large company should be gathered out of many

families. It will be found that the little things are at once taken out

of themselves, and become interested in each other. In the variety,

affinities develop themselves very prettily, and the rough points of

rampant individualities wear off. We have seen a highly gifted child,

who, at home, was--to use a vulgar, but expressive word--pesky and

odious, with the exacting demands of a powerful, but untrained mind and

heart, become "sweet as roses" spontaneously, amidst the rebound of

a large, well-ordered, and carefully watched child-society. Anxious

mothers have brought us children, with a thousand deprecations and

explanations of their characters, as if they thought we were going to

find them little monsters, which their motherly hearts were persuaded

they were not, though they behaved like little sanchos at home,--and,

behold, they were as harmonious, from the very beginning, as if they had

undergone the subduing influence of a lifetime. We are quite sure that

children begin with loving others quite as intensely as they love

themselves,--forgetting themselves in their love of others,--if they

only have as fair a chance of being benevolent and self-sacrificing as

of being selfish. Sympathy is as much a natural instinct as self-love,

and no more or less innocent, in a moral point of view. Either principle

alone makes an ugly and depraved form of natural character. Balanced,

they give the element of happiness, and the conditions of spiritual

goodness and truth,--making children fit temples for the Holy Ghost to

dwell in.

A Kindergarten, then, is children in society,--a commonwealth or

republic of children,--whose laws are all part and parcel of the

Higher Law alone. It may be contrasted, in every particular, with the

old-fashioned school, which is an absolute monarchy, where the children

are subjected to a lower expediency, having for its prime end quietness,

or such order as has "reigned in Warsaw" since 1831.

But let us not be misunderstood. We are not of those who think that

children, in any condition whatever, will inevitably develop into beauty

and goodness. Human nature tends to revolve in a vicious circle, around

the individuality; and children must have over them, in the person of

a wise and careful teacher, a power which shall deal with them as God

deals with the mature, presenting the claims of sympathy and truth

whenever they presumptuously or unconsciously fall into selfishness. We

have the best conditions of moral culture in a company large enough for

the exacting disposition of the solitary child to be balanced by the

claims made by others on the common stock of enjoyment,--there being

a reasonable oversight of older persons, wide-awake to anticipate,

prevent, and adjust the rival pretensions which must always arise where

there are finite beings with infinite desires, while Reason, whose

proper object is God, is yet undeveloped.

Let the teacher always take for granted that the law of love is quick

within, whatever are appearances, and the better self will generally

respond. In proportion as the child is young and unsophisticated, will

be the certainty of the response to a teacher of simple faith:

"There are who ask not if thine eye

Be on them,--who, in love and truth,

Where no misgiving is, rely

Upon the genial sense of youth.