CHAPTER XXXIII.

JUST AS YOU EXPECTED.

The spring of 1861 had now arrived,--that eventful spring which was to

lift the curtain and show the first scene of the first act in the mighty

drama which fixed the eyes of mankind during four bloody years. The

little schemes of little people were going on in all our cities and

villages without thought of the fearful convulsion which was soon coming

to shatter the hopes and prospects of millions. Our little Oxbow

Village, which held itself by no means the least of human centres, was

the scene of its own commotions, as intense and exciting to those

concerned as if the destiny of the nation had been involved in them.

Mr. Clement Lindsay appeared suddenly in that important locality, and

repaired to his accustomed quarters at the house of Deacon Rumrill. That

worthy person received him with a certain gravity of manner, caused by

his recollection of the involuntary transgression into which Mr. Lindsay

had led him by his present of Ivanhoe. He was, on the whole, glad to see

him, for his finances were not yet wholly recovered from the injury

inflicted on them by the devouring element. But he could not forget

that his boarder had betrayed him into a breach of the fourth

commandment, and that the strict eyes of his clergyman had detected him

in the very commission of the offence. He had no sooner seen Mr. Clement

comfortably installed, therefore, than he presented himself at the door

of his chamber with the book, enveloped in strong paper and very

securely tied round with a stout string.

"Here is your vollum, Mr. Lindsay," the Deacon said. "I understand it is

not the work of that great and good mahn who I thought wrote it. I did

not see anything immoral in it as fur as I read, but it belongs to what

I consider a very dangerous class of publications. These novels and

romances are awfully destructive to our youth. I should recommend you,

as a young mahn of principle, to burn the vollum. At least I hope you

will not leave it about anywhere unless it is carefully tied up. I have

written upon the paper round it to warn off all the young persons of my

household from meddling with it."

True enough, Mr. Clement saw in strong black letters on the back of the

paper wrapping his unfortunate Ivanhoe,--

"DANGEROUS READING FOR CHRISTIAN YOUTH.

"TOUCH NOT THE UNCLEAN THING."

"I thought you said you had Scott's picture hung up in your parlor,

Deacon Rumrill," he said, a little amused with the worthy man's fear and

precautions.

"It is _the great_ Scott's likeness that I have in my parlor," he said;

"I will show it to you if you will come with me."

Mr. Clement followed the Deacon into that sacred apartment.

"That is the portrait of the great Scott," he said, pointing to an

engraving of a heavy-looking person whose phrenological developments

were a somewhat striking contrast to those of the distinguished Sir

Walter.

"I will take good care that none of your young people see this volume,"

Mr. Clement said; "I trust you read it yourself, however, and found

something to please you in it. I am sure you are safe from being harmed

by any such book. Didn't you have to finish it, Deacon, after you had

once begun?"

"Well,--I--I--perused a consid'able portion of the work," the Deacon

answered, in a way that led Mr. Clement to think he had not stopped much

short of _Finis_. "Anything new in the city?"

"Nothing except what you've all had,--Confederate States establishing an

army and all that,--not very new either. What has been going on here

lately, Deacon?"

"Well, Mr. Lindsay, not a great deal. My new barn is pretty nigh done.

I've got as fine a litter of pigs as ever you see. I don't know whether

you're a judge of pigs or no. The Hazard gal's come back, spilt, pooty

much, I guess. Been to one o' them fashionable schools,--I've heerd that

she's learnt to dance. I've heerd say that that Hopkins boy's round the

Posey gal,--come to think, she's the one you went with some when you was

here,--I'm gettin' kind o' forgetful. Old Doctor Hurlbut's pretty

low,--ninety-four year old,--born in '67,--folks ain't ginerally very

spry after they're ninety, but he held out wonderful."

"How's Mr. Bradshaw?"

"Well, the young squire, he's off travellin' somewhere in the West, or

to Washin'ton, or somewhere else,--I don't jestly know where. They say

that he's follerin' up the courts in the business about old Malachi's

estate. I don' know much about it."

* * * * *

The news got round Oxbow Village very speedily that Mr. Clement Lindsay,

generally considered the accepted lover of Miss Susan Posey, had arrived

in that place. Now it had come to be the common talk of the village that

young Gifted Hopkins and Susan Posey were getting to be mighty thick

with each other, and the prevailing idea was that Clement's visit had

reference to that state of affairs. Some said that Susan had given her

young man the mitten, meaning thereby that she had signified that his

services as a suitor were dispensed with. Others thought there was only

a wavering in her affection for her lover, and that he feared for her

constancy, and had come to vindicate his rights.

Some of the young fellows, who were doubtless envious of Gifted's

popularity with the fair sex, attempted in the most unjustifiable manner

to play upon his susceptible nature. One of them informed him that he

had seen that Lindsay fellah raound taown with the darndest big stick y'

ever did see. Looked kind o' savage and wild like. Another one told him

that perhaps he'd better keep a little shady; that are chap that had got

the mittin was praowlin' abaout with a pistil,--one o' them Darringers

abaout as long as your thumb, an' 'll fire a bullet as big as a

potato-ball,--a fellah carries one in his breeches-pocket, an' shoots y'

right threugh his own pahnts, withaout ever takin' on it aout of his

pocket. The stable-keeper, who it may be remembered once exchanged a few

playful words with Mr. Gridley, got a hint from some of these unfeeling

young men, and offered the resources of his stable to the youth supposed

to be in peril.

"I've got a faaest colt, Mr. Hopkins, that'll put twenty mild between you

an' this here village, as quick as any four huffs'll dew it in this here

caounty, if you _should_ want to git away suddin. I've heern tell there

was some lookin' raound here that wouldn't be wholesome to meet,--jest

say the word, Mr. Hopkins, an' I'll have ye on that are colt's back in

less than no time, an' start ye off full jump. There's a good many

that's kind o' worried for fear something might happen to ye, Mr.

Hopkins,--y' see fellahs don't like to have other chaps cuttin' on 'em

aout with their gals."

Gifted Hopkins had become excessively nervous by this time. It is true

that everything in his intimacy with Susan Posey so far might come under

the general head of friendship; but he was conscious that something more

was in both their thoughts. Susan had given him mysterious hints that

her relations with Clement had undergone a change, but had never had

quite courage enough, perhaps had too much delicacy, to reveal the whole

truth.

Gifted was walking home, deeply immersed in thoughts excited by the

hints which had been thus wantonly thrown out to inflame his

imagination, when all at once, on lifting his eyes, he saw Clement

Lindsay coming straight towards him. Gifted was unarmed, except with a

pair of blunt scissors, which he carried habitually in his pocket. What

should he do? Should he fly? But he was never a good runner, being apt

to find himself scant o' breath, like Hamlet, after violent exercise.

His demeanor on the occasion, did credit to his sense of his own

virtuous conduct and his self-possession. He put his hand out, while yet

at a considerable distance, and marched up towards Clement, smiling with

all the native amiability which belonged to him.

To his infinite relief, Clement put out _his_ hand to grasp the one

offered him, and greeted the young poet in the most frank and cordial

manner.

"And how is Miss Susan Posey, Mr. Hopkins?" asked Clement, in the most

cheerful tone. "It is a long while since I have seen her, and you must

tell her that I hope I shall not leave the village without finding time

to call upon her. She and I are good friends always, Mr. Hopkins, though

perhaps I shall not be quite so often at your mother's as I was during

my last visit to Oxbow Village."

Gifted felt somewhat as the subject of one of those old-fashioned forms

of argument, formerly much employed to convince men of error in matters

of religion, must have felt when the official who superintended the

stretching-machine said, "Slack up!"

He told Mr. Clement all about Susan, and was on the point of saying

that if he, Mr. Clement, did not claim any engrossing interest in her,

he, Gifted, was ready to offer her the devotion of a poet's heart. Mr.

Clement, however, had so many other questions to ask him about everybody

in the village, more particularly concerning certain young persons in

whom he seemed to be specially interested, that there was no chance to

work in his own revelations of sentiment.

Clement Lindsay had come to Oxbow Village with a single purpose. He

could now venture to trust himself in the presence of Myrtle Hazard. He

was free, and he knew nothing to show that she had lost the liberty of

disposing of her heart. But after an experience such as he had gone

through, he was naturally distrustful of himself, and inclined to be

cautious and reserved in yielding to a new passion. Should he tell her

the true relations in which they stood to each other,--that she owed her

life to him, and that he had very nearly sacrificed his own in saving

hers? Why not? He had a claim on her gratitude for what he had done in

her behalf, and out of this gratitude there might naturally spring a

warmer feeling.

No, he could not try to win her affections by showing that he had paid

for them beforehand. She seemed to be utterly unconscious of the fact

that it was he who had been with her in the abyss of waters. If the

thought came to her of itself, and she ever asked him, it would be time

enough to tell her the story. If not, the moment might arrive when he

could reveal to her the truth that he was her deliverer, without

accusing himself of bribing her woman's heart to reward him for his

services. He would wait for that moment.

It was the most natural thing in the world that Mr. Lindsay, a young

gentleman from the city, should call to see Miss Hazard, a young lady

whom he had met recently at a party. To that pleasing duty he addressed

himself the evening after his arrival.

"The young gentleman's goin' a courtin', I calc'late," was the remark

of the Deacon's wife when she saw what a handsome figure Mr. Clement

was making at the tea-table.

"A very hahnsome young mahn," the Deacon replied, "and looks as if he

might know consid'able. An architect, you know,--a sort of a builder.

Wonder if he hasn't got any good plans for a hahnsome pigsty. I suppose

he'd charge somethin' for one, but it couldn't be much, an' he could

take it out in board."

"Better ask him," his wife said; "he looks mighty pleasant; there's

nothin' lost by askin', an' a good deal got sometimes, grandma used to

say."

The Deacon followed her advice. Mr. Clement was perfectly good-natured

about it, asked the Deacon the number of snouts in his menagerie, got an

idea of the accommodations required, and sketched the plan of a neat and

appropriate edifice for the _Porcellarium_, as Master Gridley afterwards

pleasantly christened it, which was carried out by the carpenter, and

stands to this day a monument of his obliging disposition, and a proof

that there is nothing so humble that taste cannot be shown in it.

"What'll be your charge for the plan of the pigsty, Mr. Lindsay?" the

Deacon inquired with an air of interest,--he might have been involved

more deeply than he had intended. "How much should you call about right

for the picter an' figgerin'?"

"O, you're quite welcome to my sketch of a plan, Deacon. I've seen much

showier buildings tenanted by animals not very different from those your

edifice is meant for."

* * * * *

Mr. Clement found the three ladies sitting together in the chill, dim

parlor at The Poplars. They had one of the city papers spread out on the

table, and Myrtle was reading aloud the last news from Charleston

Harbor. She rose as Mr. Clement entered, and stepped forward to meet

him. It was a strange impression this young man produced upon her,--not

through the common channels of the intelligence,--not exactly that

"magnetic" influence of which she had had experience at a former time.

It did not overcome her as at the moment of their second meeting. But it

was something she must struggle against, and she had force and pride and

training enough now to maintain her usual tranquillity, in spite of a

certain inward commotion which seemed to reach her breathing and her

pulse by some strange, inexplicable mechanism.

Myrtle, it must be remembered, was no longer the simple country girl who

had run away at fifteen, but a young lady of seventeen, who had learned

all that more than a year's diligence at a great school could teach her,

who had been much with girls of taste and of culture, and was familiar

with the style and manners of those who came from what considered itself

the supreme order in the social hierarchy. Her natural love for

picturesque adornment was qualified by a knowledge of the prevailing

modes not usual in so small a place as Oxbow Village. All this had not

failed to produce its impression on those about her. Persons who, like

Miss Silence Withers, believe, not in education, inasmuch as there is no

healthy nature to be educated, but in transformation, worry about their

charges up to a certain period of their lives. Then, if the

transformation does not come, they seem to think their cares and duties

are at an end, and, considering their theories of human destiny, usually

accept the situation with wonderful complacency. This was the stage

which Miss Silence Withers had reached with reference to Myrtle. It made

her infinitely more agreeable, or less disagreeable, as the reader may

choose one or the other statement, than when she was always fretting

about her "responsibility." She even began to take an interest in some

of Myrtle's worldly experiences, and something like a smile would now

and then disarrange the chief-mourner stillness of her features, as

Myrtle would tell some lively story she had brought away from the gay

society she had frequented.

Cynthia Badlam kept her keen eyes on her like a hawk. Murray Bradshaw

was away, and here was this handsome and agreeable youth coming in to

poach on the preserve of which she considered herself the gamekeeper.

What did it mean? She had heard the story about Susan's being off with

her old love and on with a new one. Ah ha! this is the game, is it?

Clement Lindsay passed not so much a pleasant evening, as one of

strange, perplexed, and mingled delight and inward conflict. He had

found his marble once more turned to flesh and blood, and breathing

before him. This was the woman he was born for; her form was fit to

model his proudest ideal from,--her eyes melted him when they rested for

an instant on his face,--her voice reached those hidden sensibilities of

his inmost nature, which never betray their existence until the outward

chord to which they vibrate in response sends its message to stir them.

But was she not already pledged to that other,--that cold-blooded,

contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating man of the

world, whose artful strategy would pass with nine women out of ten for

the most romantic devotion?

If he had known the impression he made, he would have felt less anxiety

with reference to this particular possibility. Miss Silence expressed

herself gratified with his appearance, and thought he looked like a good

young man,--he reminded her of a young friend of hers who--[It was the

same who had gone to one of the cannibal islands as a missionary,--and

stayed there.] Myrtle was very quiet. She had nothing to say about

Clement, except that she had met him at a party in the city, and found

him agreeable. Miss Cynthia wrote a letter to Murray Bradshaw that very

evening, telling him that he had better come back to Oxbow Village as

quickly as he could, unless he wished to find his place occupied by an

intruder.

* * * * *

In the mean time, the country was watching the garrison in Charleston

Harbor. All at once the first gun of the four years' cannonade hurled

its ball against the walls of Fort Sumter. There was no hamlet in the

land which the reverberations of that cannon-roar did not reach. There

was no valley so darkened by overshadowing hills that it did not see the

American flag hauled down on the 13th of April. There was no loyal heart

in the North that did not answer to the call of the country to its

defenders which went forth two days later. The great tide of feeling

reached the locality where the lesser events of our narrative were

occurring. A meeting of the citizens was instantly called. The venerable

Father Pemberton opened it with a prayer that filled every soul with

courage and high resolve. The young farmers and mechanics of that whole

region joined the companies to which they belonged, or organized in

squads and marched at once, or got ready to march, to the scene of

conflict.

The contagion of warlike patriotism reached the most peacefully inclined

young persons.

"My country calls me," Gifted Hopkins said to Susan Posey, "and I am

preparing to obey her summons. If I can pass the medical examination,

which it is possible I may, though I fear my constitution _may_ be

thought too weak, and if no obstacle impedes me, I think of marching in

the ranks of the Oxbow Invincibles. If I go, Susan, and if I fall, will

you not remember me ... as one who ... cherished the tenderest ...

sentiments ... towards you ... and who had looked forward to the time

when ... when...."

His eyes told the rest. He loved!

Susan forgot all the rules of reserve to which she had been trained.

What were cold conventionalities at such a moment? "Never! never!" she

said, throwing her arms about his neck and mingling her tears with his,

which were flowing freely. "Your country does not need your sword,...

but it does need ... your pen. Your poems will inspire ... our

soldiers.... The Oxbow Invincibles will march to victory, singing your

songs.... If you go ... and if you ... fall.... O Gifted!... I ... I ...

yes I ... shall die too!"

His love was returned. He was blest!

"Susan," he said, "my own Susan, I yield to your wishes, at every

sacrifice. Henceforth they will be my law. Yes, I will stay and

encourage my brave countrymen to go forward to the bloody field. My

voice shall urge them on to the battle-ground. I will give my dearest

breath to stimulate their ardor.... O Susan! My own, own Susan!"

* * * * *

While these interesting events had been going on beneath the modest roof

of the Widow Hopkins, affairs had been rapidly hastening to a similar

conclusion under the statelier shadow of The Poplars. Clement Lindsay

was so well received at his first visit that he ventured to repeat it

several times, with so short intervals that it implied something more

than a common interest in one of the members of the household. There was

no room for doubt who this could be, and Myrtle Hazard could not help

seeing that she was the object of his undisguised admiration. The belief

was now general in the village that Gifted Hopkins and Susan Posey were

either engaged, or on the point of being so; and it was equally

understood that, whatever might be the explanation, she and her former

lover had parted company in an amicable manner.

Love works very strange transformations in young women. Sometimes it

leads them to try every mode of adding to their attractions,--their

whole thought is how to be most lovely in the eyes they would fill so as

to keep out all other images. Poor darlings! We smile at their little

vanities, as if they were very trivial things compared with the last

Congressman's speech or the great election sermon; but Nature knows well

what she is about. The maiden's ribbon or ruffle means a great deal more

for her than the judge's wig or the priest's surplice.

It was not in this way that the gentle emotion awaking in the breast of

Myrtle Hazard betrayed itself. As the thought dawned in her

consciousness that she was loved, a change came over her such as the

spirit that protected her, according to the harmless fancy she had

inherited, might have wept for joy to behold, if tears could flow from

angelic eyes. She forgot herself and her ambitions,--the thought of

shining in the great world died out in the presence of new visions of a

future in which she was not to be her own,--of feelings in the depth of

which the shallow vanities which had drawn her young eyes to them for a

while seemed less than nothing. Myrtle had not hitherto said to herself

that Clement was her lover, yet her whole nature was expanding and

deepening in the light of that friendship which any other eye could have

known at a glance for the great passion.

Cynthia Badlam wrote a pressing letter to Murray Bradshaw. "There is no

time to be lost; she is bewitched, and will be gone beyond hope if this

business is not put a stop to."

Love moves in an accelerating ratio; and there comes a time when the

progress of the passion escapes from all human formulae, and brings two

young hearts, which had been gradually drawing nearer and nearer

together, into complete union, with a suddenness that puts an infinity

between the moment when all is told and that which went just before.

They were sitting together by themselves in the dimly lighted parlor.

They had told each other many experiences of their past lives, very

freely, as two intimate friends of different sex might do. Clement had

happened to allude to Susan, speaking very kindly and tenderly of her.

He hoped this youth to whom she was attached would make her life happy.

"You know how simple-hearted and good she is; her image will always be a

pleasant one in my memory,--second to but one other."

Myrtie ought, according to the common rules of conversation, to have

asked, _What other?_ but she did not. She may have looked as if she

wanted to ask,--she may have blushed or turned pale,--perhaps she could

not trust her voice; but whatever the reason was, she sat still, with

downcast eyes. Clement waited a reasonable time, but, finding it was of

no use, began again.

"_Your_ image is the one other,--the only one, let me say, for all else

fades in its presence,--your image fills all my thought. Will you trust

your life and happiness with one who can offer you so little beside his

love? You know my whole heart is yours."

Whether Myrtle said anything in reply or not,--whether she acted like

Coleridge's Genevieve,--that is, "fled to him and wept," or suffered her

feelings to betray themselves in some less startling confession, we will

leave untold. Her answer, spoken or silent, could not have been a cruel

one, for in another moment Clement was pressing his lips to hers; after

the manner of accepted lovers.

"Our lips have met to-day for the second time," he said, presently.

She looked at him in wonder. What did he mean? The second time! How

assuredly he spoke! She looked him calmly in the face, and awaited his

explanation.

"I have a singular story to tell you. On the morning of the 16th of

June, now nearly two years ago, I was sitting in my room at Alderbank,

some twenty miles down the river, when I heard a cry for help coming

from the river. I ran down to the bank, and there I saw a boy in an old

boat--"

When it came to the "boy" in the old boat, Myrtle's cheeks flamed so

that she could not bear it, and she covered her face with both her

hands. But Clement told his story calmly through to the end, sliding

gently over its later incidents, for Myrtle's heart was throbbing

violently, and her breath a little catching and sighing, as when she had

first lived with the new life his breath had given her.

* * * * *

"Why did you ask me for myself, when you could have claimed me?" she

said.

"I wanted a free gift, Myrtle," Clement answered, "and I have it."

They sat in silence, lost in the sense of that new life which had

suddenly risen on their souls.

The door-bell rang sharply. Kitty Fagan answered its summons, and

presently entered the parlor and announced that Mr. Bradshaw was in the

library, and wished to see the ladies.

OPINIONS OF THE LATE DR. NOTT RESPECTING BOOKS, STUDIES, AND ORATORS.

During the summer of 1833, several professional gentlemen, clergymen,

lawyers, and educators were spending their vacation at Saratoga Springs.

Among them was Dr. Nott. He was then regarded as a veteran teacher,

whose long experience and acknowledged wisdom gave a peculiar value to

his matured opinions. The younger members of this little circle of

scholars, taking their ease at their inn, purposely sought to "draw out"

the Doctor upon those topics in which they felt an especial interest.

They were, therefore, in their leisure moments, constantly hearing and

asking him questions. One of them, then a tutor in Dartmouth College,

took notes of the conversations, and the following dialogue is copied

from his manuscript:--

_Mr. C._ "Doctor, how long have you been at the head of Union College?"

_Dr. N._ "Thirty years. I am the oldest _president_ in the United

States, though not the oldest man in office. I cannot drop down anywhere

in the Union without meeting some one of my _children_."

_Mr. C._ "And that, too, though so many of them are dead! I believe that

nearly half of my class are dead!"

_Dr. N._ "Indeed! That is a large proportion to die so soon. I think it

remarkable that so few deaths have occurred among the members of the

college since I have been connected with it. I can distinctly recollect

all the individuals who have died at college, and during thirty years

there have been but _seven_. The proportion has been less than one third

of one per cent. Very many have died, however, very soon after leaving

college. Two or three in almost every class have died within a year

after they have graduated. I have been at a loss as to the cause of this

marked difference. I can assign no other than the sudden change which

then takes place in the student's whole manner and habits of living,

diet, &c."

_Mr. C._ "How do the students generally answer the expectations they

have raised during their college course?"

_Dr. N._ "I have been rarely disappointed. I have found my little

anticipatory notes generally fulfilled. I recollect, however, one class,

which graduated four or five years ago, in regard to which I have been

very happily disappointed. It had given us more trouble, and there were

more sceptics in it than in any other class we ever had. But now every

one of those infidels except _one_ is studying for the ministry."

_Mr. C._ "What course do you take with a sceptical student?"

_Dr. N._ "I remember a very interesting case I had several years ago.

There was a young man in college of fine talents, an excellent and

exemplary student, but an atheist. He roomed near me. I was interested

in him; but I feared his influence. It was very injurious in college,

and yet he did nothing worthy of censure. I called him one day to my

study. I questioned him familiarly and kindly in relation to his

speculative views. He said he was not an atheist, but had very serious

doubts and difficulties on the subject, and frankly stated them to me. I

did not talk with him _religiously_, but as a philosopher. I did not

think he would bear it. I told him that I felt a peculiar sympathy with

young men in his state of mind; for once, during the French Revolution,

I had been troubled with the same difficulties myself. I had been over

that whole ground; and would gladly assist his inquiries, and direct him

to such authors as I thought would aid him in his investigations after

truth. As he left my study, I said, 'Now, I expect yet to see you a

minister of the Gospel!' He returned to his room; he paced it with

emotion; said he to his room-mate (these facts his room-mate

communicated to me within a year), 'What do you think the President

says?' 'I don't know.' 'He says he expects yet to see me a minister. I a

minister! I a minister!'--and he continued to walk the room, and

reiterate the words. No immediate effect on his character was produced.

But the _prophetic_ words (for so he seemed to regard them) clung to him

as a magic talisman, and would never leave his mind; and he is now a

pious man, and a student in divinity."

_Mr. C._ "Doctor, we have been seeking amusement and profit by some

exercises in elocution. Mr. G---- and myself have been trying to read

Shakespeare a little; but some gentlemen here have had some qualms of

conscience as to the propriety of it, and have condemned the reading of

Shakespeare as demoralizing. What is your opinion, sir?"

_Dr. N._ "Why, as to that matter, sir, I always say to my young men,

'Gentlemen, if you wish to get a knowledge of the world and of human

nature, read the Bible. The Bible is the first and best book that can be

studied for the exhibition of human character; and the man who goes out

into the world expecting to find men just such as Moses and Paul have

represented them will never be disappointed. If you are contented to

read nothing but your Bibles, _well, you have it all there_. But if you

will read any other books, read Homer and Shakespeare. They come nearer,

in my estimation, to Moses and Paul, in their delineations of human

character, than any other authors I am acquainted with. I would have

every young man read Shakespeare. I have always taught my children to

read it.' Ministers, as a class, know less practically of human nature

than any other _class_ of men. As I belong to the fraternity, I can say

this without prejudice. Men are reserved in the presence of a

respectable clergyman. I might live in Schenectady, and discharge all my

appropriate duties from year to year, and never hear an oath, nor see a

man drunk; and if some one should ask me, 'What sort of a population

have you in Schenectady? Are they a moral people? Do they swear? Do they

get drunk?' for aught that I had seen or heard, I might answer, 'This

is, after all, a very decent world. There is very little vice in it.

People have entirely left off the sin of profaneness; and, as to

intemperance, there is very little of that.' But I can put on my old

great-coat, and an old slouching hat, and in five minutes place myself

amid the scenes of blasphemy and vice and misery, which I never could

have believed to exist if I had not seen them. So a man may walk along

Broadway, and think to himself, 'What a fine place this is! How civil

the people are! What a decent and orderly and virtuous city New York

is!'--while, at the same time, within thirty rods of him are scenes of

pollution and crime such as none but an eyewitness can adequately

imagine. I would have a minister _see_ the world for himself. _It is

rotten to the core._ Ministers ordinarily see only the brighter side of

the world. Almost everybody treats them with civility; the religious,

with peculiar kindness and attention. Hence they are apt to think too

well of the world. Lawyers, on the other hand, think too ill of it. They

see only, or for the most part, its worst side. They are brought in

contact with dishonesty and villany in their worst developments. I have

observed, in doing business with lawyers, that they are exceedingly

hawk-eyed, and jealous of everybody. The omission of a word or letter in

a will, they will scan with the closest scrutiny; and while I could see

no use for any but the most concise and simple terms to express the

wishes of the testator, a lawyer would be satisfied with nothing but the

most precise and formal instrument, stuffed full of legal _caveats_ and

technicalities."

_Mr. C._ "Which do you think excels in eloquence, the bar or the

pulpit?"

_Dr. N._ "The bar."

_Mr. C._ "To what causes do you ascribe the superiority?"

_Dr. N._ "The superior influence of things of sight over those of faith.

The nearness of objects enhances their importance. The subjects on which

the lawyer speaks come home to men's business and bosoms. Some present,

immediate object is to be gained. The lawyer _feels_, and he aims to

accomplish something. But ministers have plunged into the metaphysics of

religion, and gone about to inculcate the peculiarities of a system, and

have neither felt themselves, nor been able to make others feel. It has

long been a most interesting question to me, Why is the ministry so

inefficient? It has seemed to me, that, with the thousands of pulpits in

this country for a theatre to act on, and the eye and ear of the whole

community thus opened to us, we might _overturn the world_. Some ascribe

this want of efficiency to human depravity. That is not the sole cause

of it. The clergy want knowledge of human nature. They want directness

of appeal. They want the same go-ahead common-sense way of interesting

men which lawyers have."

_Mr. C._ "Ought they not to cultivate elocution?"

_Dr. N._ "It seems to me that at those institutions where they pay the

most attention to elocution they speak the worst. I have no faith in

artificial eloquence. Teach men to think and feel, and, when they have

anything to the purpose to say, they can say it. I should about as soon

think of teaching a man to weep, or to laugh, or to swallow, as to speak

when he has anything to say."

_Mr. C._ "How, then, do you account for the astonishing power of some

tragedians?"

_Dr. N._ "Ah! the speaking in the theatre is all overacted. There is no

nature in it. Those actors, placed in a public assembly, and called upon

to address men on some real and momentous occasion, would utterly fail

to touch men's hearts, while some plain country-man, who had never

learned a rule of art, would find his way at once to the fountains of

feeling and action within them. The secret of the influence which is

felt in the acting of the teatre is _not_ that it is natural. Let a

_real tragedy_ be acted, and let men _believe_ that a _real_ scene is

before them, and the theatre would be deserted. No audience in this

country could bear the presentation of a natural and real tragedy. Men

go to the theatre to be amused. The scenery, the music, the attitudes,

the gesticulations, all unite to fix attention and amuse; but the

eloquence, so called, of the theatre, is all factitious, and is no more

adapted to the real occasions of life than would be the recitative in

singing, and it pleases on the same principle that _this does_."

_Mr. C._ "But, Doctor, why was it that, when Cooke or Kean appeared on

the stage, he engrossed all eyes and ears, and nothing was heard or seen

or thought of but himself? The acting of Kean was just as irresistible

as the whirlwind. He would take up an audience of three thousand in his

fist, as it were, and carry them just where he pleased, through every

extreme of passion."

_Dr. N._ "because these actors were great men. Cooke, as far as I have

been able to learn, (I never saw him,--I had once an engagement to meet

him in Philadelphia, but he was drunk at the time, and disappointed me,)

was perfectly _natural_. So I suppose Kean to have been. So Garrick was,

and Talma. And the secret of the influence of these men was, that they

burst the bonds of art and histrionic trick, and stood before their

audience in their untrammelled natural strength. Garrick, at his first

appearance, could not command an audience. It was first necessary for

him entirely to revolutionize the English stage.

"Ministers have, very often, a sanctimonious tone, which by many is

deemed a symbol of goodness. I would not say it is a symbol of

hypocrisy, as many very pious men have it. One man acquires a tone, and

those who study with him learn to associate it with his piety, and come

to esteem it an essential part of ministerial qualification. But,

instead of its being to me evidence of feeling, it evinces, in every

degree of it, want of feeling; and whenever a man rises in his religious

feelings sufficiently high, he will break away from the shackles of his

perverse habit, and speak in the tone of nature.

"The most eloquent preacher I have ever heard was Dr. L----. General

Hamilton at the bar was unrivalled. I heard his great effort in the case

of People _versus_ Croswell, for a libel upon Jefferson. There was a

curious changing of sides in the position of the advocates. Spencer, the

Attorney-General, who had long been climbing the ladder of democracy,

managed the cause for the people; and Hamilton, esteemed an old-school

Federalist, appeared as the champion of a free press. Of course, it

afforded the better opportunity of witnessing the professional skill and

rhetorical power of the respective advocates.

"Spencer, in the course of his plea, had occasion to refer to certain

decisions of Lord Mansfield, and embraced the opportunity of introducing

a splendid _ad captandum_ eulogium on his Lordship,--'A name born for

immortality; whose sun of fame would never set, but still hold its

course in the heavens, when the humble names of his antagonist and

himself should have sunk beneath the waves of oblivion.'

"Hamilton was evidently nettled at this invidious and unnecessary

comparison, and cast about in his mind how he might retort upon Spencer.

I do not know that my conjecture is right; but it has always seemed to

me that his reason for introducing his repartee to Spencer in the odd

place where he did, just after a most eloquent and pathetic peroration,

was something as follows--'I have now constructed and arranged my

argument, and the thread of it must not be broken by the intervention of

any such extraneous matter. Neither will it do to separate my peroration

from the main body of my argument. I must, then, give up the opportunity

of retorting at all, or tack it on after the whole, and take the risk of

destroying the effect of my argument.'

"He rose, and went through his argument, which was a tissue of the

clearest, most powerful, and triumphant reasoning. He turned every

position of his opponent, and took and dismantled every fortification.

But his peroration was inimitably fine. As he went on to depict the

horrors consequent upon a muzzled press, there was not a dry eye in the

court-house. It was the most perfect triumph of eloquence over the

passions of men I ever witnessed.

"When he had thus brought his speech to its proper, and what would have

been a perfect close, he suddenly changed his tone, and, in a strain of

consummate and powerful irony, began to rally his antagonist. He

assented to the gentleman's eulogium upon Lord Mansfield. It was

deserved. He acknowledged the justice of his remarks in relation to

himself (Hamilton) and his ephemeral fame; but he did not see why the

gentleman should have included himself in the same oblivious sentence.

His course hitherto in the race of fame had been as successful, for

aught he knew, as was ever his Lordship's. His strides had been as long

and as rapid. His disposition, too, to run the race was as eager, and he

knew no reason why he might not yet soar on stronger pinions, and reach

a loftier height, than his Lordship had done.

"During the whole reply, the audience were in a titter; and he sat down

amidst a burst of incontrollable laughter. Said Spencer to him

frowningly, (I sat by the side of the judges on the bench, and both

Hamilton and Spencer were within arm's length of me,) 'What do you mean,

sir?' Said Hamilton, with an arch smile, 'Nothing but a mere

compliment.' 'Very well, sir, I desire no more such compliments.'"

_Mr. C._ "What was the difference between the oratory of Hamilton and

that of Burr?"

_Dr. N._ "Burr, above all men whom I ever knew, possessed the most

consummate tact in evading and covering up the arguments of his

opponent. His great art was to throw dust in the eyes of the jury, and

make them believe that there was neither force nor sense nor anything

else in the arguments of the opposite counsel. He never met a position,

nor answered an argument, but threw around them the mist of sophistry,

and thus weakened their force. He was the _prince of plausibilities_. He

was always on the right side (in his own opinion), and always perfectly

confident.

"Hamilton, on the other hand, allowed to the arguments of his opponent

all the weight that could ever be fairly claimed for them, and attacked

and demolished them with the club of Hercules. He would never engage in

a cause unless he believed he was on the side of justice; and he often

threw into the scale of his client the whole weight of his personal

character and opinion. His opponents frequently complained of the undue

influence he thus exerted upon the court."

_Mr. C._ "You have heard Webster, I suppose."

_Dr. N._ "I have never heard him speak. I have the pleasure of a slight

personal acquaintance with him, and, from what I know of him, should

think he would have less power over the passions of men than Hamilton.

He is a giant, and deals with _great principles_ rather than passions.

"Bishop McIlvaine will always be heard. He has an elegant form, a fine

voice, and a brilliant imagination, and he can carry an audience just

where he pleases."

_Mr. C._ "You, of course, have heard Dr. Cox."

_Dr. N._ "Yes, often. He is an original, powerful man, unequal in his

performances: sometimes he hits, sometimes he misses; sometimes he rises

to the sublimity of powerful speaking, and at others sinks below the

common level."

_Mr. C._ "Have you read his book on Quakerism?"

_Dr. N._ "As much of it as I can. Some Presbyterians like it. For my

part, I confess I do not. He carries his anti-Quaker antipathies too

far. It is perfectly natural he should do so. Men who go over from one

denomination to another always stand up more than straight, and for two

reasons;--first, to satisfy their new friends that they have heartily

renounced their former error; secondly, to convince their former friends

that they had good reasons for desertion. Baptists who have become such

from Presbyterians are uniformly the most bigoted, and _vice versa_.

"I am disgusted and grieved with the religious controversies of the

present age. The divisions of schools, old school and new school, and

the polemical zeal and fury with which the contest is waged, are

entirely foreign from the true spirit of Christianity. The Christianity

of the age is, in my view, most unamiable. It has none of those lovely,

mellow features which distinguished primitive Christianity. If

Christianity as it now exists should be propagated over the world, and

thus the millennium be introduced, we should need two or three more

millenniums before the world would be fit to live in."

_Mr. C._ "Why do you judge so, Doctor?"

_Dr. N._ "By the style of our religious periodicals. If I had suddenly

dropped down here, and wished to ascertain at a bird's-eye view the

religious and moral state of the community, I would call for the papers

and magazines, and when I had glanced at them I should pronounce that

community to be in a low moral and religious state which could tolerate

such periodicals. A bad paper cannot live in a good community.

"I have been especially grieved and offended with the recent Catholic

controversy. I abhor much in the Catholic religion; but, nevertheless, I

believe there is a great deal of religion in that Church. I do not like

the condemnation of men in classes. I would not, in controversy with the

Catholics, render railing for railing. They cannot be put down so. They

must be charmed down by kindness and love."

_Mr. C._ "I have been much amused by reading that controversy."

_Dr. N._ "My dear sir, I am sorry to hear you say so. You cannot have

read that controversy with pleasure, without having been made a worse

man by it."

_Mr. C._ "Why, I was amused by it, I suppose, just as I should be amused

by seeing a gladiator's show."

_Dr. N._ "Just so; a very good comparison,--a very accurate comparison!

It is a mere gladiatorial contest; and the object of it, I fear, is not

so much truth as victory."

_Mr. C._ "But Luther fought so, Doctor."

_Dr. N._ "I know it; and I have no sympathy with that trait in the

character of Luther. The world owes more, perhaps, to Martin Luther

than to any other man who has ever lived; and as God makes the wrath of

man to praise him, and restrains the remainder, so he raised up Luther

as an instrument adapted to his age and the circumstances of the times.

But Luther's character in some of its features was harsh, rugged, and

unlovely; and in these it was not founded upon the Gospel.

"Compare him with St. Paul. Once they were placed in circumstances

almost identically the same. Luther's friends were endeavoring to

dissuade him from going to Worms, on account of apprehended danger. Said

Luther, 'If there were as many devils at Worms as there are tiles on the

roofs of the houses, I would go.'

"When Paul's friends at Caesarea wept, and besought him not to go up to

Jerusalem, knowing the things which would befall him there, 'What mean

ye,' said he, 'to weep, and break my heart? For I am ready, not to be

bound only, but to die also at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord

Jesus.'

"Many a bold, reckless man of the world could have said what Luther

said. None but a Christian could have uttered the words of Paul."

_Mr. C._ "Was it not in part a constitutional difference? Peter and Paul

were very different men; so, if Luther had not been a Christian, he

would have exhibited the same rugged features of character."

_Dr. N._ "That is just the point, sir. These traits in his character

were no part of his Christianity. They existed, not in consequence, but

in spite, of his religion. I want to see, in Christian character, the

rich, deep, mellow tint of the Scriptures."

CRETAN DAYS.

I.

CANEA.

It was by a happy chance that my first acquaintance with Crete and the

Cretans was made just previous to the outbreak of the insurrection which

has just now brought the island so strongly to the attention of the

world, and which will prevent any future traveller of this generation

from seeing it, as I saw it, at the highest point of that comparative

material prosperity which thirty-five years of such peace as Christian

lands enjoy under Turkish rule had created, and before the beginning of

that course of destruction which has now made the island one expanse of

poverty and ruin. It was in the beginning of the last year of the

administration of Ismael Pacha, in August, 1865, that, blockaded a month

in Syra by cholera, I finally got passage on a twenty-ton yacht

belonging to an English resident of that place, and made a loitering

three days' run to Canea.

Crete, though _never_ visited by cholera, was in quarantine at all Greek

ports, and intercourse with the great world was limited to occasional

voyages of the little caiques of the island to Syra, where they endured

two weeks' quarantine, and whence they brought back the mails and a

cargo of supplies, so that any arrival was an event to the Cydonians,

and that of a yacht flying the English and American flags at once was

enough to turn out the entire population. The fitful northerly breeze

had kept us the whole afternoon in sight of the port; and it was only as

sunset closed the doors of the health-office that we dropped anchor in

the middle of the little harbor,--the wondering centre of attraction to

a wondering town, whose folk came to assist at the sunsetting and our

arrival. Lazy soldiers, lying at full length on the old bronze cannon of

the batteries, looked out at us, only raising their heads from their

crossed arms; grave Turks, smoking their nargiles in front of the cafes

that open on the Marina, turned their chairs round to look at us without

stopping their hubble-bubbling; and all about us, where nothing else

was, a line of motley humanity--Greek, Turk, Egyptian, Nubian,

Abyssinian, under hats, caps, tarbouches, turbans, hats Persian and

ecclesiastical, and no hats at all--half circled us with mute and mostly

stupid admiration.

It was my first experience of a Turkish town, and perhaps I was more

struck with the dilapidation and evident decay than I ought to have

been. The sea-wall of the massive Venetian fortification seemed

crumbling and carious; the earth-work above it was half washed away; the

semicircle of houses on the Marina looked seedy and tottering; the

Marina itself was in places under-cut and falling into the water; and

above us, overtopping the whole city, the Pacha's palace, built on the

still substantial, though time-worn and neglected walls of the old

Venetian citadel, reared a lath-and-plaster shabbiness against the glow

of the western sky, reminding one of an American seaside hotel in the

last stages of popularity and profitable tenancy,--great gaps in the

plaster showing the flimsiness of the construction, while a coating of

unmitigated whitewash almost defied the sunset glow to modify it. On the

western point of the crescent of the Marina, under the height on which

stands the palace, is a domed mosque,--one large central dome surrounded

by little ones,--with a not ugly minaret, slightly cracked by

earthquakes, standing at one side in a little cemetery, among whose

turbaned tombstones grow a palm and an olive tree, and beyond which the

khan (also serving as custom-house), a two-story house of the Venetian

days, relieves the dreary white with a wash of ochre, stained and

streaked to any tint almost. A little nearer the bottom of the port is

an old Venetian gate, which once shut the Marina in at night while the

custom-house guard slept, and over the keystone of which the Lion of St.

Mark's still turns his mutilated head to the sea.

On the whole, the look of the thing was not unpicturesque, except for

the hopeless whiteness and shabbiness of the principal architectural

features, and especially the "Konak" (palace), which was, beyond all

disguise of light or circumstance, an eyesore and a nuisance, the more

so that its foundations were fine old brown stone masonry, delicious in

color, solid, and showing at one end a pointed arched vault, with its

portward end fallen down to show the interior, and crowned with an

enormous mass of cactus. On the south side, invisible from the port, are

three fine Gothic windows, now filled up, but preserving the traceries.

The palace could scarcely have had a nobler site, or the site a more

ignoble occupancy.

Too late for pratique, we had nothing to do but turn in early, and get

ready to go ashore at sunrise.

Once landed, I began to wish that the comparison I had drawn for the

Konak was a more just one, and that inside its card-board classicalism

could be found the slightest approach to American hospitality. Not an

inn of any kind exists in Canea: a dirty, dingy restaurant, which called

itself "The Guest-House of the Spheres," offered one small bedroom,

which the filth of the place, with its suggestions of bugs and fleas,

forbade the title of a sleeping-room. While the yacht stayed I had a

bed; but after that it was a dreary prospect for a man who had intended

living at his ease in his inn the rest of the summer. And here let me,

once for all, give due credit to Crete, and say that, though there is

not from one end of the island to the other an inn, the stranger will

never wait long, even in the smallest village, to know where he may

sleep, and will rarely find a greater difficulty than to reconcile the

rival claims to the honor of his presence. In my case, I had no greatly

prolonged anxiety, and accepted the proffered hospitality of Mr. Alexis,

then Vice-Consul of the United States of America, and now Dutch Consul,

to whom most of the few travellers in Crete are more or less under

obligations.

I thoroughly enjoyed some days of careless loafing about Canea. I have

intimated my slight experience of Turkish towns; and if the critic

should think it worth while to remark that I should have seen

Constantinople and Cairo, Smyrna and Salonica, before attempting to

describe one, I admit the justice of the criticism, and pass over

readily all that is Turkish in Canea, the more that it is mainly of

negative or destructive character. What remains of interest in Canea is

Venetian, though of that there is almost nothing which represents the

great period of the sea-republic, except the fine, and in most parts

well-conditioned walls. Here and there a double-arched window, with a

bit of fine carving in the capitals, peeps out from the jutting

uglinesses of seraglio windows, close latticed and mysterious; one or

two fine doorways, neglected and battered as to their ornamentation,

some coats of arms, three or four arched gateways, and as many

fountains, are all that will catch the eye of the artist inside the

walls, unless it be the port, with its quaint and picturesque boats of

antique pattern.

Canea had its west-end in what is now known as the Castelli,--the slight

elevation on which, most probably, the ancient city was built, and on

which stood the Venetian citadel, and the aristocratic quarter, enclosed

and gated with an interior wall, whose circuit may still be traced in

occasional glimpses of the brown stone above and between the Turkish

houses. The Castelli of to-day is the principal street of this quarter,

running through its centre, and guarded by the gates whose arches

remain, valueless and without portcullis, but showing in their present

state how strong a defence was needed to assure the patricians in their

slumbers against any importunate attempts of their malcontent subjects

and fellow-townsmen to clear off the score which the infamous government

of the Republic accumulated. One doorway in this street struck me

particularly, from the exquisite ornamentation of its stone doorway; but

the palace to which it opened is abandoned, and in ruins. Most of the

better class of these houses are in the same state, modern repair being

only a shabby patching up and whitewashing. The quarter is inhabited

almost entirely by Mussulmans; and, though habitable houses are greatly

in demand in the business parts of Canea, and many of these old palaces

could be made available at a small cost, their owners have so little

energy, or so great an aversion to new-comers and Christians, that none

of them are put under repairs.

On the walls of the city are many old bronze guns of both Venetian and

Turkish manufacture. The former still bear the Lion of St. Mark's, and

one long nine-pounder is exquisitely ornamented with a reticulation of

vines cast in relief over the whole length of it. It bears the name of

Albergetti, its founder. The only modern guns I saw were half a dozen

heavy cast-iron thirty-two-pounders of Liege, and a few light bronze

guns on the battery commanding the entrance of the harbor. The whole

circuit of the walls is still furnished with the ancient bronze guns, of

which several are of about twelve-inch calibre, with their stone balls

still lying by them.

The harbor of Canea approximates in form to a clumsy L, the bottom of

the letter forming the basin in the centre of which our yacht was

moored, with a longer recess running eastward from the entrance, and

divided from the open sea only by a reef on which the mole is built,

following the direction of the coast at this part of the island. The

narrow entrance is at the exterior angle of the L, between the

water-battery and the lighthouse; and in the interior angle are the

Castelli, Konak, &c. Along the inner side of the eastern recess, and

across its extremity, is a line of galley-houses,--the penitential

offering, it is said, of a patrician exiled here, to purchase his

repatriation. Earthquakes have rent their walls, decay has followed

disuse, for the harbor has now become so filled up that only a small

boat can get into the furthermost of the arches, and the greater part of

the galley-houses have dry land out to their entrances, and the

ship-yard of to-day is in the vacant space left by the fall of two or

three of them.

As might be expected, Canea is a very dull city. Out of the highway of

Eastern trade or travel, whoever visits it must do so for itself alone,

for the arts of amusing idlers and luring travellers are unknown to it.

The only amusements for summer are a nargile on the Marina, studying

primitive civilization the while, during the twilight hours, and the

afternoon circuit of the ramparts, where every day at five o'clock an

execrable band tortures the most familiar arias with clangor of

discordant brass. From the ramparts we overlooked the plain, bounded by

Mount Malaxa, above which loomed the Aspravouna, showing late in summer

strips of snow in the ravines that furrowed the bare crystalline peaks,

brown and gray and parched with the drought of three months. The Cretan

summer runs rainless from June to October; and the only relief to the

aridity of the landscape is formed by the olive-orchards, covering

nearly the whole expanse between the sea sands and the treeless ridge of

Malaxa with so luxuriant a green, that, accustomed to the olive of

Italy, I could scarcely believe these to be the same trees. This I at

first supposed to be owing to some peculiarity of the plain, but

subsequently found it to be characteristic of the Cretan olive; and I

remember hearing Captain Brine of the Racer express the same surprise I

myself felt on first seeing the olive here. The trees are like

river-side willows in early summer.

To get a clear comprehension of the position of Canea and the ancient

advantages of Cydonia, its local predecessor, and at the same time of

the whole northwestern district of Crete, one must ascend the hills of

the Akroteri,--at least the first ridge, from which the view is superb.

The Aspravouna towers higher: we look into the gorges of the Malaxa

ridge, and up the ravine of Theriso, to the mountains about Laki,--an

immemorial strong-hold of the Cretans, behind which, a sure and

impregnable refuge to brave men, is the great plain of Omalos. Farther

on are the hills of Selinos and Kisamos, sending off northward two long

parallel ridges of considerable altitude, the peninsula of Grabusa, the

ancient Corycus, the western land of Crete, and, from where we look,

visible in portions above the nearer ridge of Cape Spada, the Dictynnian

peninsula, which divides the plain of Cydonia from that of Kisamon and

Polyrrhenia, and, but for the glimpses of Corycus above it, shutting in

our view, as it bounds the territory dependent on the ancient city.

No site in Crete is more distinctly recognizable from the indications of

the ancient geographers than Cydonia. It had "a port with shoals

outside," and from this elevation one looks directly down the longer

fork of the harbor, and can see how the mole is built on a black reef,

whose detached masses extend from the lighthouse eastward to the corner

of the city wall, which is built out to meet it, and then descends to

the mole, with which it is continuous. Beyond the entrance of the

harbor, the reef again appears, gradually nearing the shore; and beyond

this, as far as the eye can reach, are no rocks,--no Other nook where a

galley could have taken refuge.

How the hearts of the Pelasgian wanderers must have bounded when their

exploring prows pushed into this nook, which offered them shelter from

all winds that blow! It was a site to gladden the eyes of those builders

of cities. Up above them, the bluff rock waiting for the layers of huge

stones,--the eastern nook of the port more perfectly protected than the

southern, which receives more or less the swell from the northerly

winds, and whose inner shore of hard sand tempted the weary

keels,--while all around stretched a wide, fertile, and then probably

forest-clad plain, doubtless abounding in the stags for which the

district was long famous. Here the restless race "located," and seem to

have prospered in the days of those brave men who lived before

Agamemnon, to whom and to whose allies in the Trojan war they seem to

have given much the same trouble that their reputed descendants, the

Sphakiotes, did to the Cretan Assembly of 1866, not being either then or

now over-devoted to Panhellenism, though never averse to a comfortable

fight.

Pashley quotes a Latin author to show that Cydonia was one of the most

ancient, if not the most ancient, of Cretan cities,--"Cnossus and

Erythraea, and, as the Greeks say, Cydonia, mother of cities." The

alleged foundation of the city by Agamemnon was clearly, if anything,

only a revival of the more ancient city; and after him successive

colonizations rolled their waves in on this beautiful shore, obedient to

its irresistible attraction. Dorian, Samiote, Roman, followed, adding

new blood, and perhaps new wealth; and when finally, in the degradation

of the Byzantine empire, Venice took possession of Crete, Cydonia had so

far passed into insignificance, that, "seeking a place to build a

fortress to quell the turbulent Greeks," she refounded Cydonia, and

called it Canea,--an evident corruption of the old name. With all this

building and rebuilding, nothing remains, of the ancient city. A mass of

masonry near the Mussulman cemetery, which Chevalier in 1699 saw covered

with a mosaic pavement, is still visible, but is Roman work, rubble and

mortar. As Pashley says, the modern walls of Canea would have been

sufficient to consume all vestiges of the ancient building. The

citations he gives ought to put at rest all question, of the identity of

Canea with Cydonia, and we shall presently see the only serious

objection which has been raised against it disappear under an

examination of the geological character of the plain.[A]

Looking from our hill-top southwestwardly across the plain, the eye is

carried between two low ranges of hills into a valley which seems a

continuation of this plain. Here runs the Iardanos, along which,

according to Homer, the Cydonians dwelt. But it is now in no point of

its course nearer than ten miles to Canea. This discrepancy troubled the

early travellers, who were finally inclined to solve the riddle by

supposing Cydonia to have been a district, and not a city merely. But

study the plain a little, or Spratt's chart of it, and we shall see that

from that far-off river-bed an almost unbroken and very gentle

inclination leads through the plain, by the rear of the city, to the bay

of Suda, a considerable ridge rising between it and the sea.

Suppose the mountains reclothed with forests, the hillsides pierced with

perennial springs, and the flowing of the waters, not, as now, fitful

and impetuous, but copious and constant. Then dam up the narrow opening

the river has cut through the coast line of hills, in its direct course

from the mountains to the sea, with a smaller and similar one cut by a

stream coming down from Theriso, and you have the whole water sheet of

the north side of the Aspravouna emptying into the bay of Suda. In this

supposed route of the Iardanos (now the Platanos), just where it

commences its cutting through the hills, is a large marsh, the remnant

of what was once a lake of a mile or more in width, when the Iardanos,

then a gentle, bounteous river, turned from its present course to run

eastward, and deposit its washings where they made the marshes of

Tuzla, and the shallows at the head of Suda Bay. Civilization,

ship-building, commerce, carried away the forests; and, thus changed[B]

into a furious mountain torrent,--three months a roaring flood which no

bridge can stride, and the rest of the year almost a dry pebbled

bed,--the Iardanos made a straight cut for the sea, drained its lake,

forgot its old courses, and changed, in time, its name; and _so_ it

happens that the Cydonians no longer dwell along the Iardanos.

While we are on our look-out, let us try to study out another puzzle,

which even Spratt left in doubt, i. e. the site of Pergamos. We know

that it was near both Cydonia and Achaia, and Spratt pretty conclusively

fixes the latter on the Dictynnian peninsula; so that it must have been

in our present field of view. Looking this over, we can see but one

point of land which offers the indispensable requisites for a city of

the heroic ages, and that is the site of the modern Platania, midway

between Canea and the peninsula,--a bold hill with a nearly

perpendicular face to the north and east, and so abrupt on the west as

to be easily fortified, and connected with the hills on the south by a

narrow neck of hill,--such a site, in fact, as any one familiar with

Pelasgic remains would seek at once in a country where any such remains

existed. The fact that no remains exist to show that an ancient city

stood here proves no more than at Canea; while the fact that none of the

possible sites in the neighborhood show any such remains is conclusive

against them, as no modern cities are there to consume the ancient

masonry. In our researches in the island, we shall almost invariably

find that, where there are remains of ancient cities, there is no modern

town, and that, where a modern town stands on an ancient site

determined, there are few, if any, antique vestiges. The reason is

evident,--the ruins serve as quarry. The change of name even proves more

for our hypothesis than against it. The plane-tree was not in ancient

times so rare in the island as now, and would hardly have then given a

name to a city, while now it not only names Platania, but the river

even,--a grove of plane-trees occupying the valley between the city and

the mouth of the river. The probability is, then, that the names of both

are synchronous; and it would be useless to look for any Platania in

ancient times, or any vestige of the name "Pergamos" in modern times,

while, if the ancient city stood on a site now abandoned, we should in

all probability find both ruins and name to indicate the locality.

The conjecture of Spratt, that Pergamos was near Pyrgos Pori is only a

conjecture, Pyrgos being too common a name for any strongly situated

village or ruin to have any significance. A city at that locality would,

moreover, have been cut off from all sea approach by the Iardanos in its

ancient course; and as Pergamos was one of those cities founded by the

wanderers from Troy,--either, they say, by Agamemnon or AEneas,--it would

probably not have been founded on an inland site, or even on a river

navigable, as the Iardanos must have been, for small craft, the access

to which would be commanded by Aptera, Minoa, and Cydonia. So far as

conjecture goes, it seems to me much more likely that Hagia Irene--which

Spratt supposes the ancient city--was Achaia, the location of which he

avoids by supposing it a district, rather than a city, forgetting that

in those days no one dwelt outside of city walls. My hypothesis, coupled

with that of the identity of Platania with Pergamos, would satisfy all

the exigencies of the case, which that of neither Spratt nor Pashley

does. For the rest, Pergamos is mainly interesting as the burial-place

of Lycurgus.

From our point of view on the Akroteri, we see the whole domain of

Cydonia,--as at our left Suda Bay terminates the view, (on the first

plateau eastward of the bay Aptera presided,) while the Dictynnian hills

divide it from the plain of Kisamos to the west, and the mountains rise

abruptly to the south;--a little kingdom well defined, one of the most

perfectly beautiful territories the tourist can find, and still

fertile,--though the hills have forgotten their fruit and the plain its

river,--and capable of sustaining a much larger population than it now

supports, if the Mohammedan blight were off it.

Almost at the foot of the ridge where we stand is a beautiful example of

a Venetian fortified country-house,--a little castle, turreted and

loop-holed, with a drawbridge thrown from a tower rising opposite the

doorway, and still in excellent preservation. Other similar houses may

be seen, but I have nowhere in the island found one so fine as this. At

the farther edge of the plain, lying along under the hills, is a

succession of white villages,--Zukalaria, Nerokouro (running water),

Murnies, celebrated for its oranges and the brutal and gratuitous

massacre by Mustapha Pacha (late Imperial Commissioner), in 1833,

Boutzounaria (dripping water), first place of assembling of the Cretan

malcontents in 1866, Perivolia, Galatas, Hagia Marina, and Platania, by

the sea.

Off Platania is the island of St. Theodore, whose fortress, defended by

the Venetian mercenaries against the Turks, showed one of those examples

of heroic constancy we so generally and erroneously attribute to

patriotic courage; for, defying the enemy to the last, the garrison

defended the castle until the Turks had stormed and filled it with their

numbers, and then blew it up, destroying every one within the walls. The

foundations still remain, but level with the cemented floor; everything

is razed cleanly, while the fragments lie along the slopes like the

ejections of a volcano.

Midway between the Akroteri and Canea lies Kalepa, a suburb where most

of the foreign consuls reside in summer, with many of the wealthier

Khaniotes, and the only place in the vicinity where the summer can be

passed in comfort. A few houses are fitted with European improvements,

but the greater part are the simple and cheerless residences of the

Cretan peasant, furnished with the merest necessities of existence. Even

here, in the most prosperous of the villages I have been in, life is,

for most of the people, only a struggle against poverty, thrift being

impossible where every surplus meets a new impost. Many houses are still

in ruins from the devastations of 1821-1830, showing how incompletely

the island had recovered from that war before being plunged into another

more destructive still. From the ravages of this, however, Kalepa is

saved so far,--thanks to a few consular residents,--but saved alone of

all the villages of the plain country.

If it be true that civilization is determined by natural advantages, it

must be that Cydonia was the "mother of cities," at least of all the

Hellenic realm, for no more enchanting or tempting site have I ever

known through travel or description. With its climate of paradisiacal

softness and healthfulness, and the beauty of its framing hills,--fanned

in summer by the north winds from the AEgean and by south winds tempered

by the snows of the Aspravouna,--with a winter in which vegetation never

ceases and frost never comes,--with its garden-like plain and its

old-time river, and its port unexceptionable in ancient times,--nothing

was wanting to render prosperity and security complete in former days,

as nothing but freedom is wanting now to restore both, and make the city

the most attractive place in the classical world. Hitherto, its charms

have but tempted invasion, and its fertility has only grown harvests for

the sword. Here began the Cretan conquest by Metellus; here began the

movements which, one after the other, have shaken the Ottoman chain only

to make it heavier; and here began the latest struggle, which, so long

and gallantly upheld, may finally bring back to Crete the civilization

born on her shores, but for so many centuries an exile.

II.

THE AKROTERI.

Not to make one's first excursion from Canea to the Akroteri, with its

convent of the Hagia Triada (Holy Trinity), and its sacred Grotto of St.

John, would be _lesa maesta_ to the Khaniotes, who regard a pilgrimage

to the latter as entitling one to a Hadjiship.

The ride (or walk, which I recommend, in preference, to good

pedestrians) is a delightful one in early summer; and, even after the

heats of August have browned the plain of the Akroteri, an early start

from Canea will leave a memory of breezy upland with wide expanse of

mountain and sea,--including some of the most picturesque views to be

found in Crete,--and of the rich odors of many aromatic herbs and

flowers, through whose rifled sweets the Akroteri is famous for its

honey. A three hours' ride--first up the zigzag road that climbs the

ridge above Kalepa, and then over an undulating plain sparsely dotted

with hamlets and clouded here and there with olive-orchards--brings one,

with a sufficient appreciation of good cheer, and clean, cool rooms,

shade, and quiet, into the cloistered court of Hagia Triada, a

semi-military building of the Venetian days. Still unfinished, the

Turkish conquest having interrupted its progress, with all other in the

seventeenth century. In the centre of the quadrangle, round which are

the rooms of the monks and the guest-rooms, stands the church, an

edifice nondescript as to style, with a facade of a species of Venetian

Doric, fronting a building whose plan is a Latin cross, and whose roof

observes Byzantine tradition. On the entablature over the doorway are

the dedicatory Greek capitals, [Greek: BGYTHTP],--the meaning of which

none of the priests could tell me, though a duplicate inscription in

Latin and Greek beside the door told by whom the convent was built; and

the Hegoumenos added the tradition, that the two founders, being

converted by an extraordinary illumination from the Latin to the Greek

Church, gave an edifying proof of their devotion to their new creed by

erecting this convent.

The Hegoumenos was a Sphakiote, a very shrewd, clear-headed and

energetic man, and, though betraying no great familiarity with books or

dogmas, showed that he was a better fisher in those waters where men are

to be caught than most of his _confreres_ of any creed. He had that

manner of innate authority which never fails to impose itself on the

indecisions and self-distrusts of the mass of men, and which in a wider

circle of ambition would certainly have won him a larger place. Like the

Hegoumenos of every other Greek convent, he was elected by the monks,

and, though completely in the hands of his brethren, and at any time

liable to be removed by another election, the subordination to him was

perfect as could have been imagined. It was a curious exemplification of

the force of democracy. Yet not only in Hagia Triada, but in other

Cretan convents, I have seen how the mass of men find their governors as

surely and wisely, and often more fitly, than if they had had men born

to the place, or appointed by some superior hierarchy.

In Italy I had always been accustomed to find the convents posted on the

hill-tops, and almost inaccessible; but in Crete the loveliest valleys

are almost certain to have been chosen as their locations. The convent

of the Hagia Triada is indeed on a plain, but at the foot of the range

of hills which skirts the Akroteri to the north, and is thus almost shut

in from two sides, while to the south the plain extends to Suda Bay,

which is hidden in the chasm between the Akroteri and Mount Malaxa, and

beyond which the mountains of Sphakia rise in picturesque and alluring

redundance of ravine and massive rock. All the nearer plain is green

with the olive-orchards, and the road which approaches the front

entrance is flanked with two lines of cypresses, and carob-trees grow up

the rocky heights overlooking the convent, where no other tree will

grow. The hum of bees filled the air, and mingled with the notes of

nightingales (poetically fabled to sing _only_ by night), the chirping

of multitudinous sparrows, wrens, and linnets, and the twittering of

swallows. At the outer gate sat two or three aged monks, picturesque and

sculpturesque at once, like enchanted porters at the doors of some

spellbound palace, their long, gray beards and sunken, listless eyes

according with their own and the convent's external dilapidation.

The beauty and quiet of the place were almost enchantment enough to

account for the gray-headed porters, their immobility and longevity, and

I longed to draw the charm over me. But I was one of a party which had

come under the inspiration of the most inane motive of travel,--the

desire to see all there was to be seen; and so, after a half-hour's

repose, and the usual refreshments,--preserved fruits and a glass of

water, followed by coffee,--we enlisted the Hegoumenos in our party, and

set out for the grotto, taking in the way Hagios Joannes, a still more

incomplete and still more secluded convent than Hagia Triada, among the

hills between the latter and the sea. The road which we followed would

be called by no means a bad road for Crete, but anywhere else would be

execrable,--a mere bridle-path through a gorge in a range of hills from

which all the soil seems to have been washed with most of the small

stones, and where, with much precaution, your beast goes picking his way

as if in a laborious, slow-paced minuet. The convent stands in an

opening of the hills, on a little bit of comparatively plain land,-a

half-finished battlemented square pile, offering defence against a

slight attack; but the monks said that the Turks always found the road

so bad that they never came to attack them during any of the island

wars, though Hagia Triada was twice pillaged. The comparative poverty

of Hagios Joannes may have had something to do with its exemption, but

the road would defend it from my encroachments forever; and, in fact,

visitors only pass it on the way to the grottoes and convent of

Katholikon, which lie near the opening of the gorge, where it becomes a

wild glen, and approaches the sea. The path, descending, led us to the

Cave of the Bear, where we had arranged to lunch, and the bounties of

Canea, spread on the ground in the mouth of the cave, went to repair the

wear and tear of body and temper caused by the badness of the road. The

cave derives its name from a mass of stalactite which has a traceable

resemblance to a bear, but it had no further interest than being our

lunching-place. Here the road became so bad that even a donkey could not

follow it, and we clambered down on foot by zigzag and rock stair to the

mouth of the Cave of St. John. Caves _per se_ have no kind of attraction

to me. Stalactite and stalagmite are pretty much the same: so, half the

way in, I made excuse of the fatigue of some of the ladies, and,

determining to go no farther, proved my gallantry by stopping to keep

them company, thus abandoning my Hadjiship, which can only be claimed

when the inner chamber is attained. If, then, the reader would know

more, he must consult the guide-book, when there is one; and meanwhile

let me assure him, on the authority of Pashley, that the cave is four

hundred and seventy feet deep, and, on that of my more persevering

fellow-visitors, that at the bottom is a chamber, very fine and imposing

by torchlight, where is a couch of natural formation on which died the

saint, leaving his name with his bones and the odor of his sanctity. The

story is that this St. John--neither the Baptist nor the Evangelist, but

a hermit of Crete--centuries ago made his abode here, and lived many

years without seeing the face of another man. Lest he should in daylight

chance upon his abhorred and outcast brethren, or any of them, he only

ventured out at night, and lived on what he could find in other people's

gardens or orchards. Happening one night to be discovered in the act of

laying in a provision of corn, he was mistaken for a thief, and received

an arrow from the owner of the provision. He crawled back, mortally

wounded, to his grotto, and never came out again except in the shape of

relics.

The convent of Katholikon, long abandoned, did not invite entrance: a

Venetian bridge spans the ravine, and gave access to the chapel for the

hermits whose little dens still remain on the other side, the denizens

having long since deserted them. Down by the sea are some Venetian

ruins, a boat-house, and some masonry of a landing. I advise travellers

who will visit Katholikon, its cave and hermitages, to order a boat

round from Canea to meet them at this place, and then go home in

comfort,--the only point to be gained from going back by land being a

more thorough experience of Cretan roads. To those who intend seeing the

rest of the island, opportunities will not lack for this; to others, the

knowledge is superfluous. A careful horse will make his way down, but he

ought to be strong to get up. Mine was not; and, in climbing, his force

or his footing failed him, and over he went backwards, and I narrowly

escaped being crushed under him. Stunned and half bewildered by the

fall,--for I had struck on my back amongst sharp stones, with one of

which my head had made intimate acquaintance,--I managed, I know not

how, to extricate myself from the flourish of legs; the horse lying more

helpless than myself in the narrow path between two slopes of stone, and

vainly plunging to get over on his side. He finally completed his

somerset, to the confusion of the line of equestrians behind, the

nearest of whom were speedily dismounted; and the chances of a kicking

match among the quadrupeds were good for a moment, until two prompt

Arabs, in attendance on Miss T----, restored the disorderly elements to

peace. Sore, bleeding, and faint, I lay awhile on a bed of wild thyme,

until I began to feel the good effects of a cordial administered by the

_pateras_, and we resumed our file, most of the party returning directly

to Canea,--myself, with a companion who served as guide and interpreter,

passing the night at the convent, the good Hegoumenos being urgent in

his entreaties that the whole company would likewise honor his roof.

None of the ladies felt inclined to do so, and perhaps it was just as

well for their repose that they did not; for, clean as the rooms of the

convent were, and white as was the linen, there were discomforts which,

though infinitely small, were infinitely numerous, and, by the law of

majorities, our tormentors turned us out of bed to pass the night in the

open air,--a change always safe, and even delightful at this season, in

Crete.

The Greek convent is a true hostel; no one is refused admission and

hospitality,--no restrictions on the gentler sex make it impossible for

real parties of pleasure to visit its beautiful valley,--no Pharisaic

rigidity of self-denial makes it imperative to refuse visitors good

cheer, though the community observe their long and trying fasts with a

severity which puts to shame abstinence in Catholic countries. (The

Greek fasts two hundred and forty-six days out of three hundred and

sixty-five, and most of this time not even fish is allowed, while part

of the time oil, milk, and shell-fish are also forbidden.) And the

welcome is no mere show of kindliness; the longer you stay at the

convent, the better the monks are pleased, and staying longer than you

intended is the highest compliment you can pay them. What change a

larger acquaintance with the world will produce, of course I cannot say,

or how much the spirit of hospitality will diminish by an increase of

the calls on it; but now no English country-house makes you more at home

than a Cretan convent.

In the morning, the _pateras_ guided us to a peak, near the northeastern

point of the Akroteri, whence we could overlook, not only the peninsula

and Suda Bay, but the Apokorona, the coast from Cape Spada to Cape

Stavros, the Rhiza as far as the mountains of Kisamos, Mount Ida, and

the mountains of Sphakia, Lampe, and even, in the dim distance,

Lassithe. Included in the field of view were the sites of seven of the

Cretan cities of _early_ days, not counting Minoa and Canea, hidden from

view. On the north, we had the Greek islands Cerigotto, Cerigo, Milo,

Santorini, and others less prominent. It was my intention to return by

the shore of Suda Bay, in order to visit Minoa, but the badness of the

roads, and the utter want of interest in the intermediate distance,

determined me to visit that part of the Akroteri by boat at a later

period.

Returning to the convent, we had not long to wait for a capital

dinner,--soup, a boiled chicken, mutton stewed with artichokes and

beans, new honey, and rice prepared with milk, sugar, and spices, with a

dessert of figs and grapes. The wine of the convent had a bitter taste,

from an herb steeped in it, which was preferable to the pitch of Greek

wines, but still not a desirable addition. One of the monks, who had a

small property close by the convent, brought us a bottle of wine of his

own production, which was one of the best I have ever tasted in the

East, and to my mind better than that of Cyprus. With coffee and

cigarettes we stretched ourselves on the sofas before the windows,

through which the east wind blew the odors extorted from the fragrant

herbs and flowers by the overpowering sun. No other sound than the hum

of the bees darting past with unwearying haste, and the chirping of a

few birds amongst the olives, disturbed the air, and the monks left us

to dream or doze as we pleased. The charm of the place was complete, and

it would not have been a penance to make the convent a summer's abode.

The fleas were a drawback, surely; but nowhere in Crete can one get away

from that plague, and at Hagia Triada they were less offensive, as I

learned by later experience, than in many other convents, and even in

most private houses.

When, the sun cooling his fires, we ordered our steeds out, and prepared

to return, the whole _personnel_ of the convent came to assist, with the

inhabitants of a little village adjoining, which finds protection and

Christian charity from the convent. The monks, excepting two or three,

seemed of an ignorant and boorish quality, but hard-working and

kind-hearted. Here, evidently, a certain kind of bliss was in ignorance,

and the most learned were not wise enough to be accused of much folly.

The Hegoumenos, in bidding us good by, begged us warmly to come again

and stay long,--a month at least. All joined in the kindly wish; and we

rode back through the lengthening olive shadows, which never had fitter

accompaniment than in the peace and content which the convent promised

us, and I am sure not vainly. Not that I am a believer in the peace that

does not come of fighting,--the retreat before battle,--or think that

quiet and laziness are one. Content is a piggish virtue and one which no

earnest soul can abide in, and unsleeping ambition is the only Jacob's

ladder; but when my reader is tired of struggling, and must repose, I am

sure that he (or she, even) would find in Hagia Triada such peace and

content as may be healthfully known, and no begrudging of the solace and

satisfaction to heretics. It seems to me that only those who have no

right to a quiet life envy it in others, and, as our monks earn their

right to be charitable, they are not envious, even with sinners.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] As I shall have constant occasion to draw from Pashley information

and quotations which my own classical reading, time, and library

facilities do not permit me even to verify, I shall, once for all,

confess indebtedness for almost all the classical knowledge I possess of

the island, as well as for almost all the topographical information and

direction in my visits to antique sites, to either him or Spratt,

without whose invaluable researches the half of Crete would still be in

a measure _terra incognita_. What I hope to add to the knowledge of

Crete will be in a different vein from theirs.

[B] Consult Marsh's "Man and Nature."

CHANSON WITHOUT MUSIC.

BY THE PROFESSOR EMERITUS Of DEAD AND LIVE LANGUAGES.

([Greek: Phi. Beta. Kappa.]--CAMBRIDGE, 1867.)

You bid me sing,--can I forget

The classic ode of days gone by,--

How belle Fifine and jeune Lisette

Exclaimed, "Anacreon, geron ei"?

"Regardez donc," those ladies said,--

"You're getting bald and wrinkled too:

When summer's roses all are shed,

Love's nullum ite, voyez-vous!"

In vain ce brave Anacreon's cry,

"Of Love alone my banjo sings"

(Erota mounon). "Etiam si,--

Eh b'en?" replied the saucy things,--

"Go find a maid whose hair is gray,

And strike your lyre,--we sha'n't complain;

But parce nobis, s'il vous plait,--

Voila Adolphe! Voila Eugene!"

Ah, jeune Lisette! Ah, belle Fifine!

Anacreon's lesson all must learn;

'O kairos oxus; Spring is green;

But Acer Hyems waits his turn!

I hear you whispering from the dust,

"Tiens, mon cher, c'est toujours so,--

The brightest blade grows dim with rust,

The fairest meadow white with snow!"

You do not mean it! _Not_ encore?

_Another_ string of playday rhymes?

You've heard me--nonne est?--before,

Multoties,--more than twenty times;

Non possum,--vraiment,--pas du tout,

I cannot! I am loath to shirk;

But who will listen if I do,

My memory makes such shocking work?

Ginosko, Scio. Yes, I'm told

Some ancients like my rusty lay,

As Grandpa Noah loved the old

Red-sandstone march of Jubal's day

I used to carol like the birds,

But time my wits has quite unfixed,

Et quoad verba,--for my words,--

Ciel! Eheu! Whe-ew!--how they're mixed!

Mehercle! Zeu! Diable! how

My thoughts were dressed when I was young

But tempus fugit! see them now

Half clad in rags of every tongue!

O philoi, fratres, chers amis!

I dare not court the youthful Muse,

For fear her sharp response should be,

"Papa Anacreon, please excuse!"

Adieu! I've trod my annual track

How long!--let others count the miles,--

And peddled out my rhyming pack

To friends who always paid in smiles.

So, laissez-moi! some youthful wit

No doubt has wares he wants to show;

And I am asking, "Let me sit,"

Dum ille clamat, "Dos pou sto!"

THE ROSE ROLLINS.

PART II.

"It was a Sunday evening that was coming on, you see, and there was a

full moon, and all the willagers would be out to church, because there

was a rewival a-going on, and, thinks says I, he'll walk into his sleep,

like as not, and he'll be wisible to one and he'll be wisible to all,

and I must adopt the adwice that's been adwised me, whether it's quite

adwisable or not; so I gets the clothes-line, and I cuts off about five

yards, and I slips it under my piller before I goes to--before I retires

to rest. The clothes-line was a new hempen one, and strong as could be.

Well, he was no sooner asleep than up I riz, and slips the line from

under my piller, and I ties my arm to his'n with a knot that couldn't be

ontied easy. And now, thinks says I to myself, you get away and walk

into your sleep if you can! But you'll see directly that I was adwised

bad.

"Just as the meetin' folks was a-goin' home, I, bein' about half asleep,

feels somethin' pullin' and pullin' onto my arm, and says I, 'Let go!'

and nothin' answered, and then says I, 'Let go, I tell you!' and, bless

you! I had no more than got the words out of my mouth when down I comes

onto the floor, piller and all! I knowed then, right away, what was the

matter,--he was a-walkin' into his sleep. 'O, stop,' says I, 'just for a

minute, till I ontie myself!'

"'Divel a bit!' says he, and with that he strode off, and me headlong at

his heels!"

"My little wentersome one!" says John; and finding that that but very

inadequately expressed what he felt, he repeated it, with slight

alteration, "My wentersome little one!" at the same time lifting his

eyes to heaven and shaking his finger in a menacing way at the air.

"Me--your own--headlong at his heels," whispered the widow, softly. And

then she boxed his ear with the tips of her fingers, and then he said he

would love to have her a-boxin' on 'em forever, and then she laughed

incredulously, and then she went on:--

'Stop, you willain, till I ontie myself,' says I.

"'Ontie me, you wixen!' says he, 'who cares whether you are ontied or

not?' and he histed the winder,--a two-story winder it was,--and out he

went!"

"My brain is a-reelin'!" cries John. "You poor dewoted dove!"

"Dewoted, sure enough," says the widow, "and dewoted you'd 'a' thought

if you'd 'a' seen me; for up he hists the winder, and out he goes. Now

there was the framework of a new house--a great skeleton like--standin'

alongside of us, and into that he waults, and I waults after him,--for

what could I do but wault?--and away he goes from beam to beam, and from

jice to jice, and from scantlin' to scantlin', waultin' up and up, and

me waultin' after,--for what could I do but wault?--and cryin' with all

my might, 'You willain!' and he a-cryin' back, 'You wixen!' and the moon

a-shinin' like a blaze, and the meetin' folks goin' by, and my

night-gownd a-floppin', and both of us plain wisible!

"'Help! murder!' I cries, for my salwation depended on it, and, seein'

the meetin' folks adwance, he just waulted from the timber onto which we

stood right into the thin and insupportable air--"

"And dragged you after him? Lord 'a' mercy!" cried John.

"No," says the widow, speaking with great calmness; "my presence of mind

never forsook me,--I was an undertaker's daughter, and adwantage of

birth prewailed over the disadwantage of position,--I waulted down the

tother side; and there we hung balanced into the air, and there we would

have hung all night but for the accident of the rewival.

"When they cut us down,--which one of the rewival folks did with his

jack-knife,--I woluntarily fainted away, and was carried in for dead,

and didn't rewive, and wouldn't rewive, for hours and hours. La me! I

was so ashamed!"

"I wish it had been my forten to carry you into the house," says John.

"So do I," says the widow; "but let us be thankful that the wicissitudes

of life have driv us together at last."

"At last, sure enough," says John; "you speak wisdom when you don't know

on 't, you dove of doves!"

She bent her eyes upon him in tender inquiry, in answer to which he

said, "At last it is, sweetheart, for you don't know that I loved you

when I was a youngster not more 'n a dozen year old!"

"Loved _me_, captain! It isn't creditable! Tell me all about it. Are you

sure?"

"Just as sure on 't as I be of anything; just as sure as I be that I

love you now."

"Tell me all about it, I'm dying to know; it seems like some wild

novelty, to be sure."

"Yes, you're right, it is like a novelty if it was only writ out, and it

don't seem creditable, but it's true; I'm just as sure on 't as I be of

anything,--just as sure as I be that I love you now!"

"O captain!"

"Yes, my own Rose, I loved you when I was a little lad,--loved you just

as I did the mornin' star,--loved you and worshipped you from far away.

What a spry little thing you was, a-hoppin' about among the mahogany and

walnut stuff like a young sparrer! O, how I've watched and follered you

with my eyes when you didn't dream on 't!"

"But, John, my nerves are a woman's, remember, and you mustn't keep them

a-strain so long; they're wery much weakened by all this."

"Ay, to be sure," says John; "your nerves be a woman's, to say nothin'

of your curosity bein' a woman's!"

And he laughed with as much heartiness at her expense as though she had

been his wife already.

"John!" This with tender reproach, and he resumed, in a tone of

respectful and lover-like humility.

"Wa'n't your name Rose Rollins afore you was jined to the

vagabond,--wagabond, that is to say,--afore you was dethroned; and

didn't you live in Fust Street, opposite them old tenement housen knowed

as Baker's Row?"

"Of course I did, John, in the yaller brick with the shop in the corner,

and the entrance embellished with a beautiful sign,--three coffins, with

their leds turned back so as to reweal the satin linin's, and my

father's name in letters that represented silver screws! A stroke of

genius that design was!--the sign of the three coffins, two of them

sideways and one end; my father's name--Farewell Rollins, wery

appropriate to his business as it turned out--in letters that they was

modelled after silver screws."

"Three on 'em, two sideways and one end?" says John; "and the name,

Farewell Rollins, shaped arter silver screws! Why, as you be a livin'

cretur, you're the very--wery--little gal I was in love with; and many a

day, dark enough otherwise with poverty and sorrer, you've lighted up

with your purty golden head!" And then he tells her, by way of

illustrating the depth and sincerity of his early attachment, that it

once happened to him to have an orange given him at Christmas time; and

that, although he had never tasted an orange in all his born days,

except through a confectioner's window-glass, he without hesitation

tossed it over the wall into her father's yard, hoping that she, who ate

oranges every day, might possibly have his added to the rest. And he

concluded with, "Such was the nater of my feelin's for you even then."

"And the nater of your feelin's, John, was not only wergin' close upon

the feelin's of love," says the milliner, deeply touched, "but they was

love,--love of the wiolentest kind!"

And then she says that, if she can only find in the town an orange as

big as the full moon, she'll buy it, let it cost what it will, and give

it to him.

And then she says, playfully tapping his chin, "I only wish them

feelin's had hild."

"You wish them feelin's had hild!" says John, leaning his face still

lower to the touches of her pretty hands; and then in his reverence he

addressed her in the third person, saying, "How sweetly prowokin' she

is!"

Then, very earnestly, "They hev hild all these years, them feelin's hev,

and they hev been rewived this day in all their wiolence; and the

beautiful curls that used to shine down all the daffodils are just as

soft and as golden as ever!" Here he ventured to touch the ends of the

long-admired tresses; but he did not see that they were both thin and

faded, and that the parting was very, very wide. "Ay, it's the same

bright head," he went on, "that's been a-shinin' all these years so far

away that I never expected to put my rough hand on 't,--not, anyhow,

afore I'd crossed the dark ferry, and got refined into a spirit. And

now, just think! here you be, a-sailin' in my little wessel, that I'd

christened 'The Rose Rollins' for your memory's sake,--a-sailin' by my

side in all the freshness and bloom of your perfect beauty!"

The milliner laughed, well pleased with the compliment, and said that,

when one charm wanished, another took its place sometimes; so that, if

we only kept up our witality, we didn't look much the worse for all our

years. "Now you, for instance, could never have been handsomer than you

are to-day!" she concluded, pointing her theory with that kindly method

so characteristic of women.

His face had been drawing nearer to hers all the while she spoke, so

that his eyes were quite looking into hers now. "I'm broke a leetle,"

says he, "I know it; but when I see myself in these lovely

lookin'-glasses I do look right nice, for all." And then he went on with

his story.

"I was a'most forgettin' on 't," he said; "but what wonder!

"My father was a sailor; and the last time he ever went out was as one

of the crew of the Dauphin, of Nantucket, Captain Griscom,--how well I

remember it! though I was a little chap then,--about seven year old, I

guess. The Dauphin was a whaler, you must know, and Captain Griscom as

rough and hard as the sea-rocks themselves. I seen him once; and I've

got a picter in my mind of his furrered, weather-beat face, and eyes

that was more like the bulb of some pison plant than anything else,--so

blue, and dull, and lackin' all human expression. His ear was like a dry

knot,--seemed as if 't would break off if you touched it, and his nose

wa' n't much better. He wa' n't a man that any child would ever go

nigh,--anyhow I couldn't. My father was high-sperited,--too

high-sperited for his sitooation, as'll be showed by an' by.

"My mother was a little, pale woman, with blue eyes, and hair as soft as

flax. You've seen her, I dare say, for she took in washin', and used to

hang the things on the ruf, and I would go up with her under pertence of

helpin', but more, I'm afeard, because I could the better see into your

door-yard, and maybe get a glimpse o' you. Well, my father used to tell

her, 'Katura,' he would say, 'arter one more voyage I'll leave the sea,

for then I shall be rich enough to buy an acre o' ground somewheres

where I can hear the waters a-lappin' on the sand; and we'll build a

snug little house, and send our boy to school, and you sha' n't wash no

more, for you ain't strong, Katura,--not nigh so strong as you used to

be,--I can see that plain enough.' Then the tears would come to my

mother's eyes; for a tender word was always touchin' to her, and seein'

on 'em my father would make haste to say, pattin' of her cheek, that,

although some o' the airly roses was gone, she wa' n't a mite less

purty than she used to be! and then she'd wipe her eyes and smile agin,

and arter a little smoothin' up of her hair, or carefuller pinnin' of

her handkerchief, light his pipe for him, and fetch the big chair out of

the corner; and then she'd set herself to darnin' of his socks, or

patchin' of his jackets, and so they'd pass an evenin' happy as could

be,--my father singin' a sea-song, or a love-song, maybe, first or last.

"We lived in the last house o' the Row,--the housen was all poor enough,

you mind, but ourn was the very poorest on 'em, and then we had the top

floor,--one room and a pantry bein' all, exceptin' the ruf, which was

flat, and which we had the privilege on for a yard, in consideration of

a dollar extra a month. 'Have the ruf, be sure, Katura!' my father would

say. 'What's a dollar?' and he'd slap his hand down as though 't was

full o' dollars, but 't wa' n't, and mother always paid the extra dollar

out of her own airnin's, but feelin' all the time a'most as if he'd paid

it, just because of the generous way he had o' speekin'. I remember the

last time father sailed with the Dauphin, as I was sayin'

afore,--remember it just as though it was yesterday. It was a mornin' in

winter,--the twenty-third o' December, and snow a-lyin' on the ground. I

could see his tracks along the walk for a week arter he was gone, and

then the snow begun to melt; thawin' and freezin' together at first, and

then a clean thaw, so the tracks filled up with water, and arter another

week I couldn't find no trace on 'em.

"'Take good care o' your mother, my lad!' he said, 'take the best o'

care on her! I'll be home afore long, for good and all, to take care on

her myself; it won't be but two or three year at the outside,'--and he

give my shoulder a little shake, and then he slipped a quarter-dollar

into my hand. And then he turned to her. 'Three year ain't long,

Katura,' he says; 'why, they'll fly round just like so many hours,

a'most, and fust thing you know you'll hear my step a-comin' up the

stair! Have everything you want, good wife, and don't work hard; you

know its agin my will that you should,--these pale cheeks make me a

little afeard; but, arter all, you'll come round with the daisies, I

guess.' And with that he turned from her, and writ a little with his

finger on the table, and then he chirked up like, and buttoned his

jacket quick, and went out the door just as though he wa' n't a-goin' no

furder than across the street.

"The minute follerin', mother went up to the house-ruf. She wanted to

see arter the washed things, she said, how they was a-dryin' and all;

but I knowd well enough she wanted to see arter him, and didn't pull at

her skirt and foller, as I generally did. I stayed down stairs, and, to

kind o' break up my sorrer, I chucked my head aginst the knob that was

atop o' the andiron! A curus way to git relief; but my diversions, them

times, was somewhat limited.

"When my mother came down agin, there wa' n't no tears in her eyes, but

they had a kind of a fur-reachin' look, as if they was a-gazin' clear

across the salt seas; and they never lost that look arterwards. It was

wofuller than tears, that look was,--'cause it seemed as if it was arter

somethin' that wa'n't to be found on this airth.

"I hung round her, and when she did n't say nothin' I told her I was

goin' to be the best boy that ever was, and build all the fires, and

help her to keep things snug; and that I could make my old shoes last

three year, till father would come home. I was sure on 't, with one new

pair o' half-soles, and one new pair o' toe-caps, anyhow.

"Then she took me on her knee, and leaned her face agin mine, and said I

was the best child in all the world, and she hoped yet to see the time

that I'd hev as nice shoes and other things as I deserved. I slipped the

ring up and down her finger, as she held me so, a-talkin' to me, and at

last I said, 'This ring is too big, mother; what made you get such a

big one?' And then she said, 'Your father give it to me long ago, my

child, and it wa'n't none too big at fust; it's the fault of the

finger,--that is getting too thin'; and then she took the ring off,--it

was a leetle slim thing,--and put it in an old teapot that was kept on

the top shelf of the cupboard. She was afeared she'd either lose it off

her hand, she said, or break it on the washboard. She didn't say nothin'

furder, but I see she thought that the losin' on 't would be the

dreadfullest misfortin that could happen to her.

"It would take too long, and wear out your patience, I calculate, if I

was to tell you of all the troubles we hed arter the sailin' of the

Dauphin, and troubles ain't interestin' to hear on, nohow; so I'll pass

'em by, trustin' your lively imagination to picter on 'em out.

"Well, when the three year was purty near up, she used to say to me

every day, 'Where do you 'spose poor father is? And what will he think

of his little boy when he sees him?' And then she would answer her own

question, and say, 'He'll think he's a little man,--that 's what he'll

think.' And with such like talk she seemed to get a sort of comfort,

somehow. From her, more than from anything I knowed myself, I got a fine

notion o' my father; among other things, I thought he was the biggest

man in the world, and I used to spekilate as to whether Mr. Farewell

Rollins had a coffin in his shop that would be long enough for him, if

he should happen to die at home. I didn't s'pose he had, and the thought

of what it would cost to get one big enough caused me a good deal of

sorrer. More 'n this, I thought he must have wonderful powers, and that

he could make me a kite that would fly to the moon, or, if he chose, dip

all the water out o' the sea with mother's long-handled gourd.

"These thoughts give me a good deal o' satisfaction, but there was times

that nothin' I could git out o' myself could chirk me up; and them

times I always betook myself to the andirons, and bobbed my head agin

the top on 'em, and that was sure to fetch me round.

"I longed for my father to come back, as much, maybe, that Rose Rollins

might see what a big man he was, as for anything else. I guessed she'd

begin to notice of us some when the Dauphin come in! Hows'ever, the

three year went by, and no Dauphin come in; and then the eyes o' my

mother began to look, not only as if they was a-gazin' away across the

salt sea, but clean into eternity. Her cheeks fell in like a pie that

has been sot in a cellar for a week arter the bakin' on't, and her arm

showed in her sleeve no bigger than a broomstick. I was a'most afeared

on her sometimes, her forehead come to look so like yaller glass, and as

if I could see right into it, if I only tried; and them times I thumped

my head uncommon hard on the knobs of the andirons,--they was a

blessin', Rose,--and I used to spekilate as to what folks did that wa'

n't rich enough to hev 'em. My mother got so weak, arter a while, that

she would sometimes sit by the side o' the tub and wash; and it was

astonishin' to me to see what great sheets and bed-quilts she could

wring dry them times; and it was astonishin', too, that she could keep

her hands in freezin' water, day arter day, and be none the wuss for it;

but she always said she wa' n't,--in, fact, she used to tell me she

thought it done her good; and, happy enough for me! I never thought o'

doubtin' of her for many a long day arterwards.

"Many a time she give me the last bit o' bread, and said she wa' n't

hungry, and once when I broke my slice in two, and offered her part

back, she said, 'No, Johnny, I don't think I feel so well for eatin'.

Rich food,' she said, 'didn't suit her constitution. And so, if we

happened to hev meat or butter, she put it all on my plate. When it come

to be my share to work without eatin', then I understood.

"Many a time o' nights I heard her a-turnin' and moanin' in her sleep,

as if soul and body was clean wore out; and at last I went to the lady

that lived in the house with the painted door, and fitted young ladies

with corsets, and sold them pomatum that made the hair grow to their

heels,--so she said,--and told how my mother moaned in the night as if

she was a-bein' drownded in the sea; and she told me it was a nasty

habit some folks had,--mostly because they slept too sound,--and that,

if I would give her a rough shake, she guessed she would come out all

right. I tried to believe her on account o' the pomatum and the painted

door, partly; but it wa'n't in the heart o' me to give the rough shake,

and I never done it, thank the Lord!

"Sometimes the fine lady would come in with her sewin'-work to bring us

a little sunshine, she used to say, and I'm sure she never brought

nothin' else, nor that neither, that anybody could see; and I always

noticed that my mother felt a good deal less cheerful arter one o' these

visits.

"'Why don't you ride out, Mrs. Chidlaw?' she would say, 'and why don't

you call the doctor? and why don't you wear warm flannels?' and then why

didn't she do a thousand things that wa'n't to be thought on, 'cause

they wa'n't in the nater o' the case; and then she would go away, sayin'

she would run in another time and bring more sunshine!

"My mother generally cried for a spell arter one o' these bright

mornin's; and I didn't wonder, for it seemed to me as if the scent o'

the pomatum was pison, and all the air was heavy like, arter one o' the

visits.

"She used to set up o'nights, a-workin', my mother did, long beyond

midnight sometimes. 'What makes you, mother?' I would say. 'O, 'cause I

like it, John!' she 'd answer, so lively like; and then she 'd begin to

hum a tune, maybe, as if she was overflowin' with sperits.

"She didn't seem to need sleep no more, she said, and, besides, she

wanted to be wide awake when father come. So night arter night she would

set by our one taller candle, a-mendin' of my jackets, and a-darnin' of

my stockin's, and a-straightenin' and a stiffenin' up of the run-down

heels of my old shoes.

"'I don't care nothin' about 'em, mother,' I would say. 'I 'd just as

lives be a wearin' on 'em ragged as not, and you 've chores enough

without a-mindin' of me so much.' But she always said that, whether or

not I cared for myself, she cared for me, and that she wanted I should

look as smart as anybody's boy, so that father would be proud on me when

he come home; concludin' with 'He must sartainly come now afore long.'

"Many a time I've waked up of a winter night and found her woollen

petticoat spread onto my bed, and she ashiverin' by the dyin' fire. One

mornin' she surprised me uncommon by holdin' of a cap afore my eyes. 'A

new one made of the old one,' says she, 'but you 'd never dream on 't,

would you, Johnny?'