"On the east side of the mountains the mines are rich beyond

calculation, the yield thus far having equalled the most productive

locality of California of equal extent. The Bannock or Grasshopper mines

were discovered in July, 1862, and are situated on Grasshopper Creek,

which is a tributary of the Jefferson fork of the Missouri. The mining

district here extends five miles down the creek, from Bannock City,

which is situated at the head of the gulch, while upon either side of

the creek the mountains are intersected with gold-bearing quartz lodes,

many of which have been found to be very rich....

"While gold has been found in paying quantities all along the Rocky

chain, its deposits are not confined to this locality, but sweep across

the country eastward some hundreds of miles, to the Big Horn Mountains.

The gold discoveries there cover a large area of country."[G]

Governor Stevens says: "Voyagers travel all winter from Lake Superior to

the Missouri, with horses and sleds, having to make their own roads, and

are not deterred by snows."

Alexander Culbertson, the great voyager and trader of the Upper

Missouri, who, for the last twenty years, has made frequent trips from

St. Louis to Fort Benton, has never found the snow drifted enough to

interfere with travelling. The average depth is twelve inches, and

frequently it does not exceed six.[H]

Through such a country, east of the mountains, lies the shortest line of

railway between the Atlantic and Pacific,--a country rich in mineral

wealth, of fertile soil, mild climate, verdant valleys, timbered hills,

arable lands yielding grains and grass, with mountain streams for the

turning of mill-wheels, rich coal beds, and springs of petroleum!

THE MOUNTAINS.

There are several passes at the head-waters of the Missouri which may be

used;--the Hell-Gate Pass; the Deer Lodge; and the Wisdom River, or Big

Hole, as it is sometimes called, which leads into the valley of the

Bitter Root, or St. Mary's. The Big Hole is thus described by Lieutenant

Mullan:--

"The descent towards the Missouri side is very gradual; so much so,

that, were it not for the direction taken by the waters, it might be

considered an almost level prairie country."[I]

Governor Stevens thus speaks of the valley of the Bitter Root:--

"The faint attempts made by the Indians at cultivating the soil have

been attended with good success; and fair returns might be expected of

all such crops as are adapted to the Northern States of our country. The

pasturage grounds are unsurpassed. The extensive bands of horses, owned

by the Flathead Indians occupying St. Mary's village, on the Bitter Root

River, thrive well winter and summer. One hundred horses, belonging to

the exploration, are wintered in the valley; and up to the 9th of March

the grass was fair, but little snow had fallen, and the weather was

mild. The oxen and cows, owned here by the half-breeds and Indians,

obtain good feed, and are in good condition."[J]

This village of St Mary's is sixty miles down the valley from the Big

Hole Pass; yet, though so near, snow seldom falls, and the grass is so

verdant that horses and cattle subsist the year round on the natural

pasturage.

Lieutenant Mullan says of it: "The fact of the exceedingly mild winters

in this valley has been noticed and remarked by all who have ever been

in it during the winter season. It is the home of the Flathead Indians,

who, through the instrumentality and exertions of the Jesuit priests,

have built up a village,--not of logs, but of houses,--where they repair

every winter, and, with this valley covered with an abundance of rich

and nutritious grass, they live as comfortably as any tribe west of the

Rocky Mountains....

"The numerous mountain rivulets, tributary to the Bitter Root River,

that run through the valley, afford excellent and abundant mill-seats;

and the land bordering these is fertile and productive, and has been

found, beyond cavil or doubt, to be well suited to every branch of

agriculture. I have seen oats, grown by Mr. John Owen, that are as heavy

and as excellent as any I have ever seen in the States; and the same

gentleman informs me that he has grown excellent wheat, and that, from

his experience while in the mountains, he hesitated not in saying that

agriculture might be carried on here in all its numerous branches, and

to the exceeding great interest and gain of those engaged in it. The

valley and mountain slopes are well timbered with an excellent growth of

pine, which is equal, in every respect, to the well-known pine of

Oregon. The valley is not only capable of grazing immense bands of stock

of every kind, but is also capable of supporting a dense population.

"The provisions of Nature here, therefore, are on no small scale, and of

no small importance; and let those who have imagined--as some have been

bold to say it--that there exists only one immense bed of mountains at

the head-waters of the Missouri to the Cascade Range, turn their

attention to this section, and let them contemplate its advantages and

resources, and ask themselves, since these things exist, can it be long

before public attention shall be attracted and fastened upon this

heretofore unknown region?"[K]

CLIMATE OF THE MOUNTAINS.

We have been accustomed to think of the Rocky Mountains as an impassable

barrier, as a wild, dreary solitude, where the storms of winter piled

the mountain passes with snow. How different the fact! In 1852-53, from

the 28th of November to the 10th of January, there were but twelve

inches of snow in the pass. The recorded observations during the winter

of 1861-62 give the following measurements in the Big Hole Pass:

December 4, eighteen inches; January 10, fourteen; January 14, ten;

February 16, six; March 21, none.

We have been told that there could be no winter travel across the

mountains,--that the snow would lie in drifts fifteen or twenty feet

deep; but instead, there is daily communication by teams through the Big

Hole Pass every day in the year! The belt of snow is narrow, existing

only in the Pass.

Says Lieutenant Mullan, in his late Report on the wagon road: "The snow

will offer no great obstacle to travel, with horses or locomotives, from

the Missouri to the Columbia."

This able and efficient government officer, in the same Report, says of

this section of the country:--

"The trade and travel along the Upper Columbia, where several steamers

now ply between busy marts, of themselves attest what magical effects

the years have wrought. Besides gold, lead for miles is found along the

Kootenay. Red hermatite, iron ore, traces of copper, and plumbago are

found along the main Bitter Root. Cinnabar is said to exist along the

Hell Gate. Coal is found along the Upper Missouri, and a deposit of

cannel coal near the Three Butts, northwest of Fort Benton, is also said

to exist. Iron ore has been found on Thompson's farms on the Clark's

Fork. Sulphur is found on the Loo Loo Fork, and on the tributaries of

the Yellow Stone, and coal oil is said to exist on the Big Horn....

These great mineral deposits must have an ultimate bearing upon the

location of the Pacific Railroad, adding, as they will, trade, travel,

and wealth to its every mile when built....

"The great depots for building material exist principally in the

mountain sections, but the plains on either side are not destitute in

that particular. All through the Bitter Root and Rocky Mountains, the

finest white and red cedar, white pine, and red fir that I ever have

seen are found."[L]

GEOLOGICAL FEATURES.

The geological formation of the heart of the continent promises to open

a rich field for scientific exploration and investigation. The Wind

River Mountain, which divides the Yellow Stone from the Great Basin, is

a marked and distinct geological boundary. From the northern slope flow

the tributaries of the Yellow Stone, fed by springs of boiling water,

which perceptibly affect the temperature of the region, clothing the

valleys with verdure, and making them the winter home of the

buffalo,--the favorite hunting-grounds of the Indians,--while the

streams which flow from the southern slope of the mountains are

alkaline, and, instead of luxuriant vegetation, there are vast regions

covered with wild sage and cactus. They run into the Great Salt Lake,

and have no outlet to the ocean. A late writer, describing the

geological features of that section, says:--

"Upon the great interior desert streams and fuel are almost unknown.

Wells must be very deep, and no simple and cheap machinery adequate to

drawing up the water is yet invented. Cultivation, to a great extent,

must be carried on by irrigation."[M]

Such are the slopes of the mountains which form the rim of the Great

Basin, while the valley of the Yellow Stone is literally the land which

buds and blossoms like the rose. The Rosebud River is so named because

the valley through which it meanders is a garden of roses.

And here, along the head-waters of the Yellow Stone and its tributaries,

at the northern deflection of the Wind River chain of mountains, flows a

_river of hot wind_, which is not only one of the most remarkable

features of the climatology of the continent, but which is destined to

have a great bearing upon the civilization of this portion of the

continent. St. Joseph in Missouri, in latitude 40°, has the same mean

temperature as that at the base of the Rocky Mountains in latitude 47°!

The high temperature of the hot boiling springs warms the air which

flows northwest along the base of the mountains, sweeping through the

Big Hole Pass, the Deer Lodge, Little Blackfoot, and Mullan Pass, giving

a delightful winter climate to the valley of the St. Mary's, or Bitter

Root. It flows like the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic. Says Captain

Mullan: "On its either side, north and south, are walls of cold air, and

which are so clearly perceptible that you always detect the river when

you are on its shores."[N]

This great river of heat always flowing is sufficient to account for the

slight depth of snow in the passes at the head-waters of the Missouri,

which have an altitude of six thousand feet. The South Pass has an

altitude of seven thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine feet. The

passes of the Wasatch Range, on the route to California, are higher by

three thousand feet than those at the head-waters of the Missouri, and,

not being swept by a stream of hot air, are filled with snows during the

winter months. The passes at the head-waters of the Saskatchawan, in the

British possessions, though a few hundred feet lower than those at the

head-waters of the Missouri, are not reached by the heated Wind River,

and are impassable in winter. Even Cadotte's Pass, through which

Governor Stevens located the line of the proposed road, is outside of

the heat stream, so sharp and perpendicular are its walls.

Captain Mullan says: "From whatsoever cause it arises, it exists as a

fact that must for all time enter as an element worthy of every

attention in lines of travel and communication from the Eastern plains

to the North Pacific."[O]

DISTANCES.

That this line is the natural highway of the continent is evident from

other considerations. The distances between the centres of trade and San

Francisco, and with Puget Sound, will appear from the following tabular

statement:--

APPROXIMATE DISTANCES.

| to San Francisco | to Puget Sound | Difference

|------------------|----------------|-----------

Chicago | 2,448 miles[P] | 1,906 miles | 542 miles

St. Louis | 2,345 " | 1,981 " | 364 "

Cincinnati | 2,685 " | 2,200 " | 486 "

New York | 3,417 " | 2,892 " | 525 "

Boston | 3,484 " | 2,942 " | 542 "

The line to Puget Sound will require no tunnel in the pass of the Rocky

Mountains. The approaches of the Big Hole and Deer Lodge in both

directions are eminently feasible, requiring little rock excavation, and

with no grades exceeding eighty feet per mile.

All of the places east of the latitude of Chicago, and north of the Ohio

River, are from three hundred to five hundred and fifty miles nearer the

Pacific at Puget Sound than at San Francisco,--due to greater directness

of the route and the shortening of longitude. These on both lines are

the approximate distances. The distance from Puget Sound to St. Louis is

estimated--via Desmoines--on the supposition that the time will come

when that line of railway will extend north far enough to intersect with

the North Pacific.

COST OF CONSTRUCTION.

The census of 1860 gives thirty thousand miles of railroad in operation,

which cost, including land damages, equipment, and all charges of

construction, $37,120 per mile. The average cost of fifteen New England

roads, including the Boston and Lowell, Boston and Maine, Vermont

Central, Western, Eastern, and Boston and Providence, was $36,305 per

mile. In the construction of this line, there will be no charge for land

damages, and nothing for timber, which exists along nearly the entire

line. But as iron and labor command a higher price than when those roads

were constructed, there should be a liberal estimate. Lieutenant Mullan,

in his late Report upon the Construction of the Wagon Road, discusses

the probability of a railroad at length, and with much ability. His

highest estimate for any portion of the line is sixty thousand dollars

per mile,--an estimate given before civilization made an opening in the

wilderness. There is no reason to believe that this line will be any

more costly than the average of roads in the United States.

In 1850 there were 7,355 miles of road in operation; in 1860, 30,793;

showing that 2,343 miles per annum were constructed by the people of the

United States. The following table shows the number of miles built in

each year from 1853 to 1856, together with the cost of the same.

Year. Miles. Cost.

1852 2,541 $ 94,000,000

1853 2,748 101,576,000

1854 3,549 125,313,000

1855 2,736 101,232,000

1856 3,578 132,386,000

-----------

Total expenditure for five years, $554,507,000

This exhibit is sufficient to indicate that there need be no question of

our financial ability to construct the road.

In 1856, the country had expended $776,000,000 in the construction of

railroads, incurring a debt of about $300,000,000. The entire amount of

stock and bonds held abroad at that time was estimated at only

$81,000,000.[Q]

AID FROM GOVERNMENT.

The desire of the people for the speedy opening of this great national

highway is manifested by the action of the government, which, by act of

Congress, July 2, 1864, granted the alternate sections of land for

twenty miles on each side of the road in aid of the enterprise. The land

thus appropriated amounts to forty-seven million acres,--more than is

comprised in the States of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and

New York! If all of these lands were sold at the price fixed by

government,--$2.50 per acre,--they would yield $118,000,000,--a sum

sufficient to build and equip the road. But years must elapse before

these lands can be put upon the market, and the government, undoubtedly,

will give the same aid to this road which has already been given to the

Central Pacific Road, guaranteeing the bonds or stock of the company,

and taking a lien on the road for security. Such bonds would at once

command the necessary capital for building the road.

THE WESTERN TERMINUS.

Puget Sound, with its numerous inlets, is a deep indentation of the

Pacific coast, one hundred miles north of the Columbia. It has spacious

harbors, securely land-locked, with a surrounding country abounding in

timber, with exhaustless beds of coal, rich in agricultural resources,

and with numerous mill-streams. Nature has stamped it with her seal, and

set it apart to be the New England of the Pacific coast.

That portion of the country is to be peopled by farmers, mechanics, and

artisans. California is rich in mineral wealth. Her valleys and

mountain-slopes yield abundant harvests; but she has few mill-streams,

and is dependent upon Oregon and Washington for her coal and lumber. An

inferior quality of coal is mined at Mount Diablo in California; but

most of the coal consumed in that State is brought from Puget Sound.

Hence Nature has fixed the locality of the future manufacturing industry

of the Pacific. Puget Sound is nearer than San Francisco, by several

hundred miles, to Japan, China, and Australia. It is therefore the

natural port of entry and departure for our Pacific trade. It has

advantages over San Francisco, not only in being nearer to those

countries, but in having coal near at hand, which settles the question

of the future steam marine of the Pacific.

Passengers, goods of high cost, and bills of exchange, move on the

shortest and quickest lines of travel. No business man takes the

way-train in preference to the express. Sailing vessels make the voyage

from Puget Sound to Shanghai in from thirty to forty days. Steamers will

make it in twenty.

TRADE WITH ASIA.

Far-seeing men in England are looking forward to the time when the trade

between that country and the Pacific will be carried on across this

continent. Colonel Synge, of the Queen's Royal Engineers, says:--

"America is geographically a connecting link between the continents of

Europe and Asia, and not a monstrous barrier between them. It lies in

the track of their nearest and best connection; and this fact needs only

to be fully recognized to render it in practice what it unquestionably

is in the essential points of distance and direction."[R]

Another English writer says:--

"It is believed that the amount of direct traffic which would be created

between Australia, China, and Japan, and England, by a railway from

Halifax to the Gulf of Georgia, would soon more than cover the interest

upon the capital expended.... If the intended railway were connected

with a line of steamers plying between Victoria (Puget Sound), Sydney,

or New Zealand, mails, quick freight, passengers to and from our

colonies in the southern hemisphere, would, for the most part, be

secured for this route.

"Vancouver's Island is nearer to Sydney than Panama by nine hundred

miles; and, with the exception of the proposed route by a Trans-American

railway, the latter is the most expeditious that has been found.

"By this interoceanic communication, the time to New Zealand would be

reduced to forty-two, and to Sydney to forty-seven days, being at least

ten less than by steam from England via Panama."[S]

Lord Bury says:--

"Our trade [English] in the Pacific Ocean with China and with India must

ultimately be carried through our North American possessions. At any

rate, our political and commercial supremacy will have utterly departed

from us, if we neglect that great and important consideration, and if we

fail to carry out to its fullest extent the physical advantages which

the country offers to us, and which we have only to stretch out our

hands to take advantage of."[T]

Shanghai is rapidly becoming the great commercial emporium of China. It

is situated at the mouth of the Yangtse-Kiang, the largest river of

Asia, navigable for fifteen hundred miles. Hong-Kong, which has been the

English centre in China, is nine hundred and sixty miles farther south.

With a line of railway across this continent, the position of England

would be as follows:--

To Shanghai via Suez, 60 days.

" " " Puget Sound, 33 "

Mr. Maciff divides the time as follows by the Puget Sound route:--

Southampton to Halifax, 9 days.

Halifax to Puget Sound, 6 "

Puget Sound to Hong-Kong, 21 "

--

36

The voyage by Suez is made in the Peninsular and Oriental line of

steamers. The passage is proverbially comfortless,--through the Red Sea

and Persian Gulf, across the Bay of Bengal, through the Straits of

Malacca, and up the Chinese coast, under a tropical sun. Bayard Taylor

thus describes the trip down the Red Sea:--

"We had a violent head-wind, or rather gale. Yet, in spite of this

current of air, the thermometer stood at 85° on deck, and 90° in the

cabin. For two or three days we had a temperature of 90° to 95°. This

part of the Red Sea is considered to be the hottest portion of the

earth's surface. In the summer the air is like that of a furnace, and

the bare red mountains glow like heaps of live coals. The steamers at

that time almost invariably lose some of their firemen and stewards.

Cooking is quite given up."[U]

Bankok, Singapore, and Java can be reached more quickly from England by

Puget Sound than by Suez.

Notwithstanding the discomforts of the passage down the Red Sea, the

steamers are always overcrowded with passengers, and loaded to their

utmost capacity with freight. The French line, the Messageries Imperials

de France, has been established, and is fully employed. Both lines pay

large dividends.

The growth of the English trade with China during the last sixteen years

has been very rapid. Tea has increased 1300 per cent, and silk 950.[V]

The trade between the single port of Shanghai and England and America in

the two great staples of export is seen from the following statement of

the export of tea and silk from that port from July 1, 1859, to July 1,

1860:--

Tea, lbs. Silk, bales.

Great Britain, 31,621,000 19,084

United States, 18,299,000 1,554

Canada, 1,172,000

France, 47,000

The total value of exports from England to China in 1860 was

$26,590,000. Says Colonel Sykes:--

"Our trade with China resolves itself into our taking almost exclusively

from them teas and raw silk, and their taking from us cotton, cotton

yarns, and woollens."[W]

The exports of the United States to the Pacific in 1861 were as

follows:--

To China, $5,809,724

Australia, 3,410,000

Islands of the Pacific 484,000

----------

Total, $9,703,724

By the late treaty between the United States and China, that empire is

thrown open to trade; and already a large fleet of American-built

steamers is afloat on the gleaming waters of the Yang-tse. Mr.

Burlingame, our present Minister, is soon to take his departure for that

empire, with instructions to use his utmost endeavor to promote friendly

relations between the two countries. That this country is to have an

immense trade with China is evident from the fact that no other country

can compete with us in the manufacture of coarse cotton goods, which,

with cotton at its normal price, will be greatly sought after by the

majority of the people of that country, who of necessity are compelled

to wear the cheapest clothing.

Shanghai is the silk emporium of the empire. A ton of silk goods is

worth from ten to fifteen thousand dollars. Nearly all of the silk is

now shipped by the Peninsular and Oriental line, at a charge of $125 to

$150 per ton; and notwithstanding these exorbitant rates, Shanghai

merchants are compelled to make written application weeks in advance,

and accept proportional allotments for shipping. In May, 1863, the

screw-steamer Bahama made the trip from Foochow to London in eighty days

with a cargo of tea, and obtained sixty dollars per ton, while freights

by sailing vessels were but twenty dollars; the shippers being willing

to pay forty dollars per ton for forty days' quicker delivery. With the

Northern Pacific line constructed, the British importer could receive

his Shanghai goods across this continent in fifty days, and at a rate

lower than by the Peninsular line.

The route by the Peninsular line runs within eighty miles of the

Equator; and the entire voyage is through a tropical climate, which

injures the flavor of the tea. Hence the high price of the celebrated

"brick tea," brought across the steppes of Russia. The route by Puget

Sound is wholly through temperate latitudes, across a smooth and

peaceful sea, seldom vexed by storms, and where currents, like the Gulf

Stream of Mexico, and favoring trade-winds, may be taken advantage of by

vessels plying between that port and the Asiatic coast.

Japan is only four thousand miles distant from Puget Sound. The teas and

silks of that country are rapidly coming into market. Coal is found

there, and on the island of Formosa, and up the Yang-tse.

CLIMATE

The climate of Puget Sound is thus set forth by an English writer, who

has passed several months at Victoria:--

"From October to March we are liable to frequent rains; but this period

of damp is ever and anon relieved by prolonged intervals of bright dry

weather. In March, winter gives signs of taking its departure, and the

warm breath of spring begins to cover the trees with tinted buds and the

fields with verdure.... The sensations produced by the aspects of nature

in May are indescribably delightful. The freshness of the air, the

warbling of birds, the clearness of the sky, the profusion and fragrance

of wild roses, the widespread, variegated hues of buttercups and

daisies, the islets and violets, together with the distant snow-peaks

bursting upon the view, combine in that month to fill the mind with

enchantment unequalled out of Paradise. I know gentlemen who have lived

in China, Italy, Canada, and England; but, after a residence of some

years in Vancouver Island, they entertained a preference for the climate

of the colony which approached affectionate enthusiasm."[X]

The climate of the whole section through which the line passes is

milder than that of the Grand Trunk line. The lowest degree of

temperature in 1853--54 at Quebec was 29 below zero; Montreal, 34; St.

Paul, 36; Bitter Root Valley, forty miles from Big Hole Pass, 20.

In 1858 a party of Royal Engineers, under Captain Pallissir, surveyed

the country of the Saskatchawan for a line to Puget Sound which should

lie wholly within the British possessions. They found a level and

fertile country, receding to the very base of the mountains, and a

practicable pass, of less altitude than those at the head-waters of the

Missouri; but in winter the snow is deep and the climate severe. That

section of Canada north of Superior is an unbroken, uninhabitable

wilderness. The character of the region is thus set forth by Agassiz. He

says:--

"Unless the mines should attract and support a population, one sees not

how this region should ever be inhabited. Its stern and northern

character is shown in nothing more clearly than in the scarcity of

animals. The woods are silent, and as if deserted. One may walk for

hours without hearing an animal sound; and when he does, it is of a wild

and lonely character.... It is like being transported to the early ages

of the earth, when mosses and pines had just begun to cover the primeval

rock, and the animals as yet ventured timidly forth into the new

world."[Y]

THE FUTURE.

The census returns of the United States indicate that, thirty-four years

hence, in the year 1900, the population of this country will exceed one

hundred millions. What an outlook! The country a teeming hive of

industry; innumerable sails whitening the Western Ocean; unnumbered

steamers ploughing its peaceful waters; great cities in the unexplored

solitudes of to-day; America the highway of the nations; and New York

the banking-house of the world!

This is the age of the people. They are the sovereigns of the future. It

is the age of ideas. The people of America stand on the threshold of a

new era. We are to come in contact with a people numbering nearly half

the population of the globe, claiming a nationality dating back to the

time of Moses. A hundred thousand Chinese are in California and Oregon,

and every ship sailing into the harbor of San Francisco brings its load

of emigrants from Asia. What is to be the effect of this contact with

the Orient upon our civilization? What the result of this pouring in of

emigrants from every country of the world,--of all languages, manners,

customs, nationalities, and religions? Can they be assimilated into a

homogeneous mass? These are grave questions, demanding the earnest and

careful consideration of every Christian, philanthropist, and patriot.

We have fought for existence, and have a name among the nations. But we

have still the nation to save. Railroads, telegraphs, steamships,

printing-presses, schools, platforms, and pulpits are the agents of

modern civilization. Through them we are to secure unity, strength, and

national life. Securing these, Asia may send over her millions of

idol-worshippers without detriment to ourselves. With these, America is

to give life to the long-slumbering Orient.

So ever toward the setting sun the course of empire takes its way,--not

the empire of despotism, but of life, liberty,--of civilization and the

Christian religion.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Lewis and Clark's Expedition to the Columbia, Vol. II. p. 392.

[E] Ibid., p. 397.

[F] See Pacific Railroad Report, Vol. I. p. 239.

[G] Idaho: Six Months among the New Gold Diggings, by J. L. Campbell,

pp. 15-28.

[H] Pacific Railroad Report, Vol. I. p. 130.

[I] Ibid., Vol. XII. p. 169.

[J] Governor Stevens's Report of the Pacific Railroad Survey.

[K] Pacific Railroad Survey. Lieutenant Mullan's Report.

[L] Lieutenant Mullan's Report on the Construction of Wagon Road from

Fort Benton to Walla-Walla, p. 45.

[M] New York Tribune, December 2, 1865, correspondence of "A. D. R."

[N] Report of Captain Mullan, p. 54.

[O] Report of Captain Mullan, p. 54.

[P] Hall's Guide,--via Omaha, Denver, and Salt Lake.

[Q] Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1857.

[R] Paper read before the British North American Association, July 21,

1864.

[S] Vancouver's Island and British Columbia, Maciff, p. 343.

[T] Speech by Lord Bury, quoted by Maciff.

[U] India, China, and Japan, p. 23.

[V] Statistical Journal, 1862.

[W] Statistical Journal, 1862, p. 15.

[X] Vancouver and British Columbia, Maciff, p. 179.

[Y] Agassiz, Lake Superior, p. 124.

IN THE SEA.

The salt wind blows upon my cheek

As it blew a year ago,

When twenty boats were crushed among

The rocks of Norman's Woe.

'Twas dark then; 't is light now,

And the sails are leaning low.

In dreams, I pull the sea-weed o'er,

And find a face not his,

And hope another tide will be

More pitying than this:

The wind turns, the tide turns,--

They take what hope there is.

My life goes on as thine would go,

With all its sweetness spilled:

My God, why should one heart of two

Beat on, when one is stilled?

Through heart-wreck, or home-wreck,

Thy happy sparrows build.

Though boats go down, men build anew,

Whatever winds may blow;

If blight be in the wheat one year,

We trust again and sow,

Though grief comes, and changes

The sunshine into snow.

Some have their dead, where, sweet and soon,

The summers bloom and go:

The sea withholds my dead,--I walk

The bar when tides are low,

And wonder the grave-grass

Can have the heart to grow!

Flow on, O unconsenting sea,

And keep my dead below;

Though night--O utter night!--my soul,

Delude thee long, I know,

Or Life comes or Death comes,

God leads the eternal flow.

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.

III.

IS WOMAN A WORKER?

"Papa, do you see what the Evening Post says of your New-Year's article

on Reconstruction?" said Jennie, as we were all sitting in the library

after tea.

"I have not seen it."

"Well, then, the charming writer, whoever he is, takes up for us girls

and women, and maintains that no work of any sort ought to be expected

of us; that our only mission in life is to be beautiful, and to refresh

and elevate the spirits of men by being so. If I get a husband, my

mission is to be always becomingly dressed, to display most captivating

toilettes, and to be always in good spirits,--as, under the

circumstances, I always should be,--and thus 'renew his spirits' when he

comes in weary with the toils of life. Household cares are to be far

from me: they destroy my cheerfulness and injure my beauty.

"He says that the New England standard of excellence as applied to woman

has been a mistaken one; and, in consequence, though the girls are

beautiful, the matrons are faded, overworked, and uninteresting; and

that such a state of society tends to immorality, because, when wives

are no longer charming, men are open to the temptation to desert their

firesides, and get into mischief generally. He seems particularly to

complain of your calling ladies who do nothing the 'fascinating

_lazzaroni_ of the parlor and boudoir.'"

"There was too much truth back of that arrow not to wound," said

Theophilus Thoro, who was ensconced, as usual, in his dark corner,

whence he supervises our discussions.

"Come, Mr. Thoro, we won't have any of your bitter moralities," said

Jennie; "they are only to be taken as the invariable bay-leaf which

Professor Blot introduces into all his recipes for soups and stews,--a

little elegant bitterness, to be kept tastefully in the background. You

see now, papa, I should like the vocation of being beautiful. It would

just suit me to wear point-lace and jewelry, and to have life revolve

round me, as some beautiful star, and feel that I had nothing to do but

shine and refresh the spirits of all gazers, and that in this way I was

truly useful, and fulfilling the great end of my being; but alas for

this doctrine! all women have not beauty. The most of us can only hope

not to be called ill-looking, and, when we get ourselves up with care,

to look fresh and trim and agreeable; which fact interferes with the

theory."

"Well, for my part," said young Rudolph, "I go for the theory of the

beautiful. If ever I marry, it is to find an asylum for ideality. I

don't want to make a culinary marriage or a business partnership. I want

a being whom I can keep in a sphere of poetry and beauty, out of the

dust and grime of every-day life."

"Then," said Mr. Theophilus, "you must either be a rich man in your own

right, or your fair ideal must have a handsome fortune of her own."

"I never will marry a rich wife," quoth Rudolph. "My wife must be

supported by me, not I by her."

Rudolph is another of the _habitués_ of our chimney-corner, representing

the order of young knighthood in America, and his dreams and fancies, if

impracticable, are always of a kind to make every one think him a good

fellow. He who has no romantic dreams at twenty-one will be a horribly

dry peascod at fifty; therefore it is that I gaze reverently at all

Rudolph's chateaus in Spain, which want nothing to complete them except

solid earth to stand on.

"And pray," said Theophilus, "how long will it take a young lawyer or

physician, starting with no heritage but his own brain, to create a

sphere of poetry and beauty in which to keep his goddess? How much a

year will be necessary, as the English say, to _do_ this garden of Eden,

whereinto shall enter only the poetry of life?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen it near enough to consider. It is because

I know the difficulty of its attainment that I have no present thoughts

of marriage. Marriage is to me in the bluest of all blue distances,--far

off, mysterious, and dreamy as the Mountains of the Moon or sources of

the Nile. It shall come only when I have secured a fortune that shall

place my wife above all necessity of work or care."

"I desire to hear from you," said Theophilus, "when you have found the

sum that will keep a woman from care. I know of women now inhabiting

palaces, waited on at every turn by servants, with carriages, horses,

jewels, laces, cashmeres, enough for princesses, who are eaten up by

care. One lies awake all night on account of a wrinkle in the waist of

her dress; another is dying because no silk of a certain inexpressible

shade is to be found in New York; a third has had a dress sent home,

which has proved such a failure that life seems no longer worth having.

If it were not for the consolations of religion, one doesn't know what

would become of her. The fact is, that care and labor are as much

correlated to human existence as shadow is to light; there is no such

thing as excluding them from any mortal lot. You may make a canary-bird

or a gold-fish live in absolute contentment without a care or labor, but

a human being you cannot. Human beings are restless and active in their

very nature, and will do something, and that something will prove a

care, a labor, and a fatigue, arrange it how you will. As long as there

is anything to be desired and not yet attained, so long its attainment

will be attempted; so long as that attainment is doubtful or difficult,

so long will there be care and anxiety. When boundless wealth releases

woman from every family care, she immediately makes herself a new set of

cares in another direction, and has just as many anxieties as the most

toilful housekeeper, only they are of a different kind. Talk of labor,

and look at the upper classes in London or in New York in the

fashionable season. Do any women work harder? To rush from crowd to

crowd all night, night after night, seeing what they are tired of,

making the agreeable over an abyss of inward yawning, crowded, jostled,

breathing hot air, and crushed in halls and stairways, without a moment

of leisure for months and months, till brain and nerve and sense reel,

and the country is longed for as a period of resuscitation and relief!

Such is the release from labor and fatigue brought by wealth. The only

thing that makes all this labor at all endurable is, that it is utterly

and entirely useless, and does not good to any one in creation; this

alone makes it genteel, and distinguishes it from the vulgar toils of a

housekeeper. These delicate creatures, who can go to three or four

parties a night for three months, would be utterly desolate if they had

to watch one night in a sick-room; and though they can exhibit any

amount of physical endurance and vigor in crowding into assembly rooms,

and breathe tainted air in an opera-house with the most martyr-like

constancy, they could not sit one half-hour in the close room where the

sister of charity spends hours in consoling the sick or aged poor."

"Mr. Theophilus is quite at home now," said Jennie; "only start him on

the track of fashionable life, and he takes the course like a hound. But

hear, now, our champion of the Evening Post:--

"'The instinct of women to seek a life of repose, their eagerness to

attain the life of elegance, does not mean contempt for labor, but it is

the confession of unfitness for labor. Women were not intended to

work,--not because work is ignoble, but because it is as disastrous to

the beauty of a woman as is friction to the bloom and softness of a

flower. Woman is to be kept in the garden of life; she is to rest, to

receive, to praise; she is to be kept from the workshop world, where

innocence is snatched with rude hands, and softness is blistered into

unsightliness or hardened into adamant. No social truth is more in need

of exposition and illustration than this one; and, above all, the people

of New England need to know it, and, better, they need to believe it.

"'It is therefore with regret that we discover Christopher Crowfield

applying so harshly, and, as we think, so indiscriminatingly, the theory

of work to women, and teaching a society made up of women sacrificed in

the workshops of the state, or to the dust-pans and kitchens of the

house, that women must work, ought to work, and are dishonored if they

do not work; and that a woman committed to the drudgery of a household

is more creditably employed than when she is charming, fascinating,

irresistible, in the parlor or boudoir. The consequence of this fatal

mistake is manifest throughout New England,--in New England, where the

girls are all beautiful and the wives and mothers faded, disfigured, and

without charm or attractiveness. The moment a girl marries in New

England she is apt to become a drudge, or a lay figure on which to

exhibit the latest fashions. She never has beautiful hands, and she

would not have a beautiful face if a utilitarian society could "apply"

her face to anything but the pleasure of the eye. Her hands lose their

shape and softness after childhood, and domestic drudgery destroys her

beauty of form and softness and bloom of complexion after marriage. To

correct, or rather to break up, this despotism of household cares, or of

work, over woman, American society must be taught that women will

inevitably fade and deteriorate, unless it insures repose and comfort to

them. It must be taught that reverence for beauty is the normal

condition, while the theory of work, applied to women, is disastrous

alike to beauty and morals. Work, when it is destructive to men or

women, is forced and unjust.

"'All the great masculine or creative epochs have been distinguished by

spontaneous work on the part of men, and universal reverence and care

for beauty. The praise of work, and sacrifice of women to this great

heartless devil of work, belong only to, and are the social doctrine of,

a mechanical age and a utilitarian epoch. And if the New England idea of

social life continues to bear so cruelly on woman, we shall have a

reaction somewhat unexpected and shocking.'"

"Well now, say what you will," said Rudolph, "you have expressed my idea

of the conditions of the sex. Woman was not made to work; she was made

to be taken care of by man. All that is severe and trying, whether in

study or in practical life, is and ought to be in its very nature

essentially the work of the male sex. The value of woman is precisely

the value of those priceless works of art for which we build

museums,--which we shelter and guard as the world's choicest heritage;

and a lovely, cultivated, refined woman, thus sheltered, and guarded,

and developed, has a worth that cannot be estimated by any gross,

material standard. So I subscribe to the sentiments of Miss Jennie's

friend without scruple."

"The great trouble in settling all these society questions," said I,

"lies in the gold-washing,--the cradling I think the miners call it. If

all the quartz were in one stratum and all the gold in another, it would

save us a vast deal of trouble. In the ideas of Jennie's friend of the

Evening Post there is a line of truth and a line of falsehood so

interwoven and threaded together that it is impossible wholly to assent

or dissent. So with your ideas, Rudolph, there is a degree of truth in

them, but there is also a fallacy.

"It is a truth, that woman as a sex ought not to do the hard work of the

world, either social, intellectual, or moral. There are evidences in her

physiology that this was not intended for her, and our friend of the

Evening Post is right in saying that any country will advance more

rapidly in civilization and refinement where woman is thus sheltered and

protected. And I think, furthermore, that there is no country in the

world where women _are_ so much considered and cared for and sheltered,

in every walk of life, as in America. In England and France,--all over

the continent of Europe, in fact,--the other sex are deferential to

women only from some presumption of their social standing, or from the

fact of acquaintanceship; but among strangers, and under circumstances

where no particular rank or position can be inferred, a woman travelling

in England or France is jostled and pushed to the wall, and left to take

her own chance, precisely as if she were not a woman. Deference to

delicacy and weakness, the instinct of protection, does not appear to

characterize the masculine population of any other quarter of the world

so much as that of America. In France, _les Messieurs_ will form a

circle round the fire in the receiving-room of a railroad station, and

sit, tranquilly smoking their cigars, while ladies who do not happen to

be of their acquaintance are standing shivering at the other side of the

room. In England, if a lady is incautiously booked for an outside place

on a coach, in hope of seeing the scenery, and the day turns out

hopelessly rainy, no gentleman in the coach below ever thinks of

offering to change seats with her, though it pour torrents. In America,

the roughest backwoods steamboat or canal-boat captain always, as a

matter of course, considers himself charged with the protection of the

ladies. '_Place aux dames_' is written in the heart of many a shaggy

fellow who could not utter a French word any more than could a buffalo.

It is just as I have before said,--women are the recognized aristocracy,

the _only_ aristocracy, of America; and, so far from regarding this fact

as objectionable, it is an unceasing source of pride in my country.

"That kind of knightly feeling towards woman which reverences her

delicacy, her frailty, which protects and cares for her, is, I think,

the crown of manhood; and without it a man is only a rough animal. But

our fair aristocrats and their knightly defenders need to be cautioned

lest they lose their position, as many privileged orders have before

done, by an arrogant and selfish use of power.

"I have said that the vices of aristocracy are more developed among

women in America than among men, and that, while there are no men in the

Northern States who are not ashamed of living a merely idle life of

pleasure, there are many women who make a boast of helplessness and

ignorance in woman's family duties which any man would be ashamed to

make with regard to man's duties, as if such helplessness and ignorance

were a grace and a charm.

"There are women who contentedly live on, year after year, a life of

idleness, while the husband and father is straining every nerve, growing

prematurely old and gray, abridged of almost every form of recreation or

pleasure,--all that he may keep them in a state of careless ease and

festivity. It may be very fine, very generous, very knightly, in the man

who thus toils at the oar that his princesses may enjoy their painted

voyages; but what is it for the women?

"A woman is a moral being,--an immortal soul,--before she is a woman;

and as such she is charged by her Maker with some share of the great

burden of _work_ which lies on the world.

"Self-denial, the bearing of the cross, are stated by Christ as

indispensable conditions to the entrance into his kingdom, and no

exception is made for man or woman. Some task, some burden, some cross,

each one must carry; and there must be something done in every true and

worthy life, not as amusement, but as duty,--not as play, but as earnest

_work_,--and no human being can attain to the Christian standard without

this.

"When Jesus Christ took a towel and girded himself, poured water into a

basin, and washed his disciples' feet, he performed a significant and

sacramental act, which no man or woman should ever forget. If wealth and

rank and power absolve from the services of life, then certainly were

Jesus Christ absolved, as he says,--'Ye call me Master, and Lord. If I,

then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash

one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do

as I have done to you.'

"Let a man who seeks to make a terrestrial paradise for the woman of his

heart,--to absolve her from all care, from all labor,--to teach her to

accept and to receive the labor of others without any attempt to offer

labor in return,--consider whether he is not thus going directly against

the fundamental idea of Christianity,--taking the direct way to make his

idol selfish and exacting, to rob her of the highest and noblest beauty

of womanhood.

"In that chapter of the Bible where the relation between man and woman

is stated, it is thus said, with quaint simplicity:--'It is not good

that the man should be alone; I will make him an _help meet_ for him.'

Woman the _helper_ of man, not his toy,--not a picture, not a statue,

not a work of art, but a HELPER, a doer,--such is the view of the Bible

and the Christian religion.

"It is not necessary that women should work physically or morally to an

extent which impairs beauty. In France, where woman is harnessed with an

ass to the plough which her husband drives,--where she digs, and wields

the pick-axe,--she becomes prematurely hideous; but in America, where

woman reigns as queen in every household, she may surely be a good and

thoughtful housekeeper, she may have physical strength exercised in

lighter domestic toils, not only without injuring her beauty, but with

manifest advantage to it. Almost every growing young girl would be the

better in health, and therefore handsomer, for two hours of active

housework daily; and the habit of usefulness thereby gained would be an

equal advantage to her moral development. The labors of modern,

well-arranged houses are not in any sense severe; they are as gentle as

any kind of exercise that can be devised, and they bring into play

muscles that ought to be exercised to be healthily developed.

"The great danger to the beauty of American women does not lie, as the

writer of the Post contends, in an overworking of the physical system

which shall stunt and deform; on the contrary, American women of the

comfortable classes are in danger of a loss of physical beauty from the

entire deterioration of the muscular system for want of exercise. Take

the life of any American girl in one of our large towns, and see what it

is. We have an educational system of public schools which for

intellectual culture is a just matter of pride to any country. From the

time that the girl is seven years old, her first thought, when she rises

in the morning, is to eat her breakfast and be off to her school. There

really is no more time than enough to allow her to make that complete

toilet which every well-bred female ought to make, and to take her

morning meal before her school begins. She returns at noon with just

time to eat her dinner, and the afternoon session begins. She comes home

at night with books, slate, and lessons enough to occupy her evening.

What time is there for teaching her any household work, for teaching her

to cut or fit or sew, or to inspire her with any taste for domestic

duties? Her arms have no exercise; her chest and lungs, and all the

complex system of muscles which are to be perfected by quick and active

movement, are compressed while she bends over book and slate and

drawing-board; while the ever-active brain is kept all the while going

at the top of its speed. She grows up spare, thin, and delicate; and

while the Irish girl, who sweeps the parlors, rubs the silver, and irons

the muslins, is developing a finely rounded arm and bust, the American

girl has a pair of bones at her sides, and a bust composed of cotton

padding, the work of a skilful dressmaker. Nature, who is no respecter

of persons, gives to Colleen Bawn, who uses her arms and chest, a beauty

which perishes in the gentle, languid Edith, who does nothing but study

and read."

"But is it not a fact," said Rudolph, "as stated by our friend of the

Post, that American matrons are perishing, and their beauty and grace

all withered, from overwork?"

"It is," said my wife; "but why? It is because they are brought up

without vigor or muscular strength, without the least practical

experience of household labor, or those means of saving it which come by

daily practice; and then, after marriage, when physically weakened by

maternity, embarrassed by the care of young children, they are often

suddenly deserted by every efficient servant, and the whole machinery of

a complicated household left in their weak, inexperienced hands. In the

country, you see a household perhaps made void some fine morning by

Biddy's sudden departure, and nobody to make the bread, or cook the

steak, or sweep the parlors, or do one of the complicated offices of a

family, and no bakery, cookshop, or laundry to turn to for alleviation.

A lovely, refined home becomes in a few hours a howling desolation; and

then ensues a long season of breakage, waste, distraction, as one wild

Irish immigrant after another introduces the style of Irish cottage life

into an elegant dwelling.

"Now suppose I grant to the Evening Post that woman ought to rest, to be

kept in the garden of life, and all that, how is this to be done in a

country where a state of things like this is the commonest of

occurrences? And is it any kindness or reverence to woman, to educate

her for such an inevitable destiny by a life of complete physical

delicacy and incapacity? Many a woman who has been brought into these

cruel circumstances would willingly exchange all her knowledge of German

and Italian, and all her graceful accomplishments, for a good physical

development, and some respectable _savoir faire_ in ordinary life.

"Moreover, American matrons are overworked because some unaccountable

glamour leads them to continue to bring up their girls in the same

inefficient physical habits which resulted in so much misery to

themselves. Housework as they are obliged to do it, untrained, untaught,

exhausted, and in company with rude, dirty, unkempt foreigners, seems to

them a degradation which they will spare to their daughters. The

daughter goes on with her schools and accomplishments, and leads in the

family the life of an elegant little visitor during all those years when

a young girl might be gradually developing and strengthening her muscles

in healthy household work. It never occurs to her that she can or ought

to fill any of these domestic gaps into which her mother always steps;

and she comforts herself with the thought, 'I don't know how; I can't; I

haven't the strength. I _cant'_ sweep; it blisters my hands. If I should

stand at the ironing-table an hour, I should be ill for a week. As to

cooking, I don't know anything about it.' And so, when the cook, or the

chambermaid, or nurse, or all together, vacate the premises, it is the

mamma who is successively cook, and chambermaid, and nurse; and this is

the reason why matrons fade and are overworked.

"Now, Mr. Rudolph, do you think a woman any less beautiful or

interesting because she is a fully developed physical being,--because

her muscles have been rounded and matured into strength, so that she can

meet the inevitable emergencies of life without feeling them to be

distressing hardships? If there be a competent, well-trained servant to

sweep and dust the parlor, and keep all the machinery of the house in

motion, she may very properly select her work out of the family, in some

form of benevolent helpfulness; but when the inevitable evil hour comes,

which is likely to come first or last in every American household, is a

woman any less an elegant woman because her love of neatness, order, and

beauty leads her to make vigorous personal exertions to keep her own

home undefiled? For my part, I think a disorderly, ill-kept home, a

sordid, uninviting table, has driven more husbands from domestic life

than the unattractiveness of any overworked woman. So long as a woman

makes her home harmonious and orderly, so long as the hour of assembling

around the family table is something to be looked forward to as a

comfort and a refreshment, a man cannot see that the good house fairy,

who by some magic keeps everything so delightfully, has either a wrinkle

or a gray hair.

"Besides," said I, "I must tell you, Rudolph, what you fellows of

twenty-one are slow to believe; and that is, that the kind of ideal

paradise you propose in marriage is, in the very nature of things, an

impossibility,--that the familiarities of every-day life between two

people who keep house together must and will destroy it. Suppose you are

married to Cytherea herself, and the next week attacked with a rheumatic

fever. If the tie between you is that of true and honest love, Cytherea

will put on a gingham wrapper, and with her own sculptured hands wring

out the flannels which shall relieve your pains; and she will be no true

woman if she do not prefer to do this to employing any nurse that could

be hired. True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life;

and homely services rendered for love's sake have in them a poetry that

is immortal.

"No true-hearted woman can find herself, in real, actual life, unskilled

and unfit to minister to the wants and sorrows of those dearest to her,

without a secret sense of degradation. The feeling of uselessness is an

extremely unpleasant one. Tom Hood, in a very humorous paper, describes

a most accomplished schoolmistress, a teacher of all the arts and crafts

which are supposed to make up fine gentlewomen, who is stranded in a

rude German inn, with her father writhing in the anguish of a severe

attack of gastric inflammation. The helpless lady gazes on her suffering

parent, longing to help him, and thinking over all her various little

store of accomplishments, not one of which bear the remotest relation to

the case. She could knit him a bead-purse, or make him a guard-chain, or

work him a footstool, or festoon him with cut tissue-paper, or sketch

his likeness, or crust him over with alum crystals, or stick him over

with little rosettes of red and white wafers; but none of these being

applicable to his present case, she sits gazing in resigned imbecility,

till finally she desperately resolves to improvise him some gruel, and,

after a laborious turn in the kitchen,--after burning her dress and

blacking her fingers,--succeeds only in bringing him a bowl of _paste_!

"Not unlike this might be the feeling of many and elegant and

accomplished woman, whose education has taught and practised her in

everything that woman ought to know, except those identical ones which

fit her for the care of a home, for the comfort of a sick-room; and so I

say again, that, whatever a woman may be in the way of beauty and

elegance, she must have the strength and skill of a _practical worker_,

or she is nothing. She is not simply to _be_ the beautiful,--she is to

_make_ the beautiful, and preserve it; and she who makes and she who

keeps the beautiful must be able _to work_, and to know how to work.

Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and

refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile

toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings. If a true

lady makes even a plate of toast, in arranging a _petit souper_ for her

invalid friend, she does it as a lady should. She does not cut

blundering and uneven slices; she does not burn the edges; she does not

deluge it with bad butter, and serve it cold; but she arranges and

serves all with an artistic care, with a nicety and delicacy, which make

it worth one's while to have a lady friend in sickness.

"And I am glad to hear that Monsieur Blot is teaching classes of New

York ladies that cooking is not a vulgar kitchen toil, to be left to

blundering servants, but an elegant feminine accomplishment, better

worth a woman's learning than crochet or embroidery; and that a

well-kept culinary apartment may be so inviting and orderly that no lady

need feel her ladyhood compromised by participating in its pleasant

toils. I am glad to know that his cooking academy is thronged with more

scholars than he can accommodate, and from ladies in the best classes of

society.

"Moreover, I am glad to see that in New Bedford, recently, a public

course of instruction in the art of bread-making has been commenced by a

lady, and that classes of the most respectable young and married ladies

in the place are attending them.

"These are steps in the right direction, and show that our fair

country-women, with the grand good sense which is their leading

characteristic, are resolved to supply whatever in our national life is

wanting.

"I do not fear that women of such sense and energy will listen to the

sophistries which would persuade them that elegant imbecility and

inefficiency are charms of cultivated womanhood or ingredients in the

poetry of life. She alone can keep the poetry and beauty of married life

who has this poetry in her soul; who with energy and discretion can

throw back and out of sight the sordid and disagreeable details which

beset all human living, and can keep in the foreground that which is

agreeable; who has enough knowledge of practical household matters to

make unskilled and rude hands minister to her cultivated and refined

tastes, and constitute her skilled brain the guide of unskilled hands.

From such a home, with such a mistress, no sirens will seduce a man,

even though the hair grow gray, and the merely physical charms of early

days gradually pass away. The enchantment that was about her person

alone in the days of courtship seems in the course of years to have

interfused and penetrated the _home_ which she has created, and which in

every detail is only an expression of her personality. Her thoughts, her

plans, her provident care, are everywhere; and the _home_ attracts and

holds by a thousand ties the heart which before marriage was held by the

woman alone."

POOR CHLOE.

A TRUE STORY OF MASSACHUSETTS IN THE OLDEN TIME.

"Let not ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the poor."

GRAY'S _Elegy_.

It was a long, long time ago, before the flame of gas was seen in the

streets, or the sounds of the railroad were heard in the land; so long

before, that, had any prophet then living foretold such magical doings,

he would have been deemed a fit inhabitant of Bedlam. In those primitive

times, the Widow Lawton was considered a rich woman, though her income

would not go far toward clothing a city-fashionable in these days. She

owned a convenient house on the sea-shore, some twelve or fifteen miles

from Cape Ann; she cultivated ten acres of sandy soil, and had a

well-tended fish-flake a quarter of a mile long. To own an extensive

fish-flake was, in that neighborhood, a sure sign of being well to do in

the world. The process of transmuting it into money was slow and

circuitous; but those were not fast days. The fish were to be caught,

and cleaned, and salted, and spread on the flake, and turned day after

day till thoroughly dry. Then they were packed, and sent in vessels to

Maryland or Virginia, to be exchanged for flour or tobacco; then the

flour and tobacco were sold in foreign ports, and silks, muslins, and

other articles of luxury procured with the money.

The Widow Lawton was a notable, stirring woman, and it was generally

agreed that no one in that region kept a sharper look-out for the main

chance. Nobody sent better fish to market; nobody had such good luck in

hiving bees; nobody could spin more knots of yarn in a day, or weave

such handsome table-cloths. Great was her store of goodies for the

winter. The smoke-house was filled with hams, and the ceiling of the

kitchen was festooned with dried apples and pumpkins. In summer, there

was a fly-cage suspended from the centre. It was made of bristles, in a

sort of basket-work, in which were arranged bits of red, yellow, and

green woollen cloth tipped with honey. Flies, deceived by the fair

appearance, sipped the honey, and remained glued to the woollen; their

black bodies serving to set off the bright colors to advantage. In those

days, such a cage was considered a very genteel ornament for a New

England kitchen. Rich men sometimes have their coats of arms sketched on

the floor in colored crayons, to be effaced in one night by the feet of

dancers. The Widow Lawton ornamented her kitchen floor in a manner as

ephemeral, though less expensive. Every afternoon it was strewn with

white sand from the beach, and marked all over with the broom in a

herring-bone pattern; a very suitable coat of arms for the owner of a

fish-flake. In the parlor was an ingrained carpet, the admiration and

envy of the neighborhood. A large glass was surmounted by a gilded eagle

upholding a chain,--prophetic of the principal employment of the bird of

freedom for three quarters of a century thereafter. In the Franklin

fireplace, tall brass andirons, brightly burnished, gleamed through a

feathery forest of asparagus, interspersed with scarlet berries. The

high, mahogany case of drawers, grown black with time, and lustrous with

much waxing, had innumerable great drawers and little drawers, all

resplendent with brass ornaments, kept as bright as new gold.

The Widow was accustomed to say, "It takes a good deal of elbow-grease

to keep everything trig and shiny"; and though she was by no means

sparing of her own, the neat and thriving condition of the household and

the premises was largely owing to the black Chloe, her slave and

servant-of-all-work. When Chloe was a babe strapped on her mother's

shoulders, they were stolen from Africa and packed in a ship. What

became of her mother she knew not. How the Widow Lawton obtained the

right to make her work from morning till night, without wages, she never

inquired. It had always been so, ever since she could remember, and she

had heard the minister say, again and again, that it was an ordination

of Providence. She did not know what ordination was, or who Providence

was; but she had a vague idea that both were up in the sky, and that she

had nothing to do but submit to them. So year after year she patiently

cooked meals, and weeded the garden, and cut and dried the apples, and

scoured the brasses, and sanded the floor in herring-bone pattern, and

tended the fish-flake till the profitable crop of the sea was ready for

market. There was a melancholy expression in the eyes of poor, ignorant

Chloe, which seemed to indicate that there might be in her soul a

fountain that was deep, though it was sealed by the heavy stone of

slavery. Carlyle said of a dog that howled at the moon, "He would have

been a poet, if he could have found a publisher." And Chloe, though she

never thought about the Infinite, was sometimes impressed with a feeling

of its mysterious presence, as she walked back and forth tending the

fish-flake; with the sad song of the sea forever resounding in her ears,

and a glittering orb of light sailing through the great blue arch over

her head, and at evening sinking into the waves amid a gorgeous drapery

of clouds. When the moon looked on the sea, the sealed fountain within

her soul was strangely stirred. The shadow of rocks on the beach, the

white sails of fishing-boats glimmering in the distance, the everlasting

sighing of the sea, made her think of ghosts; though the oppressive

feeling never shaped itself into words, except in the statement, "I'se

sort o' feared o' moonlight." So poor Chloe paced her small round upon

the earth, as unconscious as the ant in her molehill that she was

whirling round among the stars. The extent of her moral development was,

that it was her duty to obey her mistress and believe all the minister

said. She had often been told that was sufficient for her salvation, and

she supposed it was so.

But the dream that takes possession of young hearts came to Chloe also;

though in her case it proved merely the shadow of a dream, or a dream of

a shadow. On board of one of the sloops that carried fish to Baltimore

was a free colored man, named Jim Saunders. The first time she saw him,

she thought his large brown eyes were marvellously handsome, and that he

had a very pleasant way of speaking to her. She always watched for the

ship in which he came, and was very particular to have on a clean apron

when she was likely to meet him. She looked at her own eyes in a bit of

broken looking-glass, and wondered whether they seemed as handsome to

him as his eyes did to her. In her own opinion she had rather pretty

eyes, and she was not mistaken; for the Scriptural description, "black,

but comely," was applicable to her. Jim never told her so, but she had

somehow received an impression that perhaps he thought so. Sometimes he

helped her turn the fish on the Flake, and afterward walked with her

along the beach, as she wended her way homeward. On such occasions there

was a happy sound in the song of the sea, and her heart seemed to dance

up in sparkles, like the waves kissed by the sunshine. It was the first

free, strong emotion she had ever experienced, and it sent a glow

through the cold dulness of her lonely life.

Jim went away on a long voyage. He said perhaps he should be gone two

years. The evening before he sailed, he walked with Chloe on the beach;

and when he bade her good by, he gave her a pretty little pink shell,

with a look that she never forgot. She gazed long after him, and felt

flustered when he turned and saw her watching him. As he passed round a

rock that would conceal him from her sight, he waved his cap toward her,

and she turned homeward, murmuring to herself, "He didn't say nothin';

but he looked just as ef he _wanted_ to say suthin'." On that look the

poor hungry heart fed itself. It was the one thing in the world that was

her own, that nobody could take from her,--the memory of a look.

Time passed on, and Chloe went her rounds, from house-service to the

field, and from field-service to the fish-flake. The Widow Lawton had

strongly impressed upon her mind that the Scripture said, "Six days

shalt thou work." On the Sabbath no out-door work was carried on, for

the Widow was a careful observer of established forms; but there were so

many chores to be done inside the house, that Chloe was on her feet most

of the day, except when she was dozing in a dark corner of the

meeting-house gallery, while the Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon explained the

difference between justification and sanctification. Chloe didn't

understand it, any more than she did the moaning of the sea; and the

continuous sound without significance had the same tendency to lull her

to sleep. But she regarded the minister with great awe. It never entered

her mind that he belonged to the same species as herself. She supposed

God had sent him into the world with special instructions to warn

sinners; and that sinners were sent into the world to listen to him and

obey him. Her visage lengthened visibly whenever she saw him approaching

with his cocked hat and ivory-headed cane. He was something far-off and

mysterious to her imagination, like the man in the moon; and it never

occurred to her that he might enter as a disturbing element into the

narrow sphere of her humble affairs. But so it was destined to be.

The minister was one of the nearest neighbors, and not unfrequently had

occasion to negotiate with the Widow Lawton concerning the curing of

hams in her smoke-house, or the exchange of pumpkins for dried fish.

When their business was transacted, the Widow usually asked him to "stop

and take a dish o' tea"; and he was inclined to accept the invitation,

for he particularly liked the flavor of her doughnuts and pies. On one

of these occasions, he said: "I have another matter of business to speak

with you about, Mrs. Lawton,--a matter nearly connected with my temporal

interest and convenience. My Tom has taken it into his head that he

wants a wife, and he is getting more and more uneasy about it. Last

night he strayed off three miles to see Black Dinah. Now if he gets set

in that direction, it will make it very inconvenient for me; for it will

take him a good deal of time to go back and forth, and I may happen to

want him when he is out of the way. But if you would consent to have him

marry your Chloe, I could easily summon him if I stood in need of him."

"I can't say it would be altogether convenient," replied Mrs. Lawton.

"He'd be coming here often, bringing mud or dust into the house, and

he'd be very likely to take Chloe's mind off from her work."

"There need be no trouble on that score," said Mr. Gordonmammon. "I

should tell Tom he must never come here except on Saturday evenings, and

that he must return early on Sunday morning. My good woman has taught

him to be so careful about his feet, that he will bring no mud or dust

into your house. His board will cost you nothing for he will come after

supper and leave before breakfast; and perhaps you may now and then find

it handy for him to do a chore for you."

Notwithstanding these arguments, the Widow still seemed rather

disinclined to the arrangement. She feared that some moments of Chloe's

time might thereby be lost to her.

The minister rose, and said, with much gravity: "When a pastor devotes

his life to the spiritual welfare of his flock, it would seem reasonable

that his parishioners should feel some desire to serve his temporal

interests in return. But since you are unwilling to accommodate me in

this small matter, I will bid you good evening, Mrs. Lawton."

The solemnity of his manner intimidated the Widow, and she hastened to

say: "Of course I am always happy to oblige you, Mr. Gordonmammon; and

since you have set your mind on Tom's having Chloe, I have no objection

to your speaking to her about it."

The minister at once proceeded to the kitchen. Chloe, who was carefully

instructed to use up every scrap of time for the benefit of her

mistress, had seated herself to braid rags for a carpet, as soon as the

tea things were disposed of. The entrance of the minister into her

apartment surprised her, for it was very unusual. She rose, made a

profound courtesy, and remained standing.

"Sit down, Chloe! sit down!" said he, with a condescending wave of his

hand. "I have come to speak to you about an important matter. You have

heard me read from the Scriptures that marriage is honorable. You are

old enough to be married, Chloe, and it is right and proper you should

be married. My Tom wants a wife, and there is nobody I should like so

well for him as you. I will go home and send Tom to talk with you about

it."

Chloe looked very much frightened, and exclaimed: "Please don't, Massa

Gordonmammon, I don't want to be married."

"But it's right and proper you should be married," rejoined the

minister; "and Tom wants a wife. It's your duty, Chloe, to do whatever

your minister and your mistress tell you to do."

That look from Jim came up as a bright vision before poor Chloe, and she

burst into tears.

"I will come again when your mind is in a state more suited to your

condition," said the minister. "At present your disposition seems to be

rebellious. I will leave you to think of what I have said."

But thinking made Chloe feel still more rebellious. Tom was fat and

stupid, with thick lips, and small, dull-looking eyes. He compared very

unfavorably with her bright and handsome Jim. She swayed back and forth,

and groaned. She thought over all the particulars of that last walk on

the beach, and murmured to herself, "He looked jest as ef he _wanted_ to

say suthin'."

She thought of Tom and groaned again; and underlying all her confusion

of thoughts there was a miserable feeling that, if the minister and her

mistress both said she must marry Tom, there was no help for it.

The next day, she slashed and slammed round in an extraordinary manner.

She broke a mug and a bowl, and sanded the floor with a general

conglomeration of scratches, instead of the neat herring-bone on which

she usually prided herself. It was the only way she had to exercise her

free-will in its desperate struggle with necessity.

Mrs. Lawton, who never thought of her in any other light than as a

machine, did not know what to make of these singular proceedings. "What

upon airth ails you?" exclaimed she. "I do believe the gal's gone

crazy."

Chloe paused in her harum-scarum sweeping, and said, with a look and

tone almost defiant, "I don't _want_ to marry Tom."

"But the minister wants you to marry him," replied Mrs. Lawton, "and you

ought to mind the minister."

Chloe did not dare to dispute that assertion, but she dashed her broom

round in the sand, in a very rebellious manner.

"Mind what you're about, gal!" exclaimed Mrs. Lawton. "I am not going to

put up with such tantrums."

Chloe was acquainted with the weight of her mistress's hand, and she

moved the broom round in more systematic fashion; but there was a

tempest raging in her soul.

In the course of a few days the minister visited the kitchen again, and

found Chloe still averse to his proposition. If his spiritual ear had

been delicate, he would have noticed anguish in her pleading tone, when

she said: "Please, Massa Gordonmammon, don't say nothin' more 'bout it.

I don't _want_ to be married." But his spiritual ear was _not_ delicate;

and her voice sounded to him merely as that of a refractory wench, who

was behaving in a manner very unseemly and ungrateful in a bondwoman who

had been taken from the heathen round about, and brought under the

guidance of Christians. He therefore assumed his sternest look when he

said: "I supposed you knew it was your duty to obey whatever your

minister and your mistress tell you. The Bible says, 'He is the minister

of God unto you.' It also says, 'Servants, obey your masters in all

things'; and your mistress stands to you in the place of your deceased

master. How are you going to account to God for your disobedience to his

commands?"

Chloe, half frightened and half rebellious, replied, "I don't think

Missis would like it, if you made Missy Katy marry somebody when she

said she didn't want to be married."

"Chloe, it is very presumptuous in _you_ to talk in that way," rejoined

the minister. "There is no similarity between _your_ condition and that

of your young mistress. You are descended from Ham, Chloe; and Ham was

accursed of God on account of his sin, and his posterity were ordained

to be servants; and the Bible says, 'Servants, obey your masters in all

things'; and it says that the minister is a 'minister of God unto you.'

You were born among heathen and brought to a land of Gospel privileges;

and you ought to be grateful that you have protectors capable of

teaching you what to do. Now your mistress wants you to marry Tom, and I

want you to marry him; and we expect that you will do as we bid you,

without any more words. I will come again, Chloe; though you ought to

feel ashamed of yourself for giving your minister so much trouble about

such a trifling matter."

Receiving no answer, he returned to the sitting-room to talk with Mrs.

Lawton.

Chloe, like most people who are alone much of their time, had a

confirmed habit of talking to herself; and her soliloquies were apt to

be rather promiscuous and disjointed.

"Trifling matter!" said she. "S'pose it's trifling matter to _you_,

Massa Minister. Ugh! S'pose they'll _make_ me. Don't know nothin' 'bout

Ham. Never hearn tell o' Ham afore, only ham in the smoke-house. If

ham's cussed in the Bible, what fur do folks eat it? Hearn Missis read

in the Bible that the Divil went into the swine. Don't see what fur I

must marry Tom 'cause Ham was cussed for his sin." She was silent for a

while, and, being unable to bring any order out of the chaos of her

thoughts, she turned them toward a more pleasant subject. "He didn't say

nothin'," murmured she; "but he looked jest as ef he _wanted_ to say

suthin'." The tender expression of those great brown eyes came before

her again, and she laid her head down on the table and sobbed.

Her protectors, as they styled themselves, never dreamed that she had a

heart. In their thoughts she was merely a bondwoman taken from the

heathen, and consigned to their keeping for their uses.

Tom made another visit to Dinah, and was out of the way when his master

wanted him. This caused the minister to hasten in making his third visit

to Chloe. She met him with the same frightened look; and when he asked

if she had made up her mind to obey her mistress, she timidly and sadly

repeated, "Massa Minister, I don't _want_ to be married."

"You don't want to do your duty; that's what it is, you disobedient

wench," said the minister sternly. "I will wrestle with the Lord in

prayer for you, that your rebellious heart may be taken away, and a

submissive temper given you, more befitting your servile condition."

He spread forth his hands, covered with very long-fingered, dangling

black-silk gloves, and lifted his voice in the following petition to the

Throne of Grace: "O Lord, we pray thee that this rebellious descendant

of Ham, whom thou hast been pleased to place under our protection, may

learn that it is her duty to obey thy Holy Word; wherein it is written

that I am unto her a minister of God, and that she is to obey her

mistress in all things. May she be brought to a proper sense of her

duty; and, by submission to her superiors, gain a humble place in thy

heavenly kingdom, where the curse inherited from her sinful progenitor

may be removed. This we ask in the name of thy Son, our Saviour Jesus

Christ, who died that sinners might be redeemed by believing on his

name; even sinners who, like this disobedient handmaid, were born in a

land of heathens."

He paused and looked at Chloe, who could do nothing but weep. There were

many words in the prayer which conveyed to her no meaning; and why she

was accursed on account of the sin of Ham remained a perplexing puzzle

to her mind. But she felt as if she must, somehow or other, be doing

something wicked, or the minister would not come and pray for her in

such a solemn manner.

Mr. Gordonmammon, having reiterated his rebukes and expostulations

without receiving any answer but tears, called Mrs. Lawton to his

assistance. "I have preached to Chloe, and prayed for her," said he;

"but she remains stubborn."

"I am surprised at you, Chloe!" exclaimed the Widow. "You have been told

a great many times that it is your duty to obey the minister and to obey

me; yet you have put him to the trouble of coming three times to talk

with you. I sha'n't put up with any more such doings. You must make up

your mind once for all to marry Tom. What have you to say about it, you

silly wench?"

With a great break-down of sobs, poor Chloe blubbered out, "S'pose I

_must_."

They left her alone; and O how dreadfully alone she felt, with the

memory of that treasured look, and the thought that, whatever it was Jim

wanted to say, he could never say it now!

The next day, soon after dinner, Mrs. Lawton entered the kitchen, and

said: "Chloe, the minister has brought Tom. Make haste, and do up your

dishes, and put on a clean apron, and come in to be married."

Chloe's first impulse was to run away; but she had nowhere to run. She

was recognized as the property of her mistress, and wherever she went

she would be sure to be sent back. She washed the dishes so slowly that

Mrs. Lawton came again to say the minister was waiting. Chloe merely

replied, "Yes, missis." But when the door closed after her, she muttered

to herself: "_Let_ him wait. I didn't ax him to come here plaguing me

about the cuss o' Ham. Don't know nothin' 'bout Ham. Never hearn tell

'bout him afore."

Again her mistress came to summon her, and this time in a somewhat angry

mood. "Have you got lead tied to your heels, you lazy wench?" said she.

"How many times must I tell you the minister's waiting?" And she

emphasized the question with a smart box on the ear.

Like a cowardly soldier driven up to the cannon's mouth by bayonets,

Chloe put on a clean apron, and went to the sitting-room. When the

minister told Tom to stand up, she did not even look at him; and he, on

his part, seemed very much frightened. After a brief form of words had

been repeated, they were told that they were husband and wife. Then the

bridegroom was ordered to go to ploughing, and the bride was sent to the

fish-flake.

Two witnesses were present at this dismal wedding beside Mrs. Lawton.

One was the Widow's daughter, a girl of seventeen, whom Chloe called

"Missy Katy." The other was Sukey Larkin, who lived twenty miles off,

but occasionally came to visit an aunt in the neighborhood. Both the

young girls were dressed in their best; for they were going to a

quilting-party, where they expected to meet many beaux. But Catherine

Lawton's best was very superior to Sukey Larkin's. Her gown was of a

more wonderful pattern than had been seen in that region. It had been

brought from London, in exchange for tobacco. Sukey had heard of it, and

had stopped at the Widow Lawton's to make sure of seeing it, in case

Catharine did not wear it to the quilting-party. Though she had heard

much talk about it, it surpassed her expectations, and made her very

discontented with her own gown of India-cotton, dotted all over with red

spots, like barley-corns. The fabric of Catharine's dress was fine,

thick linen, covered with pictures, like a fancifully illustrated volume

of Natural History. Butterflies of all sizes and colors were fluttering

over great baskets of flowers, birds were swinging on blossoming vines,

bees were hovering round their hives, and doves were billing and cooing

on the roof of their cots. One of the beaux in the neighborhood

expressed his admiration of it by saying "It beats all natur'." It was

made in bodice-fashion, with a frill of fine linen nicely crimped; and

the short, tight sleeves were edged just above the elbow with a similar

frill.

Sukey had before envied Catharine the possession of a gold necklace; but

that grew dim before the glory of this London gown. She repeated several

times that it was the handsomest thing she ever saw, and that it was

remarkably becoming. But at the quilting-party the bitterness of her

spirit betrayed itself in such remarks as these: "Folks wonder where the

Widow Lawton gets money to set herself up so much above other folks. But

she knows how to drive a bargain. She can skin a flint, and tan the

hide. She makes a fool of Catharine, dressing her up like a London

doll. I wonder who she expects is going to marry her, if she brings her

up with such extravagant notions."

"Mr. Gordonmammon thinks a deal of the Widow Lawton," said the hostess

of the quilting-party.

"Yes, I know he does," replied Sukey. "If he was a widower, I guess

they'd be the town's talk. Some folks think he goes there full often

enough. He brought his Tom there to-day to marry Chloe. I wonder the

Widow could spare her time to be married,--though, to be sure, it didn't

take long, for the minister made a mighty short prayer."

Poor Chloe! Thus they dismissed a subject which gave her a life-long

heart-ache. There was no honey in her bridal moon. She told Tom several

times she wished he would stay at home; but he was so perseveringly

good-natured, there was no possibility of quarrelling with him. By

degrees, she began to find his visits on Saturday evening rather more

entertaining than talking to herself.

"I wouldn't mind bein' so druv wi' work," said Tom, "ef I could live

like white folks do when _they_ gits married. I duz more work than them

as has a cabin o' their own, an' keeps a cow and a pig. But black folks

don't seem to git no good o' their work."

"Massa Minister says it's 'cause God cussed Ham," replied Chloe. "I

thought 'twas wicked to cuss, but Massa Minister says Ham was cussed in

the Bible. Ef I could have some o' the fish I clean and dry, I could

sen' to Lunnun for a gownd; but Missy Katy she gits all the gownds,

'cause Ham was cussed in the Bible. I don't know nothin' 'bout it; seems

drefful queer."

"Massa tole me I mus' work for nothin', 'cause Ham was cussed," rejoined

Tom. "But it seems like Ham cussed some black folks _worse_ nor others.

There's Jim Saunders, he's a nigger, too; but he gits his feed and six

dollars a month."

The words were like a stab to Chloe. She dropped half a needleful of

stitches in her knitting, and told Tom she wished he'd hold his tongue,

for he kept up such a jabbering that he made all her stitches run down.

Tom, thus silenced, soon fell asleep. She glanced at him as he sat

snoring by her side, and contrasted him with the genteel figure and

handsome features that had been so indelibly photographed on her memory

by the sunbeams of love. Tears dropped fast on her knitting-work; but

when Tom woke up, she spoke kindly, and tried to atone for her

ill-temper. Time, which gradually reconciles us to all things, produced

the same effect on her as on others. When the minister asked her, six

months afterward, how she and Tom were getting along, she replied, "I's

got used to him."

Yet life seemed more dreary to her than it did before she had that brief

experience of a free feeling. She never thought of that look without

longing to know what it was Jim wanted to say. But, as months passed on,

the tantalizing vision came less frequently, and at the end of a year

Chloe experienced the second happy emotion of her life. When she looked

upon her babe, a great fountain of love leaped up in her heart. She was

never too tired to wait upon little Tommy; and if his cries disturbed

her deep sleep, she folded the helpless little creature to her bosom,

with the feeling that he was better than rest. She was accustomed to

carry him to the fish-flake in a big basket, and lay him on a bed of dry

leaves, with her apron for an awning. As she paced backwards and

forwards at her daily toil, it was a perpetual entertainment to see him

lying there sucking his thumbs. But that was nothing compared with the

joy of nursing him. When his hunger was partially satisfied, he would

stop to smile in his mother's face; and Chloe had never seen anything so

beautiful as that baby smile. As he lay on her lap, laughing and cooing,

there was something in the expression of his eyes that reminded her of

the look she could never forget. He had taken the picture from her soul,

and brought it with him to the outer world; but as he lay there, playing

with his toes, he knew no more about his mother's heart than did the

Rev. Mr. Gordonmammon.

One balmy day in June, she was sitting on a rock by the sea-shore,

nursing her babe, pinching his little plump cheeks, and chirruping to

make him smile, when she heard the sound of footsteps. She looked up,

and saw Jim approaching. Her heart jumped into her throat. She felt very

hot, and then very cold. When Jim came near enough to look upon the

babe, he stopped an instant, said, in a constrained way, "How d' ye,

Chloe," then turned and walked quickly away. She gazed after him so

wistfully that for a few moments the cooing of her babe was disregarded.

"'Pears like he was affronted," she murmured, at last; and the big tears

dropped slowly. Little Tommy had a fit that night; for, by the strange

interfusion of spirit into all forms of matter, the quick revulsion of

the blood in his mother's heart passed into his nourishment, and

convulsed his body, as her soul had been convulsed.

But the disturbance passed away, and Chloe's life rolled on in its

accustomed grooves. Tommy grew strong enough to run by her side when she

went to the beach. Hour after hour he busied himself with pebbles and

shells, every now and then bringing her his treasures, and calling out,

"Pooty!" When he held out a shell, and looked at her with his great

brown eyes, it stirred up memories; but the pain was gone from them. Her

heart was no longer famished; it was filled with little Tommy.

This engrossing love was not agreeable to the Widow Lawton. If less was

accomplished in a day than usual, she would often exclaim, "That brat

takes up too much of your time." And not unfrequently Chloe was

compelled to go to the beach and leave Tommy fastened up in the kitchen;

though this was never done without some outcries on his part, and some

suppressed mutterings on hers.

On one of these occasions, Sukey Larkin came to make a call. When Mrs.

Lawton saw her at the gate, she said to her daughter, "How long do you

suppose she'll be in the house before she asks to see your silk gown?"

Catharine smiled and kept on spinning flax till her visitor entered.

"Good morning, Sukey," said Mrs. Lawton. "I didn't know you was about in

these parts."

"I come yesterday to do some business for mother," replied Sukey, "and

I'm going back in an hour. But I thought I would just run in to see you,

Catharine. Aunt says you're going to Jane Horton's wedding. Are you

going to wear your new silk?"

"So you've heard about the new silk?" said Mrs. Lawton.

"To be sure I have," rejoined Sukey. "Everybody's talking about it. Do

show it to me, Catharine; that's a dear."

The dress was brought forth from its envelope of white linen. It was a

very lustrous silk, changeable between rose-color and apple-green, and

the delicate hues glanced beautifully in the sunlight.

Sukey was in raptures, and exclaimed, "I don't wonder Mr. Gordonmammon

said Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like Catharine, when she

went to the great party at Cape Ann. I do declare, you've got lace at

the elbows and round the neck!" She heaved a deep sigh when the dress

was refolded; and after a moment's silence said, "I wish mother had a

fish-flake, and knew how to manage as well as you do, Mrs. Lawton; then

she could trade round with the sloops and get me a silk gown."

"O, I dare say you will have one some time or other," rejoined

Catharine.

"No, I shall never have one, if I live to be a hundred years old,"

replied Sukey. "I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, like some

folks."

"I wonder what Tommy's doing in the kitchen," said Mrs. Lawton. "He's

generally about some mischief when he's so still. I declare I'd as lief

have a colt in the house as that little nigger." She looked into the

kitchen and added, "He's sound asleep on the floor."

"If he's so much trouble to you," said Sukey, "I wish you'd give him to

me. I always thought I should like to have a nigger."

"You may have him if you want him," replied Mrs. Lawton. "He's nothing

but a pester, and he takes up a quarter part of Chloe's time. But you'd

better take him before she gets home, for she'll make a fuss; and if he

wakes up he'll cry."

Sukey had a plan in her mind, suggested by the sight of the silk gown,

and she was eager to get possession of little Tommy. She said her horse

was tackled to the wagon, all ready to start for home, and there was

some straw in the bottom of it. The vehicle was soon at the widow's

door, and by careful management the child was placed on the straw

without waking; though Catharine said she heard him cry before the wagon

was out of sight.

Chloe hurried through her work on the beach, and came home at a quick

pace; for she was longing to see her darling, and she had some

misgivings as to how he was treated in her absence. She opened the

kitchen-door with the expectation that Tommy would spring toward her, as

usual, exclaiming, "Mammy! mammy!" The disappointment gave her a chill,

and she ran out to call him. When no little voice responded to the call,

she went to the sitting-room and said, "Missis, have you seen Tommy?"

"He a'n't been here," replied Mrs. Lawton, evasively. "Can't you find

him?"

The Widow was a regular communicant of the Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon's

church; but she was so blinded by slavery that it never occurred to her

there was any sin in thus trifling with a mother's feelings. When Chloe

had hurried out of the room, she said to her daughter, in a tone of

indifference, "One good thing will come of giving Tommy to Sukey

Larkin,--she won't come spying about here for one spell; she'll be

afraid to face Chloe."

In fact, she herself soon found it rather unpleasant to face Chloe; for

the bereaved mother grew so wild with anxiety, that the hardest heart

could not remain untouched. "O missis! why didn't you let me take Tommy

with me" exclaimed she. "He played with hisself, and wasn't no care to

me. I s'pose he was lonesome, and runned down to the beach to look for

mammy; an' he's got drownded." With that thought she rushed to the door

to go and hunt for him on the sea-shore.

Her mistress held her back with a strong arm, and, finding it impossible

to pacify her, she at last said, "Sukey Larkin wanted Tommy, and I told

her she might have him; she'll take good care of him."

The unhappy bondwoman gazed at her with an expression of intense misery,

which she was never afterward able to forget. "O missis! how _could_ you

do it?" she exclaimed; and, sinking upon a chair, she covered her face

with her apron.

"Sukey will be good to him," said Mrs. Lawton, in tones more gentle than

usual.

"He'll cry for his mammy," sobbed Chloe. "O missis! 't was cruel to take

away my little Tommy."

The Widow crept noiselessly out of the room, and left her to wrestle

with her grief as she could. She found the minister in the sitting-room,

and told him she had given away little Tommy, but that she wouldn't have

done it if she had thought Chloe would be so wild about it; for she

doubted whether she should get any work out of her for a week to come.

"She'll get over it soon," said the minister. "My cow lowed dismally,

and wouldn't eat, when I sold her calf; but she soon got used to doing

without it."

It did not occur to him as included within his pastoral duties to pray

with the stricken slave; and poor Chloe, oppressed with an unutterable

sense of loneliness, retired to her straw pallet, and late in the night

sobbed herself to sleep. She woke with a weight on her heart, as if

there was somebody dead in the house; and quickly there rushed upon her

the remembrance that her darling was gone. A ragged gown of his was

hanging on a nail. How she kissed it, and cried over it! Then she took

Jim's pink shell from her box, folded them carefully together, and laid

them away. No mortal but herself knew what memories were wrapped up with

them. She went through the usual routine of housework like a laborer who

drags after him a ball and chain. At the appointed time, she wandered

forth to the beach with no little voice to chirp music to her as she

went. When she saw prints of Tommy's little feet in the sand, she sat

down on a stone, and covered her face with her apron. For a long time

her sobs and groans mingled with the moan of the sea. She raised her

head, and looked inland, in the direction where she supposed Sukey

Larkin lived. She revolved in her mind the possibility of going there.

But stages were almost unknown in those days; and no wagoner would take

her, without consent of her mistress, if she pleaded ever so hard. She

thought of running away at midnight; but Mrs. Lawton would be sure to

overtake her, and bring her back. Thoughts of what her mistress might do

in such a case reminded her that she was neglecting the fish. Like a

machine wound up, she began to go her customary rounds; but she had lost

so much time that it was late before her task was completed. Then she

wandered away to a little heap of moss and pebbles, that Tommy had built

the last time they were together on the beach. On a wet rock near by she

sat down and cried. Black clouds gathered over her head, a cold

northeast wind blew upon her, and the spray sprinkled her naked feet.

Still she sat there and cried. Louder and louder whistled the wind;

wilder and wilder grew the moan of the sea. She heard the uproar without

caring for it. She wished the big waves would come and wash her away.

Meanwhile Mrs. Lawton noticed the gathering darkness, and looked out

anxiously for the return of her servant. "What upon airth can have

become of her?" said she. "She oughter been home an hour ago."

"I shouldn't wonder if she had set out to go to Sukey Larkin's," replied

Catharine.

The Widow had thought of that; she had also thought of the sea; for she

had an uneasy remembrance of that look of utter misery when Chloe said,

"How _could_ you do it?"

It was Saturday evening; and, according to custom, Tom came to see his

wife, all unconscious of the affliction that had befallen them. Mrs.

Lawton went out to meet him, and said: "Tom, I wish you would go right

down to the beach, and see what has become of Chloe. She a'n't come home

yet, and I'm afraid something has happened." She returned to the house,

thinking to herself, "If the wench is drowned, where shall I get such

another?"

Tom found Chloe still sitting on the wet stone. When he spoke to her,

she started, as if from sleep; and her first exclamation was, "O Tom!

missis has guv away little Tommy."

It was some time before he could understand what had happened; but when

he realized that his child was gone, his strong frame shook with sobs.

Little Tommy was the only creature on earth that loved him,--his only

treasure, his only plaything. "It's cruel hard," said he.

"O, how little Tommy is crying for mammy!" sobbed Chloe; "and I can't

git to him nohow. Oh! oh!"

Tom tried to comfort her, as well as he knew how. Among other things, he

suggested running away.

"I've been thinking 'bout that," rejoined Chloe; "but there a'n't

nowhere to run to. The white folks has got all the money, and all the

hosses, and all the law."

"O, what a cuss that Ham was!" groaned Tom.

"Don't know nothin' 'bout that ole cuss," replied Chloe. "Missis was

cruel. What makes God let white folks cruellize black folks so?"

The question was altogether too large for Tom, or anybody else, to

answer. After a moment's silence, he said, "P'r'aps Sukey Larkin will

come sometimes, and bring little Tommy to see us."

"She shouldn't have him ag'in!" exclaimed Chloe. "I'd scratch her eyes

out, if she tried to carry him off ag'in."

The sudden anger roused her from her lethargy; and she rose immediately

when Tom reminded her that it was late, and they ought to be going home.

Home! how the word seemed to mock her desolation!

Mrs. Lawton was so glad to see her faithful servant alive, and was so

averse to receiving another accusing look from those sad eyes, that she

forbore to reprimand her for her unwonted tardiness. Chloe spoke no word

of explanation, but, after arranging a few things, retired silently to

her pallet. She had been accustomed to exercise out of doors in all

weathers, but was unused to sitting still in the wet and cold. She was

seized with strong shiverings in the night, and continued feverish for

some days. Her mistress nursed her, as she would a valuable horse or

cow.

In a short time she resumed her customary tasks, but coughed incessantly

and moved about slowly and listlessly. Her mistress, annoyed not to have

the work going on faster, said to her reproachfully one day, "You got

this cold by staying out so late that night."

"Yes, missis," replied Chloe, very sadly. "I shouldn't have stayed out

ef little Tommy had been with me."

"What a fuss you make about that little nigger!" exclaimed Mrs. Lawton.

"Tommy was my property, and I'd a right to give him away."

"'Twas cruel of you, missis," rejoined Chloe. "Tommy was all the comfort

I had; an' I's worked hard for you, missis, many a year."

Mrs. Lawton, unaccustomed to any remonstrance from her bondwoman, seized

a switch and shook it threateningly.

But Catherine said, in a low tone: "Don't, mother! She feels bad about

little Tommy."

Chloe overheard the words of pity; and the first time she was alone with

her young mistress, she said, "Please, Missy Katy, write to Sukey Larkin

and ask her to bring little Tommy."

Catharine promised she would; but her mother objected to it, as making

unnecessary trouble, and the promise was not fulfilled.

Week after week Chloe looked out upon the road, in hopes of seeing Sukey

Larkin's wagon. But Sukey had no thoughts of coming to encounter her

entreaties. She was feeding and fatting Tommy, with a view to selling

him and buying a silk gown with the money. The little boy cried and

moped for some days; but, after the manner of children, he soon became

reconciled to his new situation. He ran about in the fields, and

gradually forgot the sea, the moss, the pebbles, and mammy's lullaby.

One day Mrs. Lawton said to her daughter, "How that dreadful cough hangs

on! I begin to be afraid Chloe's going into a consumption. I hope not;

for I don't know where I shall find such another wench to work."

She mentioned her fears to the minister, and he said, "When she gets

over worrying about Tommy, she'll pick up her crumbs."

But the only change that came over Chloe was increasing listlessness of

mind and fatigue of body. At last, she was unable to rise from her

pallet. She lay there looking at her thin hands, and talking to herself,

according to her old habit. The words Mrs. Lawton most frequently heard

were, "It was cruel of missis to take away little Tommy."

Notwithstanding all the clerical arguments she had heard to prove the

righteousness of slavery, the moan of the dying mother made her feel

uncomfortable. Sometimes the mind of the invalid wandered, and she would

hug Tommy's little gown, pat it lovingly, and sing to it the lullaby her

baby loved. Sometimes she murmured, "He looked jest as ef he _wanted_ to

say suthin'"; and sometimes a smiled lighted up her face, as if she saw

some pleasant vision.

The minister came to pray with her, and to talk what he called religion.

But it sounded to poor Chloe more than ever like the murmuring of the

sea. She turned her face away from him and said nothing. With what

little mental strength she had, she rejected the idea that the curse of

Ham, whoever he might be, justified the treatment she had received. She

had no idea what a heathen was, but she concluded it meant something

bad; and she had often told Tom she didn't like to have the minister

talk that way, for it sounded like calling her names.

At last the weary one passed away from a world where the doings had all

been dark and incomprehensible to her. But her soul was like that of a

little child; and Jesus has said, "Of such are the kingdom of heaven."

They found under her pillow little Tommy's ragged gown, and a pink

shell. Why the shell was there no one could conjecture. The pine box

containing her remains was placed across the foot of Mr. Lawton's grave,

at whose side his widow would repose when her hour should come. It was

the custom to place slaves thus at the feet of their masters, even in

the graveyard.

The Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon concluded to buy a young black woman, that

Tom might not be again induced to stray off after Dinah; and Tom

passively yielded to the second arrangement, as he had to the first.

In two years after Sukey Larkin took possession of little Tommy, she

sent him to Virginia to be exchanged for tobacco; with the proceeds of

which she bought a gold necklace, and a flashy silk dress, changeable

between grass-green and orange; and great was her satisfaction to

astonish Catharine Lawton with her splendor the next time they met at a

party.

I never heard that poor Chloe's ghost haunted either them or the Widow

Lawton. Wherever slavery exerts its baneful influence, it produces the

same results,--searing the conscience and blinding the understanding to

the most obvious distinctions between right and wrong.

There is no record of little Tommy's fate. He disappeared among "the

dark, sad millions," who knew not father or mother, and had no portion

in wife or child.

SNOW.

The Summer comes, and the Summer goes.

Wild-flowers are fringing the dusty lanes,

The sparrows go darting through fragrant rains,

And, all of a sudden,--it snows!

Dear Heart! our lives so happily flow,

So lightly we heed the flying hours,

We only know Winter is gone--by the flowers,

We only know Winter is come--by the Snow!

GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.