"And blest are they who in the main

This faith even now do entertain,

Live in the spirit of this creed,

Yet find another strength, according to their

need."

Such are the natural Kindergartners, who prevent disorder by employing

and entertaining children, so that they are kept in an accommodating and

loving mood by never being thrown on self-defence,--and when selfishness

is aroused, who check it by an appeal to sympathy, or Conscience, which

is the presentiment of reason, a fore-feeling of moral order, for whose

culture material order is indispensable.

But order must be kept by the child, not only unconsciously, but

intentionally. Order is the child of reason, and in turn cultivates the

intellectual principle. To bring out order on the physical plane, the

Kindergarten makes it a serious purpose to organize _romping_, and set

it to music, which cultivates the physical nature also. Romping is the

ecstasy of the body, and we shall find that in proportion as children

tend to be violent they are vigorous in body. There is always morbid

weakness of some kind where there is no instinct for hard play; and it

begins to be the common sense that energetic physical activity must

not be repressed, but favored. Some plan of play prevents the little

creatures from hurting each other, and fancy naturally furnishes the

plan,--the mind unfolding itself in fancies, which are easily quickened

and led in harmless directions by an adult of any resource. Those who

have not imagination themselves must seek the aid of the Kindergarten

guides, where will be found arranged to music the labors of the peasant,

and cooper, and sawyer, the wind-mill, the watermill, the weather-vane,

the clock, the pigeon-house, the hares, the bees, and the cuckoo.

Children delight to personate animals, and a fine genius could not

better employ itself than in inventing a great many more plays, setting

them to rhythmical words, describing what is to be done. Every variety

of bodily exercise might be made and kept within the bounds of order and

beauty by plays involving the motions of different animals and machines

of industry. Kindergarten plays are easy intellectual exercises; for

to do anything whatever with a thought beforehand develops the mind

or quickens the intelligence; and thought of this kind does not try

intellect, or check physical development, which last must never be

sacrificed in the process of education.

There are enough instances of marvellous acquisition in infancy to show

that imbibing with the mind is as natural as with the body, if suitable

beverage is put to the lips; but in most cases the mind's power is

balanced by instincts of body, which should have priority, if they

cannot certainly be in full harmony. The mind can afford to wait for the

maturing of the body, for it survives the body; while the body cannot

afford to wait for the mind, but is irretrievably stunted, if the

nervous energy is not free to stimulate its special organs at least

equally with those of the mind.

It is not, however, necessary to sacrifice the culture of either mind or

body, but to harmonize them. They can and ought to grow together. They

mutually help each other.

Doctor Dio Lewis's "Free Exercises" are also suitable to the

Kindergarten, and may be taken in short lessons of a quarter of an hour,

or even of ten minutes. Children are fond of precision also, and it will

be found that they like the teaching best, when they are made to do the

exercises exactly right, and in perfect time to the music.

But the regular gymnastics and the romping plays must be alternated with

quiet employments, of course, but still active. They will sing at their

plays by rote; and also should be taught other songs by rote. But there

can be introduced a regular drill on the scale, which should never last

more than ten minutes at a time. This, if well managed, will cultivate

their ears and voices, so that in the course of a year they will become

very expert in telling any note struck, if not in striking it. The ear

is cultivated sooner than the voice, and they may be taught to name the

octave as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and their imaginations impressed by

drawing a ladder of eight rounds on the blackboard, to signify that the

voice rises by regular gradation. This will fix their attention, and

their interest will not flag, if the teacher has any tact.

Slates and pencils are indispensable in a Kindergarten from the first.

One side of a slate can be ruled with a sharp point in small squares,

and if their fancy is interested by telling them to make a fish-net,

they will carefully make their pencils follow these lines,--which makes

a first exercise in drawing. Their little fingers are so unmanageable

that at first they will not be able to make straight lines even with

this help. For variety, little patterns can be given them, drawn on

the blackboard, (or on paper similarly ruled,) of picture-frames and

patterns for carpets. When they can make squares well, they can be

shown how to cross them with diagonals, and make circles inside of the

squares, and outside of them, and encouraged to draw on the other side

of the slate, from their own fancy, or from objects. Entire sympathy and

no destructive criticism should meet every effort. Self-confidence is

the first requisite for success. If they think they have had success, it

is indispensable that it should be echoed from without. Of course there

will be poor perspective; and even Schmidt's method of perspective

cannot be introduced to very young children. A natural talent for

perspective sometimes shows itself, which by-and-by can be perfected by

Schmidt's method.[B]

[Footnote B: See _Common School Journal_ for 1842-3.]

But little children will not draw long at a time. Nice manipulation,

which is important, can be taught, and the eye for form cultivated, by

drawing for them birds and letting them prick the lines. It will enchant

them to have something pretty to carry home now and then. Perforated

board can also be used to teach them the use of a needle and thread.

They will like to make the outlines of ships and steamboats, birds,

etc., which can be drawn for them with a lead pencil on the board by the

teachers. Weaving strips of colored card-board into papers cut for them

is another enchanting amusement, and can be made subservient to teaching

them the harmonies of colors. In the latter part of the season, when

they have an accumulation of pricked birds, or have learned to draw

them, they can be allowed colors to paint them in a rough manner. It is,

perhaps, worth while to say, that, in teaching children to draw on

their slates, it is better for the teacher to draw at the moment on the

blackboard than to give them patterns of birds, utensils, etc., because

then the children will see how to begin and proceed, and are not

discouraged by the mechanical perfection of their model.

Drawing ought always rather to precede reading and writing, as the

minute appreciation of forms is the proper preparation for these. But

reading and writing may come into Kindergarten exercises at once, if

reading is taught by the phonic method, (which saves all perplexity to

the child's brain,) and accompanied by printing on the slate. It then

alternates with other things, as one of the amusements. We will describe

how we have seen it taught. The class sat before a blackboard, with

slates and pencils. The teacher said, "Now let us make all the sounds

that we can with the lips: First, put the lips gently together and sound

m," (not _em_,)--which they all did. Then she said,--"Now let us draw

it on the blackboard,--three short straight marks by the side of each

other, and join them on the top,--that is m. What is it?" They sounded

m, and made three marks and joined them on the top, with more or less

success. The teacher said,--"Now put your lips close together and say

p." (This is mute and to be whispered). They all imitated the motion

made. She said,--"Now let us write it; one straight mark, then the

upper lip puffed out at the top." M and p, to be written and

distinguished, are perhaps enough for one lesson, which should not reach

half an hour in length. At the next lesson these were repeated again.

Then the teacher said,--"Now put your lips together and make the same

motion as you did to say p; but make a little more sound, and it will be

b" (which is sonorous). "You must write it differently from p;--you must

make a short mark and put the _under_ lip on." "Now put your teeth on

your under lip and say f." (She gave the power.) "You must write it by

making a short straight mark make a bow, and then cross it with a little

mark across the middle." "Now fix your lips in the same manner and sound

a little, and you will make v. Write it by making two little marks meet

at the bottom."

This last letter was made a separate lesson of, and the other lessons

were reviewed. The teacher then said,--"Now you have learned some

letters,--all the lip--letters,"--making them over, and asking what each

was. She afterwards added w,--giving its power and form, and put it with

the lip-letters. At the next lesson they were told to make the letters

with their lips, and she wrote them down on the board, and then said,--

"Now we will make some tooth-letters. Put your teeth together and say

t." (She gave the power, and showed them how to write it.) "Now put your

teeth together and make a sound and it will be d." "That is written just

like b, only we put the lip behind." "Now put your teeth together and

hiss, and then make this little crooked snake (s). Then fix your teeth

in the same manner and buzz like a bee. You write z pointed this way."

"Now put your teeth together and say j, written with a dot." At the

next lessons the throat-letters were given; first the hard guttural

was sounded, and they were told three ways to write it, c, k, q,

distinguished as _round_, _high_, and _with a tail_. C was not sounded

_see_, but _ke_ (ke, ka, ku). Another lesson gave them the soft guttural

g, but did not sound it _jee_; and the aspirate, but did not call it

_aitch_.

Another lesson gave the vowels, (or voice-letters, as she called them,)

and it was made lively by her writing afterwards all of them in one

word, _mieaou_, and calling it the cat's song. It took from a week

to ten days to teach these letters, one lesson a day of about twenty

minutes. Then came words: mamma, papa, puss, pussy, etc. The vowels were

always sounded as in Italian, and i and y distinguished as _with the

dot_ and _with a tail_. At first only one word was the lesson, and the

letters were reviewed in their divisions of lip-letters, throat-letters,

tooth-letters, voice-letters. The latter were sounded the Italian way,

as in the words _a_rm, _e_gg, _i_nk, _o_ak, and Per_u_. This teacher had

Miss Peabody's "First Nursery Reading-Book," and when she had taught the

class to make all the words on the first page of it, she gave each of

the children the book and told them to find first one word and then

another. It was a great pleasure to them to be told that now they could

read. They were encouraged to copy the words out of the book upon their

slates.

The "First Nursery Reading-Book" has in it _no_ words that have

exceptions in their spelling to the sounds given to the children as

the powers of the letters. Nor has it any diphthong or combinations of

letters, such as oi, ou, ch, sh, th. After they could read it at sight,

they were told that all words were not so regular, and their attention

was called to the initial sounds of thin, shin, and chin, and to the

proper diphthongs, ou, oi, and au, and they wrote words considering

these as additional characters. Then "Mother Goose" was put into their

hands, and they were made to read by rote the songs they already knew

by heart, and to copy them. It was a great entertainment to find the

_queer_ words, and these were made the nucleus of groups of similar

words which were written on the blackboard and copied on their slates.

We have thought it worth while to give in detail this method of teaching

to read, because it is the most entertaining to children to be taught

so, and because many successful instances of the pursual of this plan

have come under our observation; and one advantage of it has been,

that the children so taught, though never going through the common

spelling-lessons, have uniformly exhibited a rare exactness in

orthography.

In going through this process, the children learn to print very nicely,

and generally can do so sooner than they can read. It is a small matter

afterwards to teach them to turn the print into script. They should be

taught to write with the lead pencil before the pen, whose use need not

come into the Kindergarten.

But we must not omit one of the most important exercises for children

in the Kindergarten,--that of block-building. Froebel has four Gifts of

blocks. Ronge's "Kindergarten Guide" has pages of royal octavo filled

with engraved forms that can be made by variously laying eight little

cubes and sixteen little planes two inches long, one inch broad, and

one-half an inch thick. Chairs, tables, stables, sofas, garden-seats,

and innumerable forms of symmetry, make an immense resource for

children, who also should be led to invent other forms and imitate other

objects. So quick are the fancies of children, that the blocks will

serve also as symbols of everything in Nature and imagination. We have

seen an ingenious teacher assemble a class of children around her large

table, to each of whom she had given the blocks. The first thing was to

count them, a great process of arithmetic to most of them. Then she made

something and explained it. It was perhaps a light-house,--and some

blocks would represent rocks near it to be avoided, and ships sailing in

the ocean; or perhaps it was a hen-coop, with chickens inside, and a fox

prowling about outside, and a boy who was going to catch the fox and

save the fowls. Then she told each child to make something, and when it

was done hold up a hand. The first one she asked to explain, and then

went round the class. If one began to speak before another had ended,

she would hold up her finger and say,--"It is not your turn." In the

course of the winter, she taught, over these blocks, a great deal about

the habits of animals. She studied natural history in order to be

perfectly accurate in her symbolic representation of the habitation of

each animal, and their enemies were also represented by blocks. The

children imitated these; and when they drew upon their imaginations for

facts, and made fantastic creations, she would say,--"Those, I think,

were Fairy hens" (or whatever); for it was her principle to accept

everything, and thus tempt out their invention. The great value of this

exercise is to get them into the habit of representing something they

have thought by an outward symbol. The explanations they are always

eager to give teach them to express themselves in words. Full scope is

given to invention, whether in the direction of possibilities or of the

impossibilities in which children's imaginations revel,--in either case

the child being trained to the habit of embodiment of its thought.

Froebel thought it very desirable to have a garden where the children

could cultivate flowers. He had one which he divided into lots for the

several children, reserving a portion for his own share in which they

could assist him. He thought it the happiest mode of calling their

attention to the invisible God, whose power must be waited upon, after

the conditions for growth are carefully arranged according to _laws_

which they were to observe. Where a garden is impossible, a flowerpot

with a plant in it for each child to take care of would do very well.

But the best way to cultivate a sense of the presence of God is to draw

the attention to the conscience, which is very active in children, and

which seems to them (as we all can testify from our own remembrance)

another than themselves, and yet themselves. We have heard a person say,

that in her childhood she was puzzled to know which was herself, the

voice of her inclination or of her conscience, for they were palpably

two, and what a joyous thing it was when she was first convinced that

one was the Spirit of God, whom unlucky teaching had previously embodied

in a form of terror on a distant judgment-seat. Children are consecrated

as soon as they get the spiritual idea, and it may be so presented that

it shall make them happy as well as true. But the adult who enters into

such conversation with a child must be careful not to shock and profane,

instead of nurturing the soul. It is possible to avoid both discouraging

and flattering views, and to give the most tender and elevating

associations.

But children require not only an alternation of physical and mental

amusements, but some instruction to be passively received. They delight

in stories, and a wise teacher can make this subservient to the highest

uses by reading beautiful creations of the imagination. Not only such

household-stories as "Sanford and Merton," Mrs. Farrar's "Robinson

Crusoe," and Salzmann's "Elements of Morality," but symbolization like

the heroes of Asgard, the legends of the Middle Ages, classic and

chivalric tales, the legend of Saint George, and "Pilgrim's Progress,"

can in the mouth of a skilful reader be made subservient to moral

culture. The reading sessions should not exceed ten or fifteen minutes.

Anything of the nature of scientific teaching should be done by

presenting _objects_ for examination and investigation.[C] Flowers and

insects, shells, etc., are easily handled. The observations should be

drawn out of the children, not made to them, except as corrections of

their mistakes. Experiments with the prism, and in crystallization

and transformation, are useful and desirable to awaken taste for

the sciences of Nature. In short, the Kindergarten should give the

beginnings of everything. "What is well begun is half done."

[Footnote C: Calkin's _Object Lessons_ will give hints.]

We must say a word about the locality and circumstances of a

Kindergarten. There is published in Lausanne, France, a newspaper

devoted to the interests of this mode of education, in whose early

numbers is described a Kindergarten; which seems to be of the nature of

a boarding-school, or, at least, the children are there all day. Each

child has a garden, and there is one besides where they work in common.

There are accommodations for keeping animals, and miniature tools to do

mechanical labor of various kinds. In short, it is a child's world. But

in this country, especially in New England, parents would not consent

to be so much separated from their children, and a few hours of

Kindergarten in the early part of the day will serve an excellent

purpose,--using up the effervescent activity of children, who may

healthily be left to themselves the rest of the time, to play or rest,

comparatively unwatched.

Two rooms are indispensable, if there is any variety of age. It is

desirable that one should be sequestrated to the quiet employments. A

pianoforte is desirable, to lead the singing, and accompany the plays,

gymnastics, frequent marchings, and dancing, when that is taught,--which

it should be. But a hand-organ which plays fourteen tunes will help to

supply the want of a piano, and a guitar in the hands of a ready teacher

will do better than nothing.

Sometimes a genial mother and daughters might have a Kindergarten, and

devote themselves and the house to it, especially if they live in one

of our beautiful country-towns or cities. The habit, in the city of New

York, of sending children to school in an omnibus, hired to go round the

city and pick them up, suggests the possibility of a Kindergarten in one

of those beautiful residences up in town, where there is a garden before

or behind the house. It is impossible to keep Kindergarten _by the

way_. It must be the main business of those who undertake it; for it is

necessary that every individual child should be borne, as it were, on

the heart of the _garteners_, in order that it be _inspired_ with order,

truth, and goodness. To develop a child from within outwards, we must

plunge ourselves into its peculiarity of imagination and feeling. No

one person could possibly endure such absorption, of life in labor

unrelieved, and consequently two or three should unite in the

undertaking in order to be able to relieve each other from the enormous

strain on life. The compensations are, however, great. The charm of the

various individuality, and of the refreshing presence of conscience yet

unprofaned, is greater than can be found elsewhere in this work-day

world. Those were not idle words which came from the lips of Wisdom

Incarnate:--"Their angels do always behold the face of my Father": "Of

such is the kingdom of heaven."

A PICTURE.

[AFTER WITHER.]

Sweet child, I prithee stand,

While I try my novel hand

At a portrait of thy face,

With its simple childish grace.

Cheeks as soft and finely hued

As the fleecy cloud imbued

With the roseate tint of morn

Ere the golden sun is born:--

Lips that like a rose-hedge curl,

Guarding well the gates of pearl,

--What care I for pearly gate?

By the rose-hedge will I wait:--

Chin that rounds with outline fine,

Melting off in hazy line;

As in misty summer noon,

Or beneath the harvest moon,

Curves the smooth and sandy shore,

Flowing off in dimness hoar:--

Eyes that roam like timid deer

Sheltered by a thicket near,

Peeping out between the boughs,

Or that, trusting, safely browse:--

Arched o'er all the forehead pure,

Giving us the prescience sure

Of an ever-growing light;

As in deepening summer night,

Over fields to ripen soon

Hangs the silver crescent moon.

* * * * *

TWO AND ONE.

I.

The winter sun streamed pleasantly into the room. On the tables lay the

mother's work of the morning,--the neatly folded clothes she had just

been ironing. A window was opened a little way to let some air into the

room too closely heated by the brisk fire. The air fanned the leaves of

the ivy-plant that stood in the window, and of the primrose which

seemed ready to open in the warm sun. Above, there hung a cage, and a

canary-bird shouted out now and then its pleasure at the sunny day, with

a half-dream perhaps of a tropical climate in the tropical air with

which the coal-fire filled the room. Mrs. Schroder leaned back in her

old-fashioned rocking-chair, and folded her hands, one over the other,

ready to rest after her morning's labor. She was willing to take the

repose won by her work; indeed, this was the only way she had managed to

preserve her strength for all the work it was necessary for her to do.

She had been conscious that her powers had answered for just so much and

no more, and she had never been able to make further demands upon them.

When years before she was left a widow, with two sons to support and

educate, all her friends and neighbors prophesied that her health would

prove unequal to either work, and agreed that it was very fortunate that

she had a rich relation or two to help her. But, unfortunately, the rich

relations preferred helping only in their own way. One uncle agreed to

send the older boy to his father's relations in Germany, while the other

wished to take the younger with him to his home in the South; and an

aunt-in-law promised Mrs. Schroder work enough as seamstress to support

herself.

It is singular how hard it is, for those who have large means and

resources, to understand how to supply the little wants and needs of

those less fortunate. The smallest stream in the mountains will find its

way through some little channel, over rocks, or slowly through quiet

meadows, into the great rivers, and finally feeds the deep sea, which

is very thankless, and thinks little of restoring what is so prodigally

poured into it. It only knows how to sway up with its grand tide upon

the broad beaches, or to wrestle with turreted rocks, or, for some

miles, perhaps, up the great rivers, it is willing to leave some flavor

of its salt strength. So it is that we little ones, to the last, pour

out our little stores into the great seas of wealth,--and the Neptunes,

the gods of riches, scarcely know how to return us our due, if they

would.

When Mrs. Schroder, then, refused these kindly offers, because she knew

that her husband had wished his boys should be brought up together and

in America, and because she could not separate them from each other or

from herself, the relations thought best to leave her to her own will,

and drew back, feeling that they had done their part for humanity and

kinship. Now and then Mrs. Schroder received a present of a worn

shawl or a bonnet out of date, and one New Year there came inclosed a

dollar-bill apiece for the boys. Ernest threw his into the fire before

his mother could stop him, while Harry said he would spend his for the

very meanest thing he could think of; and that very night he bought some

sausages with it, to satisfy, as he said, only their lowest wants.

Mrs. Schroder succeeded in carrying out her will, in spite of prophecy.

Her very delicacy of body led her to husband her strength, while the

boys very early learned that they must help their mother to get through

her day's work. Her feebleness of health helped her, too, in another

way,--by stopping their boy-quarrels.

"Boys, don't wrangle so! If you knew how it makes my head ache!"

When these words came from the mother resting in her chair, the quarrel

ceased suddenly. It ended without settlement, to be sure, which is the

best way of finishing up quarrels. There are always seeds of new wars

sown in treaties of peace. Austria is not content with her share of

Poland, and Russia privately determines upon another bite of Turkey.

John thinks it very unjust that he must give up his ball to Tom, and

resolves to have the matter out when they get down into the street;

while Tom, equally dissatisfied, feels that he has been treated like a

baby, and despises the umpire for the partial decision.

These two boys, indeed, had their perpetual quarrel. Harry, the older,

always got on in the world. He had a strong arm, a jolly face, and a

solid opinion of himself that made its way without his asking for it.

Ernest, on the other hand, was obliged to be constantly dependent on his

brother for defence, for his position with other boys at school,--as he

grew up, for his position in life, even. Harry was the favorite always.

The schoolmaster--or teacher, as we call him nowadays--liked Harry best,

although he was always in scrapes, and often behindhand in his studies,

while Ernest was punctual, quiet, and always knew his lessons, though

his eyes looked dreamily through his books rather than into them.

Harry had great respect for Ernest's talent, made way for it, would

willingly work for him. Ernest accepted these benefits: he could not

help it, they were so generously offered. But the consciousness that

he could not live without them weighed him down and made him moody. He

alternately reproached himself for his ingratitude, and his brother for

his favors. Sometimes he called himself a slave for being willing to

accept them; at other times he would blame himself as a tyrant for

making such demands upon an elder brother.

As Mrs. Schroder leaned back in her chair after her morning's labor,

the door opened, and a young girl came into the room. She had a fresh,

bright face, a brown complexion, a full, round figure. She came in

quickly, nodded cheerily to Mrs. Schroder, and knelt down in front of

the fire to warm her hands.

"I did want to come in this morning," she said,--"the very last day! I

should have liked to help you about Ernest's things. But Aunt Martha

must needs have a supernumerary wash, and I have just come in from

hanging the last of the clothes upon the line."

"It is very good of you, Violet," answered Mrs. Schroder, "but I was

glad to-day to have plenty to do. It is the thinking that troubles me.

My boys are grown up into men, and Ernest is going! It is our first

parting. To-day I would rather work than think."

Violet was the young girl's name. A stranger might think that the name

did not suit her. In her manner was nothing of the shrinking nature that

is a characteristic of the violet. Timidity and reserve she probably did

have somewhere in her heart,--as all women do,--but it had never been

her part to play them out. She had all her life been called upon to show

only energy, activity, and self-reliance. She was an only child, and

had been obliged to be son and daughter, brother and sister in one. Her

father was the owner of the house in which were the rooms occupied by

Mrs. Schroder and her sons. The little shop on the lower floor was his

place of business. He was a watchmaker, had a few clocks on the shelves

of his small establishment, and a limited display of jewelry in the

window, together with a supply of watch-keys, and minute-hands and

hour-hands for decayed watches. For though his sign proclaimed him a

watchmaker, his occupation perforce was rather that of repairing and

cleaning watches and clocks than in the higher branch of creation.

Violet's childhood was happy enough. She was left in unrestrained

liberty outside of the little back-parlor, where her Aunt Martha

held sway. Out of school-hours, her joy and delight were to join the

school-boys in their wildest plays. She climbed fences, raced up and

down alley-ways, stormed inoffensive door-yards, chased wandering

cats with the best of them. She was a favorite champion among the

boys,--placed at difficult points of espionage, whether it were over

beast, man, woman, or boy. She was proud of mounting some imaginary

rampart, or defending some dangerous position. Sometimes a taunt was

hurled from the enemy upon her allies for associating with a "girl;" but

it always received a contemptuous answer,--"You'd better look out, she

could lick any one of you!" And at the reply, Violet would look down

from her post on the picketed fence, shake her long curls triumphantly,

and climb to some place inaccessible to the enemy, to show how useful

her agility could be to her own party.

The time of sorrow came at twilight, when the boys separated for their

homes,--when Harry and Ernest clattered up to their mother's rooms. They

could be boys still. They might throw open the house-doors with a

shout and halloo, and fling away caps and boots with no more than an

uncared-for reprimand. But Violet must go noiselessly through the dark

entry, and, as she turned to close the door that let her into the

parlor, she was greeted by Aunt Martha's "Now do shut the door quietly!"

As she lowered the latch without any sound, she would say to herself,

"Why is it that boys must have all the fun, and girls all the work?"

She felt as if she shut out liberty and put on chains. Her work began

then,--to lay the tea-table, to fetch and carry as Aunt Martha ordered.

All this was pleasanter than the quiet evening that followed, because

she liked the occupation and motion. But to be quiet the whole evening,

that was a trial! After the tea-things were cleared away, she would

sit awhile by the stove, imagining all sorts of excitements in the

combustion within; but she could not keep still long without letting a

clatter of shovel and tongs, or some vigorous blows of the poker, show

what a glorious drum she thought the stove would make. Or if Aunt Martha

suggested her unloved and neglected dolls, she would retire to the

corner with them inevitably to come back in disgrace. Either the large

wooden-headed doll came noisily down from the high-backed chair, where

she had been placed as the Maid of Saragossa, or a suspicious smell of

burning arose, when Joan of Arc really did take fire from the candle on

her imaginary funeral-pile. Knitting was no more of a sedative, though

for many years it had stilled Aunt Martha's nerves. It was singular how

the cat contrived always to get hold of Violet's ball of yarn and keep

it, in spite of Violet's activity and the jolly chase she had for it all

round the room, over chairs and under tables. Even her father, during

these long evenings, often looked up over his round spectacles, through

which he was perusing a volume of the "Encyclopedia," to wonder if

Violet could never be quiet.

As she grew up, there was activity enough in her life, through which her

temperament could let off its steam: a large house to be cared for and

kept in order, some of the lodgers to be waited upon, and Aunt Martha,

with her failing strength, more exacting than ever. Her evenings now

were her happy times, for she frequently spent them in Mrs. Schroder's

room. One of the economies in the Schroders' life was that their

pleasures were so cheap. What with Harry's genial gayety and Ernest's

spiritual humor, and the gayety and humor of the friends that loved

them, they did not have to pay for their hilarity on the stage. There

were quiet evenings and noisy ones, and Violet liked them both. She

liked to study languages with Ernest; she liked the books from the

City Library that they read aloud,--romances that were taken for

Mrs. Schroder's pleasure, Ruskins which Ernest enjoyed, and Harry's

favorites, which, to tell the truth, were few. He begged to be made the

reader,--otherwise, he confessed, he was in danger of falling asleep.

Violet had grown up into a woman, and the boys had become men; and now

she was kneeling in front of Mrs. Schroder's fire.

"Ernest's last day at home," she said, dreamily. "Oh, now I begin to

pity Harry!"

"To pity Harry?" said Mrs. Schroder. "Yes, indeed! But it is Ernest that

I think of most. He is going away among strangers. He depends upon Harry

far more than Harry depends upon him."

"It is just that," said Violet. "Harry has always been the one to give.

But it will be changed now, when Ernest comes home. You see, he will be

great then. He has been dependent upon us, all along, because genius

must move so slowly at first; but when he comes back, he will be above

us, and, oh! how shall we know where to find him?"

"You do not mean that my boy will look down upon his mother?" said Mrs.

Schroder, raising herself in her chair.

"Look down upon us?" cried Violet. "Oh, no! it is only the little that

do that, that they may appear to be high. The truly great never look

down. They are kneeling already, and they look up. If they only would

look down upon us! But it is the old story: the body can do for a while

without the spirit, can make its way in the world for a little, and

meantime the spirit is dependent upon the body. Of course it could not

live without the body,--what we call life. But by-and-by spirit must

assert itself, and find its wings. And where, oh, where, will it rise

to? Above us,--above us all!"

"How strangely you talk!" said Mrs. Schroder, looking into Violet's

face. "What has this to do with poor Ernest?"

"I was thinking of poor Harry," said Violet. "All this time he has been

working for Ernest. Harry has earned the money with which Ernest goes

abroad,--which he has lived upon all these years,--not only his daily

bread, but what his talent, his genius, whatever it is, has fed itself

with. Ernest is too unpractical to have been able even to feed himself!"

"And he knows it, my poor Ernest!" said Mrs. Schroder. "This is why

he should be pitied. It is hard for a generous nature to owe all to

another. It has weighed Ernest down; it has embittered the love of the

two brothers."

"But it is more bitter for Harry," persisted Violet. "All this time

Ernest could think of the grand return he could bring when his time

should come. But Harry! He brings the clay out of which Ernest moulds

the statue; but the spirit that Ernest breathes into the form,--will

Harry understand it or appreciate it? The body is very reverent of the

soul. But I think the spirit is not grateful enough to the body. There

comes a time when it says to it, 'I can do without thee!' and spurns the

kind comrade which has helped it on so far. Yet it could not have done

without the joy of color and form, of sight and hearing, that the body

has helped it to."

"You do not mean that Ernest will ever spurn Harry?--they are brothers!"

said poor Mrs. Schroder.

Violet looked round and saw the troubled expression in Mrs. Schroder's

face, and laughed as she laid her head caressingly in her friend's lap.

"I have frightened you with my talk," she said. "I believe the hot air

in the room bewildered my senses and set me dreaming. Yes, Harry and

Ernest are brothers, and I believe they will always work together and

for each other. I have no business with forebodings, this laughing,

sunny day. The March sun is melting the icicles, and they came

clattering down upon me, as I was in the yard, with a happy, twinkling,

childish laugh. There are spring sounds all about, water melting and

dripping everywhere, full of joy. I am the last person, dear mother

Schroder, to make you feel sad."

Violet got up quickly, and busied herself about the room: filled the

canary's cup with water, drew out the table, and made all the usual

preparations necessary for dinner, talking all the time gayly, till she

had dispersed all the clouds on Mrs. Schroder's brow, and then turned to

go away.

"You will stay and see Harry and Ernest?" asked Mrs. Schroder. "They

have gone to make the last arrangements."

"Not now," said Violet. "They will like to be alone with you. I will see

Ernest to bid him good-bye."

II.

Two years passed away. At the end of this time Mrs. Schroder died. They

had passed on, as years go, slowly and quickly. Sometimes, as a carriage

takes us through narrow city-streets, and we look in at the windows we

are passing, we wonder at the close life that is going on behind them,

and we say to ourselves, "How slow the life must be within those

confined walls!" At other times, when our own life is cramped or jarred

by circumstances, we look with envy on the happy family-circles we see

smiling within, and have a fancy that the roses have fallen to others,

and we only have the thorns. There are full years, and there are years

of famine, just as there come moments to all that seem like a life-time,

and lives that hurry themselves away in a passing of the pendulum. It is

of no use to shake the hour-glass; yet, when we are counting upon time,

the sands hurry down like snow-flakes.

It was true, as Violet had foreboded, that Harry missed Ernest. He went

heavily about his work, and the house seemed silent without him. Harry

confessed this sadly to Violet, when his brother had been gone about a

year. They had heard from Ernest in Florence, that he was getting on

well. He had found occupation in the workshop of a famous sculptor, and

had time besides to carry out some of his own designs.

"He writes me," said Harry, "that he will be able now to support

himself, and that he does not need my help. Do you know, Violet, that

takes the life out of me? I feel as if I had nothing to work for. I

always felt a pride in working for Ernest, because I thought he was

fitted for something better. Violet, it saddens me to think he can do

without me. I go to my daily work; I lift my hammer and let it fall; but

it is all mechanically; there is no vital force in the blow. It is hard

to live without him."

"This is what I was afraid of," said Violet. "I was afraid he would

think he could do without us. But he cannot do without you."

"Say that he cannot do without _us_" said Harry; "for he needs you, as I

need you, and the question is, with which the need is greater."

Violet turned red and pale, and said,--

"We cannot answer that question yet."

After Mrs. Schroder died, it was sad enough in the old rooms. In the

daytime, when Harry was away at his work, Violet would go up-stairs and

put all things in order, and make them look as nearly as possible as

they did when the mother was there. Harry came to pass his evenings with

Violet.

A few days after his mother's death, he said to Violet,--

"Is it not time for you to tell me that it is I who need you more than

Ernest? He writes very happily now. He is succeeding; he has an order

for his statue. He writes and thinks of nothing else but what he will

create,--of the ideas that have been waiting for an expression. I am a

carpenter still, I shall never be more, and my work will always be less

and lower than my love. Could you be satisfied with him? He has attained

now, Ernest has, what he was looking for; and have I not a right to my

reward?"

The tears tumbled from Violet's eyes.

"Dear, noble Harry! I am not ready for you yet. I do believe he is above

us both, and satisfied to be above us both; but I am not ready yet."

A day or two afterwards, Harry brought Violet a letter from Italy. It

was from an artist friend of Ernest's, whose wife and mother had kindly

received him into their home. Carlo wrote now that Ernest had been taken

very ill. They thought him recovering, but he was still very low, and

his mind depressed, and he continued scarcely conscious of those around

him. He talked wildly, and begged that his home friends would come to

him; and though his new Italian friends promised him all that kindness

could give, Carlo wrote to ask if it were not possible for his brother

or his mother to come out. He had been working very hard, was just

finishing an order that had occupied him the last year, and he had

overtasked his mind as well as his body.

"You will go to him!" exclaimed Violet, when she had read the letter.

"If nothing better can be done," answered Harry. "Only yesterday I made

a contract for work with a hard master. It would be difficult to break

it; but I will do it gladly, if there is nothing better to be done."

"You mean that you would like to have me go to Ernest," said Violet.

"Will you go?" asked Harry. "That will be the very best thing."

Aunt Martha broke in here. She had been sitting quietly at the other

side of the table, as usual, apparently engrossed with her knitting.

"You do not mean to send Violet to Italy, and to take care of Ernest?"

she exclaimed. "What are you thinking of? I would never consent to

Violet's going alone; it would not be proper."

Violet grew crimson at the reproof. She was standing beneath the light,

and turned away her head.

"Not if I were Harry's betrothed?" she asked.

Aunt Martha looked up quickly. She saw the glad, relieved expression of

Harry's face.

"If you are engaged to Harry, that is different, indeed!" she said.

It did make a difference in Aunt Martha's thoughts. In the first place,

it gave her pleasure. Harry was well-to-do in, the world. He would make

a good husband for Violet, and a kindly one. She liked him better than

she did Ernest. She had supposed Violet would marry one or other of the

boys, and, "just because things went at cross-grain in the world," she

had always supposed Violet would prefer Ernest. She had never liked him

herself. He was always spinning cobwebs in his brain; she never could

understand a word of his talk. She did not believe he would live, and

then Violet would be left a poor widow, as his mother had been left when

her Hermann died. She remembered all about that. Ernest's absence had

encouraged her with regard to Harry; but two years had passed, and it

seemed to her the two were no nearer an engagement.

But now it was settled; and if this foolish plan of Violet's going to

Italy had brought it about, the plan itself wore a different color.

Aunt Martha said no more of the impropriety. She reserved her

complainings for the subject of the trouble of getting Violet ready, all

of a sudden, for such a voyage.

Little trouble fell to Aunt Martha's share. Violet went about it gladly.

She advised directly with a friend who could tell her from experience

exactly how little she would want, while Harry completed all the

business arrangements. The activity, the adventure of it, suited

Violet's old tastes. She had no dread of a solitary voyage, of passing

through countries whose languages she could not speak. Though burdened

with anxiety for Ernest and for Harry, she went away with a glad heart.

Unconsciously to herself, she reversed her old exclamation, saying to

herself,--

"The men, indeed, should not have all the work, and the women all the

play!"

The journey was in fact easily accomplished. At another time Violet's

thoughts would have been occupied with the scenes she passed through.

Now she travelled as a devotee travels heavenward, making a monastery of

the world, and convent-walls out of rays from Paradise. She thought

only of the end of her journey; and everything touched her through the

throbbings of her heart. On shipboard, she was busy with the poor old

sick father whom his children were carrying home to his native land. In

passing through Paris, she used all her time in helping a sister to find

a brother; because her energy was always helpful. In travelling across

France, she looked at her companions, asking herself to what home they

were going, what friends they were bound to meet. From Marseilles to

Leghorn, she was the only one of the women-passengers who was not sick;

and she was called upon for help in different languages, which she could

understand only through the teachings of her heart.

It was this same teacher that led her to understand Ernest's friends in

Florence, when she had found them, and that led them to understand her.

Ernest was in much the same state as when they wrote. He was growing

stronger, but his mind seemed to wander.

"And do you know, dear lady," said Monica, Carlo's mother, "that we fear

he has been starving,--starving, too, when we, his friends, had plenty,

and would have been glad to give him? He was to have been paid for his

work when he had finished it; and he had given up his other work for his

master, that be might complete his own statue. Oh, you should see that!

He is putting it into the marble,--or taking it out, rather, for it has

life almost, and springs from the stone."

"But Ernest?" asked Violet.

"Well, then, just for want of money, he was starving,--so the doctor

says, now. I suppose he was too proud to write home for money, and his

wages had stopped. And he was too proud to eat our bread. That was hard

of him. Just the poor food that we have, to think he should have been

too proud to let us give it him!--that was not kind."

Ernest did not recognize Violet at first, but she took her place in the

daily care of him. Monica begged that she would prepare food for him

such as he had been used to have at home. She was very sure that would

cure him. It would be almost as good for him as his native air. She

was very glad a woman had come to take care of him. "His brother's

betrothed,--a sister,--she would bring him back to life as no one else

could."

Violet did bring him back to life. Ernest had become so accustomed to

her presence in his half-conscious state, that he never showed surprise

at finding her there. He hardly showed pleasure; only in her absence his

feverish restlessness returned; in her presence he was quiet.

He grew strong enough to come out into the air to walk a little.

"I must go to work soon," he said one day. "Monsieur will be coming for

his Psyche."

"Your Psyche! I have not seen it!" exclaimed Violet. "I have not dared

to raise the covering."

They went in to look at it. Violet stood silent before it. Yes, as

Monica had said, it was ready to spring from the marble. It seemed

almost too spiritual for form, it scarcely needed the wings for flight,

it was ethereal already,--marble only so long as it remained unfinished.

At last Violet spoke.

"Do not let it go! Do not finish it; it will leave the marble then, I

know! Oh, Ernest, you have seen the spirit, and the spirit only! Could

not you hold it to earth more closely than that? It was too bold a

thought of you to try to mould the spirit alone. Is not the body

precious, too? Why wilt you be so careless of that?"

"If the body would care for me," said Ernest, "I would care for the

body. Indeed, this work shows that I have cared for the body," he went

on. "One of these days, I shall receive money for my work; I have

already sold my Psyche. One lives on money, you know. But it is but a

poor battle,--the battle of life. I shall finish my Psyche, give it to

the man who buys it, and then"----

"And then you will come home, come home to us!" said Violet; "and we

will take care of you. You shall not miss your Psyche!"

"And then," continued Ernest, shaking his head, "then I shall go into

Sicily. I shall help Garibaldi. I shall join the Italian cause."

"Garibaldi! The cause!" exclaimed Violet. "Are you not ashamed to plead

it? You know you would go then not for others, but to throw away your

own life! You are tired of living, and you seek that way to rid yourself

of life! Confess it at once!"

"Very well, then," answered Ernest, "it is so."

"Then do not sully a good cause with a traitor's help," said Violet,

"nor take its noble name. The life you offer would be worth no more than

a spent ball. You have been a coward in your own fight, and Garibaldi

does not--nor does Italy--want a coward in his ranks. Oh, Ernest,

forgive me my hard words! but it is our life that you are spending so

freely, it is our blood that you want to pour out! If you cannot live

for yourself, for me, will you not live for Harry's sake?"

"For you, for you, Heart's-Ease!" exclaimed Ernest, calling Violet by

one of her old childish names, "But Harry lives for you, and you for

him; and God knows there is no life left for me. But you are right: I am

a coward and a bungler, because I can create no life. I give myself to

you and him."

Violet stood long before the statue of Psyche, cold as the marble, with

hot fires raging within.

"He loves me, loves me as Harry does! His love is deeper,

perhaps,--higher, perhaps. He was not above me,--he lifted me above

himself, looked up to me! He dies for me!"

Presently she found Ernest.

"Ernest, you say you will do as we wish. I must go home directly, and

without you. I shall take a vessel from Leghorn. Harry and I planned my

going home that way. It is less expensive, more direct; and I confess I

do not feel so strong about going home alone as I did in coming. My head

is full of thoughts, and I could not take care of myself; but I would

rather go alone. You will stay here, and we will write to you, or Harry

will come for you. But you must take care of yourself; you must not

starve yourself."

Her Italian friends accompanied her to the vessel and bade her good-bye,

Ernest was with them. She wrote to Harry the day she sailed. The vessel

looked comfortable enough; it was well-laden, and in its hold was the

marble statue of a great man,--great in worth as well as in weight.

A few weeks after Violet left, Harry appeared in Florence. He had just

missed her letter.

"I came to bring you both home," he said. "I finished my contract

successfully, and gave myself this little vacation."

Harry was dismayed to find that Violet was gone.

"But we will return directly, and arrive in time, perhaps, to greet her

as she gets home."

Monica urged,--

"But you must not keep him long. See how much he has done in Italy! You

will see he must come back again."

"Monsieur" had been for his statue, and was to send for it the next day,

more than satisfied with it.

Harry was astonished.

"Five hundred dollars! It would take me long enough to work that out!

Ah, Ernest, your hammering is worth more than mine!"

Harry's surprise was not merely for the money earned. When he saw the

white marble figure, which brought into the poor room where it stood

grandeur and riches and life and grace, he wondered still more.

"I see now," he said. "You spent your life on this. No wonder you were

starving when your spirit was putting itself into this mould!"

Harry was in a hurry to return. Ernest's little affairs were quickly

settled. Harry was surprised to find Italian life was so like home life

in this one thing: he had been treated so kindly, just as he would have

been in his own home,--just as Mrs. Schroder, and even Aunt Martha,

would have treated a poor Italian stranger who had sought a lodging in

their house; they had welcomed Harry with the same warmth and feeling

with which they had all along cared for Ernest. This was something that

Harry knew how to translate.

"When we were boys," he said to Ernest, as they set out to return, "and

you used to talk about Europe, we little thought I should travel into it

so carelessly as I did when I came here. I crossed it much as a pair of

compasses would on the map: my only points of rest were the home I left

and the one I was reaching for."

Much in the same way they passed through it again. Harry spoke of

and observed outward things, but everything showed that it was but a

superficial observation. His thoughts were with Violet.

"'The Nereïd!' are you very sure the Nereïd is a sound vessel?" he often

asked.

"What should I know of the Nereïd?" at last answered Ernest,

impatiently.

"I believe you don't care a rush for Violet!" cried Harry. "You can have

dreams instead! Your Psyche, your winged angels and all your visions,

they suffice you. While for me,--I tell you, Ernest, she is my flesh and

blood, my meat and drink. To think of her alone on that ocean drives me

wild; that inexorable sea haunts me night and day." He turned to look at

Ernest, and saw him pale and livid.

"God forgive me!" he said. "I know you love her, too! But it is our old

quarrel; we cannot understand each other, yet cannot live either of us

without the other. Yet I am glad to quarrel even in the old way. That is

pleasant, after all, is it not?"

They had a long, stormy voyage home; and a delay in crossing France had

made them miss the steamer they hoped to take. At each delay, Ernest

grew more silent, sadder, his face darker, his features thinner and more

sharpened. Harry was wild in his impatience, and angry, but more and

more thoughtful and careful for Ernest.

At last they reached the harbor. A friend met them who had been warned

of their arrival by telegraph from Halifax. He met them to tell them of

ill news; they would rather hear it from him.

The Nereïd was lost,--lost just outside the Bay,--the vessel, the crew,

all the passengers,--in a fearful storm of a week ago, the very storm

that had delayed their own passage.

"Let us go home," said Harry. "Where is it?" asked Ernest. "Why were we

not lost in the same storm?" cried Harry. "How could we pass quietly

along the very place?"

The brothers went home into the old room. Kindly hands had been caring

for it,--had tried to place all things in their accustomed order. Even

the canary had come back from Aunt Martha's parlor.

There was a letter on the table. Harry saw that only. It was Violet's

letter, which she wrote on leaving Leghorn. He tore it from its

cover,--then gave it, opened, to Ernest.

"You must read it for me,--I cannot!" and he hurried into an inner room.

Ernest held the letter helplessly and looked round. For him there was

a double desolation in the room. The books stood untouched upon the

shelves; his mother's work-basket was laid aside. Suddenly there came

back to him the memory of that last day at home,--the joyous spring-day

in March,--which was so full of gay sounds. The clatter of the dropping

ice, the happy laugh of the water breaking into freedom, the song of the

canary, now hushed by the presence of strangers,--the thoughts of these

made gay even that moment of parting. And with them came the image of

the dear mother and of the warm-hearted Violet. Oh, the parting was

happier than the return! Now there was silence in the room, and

absence,--such unuse about all things,--such a terrible stillness! He

longed for a voice, for a sound, for words.

In his hands were words, her own, her last words. Half unconsciously he

read through the letter, as if unwillingly too, because it might not

belong to him. Yet they were her words, and for him.

"DEAR HARRY,--

"Do you know that I love him?--that I love Ernest? I ought to have known

it, just because I did not know how to confess it to myself or you. I

thought he was above us both; and when I pitied myself that he could not

love me, I pitied you, and my pity, perhaps, I mistook for love of you.

Perhaps I mistook it, for I know not but I was conscious all the time of

loving him. I learned the truth when I stood by the side of his Psyche,

and saw, that, though she hovered from the marble, though he had won

fame and success, he was unsatisfied still. It is true, he must always

remain unsatisfied, because it is his genius that thirsts, and it is my

ideal that he loves, not me. But he is dying; he asks for me. You never

could refuse him what he asked. You will give me to him? If you were not

so generous and noble-hearted, I could not ask you both for your pardon

and your pity. But you are both, and will do with me as you will.

"Your

"VIOLET."

As Ernest finished reading, as he was fully comprehending the meaning of

the words which at first had struck him idly, Harry opened the door and

came in. Ernest could not look up at first. He thought, perhaps, he was

about to darken the sorrow already heavy enough upon his brother.

But when Harry spoke and Ernest looked into his face, he saw there the

usual clear, strong expression.

"I am going to tell you, Ernest, what I should have said before,--what I

went to Florence to tell you.

"After Violet left, the whole truth began to come upon me. She loved

you; I had no right to her. She pitied me; that was why she clung to

me. You know I cannot think quickly. It was long before it all came out

clearly; but when it did come, I was anxious to act directly. I had

finished my work; I went to tell you that Violet was yours; she should

stay with you in that warm Italian sir that you liked so much; she

should bring you back to life. But I was too late. I know not if it is

my failure that has brought about this sorrow, or if God has taken it

into His own hands. I only know that she was yours living, she is yours

now. I must tell you that in the first moment of that terrible shock of

the loss, there came a wicked, selfish gleam of gladness that I had not

given her up to you. But I have wiped that out with my tears, and I can

tell you without shame that is yours, that I have given her to you."

"We can both love her now," said Ernest.

"If she were living, she might have separated us," said Harry; "but

since God has taken her, she makes us one."

And the brothers read together Violet's letter.

* * * * *

THE NEW ATLANTIC CABLE.

When the indefatigable Cyrus told our people, five years ago, that he

was going to lay a telegraph-cable in the bed of the ocean between

America and Europe, and place New York and London in instantaneous

communication, our wide-awake and enterprising fellow-citizens said very

coolly that they should like to see him do it!--a phrase intended to

convey the idea that in their opinion he had promised a great deal more

than he could perform. But Cyrus was as good as his word. The cable was

laid, and worked for the space of three weeks, conveying between the Old

and New World four hundred messages of all sorts, and some of them of

the greatest importance. Four years have elapsed since the fulfilment

of that promise, and now Mr. Field comes again before the public and

announces that a new Atlantic cable is going to be laid down, which

is not only going to work, but is to be a permanent success; and this

promise will likewise be fulfilled. You may shrug your shoulders, my

friend, and look incredulous, but I assure you the grand idea will be

realized, and speedily. I have been heretofore as incredulous as any

one; but having examined the evidence in its favor, I am fully convinced

not only of the feasibility of laying a cable, and of the certainty

of its practical operation when laid, but of its complete

indestructibility. If you will accompany me through the following

pages, my doubting friend, I will convince you of the correctness of my

conclusions.

When the fact of the successful laying of the old Atlantic cable was

known, there was no class of people in this country more surprised at

the result than the electricians, engineers, and practical telegraphers.

Meeting a friend of mine, an electrician, and who, by the way, is also

a great mathematician, and, like all of his class, inclined to be very

exact in his statements, I exclaimed, in all the warmth and exuberance

of feeling engendered by so great an event,--

"Isn't it glorious, this idea of being able to send our lightning across

the ocean, and to talk with London and Paris as readily as we do with

New York and New Orleans?"

"It is, indeed," responded my friend, with equal enthusiasm; "my hopes

are more than realized by this wonderful achievement."

"Hopes realized!" exclaimed I. "Why, I didn't consider there was one

chance in a thousand of success,--did you?"

"Why, yes," replied my exact mathematical friend; "I didn't think the

chances so much against the success of the enterprise as that. From the

deductions which I drew from a very careful examination of all the facts

I could obtain, I concluded that the chances of absolute failure were

about ninety-seven and a half per cent.!"

For many of the facts contained in this article I am indebted to the

very clear and able address delivered by Mr. Cyrus W. Field before the

American Geographical and Statistical Society, at Clinton Hall, New

York, in May last, upon the prospects of the Atlantic telegraph.

At the start, of course, every one was very ignorant of the work to be

done in establishing a telegraph across the ocean. Submarine telegraphy

was in its infancy, and aërial telegraphy had scarcely outgrown its

swaddling-clothes. We had to grope our way in the dark. It was only by

repeated experiments and repeated failures that we were able to find out

all the conditions of success.

The Atlantic telegraph, it is said by some, was a failure. Well, if it

were so, replies Mr. Field, I should say (as is said of many a man, that

he did more by his death than by his life) that even in its failure it

has been of immense benefit to the science of the world, for it has been

the great experimenting cable. No electrician ever had so long a line to

work upon before; and hence the science of submarine telegraphy never

made such rapid progress as after that great experiment. In fact, all

cables that have since been laid, where the managers availed themselves

of the knowledge and experience obtained by the Atlantic cable, have

been perfectly successful. All these triumphs over the sea are greatly

indebted to the bold attempt to cross the Atlantic made four years ago.

The first Atlantic cable, therefore, has accomplished a great work in

deep-sea telegraphy, a branch of the art but little known before. In one

sense it was a failure. In another it was a brilliant success. Despite

every disadvantage, it was laid across the ocean; it was stretched from

shore to shore; and for three weeks it continued to operate,--a time

long enough to settle forever the scientific question whether it was

possible to communicate between two continents so far apart. This was

the work of the first Atlantic telegraph; and if it lies silent at the

bottom of the ocean till the destruction of the globe, it has done

enough for the science of the world and the benefit of mankind to

entitle it to be held in honored and blessed memory.

Now, as to the prospect of success in another attempt to lay a telegraph

across the ocean. The most erroneous opinions prevail as to the

difficulties of laying submarine telegraphs in general, and securing

them against injury. It is commonly supposed that the number of failures

is much greater than of successes; whereas the fact is, that the later

attempts, where made with proper care, have been almost uniformly

successful. In proof of this I will refer to the printed "List of all

the Submarine Telegraph-Cables manufactured and laid down by Messrs.

Glass, Elliot, & Co., of London," from which it appears that within the

space of eight years, from 1854 to 1862, they have manufactured and laid

down twenty-five different cables, among which are included three of

the longest lines connecting England with the Continent,--namely, from

England to Holland, 140 miles, to Hanover, 280 miles, and to Denmark,

368 miles,--and the principal lines in the Mediterranean,--as from Italy

to Corsica and thence to Toulon, from Malta to Sicily, and from Corfu to

Otranto, and besides these, the two chief of all, that from France to

Algiers, 520 miles, laid in 1860, and the other, laid only last year,

from Malta to Alexandria, 1,535 miles! All together the lines laid by

these manufacturers comprise a total of 3,739 miles; and though some

have been lying at the bottom of the sea and working for eight years,

each one of them is at this hour in as perfect condition as on the day

it was laid down, with the exception of the two short lines laid in

shallow water along the shore between Liverpool and Holyhead, 25 miles,

and from Prince Edward's Island to New Brunswick, 11 miles; the latter

of which was broken by a ship's anchor, and the former by the anchor

of the Royal Charter during the gale in which she was wrecked, both of

which can be easily repaired.

Where failures have occurred in submarine telegraphs, the causes are now

well understood and easily to be avoided. Thus with the first Atlantic

cable, its defects have all been carefully investigated by scientific

men, and may be easily guarded against. When this cable was in process

of manufacture in the factory of Messrs. Glass, Elliot, & Co., in

Greenwich, near London, it was coiled in four large vats, and there

left exposed, day after day, to the heat of a summer sun, which was

intensified by the tarred coating of the cable to one hundred and twenty

degrees. This went on, day after day, with the knowledge of the engineer

and electrician of the company, although the directors had given

explicit orders that sheds should be erected over the vats to prevent

the possibility of such an occurrence. As might have been foreseen, the

gutta-percha was melted, so that the conductor which it was desired to

insulate was so twisted by the coils that it was left quite bare in

numberless places, thus weakening, and eventually, when the cable

was submerged, destroying the insulation. The injury was partially

discovered before the cable was taken out of the factory at Greenwich,

and a length of about thirty miles was cut out and condemned. This,

however, did not wholly remedy the difficulty, for the defective

insulation became frequently and painfully apparent while the cable was

being submerged. Still further evidence of its imperfect condition was

afforded when it came to be cut up for charms and trinkets.

The first cable was, to a great extent, an experiment,--a leap in

the dark. Its material and construction were as good as the state of

knowledge at that time provided, and in many respects not unsuitable;

but the company could not avail itself, at that time, of the instruments

or apparatus for testing its conducting power and insulation, in the

manner since pointed out by experience. The effects of temperature,

as we have seen, were not provided for. The vast differences in the

conducting power of copper were discovered only by means of that cable,

when made. The mathematical law whereby the proportions of insulation to

conduction are determined had not been fully investigated; and it was

even argued by some of the pretended electricians in the employ of the

company, that, the smaller the conductor, the more rapidly the current

could pass through it. No mode of protecting the external sheath from

oxidation had then been discovered; and the kind of machinery necessary

for submerging cables in deep water could only be theoretically assumed.

Looking back to that period, and granting that there was too much haste

in the preparations, and that other mistakes were committed which could

now be foreseen and avoided, it is not too much to say, that, if that

cable could be laid and worked, as was done, after one failure in 1857,

and the consequent uncoiling and storage of it in an exposed situation,

and after three attempts in 1858, under the most fearful circumstances

as to weather, it would be an easy task to lay a cable constructed and

submerged by the light of present experience.

[Illustration: The Cable laid in 1858.]

[Illustration: The proposed New Cable.]

The above cuts, representing sections of the cable laid in 1858 and the

proposed new cable, will serve to show the difference between the two,

and the immense superiority of the latter over the former. In the old

Atlantic cable the copper conducting-wire weighed but ninety-three

pounds to the mile, while in the new cable it weighs five hundred and

ten pounds to the mile, _or more than five times as much_. Now the size,

or diameter, of a telegraphic conductor is just as important an item, in

determining the strength of current which can be maintained upon it with

a given amount of battery-force, as the length of the conductor. To

produce the effects by which the messages are expressed at the end of

a telegraphic wire or cable, it is necessary that the electric current

should have a certain intensity or strength. Now the intensity of the

current transmitted by a given voltaic battery along a given line of

wire will decrease, other things being the same, in the same proportion

as the length of the wire increases. Thus, if the wire be continued for

ten miles, the current will have twice the intensity which it would

have, if the wire had been extended to a distance of twenty miles. It is

evident, therefore, that the wire may be continued to such a length that

the current will no longer have sufficient intensity to produce at the

station to which the despatch is transmitted those effects by which the

language of the despatch is signified. _But the intensity of the current

transmitted by a given voltaic battery upon a wire of given length will

be increased in the same proportion as the area of the section of the

wire is augmented_. Thus, if the diameter of the wire be doubled, the

area of its section being increased in a fourfold proportion, the

intensity of the current transmitted along the wire will be increased in

the same ratio. The intensity of the current may also be augmented by

increasing the number of pairs of the generating plates or cylinders

composing the galvanic battery.

All electrical terms are arbitrary, and necessarily unintelligible

to the general reader. I shall, therefore, use them as sparingly as

possible, and endeavor to make myself clearly understood by explaining

those which I do use.

All telegraphic conductors offer a certain resistance to the passage of

an electric current, and the amount of this resistance is proportional

to the length of the conductor, and inversely to its size. In order to

overcome this resistance, it is necessary to increase the number of

the cells in the battery, and thus obtain a fluid of greater force or

intensity.

On aërial telegraph-lines this increase in the intensity of the battery

occasions no particular inconvenience, other than by tending to the more

rapid destruction of the small copper coils, or helices, employed;

but upon submarine lines it has the effect of increasing the static

electricity, or electricity of tension, which accumulates along the

surface of the gutta-percha covering of the conducting-wire, in the same

manner as static electricity accumulates on the surface of glass, or of

a stick of sealing-wax, by rubbing it with a piece of cloth. The use of

submarine or of subterranean conductors occasions, from the above cause,

a small retardation in the velocity of the transmitted electricity. This

retardation is not due to the length of the path which the electric

current has to traverse, since it does not take place with a conductor,

equally long, insulated in the air; but it arises from a static

reaction, caused by the passage of an intense current through a

conductor well insulated, but surrounded outside its insulating coating

by a conducting body, such as sea-water or moist ground, or even by the

metallic envelope of iron wires placed in communication with the ground.

When this conductor is presented to one of the poles of a battery, the

other pole of which communicates with the ground, it becomes charged

with static electricity, like the coating of a Leyden-jar,--electricity

which is capable of giving rise to a discharge-current, even after the

voltaic current has ceased to be transmitted. Volta showed in one of his

beautiful experiments, that, in putting one of the ends of his pile

in communication with the earth, and the other with a non-insulated

Leyden-jar, the jar was charged in an instant of time to a degree

proportional to the force of the pile. At the same time an instantaneous

current was observed in the conductor between the pile and the jar,

which had all the properties of an ordinary current. Now it is evident

that the subaqueous wire with its insulating covering may be assimilated

exactly to an immense Leyden-jar. The glass of the jar represents the

gutta-percha; the internal coating is the surface of the copper wire;

the external coating is the surrounding metallic envelope and water. To

form an idea of the capacity of this new kind of battery, we have only

to remember that the surface of the wire is equal to fourteen square

yards per mile. Bringing such a wire into communication by one of its

ends with a battery, of which the opposite pole is in contact with the

earth, whilst the other extremity of the wire is insulated, must cause

the wire to take a charge of the same character and tension as that of

the pole of the battery touched by it.

These currents of static induction are proportional in intensity to

the force of the battery and the length of the wire, whilst an inverse

relation is true as regards the length of the conductor with the

ordinary voltaic current.

Professor Wheatstone proved, by actual experiment, that a continuous

current may be maintained in the circuit of the long wire of an

electric cable, of which one of the ends is insulated, whilst the other

communicates with one of the poles of a battery, whose other pole is

connected with the ground. This current he considers due to the uniform

and continual dispersion of the statical electricity with which the wire

is charged along its whole length.

It was mainly owing to the retardation from this cause that

communication through the Atlantic cable was so exceedingly slow and

difficult.

I will now endeavor to show why the new cable will not be liable to this

difficulty, to anything like the same extent.

I have alluded to the resistance offered by the conductor of a

telegraph-cable to the passage of an electric current, and to the

retardation of this current by static induction. The terms _retardation_

and _resistance_ are not considered technically synonymous, but are

intended, as electrical terms, to designate two very different forces.

The resistance of a wire, as we have seen above, is proportional to its

length, and inversely to its diameter. It is overcome by increasing the

number of cells in the battery, or, in other words, by increasing the

intensity or force of the current. The retardation in a telegraphic

cable, on the contrary, is proportional to the length of the

conducting-wire and the intensity of the battery. In the former case, by

increasing the electrical force you overcome the resistance; while

in the latter, by augmenting the electrical force you increase the

retardation.

From the foregoing law it will be seen that there are two ways of

lessening the resistance upon telegraphic conductors,--one by reducing

the length, and the other by increasing the area of the section of the

conducting-wire. Now, as already remarked, the copper conducting-wire in

the old cable weighed but ninety-three pounds to the mile, while in the

new cable it weighs five hundred and ten pounds to the mile, or more

than five times as much. If, then, by comparison, we estimate the

resistance in the old Atlantic cable to have been equal to two

thousand miles of ordinary telegraph-wire, the increased size of the

conducting-wire of the new cable reduces the resistance to one-fifth

that distance, or four hundred miles. And while it required two hundred

cells of battery to produce intensity sufficient to work over the two

thousand miles of resistance in the old cable, it will require but

one-fifth as much, or forty cells, to overcome the four hundred miles

of resistance in the new cable. The retardation which resulted from

the intense current generated by two hundred cells will be also

proportionately reduced in the comparatively small battery of forty

cells. Thus we perceive, that, while the length of the cable is,

electrically and practically, reduced to one-fifth of its former length,

the retardation of the current is also decreased in the same proportion.

Therefore, if, with the old cable, three words per minute could be

transmitted, with the new cable we shall be able to transmit five times

as many, or fifteen words per minute. This is not equal to our Morse

system on the land-lines, which will signal at the rate of thirty-five

words per minute, still less to the printing system, which can signal at

the rate of fifty words per minute; but, even at this rate, the

cable would be enabled to transmit in twenty-four hours one thousand

despatches containing an average of twenty words apiece. Mr. Field,

however, claims for the cable a speed of only twelve words per minute,

which would reduce the number of despatches of twenty words each

that could be transmitted in twenty-four hours to eight hundred and

sixty-four. We will suppose, however, that the cable transmits only five

hundred telegrams per day; this number, at ten dollars per message,

would give an income of five thousand dollars per diem, or one million

five hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars per annum. Quite a handsome

revenue on an outlay of about one million of dollars!

The only instrument which could be used successfully in signalling

through the old cable was one of peculiar construction, called the

Marine Galvanometer. In this instrument, momentum and inertia are almost

wholly avoided by the use of a needle weighing only one and a half

grains, combined with a mirror reflecting a ray of light, which

indicates deflections with great accuracy. By this means a gradually

increasing or decreasing current is at each instant indicated at its

due strength. Thus, when this galvanometer is placed as the

receiving-instrument at the end of a long submarine cable, the movement

of the spot of light, consequent on the completion of a circuit through

the battery, cable, and earth, can be so observed as to furnish a curve

representing very accurately the arrival of an electric current. Lines

representing successive signals at various speeds can also be obtained,

and, by means of a metronome, dots and dashes can be sent with nearly

perfect regularity by an ordinary Morse key, and the corresponding

changes in the current at the receiving end of the cable accurately

observed.

A system of arbitrary characters, similar to those used upon the Morse

telegraph, was employed, and the letter to be indicated was determined

by the number of oscillations of the needle, as well as by the length of

time during which the needle remained in one place. The operator, who

watched the reflection of the deflected needle in the mirror, held a key

in his hand communicating with a local instrument in the office, which

he pressed down or raised, according to the deflection of the needle;

and another operator deciphered the characters thus produced upon the

paper. This mode of telegraphing was, of necessity, very slow, and it

will not surprise the reader that the fastest rate of speed over the

cable did not exceed three words per minute. Still, had the old cable

continued in operation a few months longer, experience and practice

would have enabled the operator to transmit and receive with very much

greater facility. On our land-lines, operators of long experience

acquire a dexterity which enables them not only to transmit and receive

telegrams with wonderful rapidity, but to work the instruments during

storms, when those of less experience would be unable to receive a dot.

There is no occupation in which skill and experience are more necessary

to success than in that of telegraphing, and at the time the Atlantic

cable was laid no experience had been obtained upon similar lines, or

with the instruments employed. Now, however, the company can avail

itself of experienced operators from lines of nearly equal length, and

who will require no time for experimenting, but may commence operations

as soon as the two ends of the cable are landed upon the shores of

Europe and America.

In the old cable the copper wire was covered but three times with

gutta-percha, while in the new it is covered four times with the purest

gutta-percha and four times with Chatterton's patent compound, by which

the cable is rendered absolutely impenetrable to water. The old cable

was covered with eighteen strands of small iron wire, which, as they had

no other covering, were directly exposed to the action of the water. The

new is covered with thirteen strands, each strand consisting of three

wires of the best quality, and covered with gutta-percha, to render it

indestructible in salt water. By this new construction, it has double

the strength of the old cable, at the same time that it is lighter in

the water, a very important matter in laying it across the ocean.

The risk of loss in laying the new cable would be very much diminished

by the fact that it would be of such strength, that, even if broken, it

could be recovered, as has been done in the Mediterranean; and besides,

the principal and most expensive materials, copper and gutta-percha,

being indestructible, would have at all times a market value.

Other routes to Europe have been proposed, and have been at times quite

popular, the most feasible of which are those _viâ_ Behring's Straits,

or the Aleutian Islands, and _viâ_ Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, and the

Faroe Isles.

To the route _viâ_ Behring's Straits there are several grave objections.

The distance from New York to London by a route crossing the three

continents of America, Asia, and Europe, is about eighteen thousand

miles, or more than nine times as great as that from Newfoundland to

Ireland. Of course, the mere cost of constructing a continuous telegraph

three-quarters of the distance around the globe, and of maintaining

the hundreds of stations that would be necessary over such a length

of land-lines, would be enormous. But even that is not the chief

difficulty. A line which should traverse the whole breadth of Siberia

would encounter wellnigh insuperable obstacles in the country itself, as

it would have to pass over mountains and across deserts; while, as it

turned north to Kamtschatka, it would come into a region of frightful

cold, where winter reigns the greater part of the year. Of this whole

country a large part is not only utterly uncivilized, but uninhabited,

and portions which are occupied are held by savage and warlike tribes.

Of the Greenland route, Doctor Hayes, the well-known Arctic traveller,

expresses himself in the most decided manner, that it is wholly

impracticable. He says it must be obvious that the ice which hugs

the Greenland coast will prevent a cable, if laid, from remaining in

continuity for any length of time. Doctor Wallich, naturalist attached

to Sir Leopold McClintock's expedition to survey the Northern route,

considers it impracticable on account of the volcanic nature of the

bottom of the sea near Iceland, and the ridges of rock and the immense

icebergs near Greenland.

The main argument in favor of this route, in preference to the more

direct one across the Atlantic, is, that it would be impossible to work

in one continuous circuit a line so long as that from Newfoundland to

Ireland. This would seem to be answered sufficiently by the success of

the old Atlantic cable. But it is alleged that it worked slowly and with

difficulty, which is true, and hence it is thought that the distance

would be at least a very great obstacle. But we have shown, that,

practically, by the increased size of the conducting-wire, the new cable

has been reduced in length four-fifths, and will work five times as fast

as the old one. The cable extending from Malta to Alexandria is fifteen

hundred and thirty-five miles long, and the whole of this line can be

worked through without relay or repetition in a satisfactory manner, as

regards both its scientific and commercial results, and with remarkably

low battery-power. The Gutta-Percha Company, which made the core of this

cable, says that a suitably made and insulated telegraph-conductor, laid

intact between Ireland and Newfoundland, can be worked efficiently, both

in a commercial and scientific sense, and they are prepared to guaranty

the efficient and satisfactory working of a line of the length of

the Atlantic cable as manufactured by themselves, and submerged and

maintained in that state.

It can be shown by the testimony and experience of those most eminent in

the science and practice of oceanic telegraphy, that neither length of

distance, within the limits with which the Atlantic Company has to

deal, nor depth of water, is any insuperable impediment to efficient

communication by such improved conductors of electricity as are now

proposed to be laid down. All those who are best able to form a sound

opinion, from long-continued experimental researches on this particular

point, are willing to pledge their judgment, that, on such a length of

line as that between Ireland and Newfoundland, and with such a cable and

such improved instruments as are now at command, not less than twelve

words per minute could be transmitted from shore to shore, and that this

may be done with greatly diminished battery-power as compared with that

formerly used.

I think I have shown by facts, and not theory merely, that the Atlantic

cable can and will be successfully laid down and worked, thus supplying

the long-needed link between the three hundred thousand miles of

electric telegraph already in operation on the opposite shores of the

Atlantic.

There are many of our people who are inclined to look coldly upon this

enterprise, from a conviction that it would give Great Britain an undue

advantage over us in case war should occur between the two countries,

and I confess to having entertained the same views; but the case is so

well put by Mr. Field, in his address before the American Geographical

Society, as, in my judgment, to relieve every apprehension upon this

point.

The relative geographical position of the two countries cannot be

changed. It so happens, that the two points on the opposite sides of

the Atlantic nearest to each other, and which are therefore the natural

termini of an ocean telegraph, are both in British territory. Of

course, the Government which holds both ends can control the use of the

telegraph, or stop it altogether. It has the power, and the only check

upon the abuse of that power must be by a treaty, made beforehand. Shall

we refuse to aid in constructing the line, for fear that England, in

the exasperation of a war, would disregard any treaty stipulations in

reference to its use? Then we throw away our only security. For, suppose

a war to break out to-morrow, the first step of England would be to lay

a cable herself, for her own sole and exclusive benefit. Then she

would not only have the control, but would be unrestrained by any

treaty-obligations binding her to respect the neutrality of the

telegraph. We should then find this great medium of communication

between the two hemispheres, which we might have made, if not an ally,

at least a neutral, turned into a powerful antagonist.

Would it not, therefore, be better that such a line of telegraph should

be constructed by the joint efforts of both countries, and be guarded

by treaty-stipulations, so that it might be placed, as far as possible,

under the protection of the faith of nations, and of the honor of the

civilized world?

Mr. Field says, that, in the negotiations on this subject, Great Britain

has never shown the slightest wish to take advantage of its geographical

position to exact special privileges, or a desire to appropriate any

advantages which it was not willing to concede equally to the United

States.

Should not the Atlantic telegraph, if laid down under the conditions

proposed by the Company, instead of being a cause of apprehension, in

case of war, be rather looked upon with favor, as tending to lessen

the risk of war between the United States and all European countries,

affording, as it would, facilities for the prompt interchange of notes

between the Government of the United States and those of the various

nations on the other side of the Atlantic, whenever any misunderstanding

should unhappily arise?

Let us, then, throw aside all feeling of apprehension from this cause,

and be prepared to hail, with the same enthusiasm we experienced in 1858

at the laying of the old, the completion of the new Atlantic cable.

* * * * *

THE CABALISTIC WORDS.

[Since the following poem was written, we have had from the President

the pledge that the "cabalistic words" shall be uttered by him on the

first of January, 1863, unless the rebellion is abandoned before that

time. Thanks and honor to the President for the promise! But we shall

not look for the magical operation of the words till they are uttered

without reservation or qualification.]

Hear, O Commander of the Faithful, hear

A legend trite to many a childish ear;

But scorn it not, nor let its teaching fail,

Although familiar as a nursery tale.

Cassim the Covetous, whose god was gold,

Once, by strange chance, found riches manifold

Hid in a rocky cavern, where a band

Of robbers who were ravaging the land

Kept their bright spoils. Cassim had learnt the spell

By which the dazzling heaps were guarded well.

Two cabalistic words he speaks, and, lo!

The door flies open: what a golden glow!

He enters,--speaks the words of power once more,

And swift upon him clangs the ponderous door.

Croesus! what joy to eyes that know their worth!

Huge bags of gold and diamonds on the earth!

Here piles of ingots, there a glistening heap

Of coins that all their minted lustre keep.

Cassim is ravished at the wondrous sight,

And rubs his hands with ever new delight;

Absorbed in gazing, lets the hours go by,

Nor can enough indulge his gloating eye.

He chooses what he can to bear away,

And then reluctant seeks the outer day.

The words,--what _are_ they,--those that ope the door?

He falters,--loses all so plain before;--

Tries this word,--that,--in vain!--he cannot speak

The magic sentence;--he grows faint and weak,--

Spurns the base gold, cause of his wild despair;--

What if the thieves should come and find him there?--

Hark! they are coming!--yes, they come!--they shout

The precious words;--ah, now they end his doubt!--

Too late he hears; in vain he tries to fly;

Trembling he sinks upon his knees--to die!

Commander of the Faithful! dark the strait

Thy people stand in, in this hour of fate;

Thick walls of gloom and doubt have shut them in;

They grope beneath the ban of one great sin.

Yet there are two short words whose potent spell

Shall burst with thunder-crash these gates of hell,

Open a vista to celestial light,

Lead us to peace through the eternal Right.

Oh, speak those words, those saving words of power,

In this most pregnant, this supremest hour,--

Words writ in martyr blood, as all may see!--

Commander of the Faithful, say, BE FREE!

* * * * *

CONVERSATIONAL OPINIONS OF THE LEADERS OF SECESSION.

A MONOGRAPH.

The causes of the present Rebellion, the personal history of its

leaders, and the incidents immediately preceding the breaking out of the

conspiracy, will ever remain objects of chief interest to the historian

of the present period of the Republic. Influenced by a desire to obtain

unimpeachable information upon these topics from unprejudiced sources,

the writer of the following article, then a student at Yale College,

availed himself of the vacation in December, 1860, and January, 1861, to

visit the National capital, and while there to improve the reasonably

ready access with which most public men are approached, whenever the

object is either to give or to receive information, for the purpose of

studying a period then promising to exceed in importance anything in the

past history of the nation. It has been suggested to the writer, that

certain interviews, such as younger men, when collegians, were then

allowed with the frank Southern leaders, and which he has occasionally

sketched in conversation, have had the seal of privacy removed by the

tide of events, and should now be described for the public, as aiding to

unmask, from unquestionable authority, the real causes and origin of

the Rebellion, and contributing something, perhaps, to sustain public

sentiment in the defence of the nation against a conspiracy which the

statements of these Southern apologists themselves prove to have been

conceived in the most reckless disregard of honor and law, and which, if

successful, will give birth to a neighboring nation actuated by the same

spirit.

The more important interviews alluded to were with the Honorable Robert

Toombs, the Honorable R.M.T. Hunter, and the Honorable Jefferson Davis,

at that time prominent members, as is well known, of the United

States Senate, from the States respectively of Georgia, Virginia, and

Mississippi. The communications of the Senators are proved to have been

sincere by their subsequent speeches and by public events. The writer

is by no means insensible to the breach of privilege, of which, under

ordinary circumstances, notwithstanding the unfolding of events, he

would be guilty, in detailing in print private conversations; but he

believes that the public will sustain the propriety of the present

revelations, now that the persons chiefly concerned have become enemies

of the nation and of mankind.

Not, as he may possibly be accused, with the purpose of adding a

syllable of unnecessary length to the narrative, but for the sake of

vividness in presenting the idea of the _personnel_ of the Southern

leaders, soon to be known only as historical characters, and of

scrupulous accuracy in representing their sentiments, to which, in this

case, a notice of time, place, and manner seems as necessary as that of

matter, the writer has taken not a little pains, through all the usual

means, to remember, and will endeavor to state, the conversations,

always with logical, and nearly always, he believes, with verbal

accuracy, in order that the conclusions to be drawn from them by the

reader may have the better support.

It is well known that public men in Washington, out of business hours,

are visited without formal introduction or letters, especially upon

their reception-days, and that the privilege of a single interview

implies no distinction to the visitor. The urbanity and frankness with

which proper approaches are met, especially by the Southern leaders, are

also well known. Young men, with unprejudiced minds, upon whom public

characters are always anxious to impress the stamp of their own

principles, are perhaps received with quite as much frankness as others.

* * * * *

The first interview sought was with Mr. Toombs, the most daring and

ingenuous, and perhaps the most gifted in eloquence of the Southern

leaders, whose house, at that time, was a lofty building upon F Street,

only two doors from the residence of Mr. Seward. A negro servant, who,

with all the blackness of a native African, yet with thin lips and

almost the regular features of a Caucasian, appeared to the writer to be

possibly the descendant of one of the superior, princely African tribes,

showed the way to an unoccupied parlor. The room was luxuriously

furnished with evidences of wealth and taste: a magnificent pianoforte,

several well-chosen paintings, and a marble bust of some public

character standing upon a high pedestal of the same material in the

corner, attracting particular attention, and a pleasant fire in the open

grate making the December evening social. A step presently heard in the

hall, elastic, buoyant, and vigorous, was altogether too characteristic

of Mr. Toombs's portly, muscular, confident, and somewhat dashing

figure, to be mistaken for any other than his own. Mr. Toombs appeared

to be now about forty-five years of age, but carried in his whole mien

the elastic vigor, and irresistible self-reliance, frankness, decision,

and sociality of character, which mark his oratory and his public

career. His good-evening, and inquiry concerning the college named on

the card of the writer, were in a tone that at once placed his visitor

at ease.

"Your first visit to Washington, Mr. ----?"

"Yes, Sir. Like others, I have been attracted by the political crisis,

and the purpose of studying it from unprejudiced sources."

"Crisis? Oh, _that's past_."

The writer will not soon forget the tone of perfect confidence and

_nonchalance_ with which this was uttered. The time was the last week of

December, 1860.

"You are confident, then, Sir, that fifteen States will secede?"

"Secede? Certainly,--they _must_ secede. You Northerners,--you are from

a Northern college, I believe,"--referring to the writer's card,--"you

Northerners wish to make a new Constitution, or rather to give such an

interpretation to the old one as to make it virtually a new document.

How can society be kept together, if men will not keep their compacts?

Our fathers provided, in adopting their Constitution, for the protection

of their property. But here are four billions of the property of the

South which you propose to outlaw from the common Territories. You say

to us, by your elected President, by your House of Representatives, by

your Senate, by your Supreme Court, in short, by every means through

which one party can speak to another, that these four billions of

property, representing the toil of the head and hand of the South for

the last two hundred years, shall not be respected in the Territories as

your property is respected there. And this property, too, is property

which you tax and which you allow to be represented; but yet you will

not protect it. How can we remain? We should be happy to remain, if you

would treat us as equals; but you tax us, and will not protect us.

We will resist. D--n it,"--this and other striking expressions are

precisely Mr. Toombs's language,--"we will meet you on the border with

the bayonet. Society cannot be kept together, unless men will keep their

compacts."

This was said without the intonation of fierceness or malignity, but

with great decision and the vigor of high spirit.

It was taking, of course, with considerable emphasis, a side in a

famous Constitutional question, familiar to all readers of American

Congressional Debates, once supported by Mr. Calhoun, and rather

strangely, too, with that philosophical leader, confusing the absurdly

asserted State right of seceding at will with the undoubted right,

when there exists no peaceful remedy, of seceding from intolerable

oppression: an entire position which Mr. Webster especially, and

subsequent statesmen, in arguments elucidating the nature and powers of

the General Government, to say nothing of the respect due to a moral

sentiment concerning slavery, which, permeating more than a majority

of the people, has the force, when properly expressed, wherever the

Constitution has jurisdiction, of supreme law, are thought by most men,

once and forever, to have satisfactorily answered. It was a complaint,

certainly, which the South had had ever since the Constitution was

formed, and which could with no plausibility be brought forward as a

justification of war, while there existed a Constitutional tribunal for

adjusting difficulties of Constitutional interpretation. Yet, as it

was almost universally asserted, of course, by the Northern partisan

presses, and by Northern Congressmen, that the Rebellion was utterly

causeless, and as the writer was therefore exceedingly anxious to

obtain, concerning their grievances, the latest opinions of the Southern

leaders, as stated by themselves, he ventured to propose, in a pause of

Mr. Toombs's somewhat rapid rhetoric, a question which, at that moment,

seemed of central importance to the candid philosophical inquirer into

the moving forces of the times:--

"Are we, then, Sir, to consider Mr. Calhoun's old complaint--the

non-recognition of slave-property under the Federal Constitution--as

constituting now the _chief grievance_ of the South?"

"Undoubtedly," was Mr. Toombs's instant reply, "_it all turns on that.

What you tax you must protect_."

This is the very strongest argument of the Southern side. But the

alleged slave-property is protected, though only under municipal law, by

the Constitution. To protect it elsewhere is against its whole spirit,

and, in the present state of public sentiment, against its very letter.

Originally, as is well known, it was not proposed to protect at all,

_under the General Government_, property so monstrous, except as it

became necessary as a compromise, in order to secure a union. But the

provision of the Constitution that the slave-trade should be abolished,

the absolute power given to Congress to make all laws for the

Territories, the spirit of the preamble, the principles of the

Declaration, indeed, the whole history of the origin and adoption of the

fundamental law, prove that its principle and its expectation were, if

not absolutely to place slavery in the States in process of extinction,

at least never to recognize it except indirectly and remotely

under municipal law, not even by admitting the word _slave_ to its

phraseology.

"Even in the Northern States themselves, to say nothing of the

Territories, I am not safe with my property. I can travel through

France or England and be safe; but if I happen to lose my servant up in

_Vairmount_,"--Mr. Toombs pronounced the word with a somewhat marked

accent of derision,--"and undertake to recover him, I get jugged.

Besides, your Northern statesmen are far from being honest. Here is

Billy Seward, for instance,"--with a gesture toward his neighbor's

house,--"who says slavery is contrary to the Higher Law, and that he is

bound as a Christian to obey the Higher Law; but yet he takes an oath to

uphold the Constitution, which protects slavery. This inconsistency runs

through most of the Northern platforms. How can we live with such

men? They will not be true even to a compact which they themselves

acknowledge."

"You would think, then, Wendell Phillips, for instance, more consistent

in his political opinions than Mr. Seward?"

"Certainly. I can understand his position. 'Slavery,' he says, 'is

wrong. The Constitution protects slavery; therefore I will have nothing

to do with the Constitution, and cannot become a citizen.' This is

logical and consistent. I can respect such a position as that."

Here Mr. Toombs--ejecting, as perhaps the writer ought not to relate, a

competent mass of tobacco-saliva into the blazing coal--paused somewhat

reflectively, perhaps unpleasantly revolving certain possible indirect

influences of the position he had characterized.

"Upon which side, Sir, do you think there is usually the most

misunderstanding,--on the part of the North concerning the South? or on

the part of the South concerning the North?"

"Oh, by all odds," he replied, instantly, "we understand you best. We

send fifty thousand travellers, more or less, North every summer to

your watering-places. Hot down in Mobile,"--his style taking somewhat

unpleasantly the intonation as well as the negligence of the

bar-room,--"can't live in Mobile in the summer. Then your papers

circulate more among us than ours among you. Our daughters are educated

at Northern boarding-schools, our sons at Northern colleges: both my

colleague and myself were educated at Northern colleges. For these

reasons, by all odds, we have a better opportunity for understanding you

than you have for understanding us."

"In case of general secession and war," the writer ventured next to

inquire, "would there probably, in your opinion, be danger of a slave

insurrection?"

"None at all. Certainly far less than of 'Bread or Blood' riots at the

North."

The writer was surprised to find, notwithstanding Mr. Toombs's eulogy of

Southern opportunities, his understanding of the North so imperfect, and

still more surprised at the political and social principles involved in

the spirit of what followed.

"Your poor population can hold ward-meetings, and can vote. But _we_

know better how to take care of ours. They are in the fields, and

under the eye of their overseers. There can be little danger of an

insurrection under our system."

The subject and the manner of the man, in spite of his better qualities,

were becoming painful, and the writer ventured only one more remark.

"An ugly time, certainly, if war comes between North and South."

"Ugly time? _Oh, no!_"

The writer will never forget the tone of utter carelessness and

_nonchalance_ with which the last round-toned exclamation was uttered.

"Oh, no! War is nothing. Never more than a tenth part of the adult

population of a country in the field. We have four million voters. Say

a tenth of them, or four hundred thousand men, are in the field on both

sides. A tenth of them would be killed or die of camp diseases. But

_they_ would die, _any way_. War is nothing."

The tone perfectly proved this belief, not badinage.

"Some property would be destroyed, towns injured, fences overturned, and

the Devil raised generally; but then all that would have a good effect.

Only yaller-covered-literature men and editors make a noise about war.

Wars are to history what storms are to the atmosphere,--purifiers. We

shall meet, as we ought, whoever invades our rights, with the bayonet.

We are the gentlemen of this land, and gentlemen always make revolutions

in history."

This was said in the tone of an injured, but haughty man, with perfect

intellectual poise and earnestness, yet with a fervor of feeling that

brought the speaker erect in his chair.

The significance of the last remarks, which the writer can make oath he

has preserved _verbatim_, being somewhat calculated to draw on a debate,

of course wholly unfitted to the time and place, the writer, apologizing

for having taken so much time at a formal interview, and receiving, of

course, a most courteous invitation to renew the call, found himself,

after but twenty minutes' conversation, on the street, in the lonely

December evening, with a mind full of reflections.

The utter recklessness concerning life and property with which the

splendid intellect, under the lead of the ungovernable passions of this

man, was plunging the nation into a civil war of which no one could

foresee the end, was the thought uppermost. Certainly, the abstract

manliness of asserting rights supposed to be infringed it was in itself

impossible not to respect. But the man seemed to love war for its own

sake, as pugnacious schoolboys love sham-fights, with a sort of glee in

the smell of the smoke of battle. The judicial calmness of statesmanship

had entirely disappeared in the violence of sectional passion. Perhaps

he might be capable of ruining his country from pure love of turbulence

and power, could he but find a pretext of force sufficient to blind

first himself and then others. Yet Robert Toombs, in the Senate Chamber,

takes little children in his arms, and is one of the kindest of the

noblemen of Nature in the sphere of his unpolitical sympathies. The

reader who is familiar with Mr. Toombs's speeches will need no assurance

that he spoke frankly.[A]

[Footnote A: Ten days later, in the Senate, with a face full of the

combined erubescence of revolutionary enthusiasm and unstatesmanlike

anger, Mr. Toombs closed a speech to the Northern Senators in the

following amazing words, (_Congressional Globe_, 1860-61, p. 271,)

which justify, it will be seen, every syllable of the report of the

conversation upon the same points:--

"You will not regard confederate obligations; you will not regard

constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What am I to

do? Am I a freeman? Is my State, a free State, to lie down and submit

because political fossils raise the cry of 'The Glorious Union'? Too

long already have we listened to this delusive song. We are freemen. We

have rights: I have stated them. We have wrongs: I have recounted them.

I have demonstrated that the party now coming into power has declared

us outlaws, and is determined to exclude four thousand millions of our

property from the common territories,--that it has declared us under the

ban of the empire and out of the protection of the laws of the United

States, everywhere. They have refused to protect us from invasion and

insurrection by the Federal power, and the Constitution denies to us

in the Union the right either to raise fleets or armies for our own

defence. All these charges I have proven by the record, and I put

them before the civilized world, and demand the judgment of to-day, of

to-morrow, of distant ages, and of Heaven itself, upon these causes. I

am content, whatever it be, to peril all in so noble, so holy a cause.

We have appealed time and time again for these constitutional rights.

You have refused them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights as we

had them, as your court adjudges them to be, just as all our people have

said they are, redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it

will restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us. Refuse them,

and what then? We shall then ask you to 'let us depart in peace.' Refuse

that, and you present us war. We accept it; and inscribing upon our

banners the glorious words, 'Liberty and Equality,' we will trust to

the blood of the brave and the God of battles for security and

tranquillity."

Sincere, but undoubtedly mistaken, Mr. Toombs! To this philippic, let

the words of another Southern, but not sectional Senator, reply, and

that from a golden age:--