Harry understood me.--"The right day!"

"Any day is the right one for me," said the Doctor, who would have

named an earlier one, perhaps, if I had asked him to choose.

On Thursday, then, the last day but one of their visit here, I was

their guide over "The Farms."

Two brothers settled at Metapora side by side. Their two plantations

were carried on as one, under the direction of the younger brother,

Colonel Shaler, the father of my friend. The brothers talked together

of "The Farms"; their people took up the name; it gradually became the

accepted one in the neighborhood, and has maintained itself, although

the two places, having both been inherited by Charles Shaler, are now

really one estate.

I opened the little gate for the Doctor and Harry to pass in, and

followed them along the wood-path. All was the same as formerly;

unkindly the same, it seemed.

"You have not been missed," said the Doctor, entering into my feeling,

though not quite sympathizing with it. "You have not been missed, and

you are not recognized. The birds are not jubilant because you have

come back. The wood was as resonant before your key turned in the

lock." He stopped and looked about him at the grand old oaks. "The man

who grew up under these trees, and calls them his, may well long for

them, but they will wait very patiently for his return. We could not

spare trees and birds, but they can do without us well enough. Strange

the place of man on his earth! Everything is necessary to him, and he

is necessary to nothing."

Shaler had left the key of his house with me. There could be no

indiscretion in introducing such guests into it. We went first into

the dining-room. Everything was as it used to be, except that the

family portraits had been taken away. The cords to which they had been

attached still hung from the hooks, ready to receive them again. The

large oval table kept its place in the middle of the room. What

pleasant hours I had had in that room, at that table!

Colonel Shaler was our first friend in this part of the world. My

father and he were distantly related, and had had a week's

acquaintance at the house of a common friend when my father was a very

young man and the Colonel a middle-aged one. On the third day after

our arrival here, my father somewhat nervously put into my hand a note

which had taken some time to write, and asked me to find the way with

it to Colonel Shaler's plantation, which lay somewhere within ten

miles of us in a southeasterly direction. As I was to go on horseback,

I liked the adventure very much, and undertook it heartily. I was

first made conscious that it had a shady side, when I found myself in

the hall of the great, strange house, waiting to be ushered into the

presence of its master.

"Hallo!" exclaimed a voice beside and far above me, as I stood with

eyes fixed on the ground, expecting that serious moment of entrance.

"You are Ned Colvil's son!" And my hand was lost in a capacious

clasp, well proportioned to the heart it spoke for. I looked up to see

a massive head, shaggy with crisp curls of grizzled hair, and to meet

quick, bright blue eyes, that told of an active spirit animating the

heavy frame. The Colonel did not expect me to speak. "We are to be

neighbors! Good news! Your horse cannot go back at once, and I cannot

wait. You must take another for to-day, and we will send yours home to

you to-morrow."

Colonel Shaler's stout gray was soon led round, and presently

followed, for me, a light-made, graceful black, the prettiest horse I

had ever yet mounted. As soon as I saw it, I knew that it must be his

son's, and visions of friendship already floated before me.

"One of Charles's," said the Colonel; "he is out on the other. I wish

he was here to go with us, but we cannot wait."

I did not keep the Doctor and Harry long in the house. It was the

plantation they wanted to see. We spent several hours in walking over

it. I tried to do justice, not only to the plans and works of my

friend, but to his father's schemes of agricultural improvement, and

also to the very different labors of his uncle, Dr. George Shaler,

who, utterly abstracted from matters of immediate utility, took the

beautiful and the future under his affectionate protection. Through

his vigilance and pertinacity, trees were felled, spared, and

planted, with a judgment rare anywhere, singular here. If he gave into

some follies, such as grottos, mimic ruins, and surprises, after the

Italian fashion, even these are becoming respectable through time.

They are very innocent monuments; for their construction gave as much

delight to those who labored as to him who planned, and the completed

work was not less their pride than his. His artificial mounds, which,

while they were piling, were the jest of the wider neighborhood,--as

the good old man himself has often told me,--now, covered with thrifty

trees, skilfully set, are a legacy which it was, perhaps, worth the

devotion of his modest, earnest life to bequeath.

Charles Shaler has piously spared all his uncle's works,--respecting

the whimsical, as well as cherishing the excellent.

We went last to the quarters of the work-people. A few of the cabins

were left standing. Most of them had been carried off piecemeal,

probably to build or repair the cabins of other plantations. Those

that remained seemed to have been protected by the strength and beauty

of the vines in which they were embowered. I was glad to find still

unmolested one which had an interest for me. It had been the home of

an old man who used to be very kind to me. I lifted the latch and was

opening the door, when I became aware of a movement inside, as of

some one hastily and stealthily putting himself out of sight. If this

was so, the purpose was instantly changed; for a firm step came

forward, and the door was pulled open by a strong hand. I stepped back

out of the little porch, and addressed some words to the Doctor, to

make known that I was not alone; but the man followed me out, and

saluted me and my companions respectfully and frankly. I offered him

my hand, for he was an old acquaintance.

"Senator, why are you here?"

"Because I ought to be here."

"There is danger."

He did not reply, but the kindling of his look showed that he saw in

danger only a challenge to his powers. He saluted us again, and

walking away, with a slow, even step, disappeared in a thicket which

shrouded one of Dr. George's favorite grottos.

"The true Othello, after all!" exclaimed the Doctor, when we turned to

each other again, after watching until we were sure that we had seen

the last of this apparition. "Of royal siege, assuredly!"

"He claims to be, or rather it is claimed for him," I answered. "His

mother was a native African, a king's daughter, those who came with

her said; and she bore, by all accounts, the stamp of primitive

royalty as clearly impressed as her son does. Her title was never

questioned either in the cabin or at the great house. She was a slave

on the Westlake plantation,--but only for a few weeks, as I have

heard."

"Did you ever see her?" the Doctor asked.

"No, she died long ago; but her story is still told on the plantation

and in the neighborhood. Old Westlake bought her with four others, all

native Africans, at Perara. The rest throve and made themselves at

home. She, stately and still, endured until she had received her son

into the world, and then, having consigned him to a foster-mother of

her choice, passed tranquilly out of it. During her short abode on the

plantation, she was an object of general homage, and when she died,

the purple descended to her son."

"And the son has his story?" said the Doctor.

"A short one."

The Doctor and Harry both turned to me with expectation. They knew the

Westlake plantation and its master; but you do not. If Senator's story

has not the interest for you that it had for them, that must be the

reason.

The prestige of rank was the only inheritance of the little foreign

orphan. The very name his mother gave him, and which she impressed, by

frequent, though faint repetition, upon those about her, was lost in

the surprise of her sudden departure. The good souls to whom it had

been committed strove faithfully to recover it. They were sure it was

no proper Christian name, but a title of dignity; and, comparing their

recollections of the sound, and their intuitions of the meaning,

agreed among themselves that its nearest equivalent must be "Senator."

Senator was born on Christmas day; and this was regarded as all the

greater distinction that it had been enjoyed before him by the young

master,--the then heir and now owner, our present Westlake.

As he grew up, he took, as of course, and held, the place assigned to

him in advance. At the age of sixteen he was already in authority over

men, and exercised it with an ease and acceptance which proved that he

was obeyed as instinctively as he commanded.

I do not know a prouder man than Westlake, or one more saturated with

the prejudice of race. But he is not exempt from the laws which govern

human intercourse. He came under the spell of Senator's cool

self-reliance and unhesitating will. The petted slave did not directly

or palpably misuse his power; yet his demeanor occasioned a secret

dissatisfaction. He gave to his master's interests the whole force of

his remarkable abilities, but it was not clear that he duly

appreciated the indulgence which permitted him to exercise them

untrammelled. He had never undergone punishment,--had hardly even met

rebuke; but it was more than suspected that he attributed his

immunities to his own merits. Westlake valued him for his high spirit

as much as for his capacity; but should not Senator be very sensible

to such magnanimity? This spirit had never been broken by fear; ought

it not all the more to bend itself in love and gratitude?

Poor Westlake is very fond of gratitude. He enjoys it even from the

most worthless and neglected of his slaves,--enjoys it even when it is

prospective and conditional, and when he has the best reasons for

knowing that the implied stipulations are not to be fulfilled. To

Senator's gratitude he felt he had so entire a claim that he could not

but believe in its existence. He tried to see in its very silence only

a proof of its depth. But, if not necessary to his own feelings, some

outward expression was important to his dignity in the eyes of others.

He exerted himself, therefore, by gracious observations made in the

presence of guests or before the assembled people on holidays, to

afford Senator an opportunity at once of testifying to his master's

liberality and of displaying the eloquence which was one of the chief

glories of the plantation. These condescending efforts, constantly

baffled by the self-possessed barbarian, were perpetually renewed.

One Christmas morning the common flood of adulation had been poured

out more profusely than usual, and Westlake had quaffed it with more

than usual satisfaction. His outlay for the festival had been truly

liberal, and he felt that the quality of the entertainment guarantied

that of the thanks. Besides the general benevolence of the

dinner,--already arranged on long, low tables set about the lawn, to

be enjoyed in anticipation by their devouring eyes,--special gifts

were bestowed on the most deserving or the most favored. Senator was

greatly distinguished, but took his assigned portion in silence; and

Westlake felt, through every tingling nerve, that the attentive crowd

had seen, as he had, that it was received as a tribute rather than as

a favor. He had hitherto covered his defeats with the jolly laugh that

seemed meant at once to apologize for his servant's eccentricity and

to forgive it. But now he had made too sure of triumph; surprise and

pain hurried him out of himself.

"What is it now?" he cried, fiercely, raising his clenched fist

against the impassive offender.

"I have not spoken, Master."

"Speak, then! It is time. I have done more for you than for all the

rest, and not a word!"

"We have done more for you than you for us all. What you give us we

first give you."

It was as if a thunderbolt had fallen. The assembly scattered like a

flock of frightened sheep.

I had this from Westlake himself. He came straight over to me. Not

that Westlake and I are friends. There had never been any intimacy

between us. There never has been any, unless for those few hours that

day.

Senator had been secured. His sentence had been announced. It was

banishment. Those who were nearest the master's confidence had leave

to add the terrible name--New Orleans.

Senator had neither mother nor wife. He was nineteen, the age of

enterprise and confidence. Perhaps, after all, it was the master on

whom the doom would fall most heavily, I thought, while Westlake was

making his recital. He was almost pale; his heavy features were

sharpened; his firm, round cheeks were flaccid and sunken; his voice

was hoarse and tremulous. Surely, that birthday might count for ten.

"I cannot overlook it," he groaned out. "You know that yourself,

Colvil. I cannot forgive it. It would be against my duty, and---- Any

way, I cannot. But--you may think it strange--but I am not angry. I

was, but I am not now. I cannot bear to know him locked up there in

the corn-barn, shackled and chained, and thinking all the time that

it is I who have done it to him!"

Westlake had not seen the man since his imprisonment, and had come

over to ask me to be present at the first interview. I declined

positively.

"I do not believe," I said, "that he is to be reasoned out of his

opinions. Certainly he will not be reasoned out of them by me. If

anything could persuade a nature like his to submission, it would be

the indulgent course you have till now pursued with him. If that has

failed, no means within your reach will succeed."

"You do not understand me. I do not want you to reason with him, or to

persuade him to anything. I only ask you to be witness to what I am

going to say to him, that he may believe me,--that he may not himself

thwart me in my plans."

"In what plans?"

"Plans that you will agree to, and that you will help me in, I

hope,--but which I cannot trust to any one but you, nor to you except

to have your help. If you will come with me, you shall know them; if

not, I must take my chance, and he must take his."

I did not put much faith in Westlake's plans; but the thought of

Senator chained and caged drew me to his prison. There might be

nothing for me to do there; but, since I was called, I would go.

By the time my horse was saddled, Westlake had recovered his voice,

and, in part, his color. This birthday would not count for more than

five. He plucked up still more on the road; but when we came within a

mile of his place, his trouble began to work on him again. He would

have lengthened that last mile, but could not much. His horse snuffed

home, and mine a near hospitality. Our entrance sustained the master's

dignity handsomely. There was no misgiving or relenting to be

construed out of that spirited trot.

We went together to the corn-barn. Senator was extended on the floor

at the farther end of the room. He lifted his head when we entered,

and then, as if compelled by an instinctive courtesy, rose to his

fettered feet. I saw at once that there had been no more harshness

than was needful for security; it even seemed that this had not been

very anxiously provided for. The slender shackles would be no more

than withes of the Philistines to such a Samson. A chain, indeed,

fastened to a strong staple in the floor, passed to a ring in an iron

belt about his waist; but it was long enough to allow him considerable

liberty of movement. His hands were free. Perhaps Westlake had half

expected to find the room empty. He stopped, a little startled, when

he heard the first clank of the chain, and watched his prisoner as he

slowly lifted himself from the ground and rose to his full height.

Then, recollecting himself, he went forward. One ignorant of what had

gone before might have mistaken between the culprit and the judge.

"Senator," Westlake began, in a voice whose faltering he could not

control, "I have been a kind master to you."

No answer.

"You allow that?"

Senator was inflexible.

"I would never have sent you away of my own free will. This is your

doing, not mine. You cannot _want_ to go!" This in indignant

surprise,--for something like a smile had relaxed the features of the

imperious slave.

Senator spoke.

"This is my home, as it is yours. I was born here, as you were. This

land is dear to me as it is to you; dearer,--for I have given my labor

to it, and you never have. In return, I have had a support, and the

exercise of my strength and my skill. This has been enough for me

until now. But I am a man. I look round and see how other men live. I

want somebody else to do for: not you, but somebody that could not do

without me."

"Things might have gone differently," Westlake began, recovering his

self-complacency, as visions, doubtless, of the fine wedding he would

have given Senator, of the fine names he would have bestowed upon his

children, rose before his fancy. "Things might have gone differently,

if you had been"----

"If I had been what I am not," answered Senator, becoming impatient as

Westlake relapsed into pomposity. "It is enough, Master. We have done

with each other, and we both know it. Let me go."

"I will let you go,"--Westlake spoke now with real dignity,--"but not

as you think. If I would have you remember what I have been to you, it

is for your own sake, not for mine. I am used to ingratitude; I do not

complain of yours. I have never sold a servant left me by my father,

and I do not mean to begin with you. You shall not drive me to it. You

are to go, and forever, but by your own road. I will set you on it

myself. Is there any one in the neighborhood you can trust? We shall

need help."

A doubtful smile passed over Senator's face.

"There is no one, then? Think! no one?"

"I am not so unhappy. There are those whom I trust."

"Then I will trust them. Tell me who they are and where they are. And

quick! This news will be everywhere soon. To-morrow morning the

neighbors will be coming in. What is done must be done to-night.

Senator, do not ruin yourself! I mean right by you. Here is Mr.

Colvil to witness to what I say. Is this mad obstinacy only? or do you

_dare_ not to trust yourself to me?"

"I do not trust to you those who trust me."

"Do you suppose I would give up those whose aid I have asked?"

"You would know where to find them when they give aid you have not

asked."

"Colvil, speak to him! If he goes off by himself, I cannot hide it

long. The country will be roused. I shall have to hunt him down

myself. My honor will be at stake. I shall have to do it!"

The obdurate slave studied his master's features with curiosity

mingled with triumph.

"Help me, Colvil! Help him! Tell him to listen to my plan and join in

it! The useful time is passing!"

"Senator," I said at last, being so adjured, "your master means you

well. He is not free to set you free,--you know it. You have done work

for him,--good and faithful work; but never yet have you done him a

pleasure, and he has intended you a good many. This is your last

chance. Gratify him for once!"

Senator looked again, and saw, through the intent and wistful eyes,

the poor, imploring soul within, which, hurried unconsenting towards

crime, clung desperately to his rescue as its own. He comprehended

that here was no tyrant, but a wretched victim of tyranny. A laugh,

deep, reluctant, uncontrollable, no mirth in it, yet a certain bitter

irony, and Senator had recovered his natural bearing, self-possessed

and authoritative; he spoke in his own voice of composed decision.

"What is the plan, Master?"

Westlake told it eagerly. He was to save his authority with his people

and his reputation with his neighbors by selling the rebellious

servant,--that is to say, by pretending to sell him. Senator was to

entitle himself to a commutation of his sentence into simple

banishment by lending himself to the pious fraud and acting his part

in it becomingly. Westlake had been so long accustomed to smooth his

path of life by open subterfuges and falsehoods whose only guilt was

in intention, that he had formed a very high opinion of his own

address, and a very low one of the penetration of the rest of the

world. As he proceeded with the details of his plot, childishly

ingenious and childishly transparent, Senator listened, at first with

attention, then with impatience, and at last not at all. When Westlake

stopped to take breath, he interposed.

"Now hear me. Order the long wagon out, with the roans. Have me

handcuffed and fastened down in it. Tell those whom you trust that you

are taking me to Goosefield."

"To Goosefield?"

"To Dick Norman."

"Dick Norman! He help you! He is not an ----?"

Westlake could not bring himself to associate the word abolitionist

with a man who had dined with him three days before.

"He is a slave-trader."

The blood, which had rushed furiously to the proud planter's cheeks,

left them with a sudden revulsion. To be taken in by a disguised

fanatic might happen to any man too honorable to be suspicious. He

could have forgiven himself. But to have held a slave-trader by the

hand! to have asked him to his table! Westlake knew that Senator never

said anything that had to be taken back.

Richard Norman was a man of name and birth from old Virginia. Of easy

fortune, so it was reported, still unmarried, he spent a great part of

the year in travelling; and especially found pleasure in renewing old

family ties with Virginian emigrants or their children in newer

States. When he favored our neighborhood, he had his quarters at

Goosefield, where he always took the same apartments in the house of a

man, also Virginian by birth, who was said to be an old retainer of

his family. Norman's father had been the fathers' friend of most of

our principal planters. He was welcome in almost every household for

the sake of these old memories, and apparently for his own. He was

well-looking, well-mannered, possessed of various information, ready

with amusing anecdote. And yet all the time it was perfectly known to

every slave on every plantation where he visited what Mr. Richard

Norman was. It was perfectly known to every planter except Westlake,

and possibly Harvey. I do not remember to have heard of him at

Harvey's. Those who never sold their servants, those who never

separated families, those who never parted very young children from

their mothers, found Norman a resource in those cases of necessity

which exempt from law.

The slaves talked of him among themselves familiarly, though

fearfully. He was the central figure of many a dark history; the house

at Goosefield was known to them as Dick Norman's Den. The masters held

their knowledge separately, each bound to consider himself its sole

depository. If, arriving at the house of a friend, soon after a

visitation of Richard Norman, one missed a familiar hand at his

bridle, a kind old face at the door, curiosity was discreet; it would

have been very ill manners to ask whether it was Death or Goosefield.

"Dick Norman starts at midnight. He has been ready these three days.

He only waited to eat his Christmas dinner at old Rasey's."

Westlake had pondered and understood. "Where shall I really take you?"

he asked, despondingly.

"Leave me anywhere six or eight miles from here, and I will do for

myself."

"Colvil, you will ride along beside?"

"No."

I find in myself such an inaptitude for simulation or artifice of any

kind, that I do not believe it was intended I should serve my

fellow-men by those means.

"No," repeated Senator,--"not if we are going to Goosefield."

"It is true," assented Westlake, sadly; "nobody would believe you were

going with me there!"

I rode off without taking leave of Senator. I felt sure of seeing him

again. I thought I knew where the aid he would seek was to be found.

Mine was just the half-way house to it. He would not be afraid of

compromising me, for his master himself had called me to be witness to

their compact. Senator would have the deciding voice, as usual; and

Westlake would be guided by him now the more readily that he himself

would tend in the direction of his only confidant. When I had put up

my horse, I went into the house only for a few moments to tell my

mother what I had seen and what I was expecting.

I walked up and down between the gate and the brook that evening,--I

could not tell how long. I had time to become anxious,--time to invent

disasters,--time to imagine encounters Westlake might have had on the

way, with officious advisers, with self-proposed companions. I was

disappointed more than once by distant wheels, which came nearer and

nearer only to pass on, and farther and farther away, on the road

which, crossing ours, winds round behind our place to Winker's Hollow.

At last I caught sound of an approach which did not leave me an

instant in uncertainty. This time, beyond mistake, it was the swift,

steady tramp of Westlake's roans. As they entered our sandy lane,

their pace slackened to a slow trot, and then to a walk. Westlake was

on the lookout for me. I went into the middle of the road. He saw me;

I heard him utter an exclamation of relief.

Senator, who had been stretched out on the bottom of the wagon, sat up

when the horses stopped, took the manacles from his wrists and threw

them down on the straw. With his master's help, he soon disencumbered

himself of his fetters, and sprang lightly to the ground. Westlake

followed, and the two stood there in the starlight confronting each

other for the last time.

The face of the banished man was inscrutable. His master's worked

painfully. This boy, born on his own twenty-first birthday, had been

assigned to him, not only by his father's gift, but also, so it

seemed, by destiny itself. He had had property in him; he had had

pride in him; he had looked for a life-long devotion from him. And

now, in one moment, all was to be over between them forever. The scene

could not be prolonged. There was danger in every instant of delay.

"Westlake, he must go."

"He must go," Westlake repeated, but hesitatingly. And then, with a

sudden impulse, he put out his hand to his forgiven, even if

unrepentant, servant.

The movement was not met.

"No, Master; I will not wrong you by thanking you. This is not my

debt." Senator raised towards heaven the coveted hand. "It is His who

always pays."

TUESDAY, April 16, 1844.

You can always tell what view of certain questions Harry Dudley will

take. You have only to suppose them divested of all that prejudice or

narrow interest may have encumbered them with, and look at them in the

light of pure reason. One of the charms of your intercourse with Dr.

Borrow is that it is full of surprises.

"I have a weakness for Westlake, I own it," said the Doctor, when we

were seated at the tea-table after our return from The Two Farms. "If

you had known him when he was young, as I did, Colvil! Such an easy,

soft-hearted, dependent fellow! You couldn't respect him very greatly,

perhaps; but like him you must! His son Reginald you ought to like. I

do. And--what you will think more to the purpose--so does Harry."

Harry enforced this with a look.

Reginald Westlake is a handsome boy, rather sullen-looking, but with a

face capable of beaming out into a beautiful smile. He is always

distant in his manners to me, I do not know whether through shyness or

dislike.

"He will make a man," Doctor Borrow went on; "if I am any judge of

men, he will make a man."

The Doctor was interrupted by the brisk trot of a horse coming up the

road. The rider did not stop at the gate; he cleared it. In another

moment Westlake's jolly red face was looking down on us through the

window. I might have found this arrival untimely; but turning to Harry

to know how he took it, I saw in his eyes the "merry sparkle" the

Doctor had told of, and divined that there was entertainment in a

colloquy between the classmates.

Westlake made a sign with his hand that he was going to take his horse

to the stable. I went out to him, Harry following. I welcomed him as

cordially as I could, but his manner was reserved at first. We had not

met in a way to be obliged to shake hands since Shaler went away.

Westlake knew that I was greatly dissatisfied with him at that time.

Not more so, though, than he was with himself, poor fellow! He was

evidently sincerely glad to see Harry again, and Harry greeted both

him and his horse very kindly. Westlake is always well-mounted, and

deserves to be: he loves his horses both well and wisely. It is

something to be thoroughly faithful in any one relation of life, and

here Westlake is faultless. The horse he rode that afternoon--one

raised and trained by himself--bore witness in high spirit and gentle

temper to a tutor who had known how to respect a fiery and

affectionate nature. We all three gave our cares to the handsome

creature, and this common interest put me quite in charity with my

unexpected guest before we went into the house.

"This is a way to treat an old friend!" cried Westlake, as he gave his

hand to the Doctor, who had come down the door-steps to meet him. "I

cannot get two whole days from you, and then you come here and stay on

as if you meant to live here!"

Tabitha watched my mother's reception of the new-comer, and, seeing it

was hospitable, placed another chair at the table with alacrity. She

knew he was out of favor here, but had never thought very hardly of

him herself. Her race often judges us in our relations with itself

more mildly than we can judge each other. In its strange simplicity,

it seems to attribute to itself the part of the superior, and pities

where it should resent.

"You cannot make it up to me, Borrow," Westlake went on, as soon as we

had taken our places, "except by going right back with me to-night, or

coming over to me to-morrow morning, and giving me as many days as you

have given Colvil. Next week is the very time for you to be with us. I

want you to see us at a gala season: next week is the great marrying

and christening time of the year. It usually comes in June; but this

year we have it two months earlier, on account of Dr. Baskow's

engagements. My little Fanny is to give all the names. She has a fine

imagination."

"Westlake, I would do all but the impossible to show my sense of your

kindness. For the rest, my appreciation of little Miss Fanny's

inventive powers could not be heightened."

"Does that mean no? Borrow, I shall think in earnest that you have

done me a wrong in giving so much time away from me, if these are

really your last days in our parts."

"We will make it up to you. I will tell you how we will make it up to

you. Come to us,--come to Massachusetts: I will give you there a week

of my time for every day we have taken from you here. Come to us in

June: that is the month in which New England is most itself. Come and

renew old associations."

"You will never see me again, if you wait to see me there."

"What now? You used to like it."

"I am not so sure that I used to like it, when I think back upon it.

At any rate, if you want to see _me_, you must see me in my own place.

I am not myself anywhere else. Equality, Borrow, equality is a very

good thing for people who have never known anything better: may be a

very good thing for people who can work themselves up out of it. But

for a man who has grown up in the enjoyment of those privileges

inappreciable by the vulgar, but which by the noble of every age have

been regarded as the most real and the most valuable,--for such a man

to sit, one at a long table, feeling himself nobody, and knowing all

the time he has a right to be somebody! You can talk very easily about

equality. You have never suffered from it. You have your learning

and---- Well, you know how to talk. I have no learning, and I can't

talk, except to particular friends. A man cannot ticket himself with

his claims to estimation. Even Paris has too much equality for me.

Flora liked it; she had her beauty and her toilet. But I! how I longed

to be back here among my own simple, humble people! As soon as she was

married, I made off home. In my own place, among my own people, I am,

I might almost say, like a god, if I were not afraid of shocking you.

And is not their fate in my hands? My frown is their night, my smile

is their sunshine. The very ratification of their prayers to a Higher

Power is intrusted to my discretion. Homage, Borrow, homage is the

sweetest draught ever brought to mortal lips!"

"The homage of equals I suppose may be," said Dr. Borrow, modestly.

"You do not understand. How should you? Our modes of thinking and

feeling are not to be comprehended by one brought up in a society so

differently constituted. We avow ourselves an aristocracy."

"You do well: something of the inherent meaning of a word will always

make itself felt. _Aristocracy!_ It is vain to try to dispossess it of

its own. The world will not be disenchanted of the beautiful word.

Cover yourselves with its prestige. It will stand you in good stead

with outsiders. But, between ourselves, Westlake, how is it behind the

scenes? Can you look each other in the face and pronounce it? Or have

you really persuaded yourselves down here that you are governed by

your best men?"

"We do not use the word so pedantically down here. By an aristocracy

we mean a community of gentlemen."

"And, pronouncing it so emphatically, you of course use the word

gentleman in the sense it had when it had a sense. You bear in mind

what the gentleman was pledged to, when to be called one was still a

distinction. 'To eschew sloth,' 'to detest all pride and

haughtiness,'--these were among his obligations: doubtless they are of

those most strictly observed in your community. He was required 'to be

true and just in word and dealing'; 'to be of an open and liberal

mind.' You find these conditions fulfilled in Rasey, your leading

man."

"Our leading man?"

"Certainly, your leading man. Whose lead did you follow, when you

joined in worrying Charles Shaler out of your community of gentlemen?"

Westlake shrank. He was conscious that he had been going down hill

ever since Shaler left the neighborhood. The hold that Rasey took of

him then the crafty old man has never let go.

When Westlake's plantation came into his possession by the death of

his father, he undertook to carry it on himself, and has been supposed

to do so ever since. It was carried on well from the time that Senator

was old enough to take charge; but with his disappearance disappeared

all the credit and all the comfort his good management had secured to

his master. Westlake needed some one to lean on, and Rasey was ready

to take advantage of this necessity. His ascendancy was not

established all at once. It is only during the last year that it has

been perfected. In the beginning, he gave just a touch of advice and

withdrew; showed himself again at discreet intervals, gradually

shortened; but, all the time, was casting about his victim the singly

almost impalpable threads of his deadly thraldom, until they had

formed a coil which forbade even an effort after freedom. Westlake had

put no overseer between himself and his people; but he had, without

well knowing how it came about, set a very hard one over both. He

found the indulgences on his plantation diminished, the tasks more

rigidly enforced, the holidays fewer. The punishments, which were

before sometimes capriciously severe, but more often threatened and

remitted, he was now expected to carry out with the inflexibility of

fate. He has found himself reduced to plotting with his servants

against himself,--to aiding them in breaking or evading his own laws;

reduced--worst humiliation of all--to ordering, under the sharp eye

and sharp voice of his officious neighbor, the infliction of

chastisement for neglect which he himself had authorized or connived

at.

All came of that unhappy Christmas I have told you of. If Westlake

could only have been silent, the simple plot devised by Senator would

have worked perfectly. All the neighborhood would have respected a

secret that was its own. But Westlake could not be silent; he was too

uneasy. It was not long before the culprit's escape and his master's

part in it were more than surmised. In view of the effect of such a

transaction on the servile imagination, Westlake's weakness was

ignored by common consent; but it was not the less incumbent upon him

to reinstate himself in opinion on the first opportunity. The

opportunity was offered by the storm then brewing against Shaler.

Westlake's sufferings are, happily for him, intermittent. Rasey is

away from the neighborhood one month out of every three, looking after

the estates of yet more unlucky vassals,--his through debt, and not

from simple weakness. During these intervals, Westlake takes his ease

with his people, as thoughtless as they of consequences no more within

his ability to avert than theirs. He has lately had an unusual

respite. Rasey has been confined to the house by an illness,--the

first of his life.

I do not know how far Dr. Borrow is aware of Westlake's humiliations;

and Westlake, I think, does not know. When he was able to speak again,

he sheltered himself under a question.

"Do you know Rasey?"

"He is owner of the plantation which lies south of yours and Shaler's,

larger than both together."

"His plantation;--but do you know _him_?"

"Root and branch. But who does not know him, that knows anybody here?

In the next generation his history may be lost in his fortune, but it

is extant yet. His father was overseer on a Georgia plantation, from

which he sucked the marrow: his employer's grandchildren are crackers

and clay-eaters; his are--of your community."

"Not exactly."

"Strike out all who do not yet belong to it, and all who have ceased

to have a full claim to belong to it, and what have you left?"

"Do you know old Rasey personally? Have you ever seen him?"

"I have seen him."

"Lately? I hear that a great change has come over him. He has lost his

elder son."

"You might say his only one. He turned the other out of doors years

ago, and has had no word of him since. The old man has a daughter; but

her husband has challenged him to shoot at sight. He has lost his

partner and heir, and, in the course of Nature, cannot himself hold on

many years longer. If a way could be found of taking property over to

the other side, he might be consoled. The old Gauls used to manage it:

they made loans on condition of repayment in the other world; but I

doubt whether Rasey's faith is of force to let him find comfort in

such a transaction.

"I had to see him about a matter of business which had been intrusted

to me. I went there the day I left you. If I had known how it was with

him, I should have tried to find a deputy. It is an awful sight, a man

who never had compassion needing it, a man who never felt sympathy

claiming and repelling it in one.

"When I entered the room, where he was sitting alone, he looked up at

me with a glare like a tiger-cat's. He was tamed for the moment by the

mention of my errand, which was simply to make him a payment. He

counted the money carefully, locked it up, and gave me a receipt. Then

he began to talk to me, or rather to himself before me. I could

acquiesce in all he said. I knew what Giles Rasey was, and understood

that the loss of such a son, to such a father, was irreparable.

"'Another self! another self!' he repeated, until I hardly knew

whether to pity him more for having had a son so like himself, or for

having him no longer. It was an injustice that he felt himself

suffering,--a bitter injustice. He had counted on this son as his

successor, and the miscalculation was one with which he was not

chargeable. 'Not thirty-five! I am past sixty, and a young man yet! My

father lived to be ninety!'

"His rage against this wrong which had been done him was aggravated by

another which he had done himself, a weakness into which he had been

led by his son,--the only one, probably, in which they had ever been

partners. The son had a slave whose ability made him valuable, whose

probity made him invaluable.

"'I gave him to Giles myself,' said the old man. 'He was such as you

don't find one of in a thousand; no, not in ten thousand. I could have

had any money for him, if money could have bought him. It couldn't. I

gave him to Giles.'

"Giles, on the death-bed where he found himself with very little

warning, exacted of his father a promise that this man should be made

free.

"'What could I refuse him then?' asked old Rasey.

"The man in whose behalf the promise was made, and who was present

when it was made, took it in earnest.

"'A fellow whom we had trusted!' cried the old man. 'A fellow in whose

attachment we had believed! We have let him carry away and pay large

sums of money for us; have even let him go into Free States to pay

them, and he always came back faithfully! You may know these people a

life long and not learn them out! A fellow whom we had trusted!'

"The fellow bade good-day as soon as the funeral services were over.

His master was sufficiently himself to surmise his purpose and to make

an attempt to baffle it. But the intended freedman was too agile for

him; he disappeared without even claiming his manumission-papers.

Imagine Rasey's outraged feelings! It was like the Prince of Hell in

the old legend, complaining of the uncivil alacrity with which Lazarus

obeyed the summons to the upper air:--'He was not to be held, but,

giving himself a shake, with every sign of malice, immediately he went

away.'"

"So Rasey has lost Syphax! he has lost Syphax!" repeated Westlake,

thoughtfully. "Rasey is not a good master, but he was good to him. It

was hard, even for Rasey."

"Rasey has lost Syphax, and Syphax has found him," said the Doctor,

dryly.

"You do not understand. You see in the rupture of these ties only a

loss of service to the master. We feel it to be something more."

"The human heart is framed sensible to kindness; that you should have

an attachment for the man who devotes his life to yours without return

has nothing miraculous for me. I can believe that even Rasey is

capable of feeling the loss of what has been useful to him."

"No, you do not understand the relation between us and this

affectionate subject race."

"Frankly, I do not. I cannot enter into it on either side. If I were

even as full of the milk of human kindness as we are bound to suppose

these soft-tempered foreigners to be, it seems to me I should still

like to choose my beneficiaries; and, in your place, I should have

quite another taste in benefactors. When I indue myself in imagination

with a black skin, and try to think and feel conformably, I find my

innate narrowness too much for me; I cannot disguise from myself that

I should prefer to lavish my benefits on my own flesh and blood.

Resuming my personality, I can as little divest myself in fancy of my

pride of race. If I must accept a state of dependence, I would take

the bounty of a white man, hard and scanty though it might be, rather

than receive luxurious daily bread at the hands of blacks."

"Borrow, you always had the knack of making a fellow feel

uncomfortable. I would rather talk with Dudley than with you. I do not

see that you are any better friend to our institutions than he is."

"A friend to slavery? Distrust the man not born and bred to it who

calls himself one!

"I suppose I am as much of a pro-slavery man as you will easily find

in New England,--for an unambitious, private man, I mean. Slavery does

not mean for me power or place. What does slavery mean for me when I

oppose its opponents? It means you, Westlake, my old schoolmate,--you

and your wife and children. It means Harvey and his wife and children.

I have the weakness to care more for you than for your slaves. I

cannot resolve to see you deprived of comforts and luxuries that use

has made necessary to you, that they may rise to wants they have no

sense of as yet. As to your duties to your humble neighbors, and the

way you fulfil them, that account is kept between you and your Maker.

He has not made me a judge or a ruler over you."

Westlake's deep red deepened. "I leave religious matters to those

whose charge it is. I have been instructed to hold the place which has

been awarded me, without asking why I have been made to differ from

others. And the teaching which is good enough for me is, I suppose,

good enough for my servants. As for the rest, we know that our people

are as well off as the same class in any part of the world, not

excepting New England."

"I dare say such a class would be no better off there than here. But

come and learn for yourself how it is there."

"I could not learn there how to live here. And I do not pretend that

we can understand you better than you can us. But, Borrow, you are

hard to suit. You twit us with our waste and improvidence, and yet you

are not better pleased with Rasey, who follows gain like a

New-Englander."

"Rasey follows gain from the blind impulse of covetousness. The

New-Englander's zeal is according to knowledge. Rasey's greed is the

inherited hunger of a precarious race. The New-Englander thrives

because he has always thriven. He has in his veins 'the custom of

prosperity.'

"Fuller tells us, that, in his time, 'a strict inquiry after the

ancient gentry of England' would have found 'most of them in the class

moderately mounted above the common level'; the more ambitious having

suffered ruin in the national turmoils, while these even-minded men,

'through God's blessing on their moderation, have continued in their

condition.' It was from this old stock that the planters of New

England were chiefly derived, mingled with them some strong scions of

loftier trees."

"Do we not know that there is no such thing as birth in New England?

There, even if a man had ancestry, he would not dare to think himself

the better for it."

"Disabuse yourself; the New-Englander is perfectly human in this

respect, and only a very little wiser than the rest of the world. But

he disapproves waste, even of so cheap a thing as words: he does not

speak of his blood, because his blood speaks for itself.

"Rasey thinks whatever is held by others to be so much withheld from

him. To make what is theirs his is all his aim. He has no conception

of a creative wealth, of a diffusive prosperity. To live and make live

is an aristocratic maxim. Rasey, and such as he, grudge almost the

subsistence of their human tools. With the New-Englander, parsimony is

not economy. The aristocratic household law is a liberal one, and it

is his. He lives up to his income as conscientiously as within it.

Rasey and his like think what is theirs, enjoyed by another,

wasted;--they think it wasted, enjoyed by themselves. The

New-Englander's rule of personal indulgence is the same with that

given to the Persian prince Ghilan by his father, the wise Kyekyawus,

who, warning him against squandering, adds, 'It is not squandering to

spend for anything which can be of real use to thee either in this

world or the next.'

"Together with the inherited habit of property, the well-descended

have and transmit an inherited knowledge of the laws which govern its

acquisition and its maintenance: laws older than legislation; as old

as property itself; as old as man; a part of his primitive wisdom;

always and everywhere the common lore of the established and endowed.

If Rasey had inherited or imbibed this knowledge, perhaps he would

have been more cautious. 'Beware of unjust gains,' says an Eastern

sage, an ancient member of our Aryan race; 'for it is the nature of

such, not only to take flight themselves, but to bear off all the rest

with them.' 'Do not think,' it is set down in the book of Kabus, a

compendium of Persian practical wisdom, 'Do not think even a good use

of what has been ill acquired can make it thine. It will assuredly

leave thee, and only thy sin will remain to thee.'

"The well-born would not dare to amass a fortune by such means as

Rasey uses; amassed, they would not expose it to such hazards. 'The

same word in the Greek'--I am citing now an English worthy, the

contemporary of our New-England fathers--'The same word in the

Greek--[Greek: ios]--means both rust and poison; and a strong poison

is made of the rust of metals; but none more venomous than the rust of

the laborer's wages detained in his employer's purse: it will infect

and corrode a whole estate.'

"A man's descent is written on his life yet more plainly than on his

features. In New England you shall see a youth come up from the

country to the metropolis of his State with all his worldly goods upon

his back. Twenty years later you shall find him as much at ease in the

position he has retaken rather than gained, as he was in the

farm-house where he was born, or on the dusty road he trudged over to

the scene of his fortunes. His house is elegant, not fine; it is

furnished with paintings not bought on the advice of the

picture-dealer, with a library not ordered complete from the

bookseller. He is simple in his personal habits, laborious still,

severe to himself, lenient and liberal to those who depend upon him,

munificent in his public benefactions, in his kindly and modest

patronage. If he enters public life, it is not because he wants a

place there, but because there is a place that wants him. He takes it

to work, and not to shine; lays it down when he can, or when he must;

and takes hold of the nearest duty, great or small as may be, with

the same zeal and conscience. Such a man is called a self-made man. He

is what ages of culture and highest discipline have made him,--ages of

responsibility and thought for others.

"Stealthy winning and sterile hoarding are the marks of a degraded and

outlawed caste. When these tendencies show themselves in a member of

an honest race, they have come down from some forgotten interloper.

The Raseys are the true representatives of the transported wretches

who, and whose progeny, have been a dead weight upon the States

originally afflicted with them, and upon those into which they have

wandered out. In their native debasement, they furnish material for

usurpation to work upon and with; raised here and there into fitful

eminence, they infect the class they intrude upon with meannesses not

its own.

"Thomas Dudley, writing to England from New England in its earliest

days, when, as he frankly owns, it offered 'little to be enjoyed and

much to be endured,' is explicit as to the class of men he and his

colleagues would have join them. He invites only godly men of

substance. Such, he says, 'cannot dispose of themselves and their

estates more to God's glory.' Those who would 'come to plant for

worldly ends' he dissuades altogether; for 'the poorer sort' it was

'not time yet.' As for reckless adventurers and the destitute idle,

who sought the New World for gold or an indolent subsistence, when

these, 'seeing no other means than by their labor to feed themselves,'

went back discouraged, or off to find some more indulgent plantation,

the colony felt itself 'lightened, not weakened.'

"The chief distinctive mark of high race is the quality the Romans

called _fortitudo_,--a word of larger meaning than we commonly intend

by ours derived from it: that strength of soul, namely, which gives

way as little before work as before danger or under suffering. A Roman

has defined this Roman fortitude as the quality which enables a man

fearlessly to obey the highest law, whether by enduring or by

achieving.

"Another mark of high race is its trust in itself. The early heads of

New England did not try to secure a position to their children. They

knew that blood finds its level just as certainly as water does.

Degenerate sons they disowned in advance.

"Westlake, you ought to know New England better. Even if your memory

did not prompt you to do it justice, there ought to be a voice to

answer for it in your heart. But I find ancestry is very soon lost in

the mists of antiquity down here. You come early into the advantages

of a mythical background. Must I teach you your own descent?"

"I thank you. I am acquainted with it. My great-grandfather was an

Englishman,--a man of some consideration, as I have been informed. He

went over to Massachusetts; but my grandfather left it, as soon as he

was of age, for a newer State, where he could enjoy greater freedom."

"Your great-grandfather came from England to New England, as you say.

He fixed himself in that part of our Massachusetts town of Ipswich

which used to go by the name of 'The Hamlet.' What he was before he

came out I do not know; but I suppose he brought credentials, for he

married his wife from a family both old and old-fashioned. Your

grandfather, Simeon Symonds Westlake, at seventeen found the Hamlet

too narrow for him, and the paternal, or perhaps the maternal, rule

too strict. He walked over into New Hampshire one morning, without

mentioning that he was not to be back for dinner. New Hampshire did

not suit him: he went to Rhode Island; then tried New York for a year

or so: it did not answer. His father died, and Simeon made experiment

of life at home again, but only again to give it up in disgust.

Finally he emigrated to Georgia, taking with him a little money and a

great deal of courage; invested both in a small farm which was soon a

large plantation; added a yet larger by marriage; died, a great

landholder and a great slaveholder.

"Simeon--I must call him by that name, historical for me, although I

know that the first initial disappeared from his signature after his

marriage--Simeon left two sons, Reginald and Edwin. He had the

ambition of founding a dynasty; so left his whole estate to the elder,

yet with certain restrictions and conditions, which, doubtless, he had

good reasons for imposing, and which the intended heir lost no time in

justifying. By some law of inheritance which statutes cannot supersede

nor wills annul, this son of a father in whom no worst enemy could

have detected a trace of the Puritan, was born in liberal Georgia, in

the last half of the enlightened eighteenth century, as arrogant a

bigot and as flaming a fanatic as if he had come over in the

Mayflower. He refused his father's bequest, on the ground that God has

given man dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the

air, and over the cattle,--but none over his fellow-man, except such

as he may win through affection or earn by service. He went back to

New England, where he belonged. I knew a son of his, a respectable

mason. You need not blush for him, though he was your own cousin and

worked with his hands. He was never conscious of any cause for shame,

himself, unless it were the sin of his slaveholding grandfather; and

that did not weigh on him, for he believed the entail of the curse cut

off with that of the rest of the inheritance.

"If I have grieved the shade of Simeon by pronouncing that rejected

name, I will soothe it again by stating that this name has not been

perpetuated by his New-England descendants. That branch of his house

has already a third Reginald, about a year younger than yours. He is

now a Freshman in college. You may hear of him some day."

"He is in college? That is well. He has, then, recovered, or will

recover, the rank of a gentleman?"

"No need of that, if he ever had a claim to it. You, who know so much

about birth, should know that its rights are ineffaceable. This was

well understood by those whom it concerned, in the time of our first

ancestors. We have it on high heraldic authority of two hundred years

ago, that a gentleman has a right so to be styled in legal

proceedings, 'although he be a husbandman.' 'For, although a gentleman

go to the plough and common labor for a maintenance, yet he is a

gentleman.' The New-England founders had no fear of derogating in

taking hold of anything that needed to be done; had no fear that their

children could derogate in following any calling for which their

tastes and their abilities qualified them. Carrying to it the ideas,

feelings, and manners of the gentle class, they could ennoble the

humblest occupation; it could not lower them.

"It is out of this respect that good blood has for itself, that the

true New-Englander, whatever his station, is not ashamed of a humbler

relative. You are amazed down here at the hardihood of a Northern man

who speaks coolly of a cousin of his who is a blacksmith, it may be,

or a small farmer; and you bless yourselves inwardly for your greater

refinement. But you are English, you say, not New-English.

"When I was in Perara, dining with one of the great folks there, I

happened to inquire after a cousin of his, an unlucky fellow, who,

after trying his fortune in half the cities of the Union, had had the

indiscretion to settle down in a very humble business, within a

stone's throw of his wealthy namesake. I had known him formerly, and

could not think of leaving Perara without calling on him. To my

surprise, my question threw the family into visible confusion. They

gave me his address, indeed, but in a way as if they excused

themselves for knowing it. This may be English, but it is not

Old-English.

"In the Old England which we may call ours,--for it was before, and

not long before, she founded the New,--a laboring man came to the Earl

of Huntingdon, Lieutenant of Leicestershire, to pray for the discharge

of his only son, the staff of his age, who had been 'pressed into the

wars.' The Earl inquires the name of his petitioner. The old man

hesitates, fearing to be presumptuous, for his family name is the same

with that of the nobleman he addresses; but being urged, he takes

courage to pronounce it. 'Cousin Hastings,' said the Earl then, 'my

kinsman, your son, shall not be pressed.' This 'modesty in the poor

man and courtesy in the great man' were found in that day 'conformable

to the gentle blood in both.' Those who know New England know that

this absence of assumption and of presumption, this modest kindliness

and this dignified reserve, are characteristic there, testifying to

the sources from which it derives.

"I am a cosmopolite. I could never see why I should think the better

or the worse of a place, for my happening to draw my first breath

there. I am of the company of the truth-seekers. A fact, though it

were an ugly one, is of more worth to me than a thousand pleasantest

fancies. But a fact is not the less one for being agreeable: the

extension of a fine race is an agreeable fact to a naturalist.

"The earlier emigrations to New England were emphatically aristocratic

emigrations. Their aim was to found precisely what you claim to show

here. Their aim was to found a community of gentlemen,--a community,

that is to say, religious, just, generous, courteous. They proposed

equality, but equality on a high plane. Their work has been hindered

by its very success. The claimants for adoption have crowded in faster

than full provision could be made for them. They cannot instantly be

assimilated. Their voices sometimes rise above those of the true

children. But New England is there, strong and tranquil. Her heart has

room for all that ask a place in it. She welcomes these orphans to it

motherly, and will make them all thoroughly her own with time.

"Come to us, Westlake. I have planned out a tour for you."

And Dr. Borrow, tracing the route he had marked out for his friend,

sketched the country it led through, comparing what came before us

with reminiscences of other travels. No contrasts here of misery with

splendor rebuke a thoughtless admiration. Nowhere the picturesqueness

of ruin and squalor; everywhere the lovely, living beauty of

healthfulness, dignity, and order.

With what a swell of feeling does the distant New-Englander listen to

accounts of family life in the old home! How dear every detail, making

that real again which had come to be like a sweet, shadowy dream!

Dr. Borrow led us through the beautiful street of a New-England

village, under the Gothic arches of its religious elms. He did not

fear to throw open for us the willing door. He showed us the simple,

heartsome interior, with its orderly ease, its unambitious

hospitality, its refined enjoyments. Other travellers have drawn for

us other pictures. They have told us of a pomp and state which have

reconciled us to our rudeness. But Dr. Borrow sketched the New-England

home, such as we know it by tradition, such as it still exists among

those who are content to live as their fathers lived before them.

"Hold on, Borrow!" cried Westlake; "you don't suppose you are going to

persuade me that there is neither poverty nor overwork in New England!

I have heard, and I think I have seen, that there are hard lives lived

there,--harder than those of our slaves, of my slaves, for

example;--and that not by foreigners, who, you may say, are not up to

the mark yet, but by Americans born and bred."

"There are very hard lives lived there. The human lot is checkered

there as everywhere. Death sometimes arrests a man midway in his

course and leads him off, leaving his wife and children to struggle

along the road they never knew was rough before. It happened thus to

your Cousin Reginald. His wife and children were thus left. You are

right. His son, the boy I told you of, is as much a slave as any of

yours: almost as poorly fed, and twice as hardly worked. He lives at

a distance from his college, to have a cheaper room; his meals he

prepares himself;--no great fatigue this, to be sure, for they are

frugal, and he contents himself with two. In what ought to be his

vacation, he delves away at his books harder than ever, and is besides

a hewer of wood and a drawer of water,--all without wages. His only

pay is his mother's pride in him, and the joy of sometimes calling

back the old smiles to her face."

"How did he get to college? How does he stay there, if he has

nothing?"

"He has less than nothing. To go to college, he has incurred

debts,--debts for which he has pledged himself, body and soul. He was

ten when his father died. His sister was sixteen. She assumed the

rights of guardian over him, kept him up to his work at school, sent

him to college when he was fourteen, and maintains him there.

"If his life is a hard one, hers is not easier. Every morning she

walks nearly three miles to the school she teaches, gives her day

there, and walks back in the late afternoon. The evening she passes in

sewing, a book on the table before her. She catches a line as she

draws out her thread, and fixes it in her memory with the setting of

the next stitch. Besides Reginald, there are two other boys to make

and mend for, not yet so mindful of the cost of clothes as he has

learned to be; and she has her own education to carry on, as well as

that of the little community among whom she must hold her place as one

who has nothing left to learn.

"Her mother works at the same table, evenly, continuously, not to

disturb or distract by haste or casual movement, and under a spell of

silence, which only the child whose first subject she is is privileged

to break. It is broken from time to time,--the study being suspended,

though not the needlework. These intervals are filled with little,

happy confidences,--hopes, and dreams, which the two cherish apart and

together, and whose exchange, a hundred times renewed, never loses its

power to refresh and reassure. If you were near enough to hear the

emphatic word in these snatches of conversation, be sure you would

hear 'Reginald.'"

"Do you know them so well?"

"Perhaps I may have spent a summer in the country town where they

live. Perhaps it has been my chance some evening to walk by the

little, old, black house they moved into after their father's death,

from the nice, white, green-blinded one he built for them, and the

astral lamp on the round table may have lighted for me the tableau I

am showing you. Our heroine works and studies late, perhaps; but she

must not the less be up early the next morning, to do the heavier

portion of the house-work before her mother is stirring. If ever you

hear a severe tone in her voice, be sure the mother has been

encroaching upon the daughter's prerogative by rising first, or by

putting her hand to some forbidden toil.--Well, is all this enough?

Not for Anna Westlake. There is a music lesson to be given, before she

sets off for her regular day's work."

"Is her name Anna?"--Westlake had once a sister Anna, whom he

loved.--"Is she pretty?"

"She might have been."

"Fair hair? Blue eyes?"

"Yes; a true Westlake in features and complexion; but somewhat thin

for one of your family, as you may believe."

"Pale, delicate?"

"The winds of heaven have visited her too roughly."

"Graceful?"

"I should not dare to say Yes, seeing that grace is denied to

New-England women; still less do I dare to say No, remembering how I

have seen her taking her small brothers to their school, on the way to

her own, making believe run races with them, to get the little wilful

loiterers over the ground the quicker."

"Borrow, it is a hard life for Anna Westlake,--for my cousin's child."

"You would be a severe taskmaster, if you demanded of a slave such a

day's work as hers. Of a slave! He would be insane who should expect

it of any woman who had not the developed brain, the steady nerves,

the abounding vitality of the born aristocrat.

"But how is Reginald ever going to pay his debt to this sister? Do you

think she will be satisfied with anything short of seeing him

President? Who knows but she looks for more yet? The Puritan stamp is

as strong on her as on her grandfather. Who knows but she looks to see

him one of the lights of the world,--one of the benefactors of his

race,--a discoverer in science,--a reformer? Here are responsibilities

for a boy to set out under!"

"For the boys, let them rough it; I have nothing to say. But, Borrow,

when you go back, tell Anna Westlake there is a home for her here,

whenever she is ready to come and take it."

"I will tell her, if you will, that her cousins here wish to have news

of her, and are ready to love her and hers. But propose to her a life

of dependence! You must get a bolder man to do that errand."

"It should not be a life of dependence. She may surely do for her own

kindred what she does for a pack of village children. She should be an

elder sister to my girls. Why, Borrow, I should like to have her here.

I don't put it in the form of a favor to her. Her being here would be

a great pleasure and a great good to my little Fanny."

"And her own brothers?"

"She should be able to do for them all she does now."

"All she does now! Do you know what that is?"

"She should be able to do more than she does now. Reginald should live

as he ought."

"He shall have three good meals a day, and cooked for him: is that it?

And the two little boys?"

"They should be as much better off as he. I do not forget that I have

the whole inheritance, which might have been divided."

"Yes, the means for their material bread might be supplied by another;

but it is from her own soul that she feeds theirs. And then, homage,

Westlake,--homage, that sweetest draught! Do you suppose it is least

sweet when most deserved?"

"I have nothing, then, to offer which could tempt her?" asked

Westlake, a little crestfallen.

"You have nothing to offer, the world has nothing to offer, which

could tempt her to resign her little empire;--little now, but which

she sees widening out in futurity through her three brothers' work and

their children's."

"I knew," said Westlake, after he had sat for a few moments in

dissatisfied silence, "I knew I had once an uncle who went off to

parts unknown; but it never occurred to me that he might have

descendants to whom I might owe duties. Have they not claims upon me?"

"No more than you on them. Their ancestor made his choice, as yours

made his. They have the portion of goods that falleth to them. They

are quite as content with their share as you are with yours. Moreover,

each party is free to complete his inheritance without prejudice to

the other. They can recover the worldly wealth they gave up, if they

choose to turn their endeavors in that direction; and nothing forbids

to your children the energy and self-denial which are their birthright

as much as that of their cousins.

"New England never gives up her own. A son of hers may think he has

separated himself forever from her and from her principles, but she

reclaims him in his children or in his children's children.

"You have forgotten your tie to the old home. The conditions of your

life forbid you to remember it. But your heart formerly rebelled

against these conditions. It has never ceased to protest. Reginald's

protests already, and will some day protest to purpose."

"You think so!" cried Westlake; then, checking himself, "I am glad,

at least, that you think so; it proves that you like him. I was

afraid"----

"You are right. I do not like him as he is, but only as he is to be. I

saw what you feared I did, and marked it. I saw him knock down the boy

whom he had condescended to make his playmate in default of better,

for taking too much in earnest the accorded equality. But I saw, too,

that his own breast was sorer with the blow than the one it hit. That

is not always a cruel discipline which teaches a man early what he is

capable of, whether in good or evil. When your Reginald comes to the

responsible age, his conscience will hand in the account of his

minority. Looking, then, on this item and on others like it, he will

ask himself, 'Am I a dog that I have done these things?' and he will

become a man, and a good one.

"We see farcical pretensions enough down here, where men are daily

new-created from the mud. There is Milsom. He does not own even the

name he wears. His father borrowed it for a time, and, having worn it

out, left it with this son, decamping under shelter of a new one. The

son, abandoned to his wits at twelve years old, relieved his father

from the charge of inhumanity by proving them sufficient. His first

exploit was the betraying of a fugitive who had shared a crust with

him. This success revealed to him his proper road to fortune. He

passed through the regular degrees of slave-catcher and slave-trader,

to the proud altitude of slave-holder; then, moving out of the reach

of old associations, proclaims himself a gentleman by descent as well

as by desert. His sons take it on his word; in all simplicity believe

themselves an integral part of time-honored aristocracy, and think it

beneath them to do anything but mischief.

"Your claims I neither blame nor make light of. I know what their

foundation is better than you do yourself. Only dismiss illusions, and

accept realities, which do not yield to them even in charm to the

imagination. When you know the ground under your feet, you will stand

more quietly as well as more firmly. You will understand then that the

silence of the New-Englander in regard to his extraction is not

indifference, but security. Nowhere is the memory of ancestry so

sacredly cherished as in New England, nowhere so humbly. What are we

in presence of those majestic memories? We may lead our happy humdrum

lives; may fulfil creditably our easy duties; we may plant and build

and legislate for those who come after us; but it will still be to

these great primitive figures that our descendants will look back; it

will still be the debt owed there that will pledge the living

generation to posterity.

"John Westlake, your first paternal ancestor in New England had

nothing in common with the Puritan leaders. You are well informed

there. He came over to seek his fortune. They came to prepare the

destinies of a nation. He had nothing to do with them, except in being

one of those they worked for. He came when the country was ready for

him. His motive was a reasonable one. I shall not impugn it; but it

tells of the roturier. The founding of states is an aristocratic

tendency. He was a respectable ancestor. I have more than one such of

my own. I owe to them the sedate mind which permits me to give myself

to my own affairs, without feeling any responsibility about those of

the world. But these are not the men who ennoble their descendants in

perpetuity. If your breast knows the secret suggestions of lineage,

these promptings are not from John Westlake. You must go back to our

heroic age to find yours."

"I should be very glad to find myself in an heroic age," said

Westlake, with a slight laugh, followed by a heavy sigh. "I feel as if

I might have something to do there. But this thought never yet took me

back to the Puritans: the battle-field is the hero's place, as I

imagine the hero. They, I have understood, were especially men of

peace. Is it not one of their first titles to honor?"

"The office of the hero is to create, to organize, to endow;--works of

peace which incidentally require him to suppress its disturbers. The

heroes have always been men of peace--its winners and maintainers for

those who can only enjoy it--from Hercules down, that first great

overthrower of oppressions and founder of colonies.

"To the age I call on you to date from--that of the imagining and

founding a new England, a renovated world--belongs the brightest and

dearest of English heroic names: the name whose associations of valor

and tenderness, of high-heartedness and humility are as fresh now as

when the love of the noble first canonized it. It is not without good

reason that the name of Philip Sidney is a household word throughout

New England, held in traditional affection and reverence. He was one

of the first to project a new state beyond the seas, in which the

simplicity and loyalty of primitive manners were to be restored, and

the true Christian Church revived. He turned from these hopes only

because he felt that he owed himself to Europe as long as an effort

for the vindication of human rights upon its soil was possible. It was

not love of war that led him to his fate in the Netherlands. He was

not to be misled by false glory. In his Defence of Poesy he makes it a

reproach to History, that 'the name of rebel Cæsar, after a thousand

six hundred years, still stands in highest honor.' The peace-loving

Burleigh, when the expedition in which Sidney fell was setting forth,

wrote,--deprecating the reproach of lukewarmness,--that he 'should

hold himself a man accursed, if he did not work for it with all the

powers of his heart, seeing that its ends were the glory of God and

the preservation of England in perpetual tranquillity.'

"'Nec gladio nec arcu' was the motto of Thomas Dudley, Harry's first

ancestor in this country. He was a man of peace. But he offered his

life to the same cause for which Philip Sidney laid down his,--drawing

the sword for it in France, as Sidney had done ten years before in

Flanders. He was reserved to aid in carrying out the other more

effectual work which Sidney had designed, but from which his early

death withdrew him.

"I am not telling you of Harry's ancestor for Harry's sake. You have

your own part in all this, Westlake. When Reginald and Harry met and

loved each other, blood spoke to blood.

"How many descendants do you suppose there are now from Governor

Thomas Dudley's forty grandchildren? Hardly a family of long standing

in New England but counts him among its ancestors; hardly a State of

our Union into which some of that choice blood has not been carried,

with other as precious.

"New England is not limited to that little northeastern corner. Our

older country, 'that sceptred isle, that earth of majesty,' did not

send forth the happiest of its 'happy breed of men' to found a world

no wider than its own: wherever the descendants of those great

pioneers set up their home, they plant a new New England.

"Do you know how their regenerate Transatlantic country presented

itself to its early projectors? The most sanguine of us do not paint

its future more brightly now than it was imaged in 1583.

"A Hungarian poet, on a visit to England, enjoyed the intimacy of

Hakluyt, and, through him introduced to the society of such men as Sir

Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Philip Sidney, was initiated into the hopes

and projects of the nobler England of the day. He has celebrated these

in a poem addressed to Sir Humphrey Gilbert. The return of the Golden

Age promised in ancient prophecy is, he believes, impossible in

Europe, sunk below the iron one. He sees it, in vision, revive upon

the soil of the New World, under the auspices of men who, true

colonizers, renounce home and country, and dare the vast, vague

dangers of sea and wilderness, not for gain or for glory, but 'for the

peace and welfare of mankind.'

"'Oh, were it mine to join the chosen band,

Predestined planters of the promised land,

My happy part for after-time to trace

The earliest annals of a new-born race!

There Earth, with Man at amity once more,

To willing toil shall yield her willing store.

There Law with Equity shall know no strife;

Justice and Mercy no divided life.

Not there to birth shall merit bend; not there

Riches o'ermaster freedom. Tyrant care

Shall lay no burden on man's opening years,

Nor bow his whitening head with timeless fears;

But--every season in its order blest--

Youth shall enjoy its hope, and age its rest!'

"Our poet was in earnest. He did not write the annals of the country

that his hero did not found; but he shared his grave under the waves

of the Atlantic. Their hope outlived them. Visions like theirs are not

for you and me, Westlake. They are for young men,--for the men who

never grow old. We may admit that such have their place in the world.

Man must strive for something greatly beyond what he can attain, to

effect anything. He cannot strive for what he has not faith in. Those

men who live in aspirations that transcend this sphere believe that

all human hearts can be tuned to the same pitch with theirs. We know

better, but let us not for that contemn their efforts. I am no

visionary. I have no inward evidence of things not seen; but I am

capable of believing what is proved. I believe in work,--that none is

lost, but that, whether for good or ill, every exertion of power and

patience tells. I believe in race, and I believe in progress for a

race with which belief in progress is a tradition, and which

inherits, besides, the strength, the courage, and the persistence

which make faith prophetic.

"Your institutions, Westlake, are to yield the ground to other forms.

They are contrary to the inborn principles of the race that leads on

this continent. We at the North, who tolerate them, tolerate them

because we know they are ephemeral. It is a consciousness of their

transitoriness that enables you yourselves to put up with them."

"Not so fast! If they are not rooted, they are taking root. They have

a stronger hold with every year. If any of us felt in the way you

suppose, we should have to keep our thoughts to ourselves."

"So you all keep your thoughts to yourselves for fear of each other.

What a lightening of hearts, when you once come to an understanding! I

wish it soon for your own sakes; but a few years in the life of a

people are of small account. I am willing to wait for the fulness of

time. The end is sure."

"It all looks very simple to you, I dare say."

"I do not undervalue your difficulties. The greatest is this miserable

population that has crept over your borders from the older Slave

States: progeny of outcasts and of reckless adventurers, they never

had a country and have never found one. Without aims or hopes, they

ask of their worthless life only its own continuance. Ignorant that

they can never know anything worse than to remain what they are,

dreading change more than those who may have something to lose by it,

they uphold the system that dooms them to immobility, shameful

Atlantes of the dismal structure."

"You will not wonder that we are ready to renounce the theories of

equality put forth by the men you would have us look to as founders.

We make laws to keep our black servants from getting instruction. Do

you think we could legislate the class you speak of into receiving

it?"

"Westlake, they are here. They are among you, and will be of you, or

you of them."

"We must take our precautions. We intend to do so. The dividing line

must be more strongly marked. They must have their level prescribed to

them, and be held to it."

"The more you confirm their degradation, the more you prepare your

own. The vile and abject, for being helpless, are not harmless. Unapt

for honest service, but ready tools of evil, they corrupt the class

whose parasites they are, tempting the strong and generous to tyranny

and scorn."

"You know them!"

"They are known of old. The world has never wanted such.

'The wretches will not be dragged out to sunlight.

They man their very dungeons for their masters,

Lest godlike Liberty, the common foe,

Should enter in, and they be judged hereafter

Accomplices of freedom!'

"But ten righteous men are enough to redeem a state. No State of ours

but has men enough, greatly more than enough, to save and to exalt it,

whose descent pledges them to integrity and entitles them to

authority. Only let them know themselves, and stand by themselves and

by each other.

'Nought shall make us rue,

If England to itself do rest but true.'

And it will. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to

the third and fourth generation, but their virtues are a perpetual

inheritance.

"I should not talk as I have been talking out of the family."--The

Doctor fell into his familiar tone.--"I take in Colvil, because I

know, if we had time to trace it up, we should not go back far without

coming upon common ancestors. Our pedigrees all run one into another.

When I see a New-England man, I almost take for granted a cousin. I

found one out not many days' journey from here, by opening the old

family Bible, which made an important part of the furniture of his

log-house, and running over the names of his grandmothers. I am so

well informed in regard to your great-grandfather, because his story

is a part of my own family history. It is through your mother that

you are related to Harry. Perhaps, if she had lived long enough for

you to remember her, you would not have forgotten New England."

"My mother was an orphan young, and had neither brother nor sister. I

have never seen any member of her family. They tell me that Reginald

looks like her."

"Where is Reginald? Why did he not come with you?"

"I asked him to come. He said that Dudley and he had agreed on a time

of meeting. He is not very communicative with me; but they seem to

understand each other."

* * * * *

The parting of the classmates was very kindly. Westlake led his horse

as far as the end of our road,--the Doctor, Harry, and I accompanying.

When he had mounted, he still delayed. I thought that he looked worn

and weary. With his old friend, he had been his old, easy self; but

now that his face was turned towards home, it seemed that he felt its

vexations and cares confronting him again. The Doctor probably does

not know as much of Westlake's position as is known in the

neighborhood; he saw in this sadness only that of the separation from

himself, and was more gratified than pained by it.

"We shall not see each other again, Borrow," said Westlake, stretching

down his hand for a last clasp of his friend's.

"Yes, we shall. Why not, if we both wish it? Say good-bye for me to

the little Fanny," the Doctor added, gayly.

Westlake brightened with the one pleasant thought connected with his

home, and, under its influence, set forward.

The Doctor stood looking after him with a friendly, contented air. He

was pleased with himself for having spoken his mind out, and with

Westlake for having heard it. But when he turned and met Harry's

happy, affectionate look, his face clouded. He passed us and walked on

fast. When we came into the house, he was seated in the arm-chair,

looking straight before him. Harry went and stood beside him, waiting

for him to give sign that all was right between them again by opening

a new conversation.

The Doctor did not hold out long. "I have told, or as good as told, my

old friend," he began, with rather a sour smile, "that he is suffering

himself to be infected by the meannesses of those below him; and now I

am almost ready to tell myself that my grave years are giving into the

fanaticisms of boyhood. But I stand where I did, Harry. I stand

precisely where I did. I have always told you that I hate slavery as

much as you do. The only difference between us is, that I am not for

justice though the heavens fall."

"Justice, and the heavens will _not_ fall," Harry answered, firmly,

but with a tender deference in look and tone.

"And you make too much account of a name," the Doctor went on. "What

does it signify that men are called slaves and slaveholders, if, in

their mutual relations, they observe the laws of justice and kindness?

You will not deny that this is possible? I object to slavery, as it

exists, because it too often places almost absolute power in

unqualified hands. But you are too sweeping. Good men are good

masters. I should count Harvey among such. Colvil has given you a

portrait you will accept in Shaler, who was as good a man when he was

a slaveholder as he is now. Cicero, a slaveholder,--and Roman

slaveholders have not the best repute,--writing upon justice, does not

put the slave beyond its pale; he recognizes his humanity and its

rights. Will you suppose that we have not American slaveholders as

Christian as Cicero?"

"Cicero has said that to see a wrong done without protesting is to

commit one."

"We will not dispute to-night, Harry. I am not altogether insensible

to the interests of the world, but I have some regard for yours.

Perhaps I should take less thought for them, if there were hope that

you would take any. At any rate, we will not dispute to-night."

Harry, at least, was in no mood for disputing. He was very happy. He

had a gayety of manner I had hardly seen in him. The Doctor soon fell

into tune with it, and reconciled himself to the pleasure he had

caused.

WEDNESDAY, April 17, 1844.

The Friday came. We had made our last evening a long one, but we were

up early on the last morning. Harry and I had our walk together.

Coming back, we found the Doctor under Keith's Pine, busy making up

his dried grasses and flowers into little compact packages. We sat

down there with him as usual. I read aloud. My reading gave us matter

of discussion on the way home.

After breakfast, Hans, Karl, and Fritz came up to the house. Good

Friday we always keep alone with our own family; but these three are

of it, though they are lodged under a different roof. I read part of a

sermon of South's:--"For the transgression of my people was he

stricken."

How real seemed to me, that morning, the sacred story! I had hitherto

contemplated the Christ in his divine being, looking up to him from a

reverent distance. Now he seemed suddenly brought near to me in his

human nature. I felt that our earth had, indeed, once owned him. And

then how vivid the sense of loss and waste,--a beautiful and

beneficent life cut short by violence! "Dying, not like a lamp that

for want of oil can burn no longer, but like a torch in its full flame

blown out by the breath of a north wind!"

Everything that I read with Harry, or that I talk over with him, has

new meaning for me, or a new force.

Why are we so careful to avoid pain? If it was a necessary part of the

highest mortal experience, how can we ask that it may be left out from

ours? And yet, on every new occasion, we strive to put from us the

offered cross. Even while we say, "Thy will be done!" an inward hope

entreats that will to be merciful. Such remonstrances with myself rose

in me as I read. They did not prevent me from feeling a thrill of

dread as this warning passed over my lips:--"Who shall say how soon

God may draw us from our easy speculations and theories of suffering,

to the practical experience of it? Who can tell how soon we may be

called to the fiery trial?" I turned involuntarily to Harry. He, too,

had heard a summons in these words. I read in his eyes the answer that

came from his steady breast,--"My Father, I am here!" I felt my spirit

lifted with the closing words,--"If we suffer with him, we shall also

reign with him"; but there was no change in Harry's clear, prepared

look. I have never known a faith so implicit as his. He does not ask

after threats or promises; he only listens for commands.

When the services were over, Hans came forward to say good-bye to the

Doctor and Harry. He took a hand of each, and stood looking from one

to the other.

"We cannot spare you, Harry Dudley. We shall miss you, Doctor. Harry,

when you are ready to set up your farm, come and take a look round you

here again. We are good people, and love you. There will be land near

in the market before long. Sooner should you have it than old Rasey.

Think of it; we can talk things over, evenings."

"You shall have your turn," he said to his boys, who were waiting, one

on either side of him. "I am an old man, and leave-taking comes hard.

Youth has many chances more."

He gave his benediction, repeated a little rhyming German couplet,--a

charm, perhaps, for a good journey,--and then turned away sturdily,

went slowly out of the door and down the steps, leaving Karl and Fritz

to say their words of farewell. Karl spoke for both. What Fritz had in

his heart to say he could not utter, for the tears would have come

with it.

At a quarter before twelve Harry brought down the russet

knapsack,--brought down the little flower-press,--brought down the

long umbrella.

He transferred from the over-full knapsack to his own some packages of

flowers. The flower-press would not enter either knapsack. The Doctor

had it strapped on outside his. I watched these little arrangements,

glad of the time they took. Harry helped the Doctor on with his pack.

I would have done the same for Harry, but he was too quick for me. I

adjusted the strap from which the green tin case hung, that I might do

something for him.

Doctor Borrow took a serious leave of my mother,--for this, at least,

was a final one. But Harry would not have it so. The tears were

gathering in her eyes. "You will see us again," he said, confidently.

The Doctor shook his head. "You have made us too happy here for us not

to wish that it might be so."

But my mother accepted Harry's assurance.

They looked round for Tabitha. She appeared from my mother's room, the

door of which had been a little open. Both thanked her cordially for

her kind cares. She gave them her good wishes, affectionately and

solemnly, and disappeared again.

"I shall not bid you good-bye," said the Doctor, yet taking my hand.

"Only till the nineteenth," said Harry, clasping it as soon as the

Doctor relinquished it. "Till the eighteenth," I mean; "till the

eighteenth," he repeated, urgently.

"Till the eighteenth," I answered.

The Doctor mounted the blue spectacles. This was the last act of

preparation. The minute-hand was close upon the appointed moment.

At the first stroke of twelve, they were on their way. I followed,

slowly, as if the reluctance of my steps could hold back theirs. The

gate closed behind them. The Doctor took at once his travelling gait

and trudged straight on; but Harry turned and gave a glance to the

house, to the barn, to the little patch of flowers,--to all the

objects with which the week had made him familiar. Then his look fell

upon me, who was waiting for it. He searched my face intently for an

instant, and then, with a smile which made light of all but happy

presentiments, waved me adieu, and hastened on to overtake the Doctor.

I was glad it was not a working-day,--glad that I could go in and sit

down by my mother, to talk over with her, or, silent, to think over

with her, the scenes which had animated our little room, and which

were still to animate it. Harry's parting look stayed with me. I felt

all my gain, and had no more sense of loss. Can we ever really lose

what we have ever really possessed?