CHAPTER IV.

Our kinsman had been easily persuaded to remain with us a week, and a

charming week it had been to all of us. He had visited all the West

India Islands, and the most interesting portions of England and the

Continent. My grandfather, who, as the commander of his own

merchant-ship, had formerly visited many foreign countries, was

delighted to refresh his recollections of distant scenes, and to live

over again his adventures by sea and land. The conversation of our

guest with his uncle was richly instructive and entertaining; for he

had a lively appreciation of national and individual character, and

could illustrate them by a world of amusing anecdote. The old

veteran's early fondness for his nephew revived in full force, and his

enjoyment was alloyed only by the dread of a new separation. "What

shall I do when you are gone, Harry!" was his frequent exclamation;

and then he would sigh and shake his head, and wish he had one son

left.

But the richest treat for my aunt and me was reserved till the late

evening, when the dear patriarch had retired to rest. Those warm,

balmy nights on the piazza, with the moonlight quivering through the

vines, and turning the terraced lawn with fantastic mixture of light

and shadow into a fairy scene, while the cultivated traveller

discoursed of all things beautiful in nature and art, were full of

witchery. Mont Blanc at sunrise, the wild scenery of the Simplon, the

exhumed streets of Pompeii, the Colosseum by moonlight, those wondrous

galleries of painting and sculpture of which I had read as I had read

of the palace of Aladdin and the gardens of the genii,--the living man

before me had seen all these! I looked upon him as an ambassador from

the world of poetry. But even this interested me less than the tone of

high and manly sentiment by which his conversation was pervaded, the

feeling reminiscences of endeared friendships formed in those far-off

lands, the brief glimpses of deep sorrows bravely borne; and I watched

with a sweet, sly pleasure my aunt's quiet surrender to the old spell.

"It makes me very happy, Kate," said she one day, "to have found my

cousin and friend again. I am glad to feel that friendships springing

from the pure and good feelings of the heart are not so transient as I

have sometimes been tempted to think them. They may be buried for

years under a drift of new interests; but give them air, and they will

live again."

"What is that remark of Byron about young ladies' friendship? Take

care, take care!" said I, shaking my head, gravely; "receive the

warning of a calm observer!"

"Oh, no, Kate! this visit is but a little green oasis in the

desert. In a day or two we shall separate, probably forever; but both,

I doubt not, will be happier through life for this brief reunion. His

plan is to make his future residence in France."

At the end of the week our kinsman left us for a fortnight's visit to

the metropolis. Intending to give us a call on his return south, he

willingly complied with our desire to leave his little girl with

us. As we were sitting together in my aunt's room after his departure,

the child brought her a small packet which her father had intrusted to

her. "I believe," said the little smiler, "he said it was a story for

you to read. Won't you please to read it to me?" She took it with a

look of surprise and curiosity, and immediately opened it and began to

read. But her color soon began to vary, her hand trembled, and

presently laying down the sheets in her lap, she sat lost in thought.

"It seems a moving story!" I remarked, dryly.

"Kate, this is the strangest affair!--But I can't tell you now; I must

read it first alone."

She left the room, and I heard the key turn in the lock as she entered

another chamber. In about an hour she came out very composedly, and

said nothing more on the subject.

After our little guest was asleep at night, I could restrain myself no

longer. "You are treating me shabbily, aunty," said I. "See if I am

ever a good girl again to please you!"

"You shall know it all, Katy; I only wished to think it over first by

myself. There, take the letter; but make no note or comment till I

mention it again."

* * * * *

The letter of Cousin Harry seemed to me rather matter-of-fact, I must

confess, till near the end, where he spoke of a little nosegay which

he enclosed, and which would speak to her of dear old times.

"But where is the nosegay, aunty?"

With a beautiful flush, as if the sunset of that vanished day were

reddening the sky of memory, she drew a small packet from her bosom,

and in it I found a withered rose-bud tied up with a shrivelled sprig

of mignonette.

I am afraid that my Aunt Linny's answer was a great deal more proper

than I should have wished; and yet, with all its emphatic expressions

of duty towards her father and the impossibility of leaving him, there

must have been something between the lines which I could not read. I

have since discovered that all such epistles have their real meaning

concealed in some kind of more rarefied sympathetic ink, which betrays

itself only under the burning hands of a lover.

"So, then," said Aunt Linny, as she was sealing this letter, "you see,

Katy, that your romance has come to an untimely end."

I turned round her averted face with both my hands, and looked in her

eyes till she blushed and laughed in spite of herself.

"My knowledge of symptoms is not large," said I, "but I have a

conviction that his health will now endure a northern climate."

"Let's talk no more of this!" said she, putting me aside with a gentle

gravity, which checked my nonsense. But as I was unable to detect in

her, on this or the following day, the slightest depression of

spirits, I shrewdly guessed that our anticipations of the result were

not very dissimilar.

The next return post brought, not the expected letter, but our hero

himself. I was really amazed at the change in his appearance. Erect,

elastic, his face radiant with expression, he looked years younger

than at his first arrival. I caught Aunt Linny's eloquent glance of

surprise and pleasure as they met. For a moment the bridal pair of my

dream stood living before me; then vanished even more suddenly than

that fancy show of the old magician. When we again met, two or three

hours after, my aunt's serene smile and dewy eyes told me that all was

right.

* * * * *

In a month the wedding took place, and the "happy pair" started off on

a few weeks' excursion. As I was helping my aunt exchange her bridal

for her travelling attire, I whispered, "What say you to my doctrine

of first love, aunty?"

"That it finds its best refutation in my experience. No, believe me,

dearest Katy, the true jewel of life is a spirit that can rule itself,

that can subject even the strongest, dearest impulses to reason and

duty. Without it, indeed," she added, with a soft earnestness,

"affection towards the worthiest object becomes an unworthy

sentiment--And besides, Kate,"--here her eye gleamed with girlish

mirth--"you see, if I had made love my all, I should have missed it

all. Not even Cousin Harry's constancy would have been proof against a

withered, whining, sentimental old maid."

"Well, you will allow that it's a great paradox, aunty! If you believe

in my doctrine, it turns out a mere delusion; if you don't believe in

it, 'tis sure to come true."

"Take care, then, and disbelieve in it with all your might!" said she,

laughing, and kissing me, as we left her room,--my room alone

henceforth. A shadow seemed to fill it, as she passed the threshold.

OUR BIRDS, AND THEIR WAYS.

Among our summer birds, the vast majority are but transient visitors,

born and bred far to the northward, and returning thither every

year. The North, then, is their proper domicile, their legal "place of

residence," which they have never renounced, but only temporarily

desert, for special reasons. Their sojourn with us, or farther south,

is merely an exile by stress of climate, like the flitting of the

Southern planters from the rice-fields to the mountains in summer, or

the pleasure tour or watering-place visit customary with the citizens

of Boston and New York.

The lower orders, such as the humming-bird with his insect-like

stomach and sucking-tube, and so on up through the warblers and

flycatchers, more strictly bound by the necessities of their life,

closely follow the sun,--while the upper-ten-thousand, the robins,

cedar-birds, sparrows, etc., like man, omnivorous in their diet and

their attendant _chevaliers d'industrie_, the rapacious birds,

allow themselves greater latitude, and go and come occasionally at all

seasons, though in general tending to the south in winter and north in

summer. But precedence before all is due to permanent residents, with

whom our intercourse is not of this transitory and fair-weather

sort. Such are the crow, the blue jay, the chickadee, the partridge,

and the quail, who may be called regular inhabitants, though perhaps

all of them wander occasionally from one district to another. Besides

these, perhaps some of the hawks and owls remain here throughout the

year. But the species I have named are the only ones that occur to me

as equally numerous at all seasons in the immediate vicinity of

Boston, and never out of town, whether you take the census in May or

in January.

In spite of our uninterrupted acquaintance with them, however, there

are still many of the nearest questions concerning these birds for

which I find no sufficient answers. Even to the first question--How do

they get their living?--there are only vague replies in the books.

There is the crow, for example. I have seen crows in the neighborhood

of Boston every week of the year, and in not very different

numbers. My friend the ornithologist said to me last winter, "You will

see that they will be off as soon as the ground is well covered with

snow." But on the contrary, when the snow came, and after it had lain

deep on the fields for many days, I saw more than before,--probably

because they found it easier to get food in the neighborhood of the

houses and cultivated grounds.

A crow must require certainly half a pound of animal food, or its

equivalent, daily, in order to keep from starving. Yet they not only

do not starve that I hear of, but seem to keep in as good case in

winter as in summer, though what they find to eat is not immediately

apparent. The vague traditional suggestion of "carrion," as of dead

horses and the like, does not help us much. Some scraps doubtless may

be left lying about, but any reliable stores of this kind are hardly

to be looked for in this neighborhood. A few scattered kernels of

corn, perhaps on a pinch a few berries, he may pick up; though I

suspect the crow is somewhat human in his tastes, and, besides animal

food, affects only the cereals. The frogs are deep in the mud. Now

and then a squirrel or a mouse may be had; but they are mostly dozing

in their holes. As for larger game, rabbits and the like, the crow is

hardly nimble enough for them, nor are his claws well adapted for

seizing; anything of this kind he will scarcely get, except as the

leavings of the weasel or skunk. These he will not refuse; for though

he is of a different species from the carrion crow of Europe, with

whom he was formerly confounded, yet he is of similar, though perhaps

less extreme, tastes as to his food. But when the ground is freshly

covered with snow, all supplies of this sort would seem to be cut off,

for the time at least. Yet who ever found a starved crow, or even saw

one driven by hunger from any of his accustomed caution? He is ever

the same alert, vivacious, harsh-tongued wanderer over the white

fields as over the summer meadows.

A partial solution of the mystery is to be found in the habit which

the bird has in common with most of the crow kind, of depositing any

surplus food in a place of safety for future use. A tame crow that I

saw last year was constantly employed in this way. As soon as his

hunger was satisfied, if a piece of meat was given to him, he flew off

to some remote spot, and there covered it up with twigs and leaves. I

was told that the woods were full of these caches of his. Bits of

bread and the like he was too well-fed to care much about, but he

would generally go through the form of covering them, at your very

feet, with a little rubbish, not taking the trouble to hide them.

Meanwhile his hunting went on as if he still had his living to get,

and he would watch for field-mice, or come flying in from the woods

with a squirrel swinging from his claws, either for variety's sake, or

because he had really forgotten the stores he had laid up. Scattered

magazines of this kind, established in times of accidental plenty, may

render life during our winters possible to the crow.

But why should he give himself so much trouble to subsist here, when a

few hours' work with those broad wings would bear him to a land of

tropical abundance? The crow, it seems, is not a mere eating and

drinking machine, drawn hither and thither by the balance of supply

and demand, but has his motives of another sort. Is it, perhaps, some

local attachment, so that a crow hatched in Brookline, for example,

would be more loath than another to quit that neighborhood,--a sort of

crow patriotism, akin to that which keeps the Greenlanders slowly

starving of cold and hunger on that awful coast of theirs.

It is not probable, however, that the crow allows himself to suffer

much from these causes; he is far too knowing for that, and shows his

position at the head of the bird kind by an almost total emancipation

from scruples and prejudices, and by the facility with which he adapts

himself to special cases. Instinct works by formulas, which, as it

were, make up the animal, so that the ant and the bee are atoms of

incarnate constructiveness and acquisitiveness, and nothing else. And

as intelligence, when its action is too narrowly concentrated, whether

upon pin-making or money-making, tends to degenerate into mere

instinct,--so instinct, when it begins to compare, and to except, and

to vary its action according to circumstances, shows itself in the act

of passing into intelligence. This marks the superiority of the crow

over birds it often resembles in its actions. Most birds are

wary. The crow is wary, and something more. Other shy birds, for

instance ducks, avoid every strange object. The crow considers whether

there be anything dangerous in the strangeness. An ordinary scarecrow

will not keep our crow from anything worth a little risk. He fathoms

the scarecrow, compares its behavior, under various circumstances,

with that of the usual wearer of its garments, and decides to take the

risk. To protect his corn, the farmer takes advantage of this very

discursiveness, and stretches round the field a simple line, nothing

in itself, but hinting at some undeveloped mischief which the bird

cannot penetrate.

Again, the crow is sometimes looked upon as a mere marauder; but this

description also is much too narrow for him. He is anxious only for

his dinner, and swallows seed-corn and noxious grubs with perfect

impartiality. He is not a mere pirate, living by plunder alone, but

rather like the old Phoenician sea-farer, indifferently honest or

robber as occasion serves,--and robber not from fierceness of

disposition, but merely from utter unscrupulousness as to means.

This is shown in his docility. A hawk or an eagle is never tamed, but

a crow is more easily and completely tamable than the gentlest

singing-bird. The one I have just spoken of, though hardly six months

from the nest, would allow himself to be handled by his owner, and

would suffer even a stranger to touch him. When I first came near the

house, he greeted me with a suppressed caw, and flew along some

hundred yards just over my head, looking down, first with one eye and

then with the other, to get a complete view of the stranger. Next

morning I became aware, when but half awake, of a sort of mewing sound

in the neighborhood, and at last looking around, I saw through the

window, which opened to the floor, my new acquaintance perched on the

porch roof, which was at the same level, turning his head from side to

side, and eyeing me through the glass with divers queer contortions

and gesticulations, reminding me of some odd, old, dried-up French

dancing-master, and with a varied succession of croakings, now high,

now low, evidently bent upon attracting my attention. When he had

succeeded, he flew off with loud, joyous caws to the top of the house,

where I heard him rolling nuts or acorns from the ridge, and flying to

catch them before they fell off.

Their independence of seasons is shown also in their habit of

associating in about equal numbers throughout the year. In the spring

the flocks are more noticeable, hovering about some grove of pines,

flying straight up in the air and swooping down again with an

uninterrupted cawing,--seemingly a sort of crow ball, with a view to

match-making. Afterwards they become more silent, and apparently more

solitary, but still fly out to their feeding-grounds morning and

evening; and if you sit down in the woods near one of their nests, the

uneasy choking chuckle, ending at last in the outright cawing of the

disturbed owner, will generally be answered from every point, and crow

after crow come edging up from tree to tree to see what is the matter.

Though all of the crow tribe are notorious for their harsh voices, yet

if the power of mimicry be considered as a mark of superiority, the

crow has claims to high rank in this department also. The closest

imitators of the human voice are birds of this family: for instance,

the Mino bird. Our crow also is a vocal mimic, and that not in the

matter-of-course way of the mocking-bird, but, as it were, more

individual and spontaneous. He is not merely an imitator of the human

voice, like the parrots, (and a better one as regards tone,) nor of

other birds, like the thrushes, but combines both. The tame crow

already mentioned very readily undertook extempore imitations of

words, and with considerable success. I once heard a crow imitate the

warbling of a small bird, in a tone so entirely at variance with his

ordinary voice, that, though assured by one who had heard him before,

that it was a crow and nothing else, it was only on the clearest proof

that I could satisfy myself of the fact. It seemed to be quite an

original and individual performance.

The blue jay is a near relative of the crow, and, like him,

omnivorous, harsh-voiced, predaceous, a robber of birds' nests; so

that if you hear the robins during their nesting-time making an

unusual clamor about the house, the chances are you will get a glimpse

of this brilliant marauder, sneaking away with a troop of them in

pursuit. His usual voice is a harsh scream, but he has some low

flute-like notes not without melody. The presence of a hawk, or more

particularly an owl in the woods, is often made known by the screaming

of the jays, who flock together about him with ever-increasing noise,

like a troop of jackals about a lion, pressing in upon him closer and

closer in a paroxysm of excitement, while the owl, thus taken at

disadvantage, sidles along his bough seeking concealment, and at

length softly flaps off to some more undisturbed retreat.

The blue jay is a shy bird, but he is enough of a crow to take a risk

where anything is to be had for it, and in winter will come close to

the house for food. In his choice of a nesting-place he seems at first

sight to show less than his usual caution; for, though the nest is a

very conspicuous one, it is generally made in a pine sapling not far

from the ground, and often on a path or other opening in the

woods. But perhaps, in the somewhat remote situations where he builds,

the danger is less from below than from birds of prey sailing

overhead. I once found a blue jay's nest on a path in the woods

somewhat frequented by me, but not often trodden by any one else, and

passed it twice on different days, and saw the bird sitting, but took

some pains not to alarm her. The next time, and the next, she was not

there; and on examination I found the nest empty, though with no marks

of having been robbed. There was not time for the eggs to have

hatched, and it was plain, that, finding herself observed, she had

carried them off.

As a general thing, the severity of our winters does not seem much to

affect the birds that stay with us. I have found chickadees and some

of the smaller sparrows apparently frozen to death, but the

extravasation of blood usual in such cases leaves us in doubt whether

some accident may not have first disabled the bird; and if dead birds

are more often found in winter than in summer, it may be only that the

body keeps longer, and, from the absence of grass and leaves, and the

white covering of the ground, is more readily seen. At all events,

such specimens are not usually emaciated, and sometimes they are in

remarkably good case, which, considering the rapid circulation and the

corresponding waste of the body, shows that the cold had not affected

their activity and their power of obtaining food.

The truth is, that birds are remarkably well guarded against cold by

their quick circulation, their dense covering of down and feathers,

and the ease with which they can protect their extremities. The

chickadee is never so lively as in clear, cold weather;--not that he

is absolutely insensible to cold; for on those days, rare in this

neighborhood, when the mercury falls to fifteen degrees or more below

zero, the chickadee shows by his behavior that he, too, feels it to be

an exceptional state of things. Of such a morning I have seen a small

flock of them collected on the sunny side of a thick hemlock, rather

silent and quiet, with ruffled plumage, like balls of gray fur,

waiting, with an occasional chirp, for the sun's rays to begin to warm

them up, and meanwhile not depressed, but only a little sobered in

their deportment, and ready, if the cold continued, to get used to

that too.

The matter of food-supply during the winter for the smaller birds is

more easily understood than in the case of the crow. The seeds of

grasses and the taller summer flowers, and of the birches, alders, and

maples, furnish supplies that are not interfered with by cold or snow;

also the buds of various trees and shrubs,--for the buds do not first

come into existence in the spring, as our city friends suppose, but

are to be found all winter. Nor is insect-life suspended at this

season to the extent that a careless observer might suppose. A sunny,

sheltered nook, at any time during the winter, will show you a variety

of two-winged flies, and several species of spiders, often in

considerable abundance, and as brisk as ever. And the numbers of eggs,

and larvae, and of the lurking tenants of crevices in tree-bark and

dead wood, may be guessed by the incessant and assuredly not aimless

activity of the chickadees and gold-crests and their associates.

This winter activity of the birds ought to be taken into account by

those who accuse them of mischief-doing in summer. In winter, at

least, no mischief can be done; there is no fruit to steal; and even

sap-sucking, if such a practice at any time be not altogether

fabulous, certainly cannot be carried on now. Nothing can be destroyed

now except the farmer's enemies, or at best neutrals. Yet the birds

keep at work all the time.

The only bird that occurs to me as a proved sufferer from famine in

the winter is the quail. This is the most limited in its range of all

our birds. Not only does it not migrate, (or only exceptionally,) but

it does not even wander much,--the same covey keeping all the year,

and even year after year, to the same feeding-ground. Nor does it ever

seek its food upon trees, like the partridge, but solely upon the

ground.

The quail is our nearest representative of the common barn-yard

fowl. This it resembles in many respects, and among others, in its

habit of going a-foot, except when the covey crosses from one feeding

or roosting ground to another, or when the cock-bird mounts upon a

rail-fence or stone-wall to sound his call in the spring. This

persistence exposes the quail to hardship when the ground is covered

with snow, and the fruit of the skunk-cabbage and all the berries and

grain are inaccessible. He takes refuge at such times in the

smilax-thickets, whose dense, matted covering leaves an open

feeding-ground below. But a snowy winter always tells upon their

numbers in any neighborhood. Whole coveys are said to have been found

dead, frozen stiff, under the bush where they had huddled together for

warmth; and even before this extremity, their hardships lay them open

to their enemies, and the fox and the weasel, and the farmer's boy

with his box-trap, destroy them by wholesale. The deep snows of 1856

and 1857 have nearly exterminated them hereabouts; and I was told at

Vergennes, in Vermont, that there were quails there many years ago,

but that they had now entirely disappeared.

The appearance and disappearance of species within our experience

teach us that Nature's lists are not filled once for all, but that the

changes which geology shows in past ages continue into the

present. Sometimes we can trace the immediate cause, or rather

occasion, as in the case of the quail's congeners, the pinnated

grouse, and the wild turkey, both of them inhabitants of all parts of

the State in the early times. The pinnated grouse has been seen near

Boston within the present century, but is now exterminated, I believe,

except in Martha's Vineyard. The wild turkey was to be found not long

since in Berkshire, but probably it has become extinct there

too. Sometimes, for no reason that we can see, certain species forsake

their old abodes, as the purple martin, which within the last

quarter-century has receded some twenty miles from the seaboard,--or

appear where they were before unknown, as the cliff swallow, which was

first seen in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, but within

about the same space of time has become as common hereabouts as any of

the genus. In examples so conspicuous the movement is obvious enough;

but in the case of rarer species, for instance, the olive-sided

flycatcher, who can tell whether, when first observed, it was new to

naturalists merely, or to this part of the country, or to the earth

generally? The distinction sometimes made in such cases between

accidental influences and the regular course of nature is a

superficial one. The regular course of nature is in itself a series of

accidental influences; that is, the particular occasion is subservient

to a general law with which it does not seem at first sight to have

any connection. A severe winter may be sufficient to kill the quails,

just as the ancient morass was sufficient to drown the mastodon. But

the question is, why these causes began to operate just at these

times. We may as well stop with the evident fact, that the unresting

circulation is forever going on in the universe.

But if the quail, who is here very near his northern limits, has a

hard time of it in the winter, and is threatened with such "removal"

as we treat the Indians to, his relative, the partridge, our other

gallinaceous or hen-like bird, is of a tougher fibre, as you see when

you come upon his star-like tracks across the path, eight or nine

inches apart, and struck sharp and deep in the snow, or closer

together among the bushes, where he stretched up for barberries or

buds, and ending on either side with a series of fine parallel cuts,

where the sharp-pointed quills struck the snow as he rose,--a picture

of vigor and success. He knows how to take care of himself, and to

find both food and shelter in the evergreens, when the snow lies fresh

upon the ground. There, in some sunny glade among the pines, he will

ensconce himself in the thickest branches, and whir off as you come

near, sailing down the opening with his body balancing from side to

side.

The partridge is altogether a wilder and more solitary bird than the

quail, and does not frequent cultivated fields, nor make his nest in

the orchard, as the quail does, but prefers the shelf of some rocky

ledge under the shadow of the pines in remote woods. He is one of the

few birds found in the forest; for it is a mistake to suppose that

birds abound in the forest, or avoid the neighborhood of man. On the

contrary, you may pass days and weeks in our northern woods without

seeing more than half a dozen species, of which the partridge is

pretty sure to be one. All birds increase in numbers about

settlements,--even the crow, though he is a forest bird too. Hence,

no doubt, has arisen the notion that the crow (supposed to be of the

same species with the European) made his appearance in this country

first on the Atlantic coast, and gradually spread westward, passing

through the State of New York about the time of the Revolution. I was

told some years since by a resident of Chicago, that the quails had

increased eight-fold in that vicinity since he came there. The fact

is, that the bird population, like the human, in the absence of

counteracting causes, will continue to expand in precise ratio to the

supply of food. The partridge goes farther north than the quail, and

is found throughout the United States. With us he affects high and

rocky ground, but northward he keeps at a lower level. At the White

Mountains, the regions of this species and of the Canada grouse or

spruce partridge are as well defined in height as those of the maples

and the "black growth." Still farther north I have observed that our

partridge frequents the lowest marshy ground, thus equalizing his

climate in every latitude.

There are few of our land-birds that flock together in summer, and few

that are solitary in winter,--none that I recollect, except birds of

prey. And not only do birds of the same kind associate, but certain

species are almost always found together. Thus, the chickadee, the

golden-crested wren, the white-breasted nuthatch, and, less

constantly, the brown creeper and the downy woodpecker, form a little

winter clique, of which you do not often see one of the members

without one or more of the others. No sound in nature more cheery and

refreshing than the alternating calls of a little troop of this kind

echoing through the glades of the woods on a still, sunny day in

winter: the vivacious chatter of the chickadee, the slender, contented

pipe of the gold-crest, and the emphatic, business-like _hank_ of the

nuthatch, as they drift leisurely along from tree to tree. The winter

seems to be the season of holiday enjoyment to the chickadee, and he

is never so evidently and conspicuously contented as in very cold

weather. In summer he withdraws to the thickets, and becomes less

noisy and active. His plumage becomes dull, and his brisk note changes

to a fine, delicate _pee-peh-wy_, or oftenest a mere whisper. They are

so much less noticeable at this season that one might suppose they had

followed their gold-crest companions to the North, as some of them

doubtless do, but their nests are not uncommon with us. Fearless as

the chickadee is in winter,--so fearless, that, if you stand still, he

will alight upon your head or shoulder,--in summer he becomes cautious

about his nest, and will desert it, if much watched. They build here,

generally, in a partly decayed white-birch or apple-tree, excavating a

hole eighteen inches or two feet deep,--the chips being carefully

carried off a short distance, so as not to betray the workman,--and

lining the bottom of it with a felting of soft materials, generally

rabbits' fur, of which I have taken from one hole as much as could be

conveniently grasped with the hand.

Besides the species that we regularly count upon in winter, there are

more or less irregular visitors at this season, some of them summer

birds also,--as the purple finch, cedar-bird, gold-finch, robin, the

flicker, or pigeon woodpecker, and the yellow-bellied and hairy

woodpeckers. Others, again, linger on from the autumn, and sometimes

through the winter,--as the snow-bird, song-sparrow, tree-sparrow.

Still others are seen only in winter,--as the brown and shore larks,

the crossbills, redpolls, snow-buntings, pine grosbeak, and some of

the hawks and owls; and of these some are merely accidental,--as the

pine grosbeak, which in 1836 appeared here in great numbers in

October, and remained until May. This beautiful and gentle bird (a

sweet songster too) is doubtless a permanent resident within the

United States, for I have seen them at the White Mountains in

August. What impels them to these occasional wanderings it is

difficult to guess; it is obviously not mere stress of weather; for in

1836, as I have remarked, they came early in autumn and continued

resident until late in the spring; and their food, being mainly the

buds of resinous trees, must have been as easy to get elsewhere as

here. Their coming, like the crow's staying, is a mystery to us.

I have spoken only of the land-birds; but the position of our city, so

embraced by the sea, affords unusual opportunities for observing the

sea-birds also. All winter long, from the most crowded thoroughfares

of the city, any one, who has leisure enough to raise his eyes over

the level of the roofs to the tranquil air above, may see the gulls

passing to and fro between the harbor and the flats at the mouth of

Charles River. The gulls, and particularly that cosmopolite, the

herring gull, are met with in this neighborhood throughout the year,

though in summer most of them go farther north to breed. On a still,

sunny day in winter, you may see them high in the air over the river,

calmly soaring in wide circles, a hundred perhaps at a time, or

pluming themselves leisurely on the edge of a hole in the ice. When

the wind is violent from the west, they come in over the city from the

bay outside, strong-winged and undaunted, breasting the gale, now

high, now low, but always working to windward, until they reach the

shelter of the inland waters.

In the spring they come in greater numbers, and other species arrive:

the great saddle-back, from the similarity of coloring almost to be

mistaken for the white-headed eagle, as he sits among the broken ice

at the edge of the channel; and the beautiful little Bonaparte's gull.

The ducks, too, still resort to our rivermouth, in spite of the

railroads and the tall chimneys by which their old feeding-grounds are

surrounded. As long as the channel is open, you may see the

golden-eyes, or "whistlers," in extended lines, visible only as a row

of bright specks, as their white breasts rise and fall on the waves;

and farther than you can see them, you may hear the whistle of their

wings as they rise. Spring and fall the "black ducks" still come to

find the brackish waters which they like, and to fill their crops with

the seeds of the eel-grass and the mixed food of the flats. In the

late twilight you may sometimes catch sight of a flock speeding in,

silent and swift, over the Mill-dam, or hear their sonorous quacking

from their feeding-ground.

At least, these things were,--and not long since,--though I cannot

answer for a year or two back. The birds long retain the tradition of

the old places, and strive to keep their hold upon them; but we are

building them out year by year. The memory is still fresh of flocks of

teal by the "Green Stores" on the Neck; but the teal and the "Stores"

are gone, and perhaps the last black duck has quacked on the river,

and the last whistler taken his final flight. Some of us, who are not

yet old men, have killed "brown-backs" and "yellow-legs" on the

marshes that lie along to the west and south of the city, now cut up

by the railroads; and you may yet see from the cars an occasional

long-booted individual, whose hopes still live on the tales of the

past, stalking through the sedge with "superfluous gun," or patiently

watching his troop of one-legged wooden decoys.

The sea keeps its own climate, and keeps its highways open, after all

on the land is shut up by frost. The sea-birds, accordingly, seem to

lead an existence more independent of latitude and of seasons. In

midwinter, when the seashore watering-places are forsaken by men, you

may find Nahant or Nantasket Beach more thronged with bipeds of this

sort than by the featherless kind in summer. The Long Beach of Nahant

at that season is lined sometimes by an almost continuous flock of

sea-ducks, and a constant passing and repassing are kept up between

Lynn Bay and the surf outside.

Early of a winter's morning at Nantasket I once saw a flock of geese,

many hundreds in number, coming in from the Bay to cross the land in

their line of migration. They advanced with a vast, irregular front

extending far along the horizon, their multitudinous _honking_

softened into music by the distance. As they neared the beach the

clamor increased and the line broke up in apparent confusion, circling

round and round for some minutes in what seemed aimless

uncertainty. Gradually the cloud of birds resolved itself into a

number of open triangles, each of which with its deeper-voiced leader

took its way inland; as if they trusted to their general sense of

direction while flying over the water, but on coming to encounter the

dangers of the land, preferred to delegate the responsibility. This

done, all is left to the leader; if he is shot, it is said the whole

flock seem bewildered, and often alight without regard to place or to

their safety. The selection of the leader must therefore be a matter

of deliberation with them; and this, no doubt, was going on in the

flock I saw at Nantasket during their pause at the edge of the

beach. The leader is probably always an old bird. I have noticed

sometimes that his _honking_ is more steady and in a deeper tone,

and that it is answered in a higher key along the line.

THE INDIAN REVOLT.

For the first time in the history of the English dominion in India,

its power has been shaken from within its own possessions, and by its

own subjects. Whatever attacks have been made upon it heretofore have

been from without, and its career of conquest has been the result to

which they have led. But now no external enemy threatens it, and the

English in India have found themselves suddenly and unexpectedly

engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with a portion of their subjects,

not so much for dominion as for life. There had been signs and

warnings, indeed, of the coming storm; but the feeling of security in

possession and the confidence of moral strength were so strong, that

the signs had been neglected and the warnings disregarded.

No one in our time has played the part of Cassandra with more

foresight and vehemence than the late Sir Charles Napier. He saw the

quarter in which the storm was gathering, and he affirmed that

it was at hand. In 1850, after a short period of service as

commander-in-chief of the forces in India, he resigned his place,

owing to a difference between himself and the government, and

immediately afterwards prepared a memoir in justification of his

course, accompanied with remarks upon the general administration of

affairs in that country. It was written with all his accustomed

clearness of mind, vigor of expression, and intensity of personal

feeling,--but it was not published until after his death, which took

place in 1853, when it appeared under the editorship of his brother,

Lieutenant-General Sir W.F.P. Napier, with the title of "Defects,

Civil and Military, of the Indian Government." Its interest is

greatly enhanced when read by the light of recent events. It is in

great part occupied with a narrative of the exhibition of a mutinous

spirit which appeared in 1849 in some thirty Sepoy battalions, in

regard to a reduction of their pay, and of the means taken to check

and subdue it. On the third page is a sentence which read now is of

terrible import: "Mutiny with [among?] the Sepoys is the _most_

formidable danger menacing our Indian empire." And a few pages farther

on occurs the following striking passage: "The ablest and most

experienced civil and military servants of the East India Company

consider mutiny as one of the greatest, if not _the_ greatest danger

threatening India,--a danger also that may come unexpectedly, and, if

the first symptoms be not carefully treated, with a power to shake

Leadenhall."

The anticipated mutiny has now come, its first symptoms were treated

with utter want of judgment, and its power is shaking the whole fabric

of the English rule in India.

One day toward the end of January last, a workman employed in the

magazine at Barrackpore, an important station about seventeen miles

from Calcutta, stopped to ask a Sepoy for some water from his

drinking-vessel. Being refused, because he was of low caste, and his

touch would defile the vessel, he said, with a sneer, "What caste are

you of, who bite pig's grease and cow's fat on your cartridges?"

Practice with the new Enfield rifle had just been introduced, and the

cartridges were greased for use in order not to foul the gun. The

rumor spread among the Sepoys that there was a trick played upon

them,--that this was but a device to pollute them and destroy their

caste, and the first step toward a general and forcible conversion of

the soldiers to Christianity. The groundlessness of the idea upon

which this alarm was founded afforded no hindrance to its ready

reception, nor was the absurdity of the design attributed to the

ruling powers apparent to the obscured and timid intellect of the

Sepoys. The consequences of loss of caste are so feared,--and are in

reality of so trying a nature,--that upon this point the sensitiveness

of the Sepoy is always extreme, and his suspicions are easily

aroused. Their superstitions and religious customs "interfere in many

strange ways with their military duties." "The brave men of the 35th

Native Infantry," says Sir Charles Napier, "lost caste because they

did their duty at Jelalabad; that is, they fought like soldiers, and

ate what could be had to sustain their strength for battle." But they

are under a double rule, of religious and of military discipline,--and

if the two come into conflict, the latter is likely to give way.

The discontent at Barrackpore soon manifested itself in ways not to be

mistaken. There were incendiary fires within the lines. It was

discovered that messengers had been sent to regiments at other

stations, with incitements to insubordination. The officer in command

at Barrackpore, General Hearsay, addressed the troops on parade,

explained to them that the cartridges were not prepared with the

obnoxious materials supposed, and set forth the groundlessness of

their suspicions. The address was well received at first, but had no

permanent effect. The ill-feeling spread to other troops and other

stations. The government seems to have taken no measure of precaution

in view of the impending trouble, and contented itself with

despatching telegraphic messages to the more distant stations, where

the new rifle-practice was being introduced, ordering that the native

troops were "to have no practice ammunition served out to them, but

only to watch the firing of the Europeans." On the 26th of February,

the 19th regiment, then stationed at Berhampore, refused to receive

the cartridges that were served out, and were prevented from open

violence only by the presence of a superior English force. After great

delay, it was determined that this regiment should be disbanded. The

authorities were not even yet alarmed; they were uneasy, but even

their uneasiness does not seem to have been shared by the majority of

the English residents in India. It was not until the 3d of April that

the sentence passed upon the 19th regiment was executed. The affair

was dallied with, and inefficiency and dilatoriness prevailed

everywhere.

But meanwhile the disaffection was spreading. The order for confining

the use of the new cartridges to the Europeans seems to have been

looked upon by the native regiments as a confirmation of their

suspicions with regard to them. The more daring and evil-disposed of

the soldiers stimulated the alarm, and roused the prejudices of their

more timid and unreasoning companions. No general plan of revolt

seems to have been formed, but the materials of discontent were

gradually being concentrated; the inflammable spirits of the Sepoys

were ready to burst into a blaze. Strong and judicious measures,

promptly put into action, might even now have allayed the excitement

and dissipated the danger. But the imbecile commander-in-chief was

enjoying himself and shirking care in the mountains; and Lord Canning

and his advisers at Calcutta seem to have preferred to allow to take

the initiative in their own way. Generally throughout Northern India

the common routine of affairs went on at the different stations, and

the ill-feeling and insubordination among the Sepoys scarcely

disturbed the established quiet and monotony of Anglo-Indian life.

But the storm was rising,--and the following extracts from a letter,

hitherto unpublished, written on the 30th of May, by an officer of

great distinction, and now in high command before Delhi, will show the

manner of its breaking.

"A fortnight ago no community in the world could have been living in

greater security of life and property than ours. Clouds there were

that indicated to thoughtful minds a coming storm, and in the most

dangerous quarter; but the actual outbreak was a matter of an hour,

and has fallen on us like a judgment from Heaven,--sudden,

irresistible as yet, terrible in its effects, and still spreading from

place to place. I dare say you may have observed among the Indian news

of late months, that here and there throughout the country mutinies of

native regiments had been taking place. They had, however, been

isolated cases, and the government thought it did enough to check the

spirit of disaffection by disbanding the corps involved. The failure

of the remedy was, however, complete, and, instead of having to deal

now with mutinies of separate regiments, we stand face to face with a

general mutiny of the Sepoy army of Bengal. To those who have thought

most deeply of the perils of the English empire in India this has

always seemed the monster one. It was thought to have been guarded

against by the strong ties of mercenary interest that bound the army

to the state, and there was, probably, but one class of feelings that

would have been strong enough to have broken these ties,--those,

namely, of religious sympathy or prejudice. The overt ground of the

general mutiny was offence to caste feelings, given by the

introduction into the army of certain cartridges said to have been

prepared with hog's lard and cow's fat. The men must bite off the ends

of these cartridges; so the Mahometans are defiled by the unclean

animal, and the Hindoos by the contact of the dead cow. Of course the

cartridges are _not_ prepared as stated, and they form the mere

handle for designing men to work with. They are, I believe, equally

innocent of lard and fat; but that a general dread of being

Christianized has by some means or other been created is without

doubt, though there is still much that is mysterious in the process by

which it has been instilled into the Sepoy mind, and I question if the

government itself has any accurate information on the subject.

"It was on the 10th of the present month [May] that the outburst of

the mutinous spirit took place in our own neighborhood,--at

Meerut. The immediate cause was the punishment of eighty-five troopers

of the 3d Light Cavalry, who had refused to use the obnoxious

cartridges, and had been sentenced by a native court-martial to ten

years' imprisonment. On Saturday, the 9th, the men were put in irons,

in presence of their comrades, and marched off to jail. On Sunday,

the 10th, just at the time of evening service, the mutiny broke

out. Three regiments left their lines, fell upon every European, man,

woman, or child, they met or could find, murdered them all, burnt half

the houses in the station, and, after working such a night of mischief

and horror as devils might have delighted in, marched off to Delhi

_en masse_, where three other regiments ripe for mutiny were

stationed. On the junction of the two brigades, the horrors of Meerut

were repeated in the imperial city, and every European who could be

found was massacred with revolting barbarity. In fact, the spirit was

that of a servile war. Annihilation of the ruling race was felt to be

the only chance of safety or impunity; so no one of the ruling race

was spared. Many, however, effected their escape, and, after all sorts

of perils and sufferings, succeeded in reaching military stations

containing European troops. * * *

"From the crisis of the mutiny our local anxieties have lessened. The

country round is in utter confusion. Bands of robbers are murdering

and plundering defenceless people. Civil government has practically

ceased from the land. The most loathsome irresolution and incapacity

have been exhibited in some of the highest quarters. A full month will

elapse before the mutineers are checked by any organized resistance.

A force is, or is supposed to be, marching on Delhi; but the outbreak

occurred on the 10th of May, and this day is the first of June, and

Delhi has seen no British colors and heard no British guns as

yet. * * *

"As to the empire, it will be all the stronger after this storm. It is

not five or six thousand mutinous mercenaries, or ten times the

number, that will change the destiny of England in India. Though we

small fragments of the great machine may fall at our posts, there is

that vitality in the English people that will bound stronger against

misfortunes, and build up the damaged fabric anew."

So far the letter from which we have quoted.--It was not until the 8th

of June that an English force appeared before the walls of Delhi. For

four weeks the mutineers had been left in undisturbed possession of

the city, a possession which was of incalculable advantage to them by

adding to their moral strength the prestige of a name which has always

been associated with the sceptre of Indian empire. The masters of

Delhi are the masters not only of a city, but of a deeply rooted

tradition of supremacy. The delay had told. Almost every day in the

latter half of May was marked by a new mutiny in different military

stations, widely separated from each other, throughout the

North-Western Provinces and Bengal. The tidings of the possession of

Delhi by the mutineers stimulated the daring madness of regiments that

had been touched by disaffection. Some mutinied from mere panic, some

from bitterness of hate. Some fled away quietly with their arms, to

join the force that had now swelled to an army in the city of the

Great Moghul; some repeated the atrocities of Meerut, and set up a

separate standard of revolt, to which all the disaffected and all the

worst characters of the district flocked, to gratify their lust for

revenge of real or fancied wrongs, or their baser passions for plunder

and unmeaning cruelty. The malignity of a subtle, acute,

semi-civilized race, unrestrained by law or by moral feeling, broke

out in its most frightful forms. Cowardice possessed of strength never

wreaked more horrible sufferings upon its victims, and the bloody and

barbarous annals of Indian history show no more bloody and barbarous

page.

The course of English life in those stations where the worst cruelties

and the bitterest sufferings have been inflicted on the unhappy

Europeans has been for a long time so peaceful and undisturbed, it has

gone on for the most part in such pleasant and easy quiet and with

such absolute security, that the agony of sudden alarm and unwarned

violence has added its bitterness to the overwhelming horror. It is

not as in border settlements, where the inhabitants choose their lot

knowing that they are exposed to the incursions of savage

enemies,--but it is as if on a night in one of the most peaceful of

long-settled towns, troops of men, with a sort of civilization that

renders their attack worse than that of savages, should be let loose

to work their worst will of lust and cruelty. The details are too

recent, too horrible, and as yet too broken and irregular, to be

recounted here.

Although, at the first sally of the mutineers from Delhi against the

force that had at length arrived, a considerable advantage was gained

by the Europeans, this advantage was followed up by no decisive

blow. The number of troops was too small to attempt an assault against

an army of thirty thousand men, each man of whom was a trained

soldier. The English force was unprovided with any sufficient siege

battery. It could do little more than encamp, throw up intrenchments

for its own defence, and wait for attacks to be made upon it,--attacks

which it usually repulsed with great loss to the attackers. The month

of June is the hottest month of the year at Delhi; the average height

of the thermometer being 92°. There, in such weather, the force must

sit still, watch the pouring in of reinforcements and supplies to the

city which it was too small to invest, and hear from day to day fresh

tidings of disaster and revolt on every hand,--tidings of evil which

there could scarcely be any hope of checking, until this central point

of the mutiny had fallen before the British arms. A position more

dispiriting can scarcely be imagined; and to all these causes for

despondency were added the incompetency and fatuity of the Indian

government, and the procrastination of the home government in the

forwarding of the necessary reinforcements.

Delhi has been often besieged, but seldom has a siege been laid to it

that at first sight would have appeared more desperate than this. The

city is strong in its artificial defences, and Nature lends her force

to the native troops within the walls. If they could hold out through

the summer, September was likely to be as great a general for them as

the famous two upon whom the Czar relied in the Crimea. A wall of gray

stone, strengthened by the modern science of English engineers, and

nearly seven miles in circumference, surrounds the city upon three

sides, while the fourth is defended by a wide offset of the Jumna, and

by a portion of the high, embattled, red stone wall of the palace,

which almost equals the city wall in strength, and is itself more than

a mile in length. Few cities in the East present a more striking

aspect from without. Over the battlements of the walls rise the

slender minarets and shining domes of the mosques, the pavilions and

the towers of the gates, the balustraded roofs of the higher and finer

houses, the light foliage of acacias, and the dark crests of tall

date-palms. It is a new city, only two hundred and twenty-six years

old. Shah Jehan, its founder, was fond of splendor in building, was

lavish of expense, and was eager to make his city imperial in

appearance as in name. The great mosque that he built here is the

noblest and most beautiful in all India. His palace might be set in

comparison with that of Aladdin; it was the fulfilment of an Oriental

voluptuary's dream. All that Eastern taste could devise of beauty,

that Eastern lavishness could fancy of adornment, or voluptuousness

demand of luxury, was brought together and displayed here. But its day

of splendor was not long; and now, instead of furnishing a home to a

court, which, if wicked, was at least magnificent, it is the abode of

demoralized pensioners, who, having lost the reality, retain the pride

and the vices of power. For years it has been utterly given over to

dirt and to decay. Its beautiful halls and chambers, rich with marbles

and mosaics, its "Pearl" _musjid_, its delicious gardens, its

shady summer-houses, its fountains, and all its walks and

pleasure-grounds, are neglected, abused, and occupied by the filthy

retainers of an effete court.

The city stands partly on the sandy border of the river, partly on a

low range of rocks. With its suburbs it may contain about one hundred

and sixty thousand inhabitants, a little more than half of whom are

Hindoos, and the remainder nominally Mahometans, in creed. Around the

wall stretches a wide, barren, irregular plain, covered, mile after

mile, with the ruins of earlier Delhis, and the tombs of the great or

the rich men of the Mahometan dynasty. There is no other such

monumental plain as this in the world. It is as full of traditions and

historic memories as of ruins; and in this respect, as in many others,

Delhi bears a striking resemblance to Rome,--for the Roman Campagna is

the only field which in its crowd of memories may be compared with it,

and the imperial city of India holds in the Mahometan mind much the

same place that Rome occupies in that of the Christian.

Before these pages are printed it is not unlikely that the news of the

fall of Delhi will have reached us. The troops of the besiegers

amounted in the middle of August to about five thousand five hundred

men. Other troops near them, and reinforcements on the way, may by the

end of the month have increased their force to ten thousand. At the

last accounts a siege train was expected to arrive on the 3d of

September, and an assault might be made very shortly afterwards. But

September is an unhealthy month, and there may be delays. _Dehli

door ust_,--"Delhi is far off,"--is a favorite Indian proverb. But

the chances are in favor of its being now in British hands.[1]

With its fall the war will be virtually ended,--for the reconquest of

the disturbed territories will be a matter of little difficulty, when

undertaken with the aid of the twenty thousand English troops who will

arrive in India before the end of the year.

The settlement of the country, after these long disturbances, cannot

be expected to take place at once; civil government has been too much

interrupted to resume immediately its ordinary operation. But as this

great revolt has had in very small degree the character of a popular

rising, and as the vast mass of natives are in general not

discontented with the English rule, order will be reëstablished with

comparative rapidity, and the course of life will before many months

resume much of its accustomed aspect.

The struggle of the trained and ambitious classes against the English

power will but have served to confirm it. The revolt overcome, the

last great danger menacing English security in India will have

disappeared. England will have learnt much from the trials she has had

to pass through, and that essential changes will take place within a

few years in the constitution of the Indian government there can be no

doubt. But it is to be remembered that for the past thirty years,

English rule in India has been, with all its defects, an enlightened

and beneficent rule. The crimes with which it has been charged, the

crimes of which it has been guilty, are small in amount, compared with

the good it has effected. Moreover, they are not the result of

inherent vices in the system of government, so much as of the

character of exceptional individuals employed to carry out that

system, and of the native character itself.--But on these points we do

not propose now to enter.

If the close of this revolt be not stained with retaliating cruelties,

if English soldiers remember mercy, then the whole history of this

time will be a proud addition to the annals of England. For though it

will display the incompetency and the folly of her governments, it

will show how these were remedied by the energy and spirit of

individuals; it will tell of the daring and gallantry of her men, of

their patient endurance, of their undaunted courage, and it will tell,

too, with a voice full of tears, of the sorrows, and of the brave and

tender hearts, and of the unshaken religious faith supporting them to

the end, of the women who died in the hands of their enemies. The

names of Havelock and Lawrence will be reckoned in the list of

England's worthies, and the story of the garrison of Cawnpore will be

treasured up forever among England's saddest and most touching

memories.

[Footnote 1: It is earnestly to be hoped that the officers in command

of the British force will not yield to the savage suggestions and

incitements of the English press, with regard to the fate of

Delhi. The tone of feeling which has been shown in many quarters in

England has been utterly disgraceful. Indiscriminate cruelty and

brutality are no fitting vengeance for the Hindoo and Mussulman

barbarities. The sack of Delhi and the massacre of its people would

bring the English conquerors down to the level of the conquered. Great

sins cry out for great punishments,--but let the punishment fall on

the guilty, and not involve the innocent. The strength of English rule

in India must be in her justice, in her severity,--but not in the

force and irresistible violence of her passions. To destroy the city

would be to destroy one of the great ornaments of her empire,--to

murder the people would be to commence the new period of her rule with

a revolting crime.

"For five days," says the historian, "Tamerlane remained a tranquil

spectator of the sack and conflagration of Delhi and the massacre of

its inhabitants, while he was celebrating a feast in honor of his

victory. When the troops were wearied with slaughter, and nothing was

left to plunder, he gave orders for the prosecution of his march, and

on the day of his departure he offered up to the Divine Majesty the

sincere and humble tribute of grateful praise."

"It is said that Nadir Shah, during the massacre that he had

commanded, sat in gloomy silence in the little mosque of

Rokn-u-doulah, which stands at the present day in the Great

Bazaar. Here the Emperor and his nobles at length took courage to

present themselves. They stood before him with downcast eyes, until

Nadir commanded them to speak, when the Emperor burst into tears and

entreated Nadir to spare his subjects."]

SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE.

Of all the rides since the birth of time,

Told in story or sung in rhyme,--

On Apuleius's Golden Ass,

Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass,

Witch astride of a human hack,

Islam's prophet on Al-Borák,--

The strangest ride that ever was sped

Was Ireson's out from Marblehead!

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

Body of turkey, head of owl,

Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,

Feathered and ruffled in every part,

Captain Ireson stood in the cart.

Scores of women, old and young,

Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue,

Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,

Shouting and singing the shrill refrain:

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt

By the women o' Morble'ead!"

Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,

Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,

Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase

Bacchus round some antique vase,

Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,

Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,

With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang,

Over and over the Maenads sang:

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt

By the women o' Morble'ead!"

Small pity for him!--He sailed away

From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay,--

Sailed away from a sinking wreck,

With his own town's-people on her deck!

"Lay by! lay by!" they called to him.

Back he answered, "Sink or swim!

Brag of your catch of fish again!"

And off he sailed through the fog and rain!

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur

That wreck shall lie forevermore.

Mother and sister, wife and maid,

Looked from the rocks of Marblehead

Over the moaning and rainy sea,

Looked for the coming that might not be!

What did the winds and the sea-birds say

Of the cruel captain who sailed away?--

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

Through the street, on either side,

Up flew windows, doors swung wide;

Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,

Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.

Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,

Hulks of old sailors run aground,

Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,

And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain:

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt

By the women o' Morble'ead!"

Sweetly along the Salem road

Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.

Little the wicked skipper knew

Of the fields so green and the sky so blue.

Riding there in his sorry trim,

Like an Indian idol glum and grim,

Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear

Of voices shouting far and near:

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt

By the women o' Morble'ead!"

"Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried,--

"What to me is this noisy ride?

What is the shame that clothes the skin,

To the nameless horror that lives within?

Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck

And hear a cry from a reeling deck!

Hate me and curse me,--I only dread

The hand of God and the face of the dead!"

Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea

Said, "God has touched him!--why should we?"

Said an old wife mourning her only son,

"Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!"

So with soft relentings and rude excuse,

Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,

And gave him cloak to hide him in,

And left him alone with his shame and sin.

Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY.

I fell in with a humorist, on my travels, who had in his chamber a

cast of the Rondanini Medusa, and who assured me that the name which

that fine work of art bore in the catalogues was a misnomer, as he was

convinced that the sculptor who carved it intended it for Memory, the

mother of the Muses. In the conversation that followed, my new friend

made some extraordinary confessions. "Do you not see," he said, "the

penalty of learning, and that each of these scholars whom you have met

at S., though he were to be the last man, would, like the executioner

in Hood's poem, guillotine the last but one?" He added many lively

remarks, but his evident earnestness engaged my attention, and, in the

weeks that followed, we became better acquainted. He had great

abilities, a genial temper, and no vices; but he had one defect,--he

could not speak in the tone of the people. There was some paralysis on

his will, that, when he met men on common terms, he spoke weakly, and

from the point, like a flighty girl. His consciousness of the fault

made it worse. He envied every daysman and drover in the tavern their

manly speech. He coveted Mirabeau's _don terrible de la

familiarité_, believing that he whose sympathy goes lowest is the

man from whom kings have the most to fear. For himself, he declared

that he could not get enough alone to write a letter to a friend. He

left the city; he hid himself in pastures. The solitary river was not

solitary enough; the sun and moon put him out. When he bought a house,

the first thing he did was to plant trees. He could not enough conceal

himself. Set a hedge here; set oaks there,--trees behind trees; above

all, set evergreens, for they will keep a secret all the year

round. The most agreeable compliment you could pay him was, to say

that you had not observed him in a house or a street where you had met

him. Whilst he suffered at being seen where he was, he consoled

himself with the delicious thought of the inconceivable number of

places where he was not. All he wished of his tailor was, to provide

that sober mean of color and cut which would never detain the eye for

a moment. He went to Vienna, to Smyrna, to London. In all the variety

of costumes, a carnival, a kaleidoscope of clothes, to his horror he

could never discover a man in the street who wore anything like his

own dress. He would have given his soul for the ring of Gyges. His

dismay at his visibility had blunted the fears of mortality. "Do you

think," he said, "I am in such great terror of being shot,--I, who am

only waiting to shuffle off my corporeal jacket, to slip away into the

back stars, and put diameters of the solar system and sidereal orbits

between me and all souls,--there to wear out ages in solitude, and

forget memory itself, if it be possible?" He had a remorse running to

despair of his social _gaucheries_, and walked miles and miles to

get the twitchings out of his face, the starts and shrugs out of his

arms and shoulders. "God may forgive sins," he said, "but awkwardness

has no forgiveness in heaven or earth." He admired in Newton, not so

much his theory of the moon, as his letter to Collins, in which he

forbade him to insert his name with the solution of the problem in the

"Philosophical Transactions": "It would perhaps increase my

acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly study to decline."

These conversations led me somewhat later to the knowledge of similar

cases, existing elsewhere, and to the discovery that they are not of

very infrequent occurrence. Few substances are found pure in

nature. Those constitutions which can bear in open day the rough

dealing of the world must be of that mean and average structure,--such

as iron and salt, atmospheric air, and water. But there are metals,

like potassium and sodium, which, to be kept pure, must be kept under

naphtha. Such are the talents determined on some specialty, which a

culminating civilization fosters in the heart of great cities and in

royal chambers. Nature protects her own work. To the culture of the

world, an Archimedes, a Newton is indispensable; so she guards them by

a certain aridity. If these had been good fellows, fond of dancing,

Port, and clubs, we should have had no "Theory of the Sphere," and no

"Principia." They had that necessity of isolation which genius

feels. Each must stand on his glass tripod, if he would keep his

electricity. Even Swedenborg, whose theory of the universe is based on

affection, and who reprobates to weariness the danger and vice of pure

intellect, is constrained to make an extraordinary exception: "There

are also angels who do not live consociated, but separate, house and

house; these dwell in the midst of heaven, because they are the best

of angels."

We have known many fine geniuses have that imperfection that they

cannot do anything useful, not so much as write one clean

sentence. 'Tis worse, and tragic, that no man is fit for society who

has fine traits. At a distance, he is admired; but bring him hand to

hand, he is a cripple. One protects himself by solitude, and one by

courtesy, and one by an acid, worldly manner,--each concealing how he

can the thinness of his skin and his incapacity for strict

association. But there is no remedy that can reach the heart of the

disease, but either habits of self-reliance that should go in practice

to making the man independent of the human race, or else a religion of

love. Now he hardly seems entitled to marry; for how can he protect a

woman, who cannot protect himself?

We pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall

not be, if there is anything good in you. Dante was very bad company,

and was never invited to dinner. Michel Angelo had a sad, sour time of

it. The ministers of beauty are rarely beautiful in coaches and

saloons. Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself. Yet

each of these potentates saw well the reason of his exclusion.

Solitary was he? Why, yes; but his society was limited only

by the amount of brain Nature appropriated in that age to carry on the

government of the world. "If I stay," said Dante, when there was

question of going to Rome, "who will go? and if I go, who will stay?"

But the necessity of solitude is deeper than we have said, and is

organic. I have seen many a philosopher whose world is large enough

for only one person. He affects to be a good companion; but we are

still surprising his secret, that he means and needs to impose his

system on all the rest. The determination of each is _from_ all

the others, like that of each tree up into free space. 'Tis no wonder,

when each has his whole head, our societies should be so small. Like

President Tyler, our party falls from us every day, and we must ride

in a sulky at last. Dear heart! take it sadly home to thee, there is

no coöperation. We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a

reconnoitring and recruiting of the holy fraternity that shall combine

for the salvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of

united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not

resolve, and the dearest friends are separated by impassable

gulfs. The coöperation is involuntary, and is put upon us by the

Genius of Life, who reserves this as a part of his prerogative. 'Tis

fine for us to talk: we sit and muse, and are serene, and complete;

but the moment we meet with anybody, each becomes a fraction.

Though the stuff of tragedy and of romances is in a moral union of two

superior persons, whose confidence in each other for long years, out

of sight, and in sight, and against all appearances, is at last

justified by victorious proof of probity to gods and men, causing

joyful emotions, tears, and glory,--though there be for heroes this

_moral union_, yet they, too, are as far off as ever from an

intellectual union, and the moral union is for comparatively low and

external purposes, like the coöperation of a ship's company, or of a

fire-club. But how insular and pathetically solitary are all the

people we know! Nor dare they tell what they think of each other, when

they meet in the street. We have a fine right, to be sure, to taunt

men of the world with superficial and treacherous courtesies!

Such is the tragic necessity which strict science finds underneath our

domestic and neighborly life, irresistibly driving each adult soul as

with whips into the desert, and making our warm covenants sentimental

and momentary. We must infer that the ends of thought were

peremptory, if they were to be secured at such ruinous cost. They are

deeper than can be told, and belong to the immensities and

eternities. They reach down to that depth where society itself

originates and disappears,--where the question is, Which is first, man

or men?--where the individual is lost in his source.

But this banishment to the rocks and echoes no metaphysics can make

right or tolerable. This result is so against nature, such a

half-view, that it must be corrected by a common sense and

experience. "A man is born by the side of his father, and there he

remains." A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a

certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished

member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as

body-garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone,

and must but coop up most men, and you undo them. "The king lived and

ate in his hall with men, and understood men," said Selden. When a

young barrister said to the late Mr. Mason, "I keep my chamber to read

law." "Read law!" replied the veteran, "'tis in the courtroom you

must read law." Nor is the rule otherwise for literature. If you would

learn to write, 'tis in the street you must learn it. Both for the

vehicle and for the aims of fine arts, you must frequent the public

square. The people, and not the college, is the writer's home. A

scholar is a candle, which the love and desire of all men will

light. Never his lands or his rents, but the power to charm the

disguised soul that sits veiled under this bearded and that rosy

visage is his rent and ration. His products are as needful as those of

the baker or the weaver. Society cannot do without cultivated men. As

soon as the first wants are satisfied, the higher wants become

imperative.

'Tis hard to mesmerize ourselves, to whip our own top; but through

sympathy we are capable of energy and endurance. Concert exasperates

people to a certain fury of performance they can rarely reach

alone. Here is the use of society: it is so easy with the great to be

great! so easy to come up to an existing standard!--as easy as it is

to the lover to swim to his maiden, through waves so grim before. The

benefits of affection are immense; and the one event which never loses

its romance is the alighting of superior persons at our gate.

It by no means follows that we are not fit for society, because

_soirées_ are tedious, and because the _soirée_ finds us

tedious. A backwoodsman, who had been sent to the university, told

me, that when he heard the best-bred young men at the law-school talk

together, he reckoned himself a boor; but whenever he caught them

apart, and had one to himself alone, then they were the boors, and he

the better man. And if we recall the rare hours when we encountered

the best persons, we then found ourselves, and then first society

seemed to exist. That was society, though in the transom of a brig,

or on the Florida Keys.

A cold, sluggish blood thinks it has not facts enough to the purpose,

and must decline its turn in the conversation. But they who speak have

no more,--have less. 'Tis not new facts that avail, but the heat to

dissolve everybody's facts. Heat puts you in right relation with

magazines of facts. The capital defect of cold, arid natures is the

want of animal spirits. They seem a power incredible, as if God

should raise the dead. The recluse witnesses what others perform by

their aid with a kind of fear. It is as much out of his possibility,

as the prowess of Coeur-de-Lion, or an Irishman's day's work on the

railroad. 'Tis said, the present and the future are always

rivals. Animal spirits constitute the power of the present, and their

feats are like the structure of a pyramid. Their result is a lord, a

general, or a boon-companion. Before these, what a base mendicant is

Memory with his leathern badge! But this genial heat is latent in all

constitutions, and is disengaged only by the friction of society. As

Bacon said of manners, "To obtain them, it only needs not to despise

them," so we say of animal spirits, that they are the spontaneous

product of health and of a social habit. "For behavior, men learn it,

as they take diseases, one of another."

But the people are to be taken in very small doses. If solitude is

proud, so is society vulgar. In society, high advantages are set down

to the individual as disadvantages. We sink as easily as we rise,

through sympathy. So many men whom I know are degraded by their

sympathies, their native aims being high enough, but their relation

all too tender to the gross people about them. Men cannot afford to

live together on their merits, and they adjust themselves by their

demerits,--by their love of gossip, or sheer tolerance and animal

good-nature. They untune and dissipate the brave aspirant.

The remedy is, to reinforce each of these moods from the

other. Conversation will not corrupt us, if we come to the assembly in

our own garb and speech, and with the energy of health to select what

is ours and reject what is not. Society we must have; but let it be

society, and not exchanging news, or eating from the same dish. Is it

society to sit in one of your chairs? I cannot go to the houses of my

nearest relatives, because I do not wish to be alone. Society exists

by chemical affinity, and not otherwise.

Put any company of people together with freedom for conversation, and

a rapid self-distribution takes place into sets and pairs. The best

are accused of exclusiveness. It would be more true to say, they

separate as oil from water, as children from old people, without love

or hatred in the matter, each seeking his like; and any interference

with the affinities would produce constraint and suffocation. All

conversation is a magnetic experiment. I know that my friend can talk

eloquently; you know that he cannot articulate a sentence: we have

seen him in different company. Assort your party, or invite none. Put

Stubbs and Byron, Quintilian and Aunt Miriam, into pairs, and you make

them all wretched. 'Tis an extempore Sing-Sing built in a

parlor. Leave them to seek their own mates, and they will be as merry

as sparrows.

A higher civility will reëstablish in our customs a certain reverence

which we have lost. What to do with these brisk young men who break

through all fences, and make themselves at home in every house? I find

out in an instant if my companion does not want me, and ropes cannot

hold me when my welcome is gone. One would think that the affinities

would pronounce themselves with a surer reciprocity.

Here again, as so often, Nature delights to put us between extreme

antagonisms, and our safety is in the skill with which we keep the

diagonal line. Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal. We must

keep our head in the one, and our hands in the other. The conditions

are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our

sympathy. These wonderful horses need to be driven by fine hands. We

require such a solitude as shall hold us to its revelations when we

are in the street and in palaces; for most men are cowed in society,

and say good things to you in private, but will not stand to them in

public. But let us not be the victims of words. Society and solitude

are deceptive names. It is not the circumstance of seeing more or

fewer people, but the readiness of sympathy, that imports; and a sound

mind will derive its principles from insight, with ever a purer ascent

to the sufficient and absolute right, and will accept society as the

natural element in which they are to be applied.

AKIN BY MARRIAGE.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER III

When little Helen was not far from nine years old, her mother, (as she

had learned to call Mrs. Bugbee,) whose health for a long time had

been failing, fell sick and took to her bed. Sometimes, for a brief

space, she would seem to mend a little; and a council of doctors,

convened to consider her case,--though each member differed from all

the others touching the nature of her malady,--unanimously declared

she would ultimately recover. But her disease, whatever it was, proved

to be her mortal illness; for the very next night she came suddenly to

her end. Her loss was a heavy one, especially to her own household.

She had always been a quiet person, of rather pensive humor, whose

native diffidence caused her to shrink from observation; and after

Amelia's death she was rarely seen abroad, except at meeting, on

Sundays, or when she went to visit the poor, the sick, or the

grief-stricken. It was at home that her worth was most apparent;

for plain domestic virtues, such as hers, seldom gain wide

distinction. Her children's sorrow was deep and lasting, and the badge

of mourning which her husband wore for many months after her death was

a truthful symbol of unaffected grief. From the beginning, he was

warmly attached to his wife, whose affection for him was very great

indeed. It would have been strange if he had been unhappy, when she,

who made his tastes her study, also made it the business of her life

to please him. Besides, his cheerful temper enabled him to make light

of more grievous misfortunes than the getting of a loving wife and

thrifty helpmeet ten years older than himself.

When a widower, like the Doctor, is but fifty, with the look of a much

younger man, people are apt to talk about the chances of his marrying

again. Before Mrs. Bugbee had been dead a twelve-month, rumors were as

plenty as blackberries that the Doctor had been seen, late on Sunday

evenings, leaving this house, or that house, the dwelling-place of

some marriageable lady; and if he had finally espoused all whom the

gossips reported he was going to marry, he would have had as many

wives as any Turkish pasha or Mormon elder. It was doubtless true that

he called at certain places more frequently than had been his custom

in Mrs. Bugbee's lifetime. This, he assured Cornelia, to whom the

reports I have mentioned occasioned some uneasiness, was because he

was more often summoned to attend, in a professional way, at those

places, than he had ever been of old; which was true enough, I dare

say, for more spinsters and widows were taken ailing about this time

than had ever been ill at once before. Be that as it may, certain

arrangements which the Doctor presently made in his domestic affairs

did not seem to foretoken an immediate change of condition.

Miss Statira Blake, whom the Doctor engaged as housekeeper, was the

youngest daughter of an honest shoemaker, who formerly flourished at

Belfield Green, where he was noted for industry, a fondness for

reading, a tenacious memory, a ready wit, and a fluent tongue. In

politics he was a radical, and in religion a schismatic. The little

knot of Presbyterian Federalist magnates, who used to assemble at the

tavern to discuss affairs of church and state over mugs of flip and

tumblers of sling, regarded him with feelings of terror and

aversion. The doughty little cobbler made nothing of attacking them

single-handed, and putting them utterly to rout; for he was a dabster

at debate, and entertained as strong a liking for polemics as for

books. Nay, he was a thorn in the side of the parson himself, for

whom he used to lie in wait with knotty questions,--snares set to

entrap the worthy divine, in the hope of beguiling him into a

controversy respecting some abstruse point of doctrine, in which the

cobbler, who had every verse of the Bible at his tongue's end, was not

apt to come off second best.

But one day, Tommy Blake, being at a raising where plenty of liquor

was furnished, (as the fashion used to be,) slipped and fell from a

high beam, and was carried home groaning with a skinful of broken

bones. He died the next day, poor man, and his bedridden widow

survived the shock of witnessing his dreadful agonies and death but a

very little while. Her daughters, two young girls, were left destitute

and friendless. But Major Bugbee, to whom the cobbler's wife had been

remotely akin, and who was at that time first selectman of the town,

took the orphans with him to his house, where they tarried till he

found good places for them. Roxana, the elder girl, went to live with

a reputable farmer's wife, whose only son she afterwards

married. Statira remained under the shelter of the good Major's

hospitable roof much longer than her sister did, and would have been

welcome to stay, but she was not one of those who like to eat the

bread of dependence. With the approval of the selectmen, she bound

herself an indentured apprentice to Billy Tuthill, the little lame

tailor, for whom she worked faithfully four years, until she had

served out her time and was mistress of her trade, even to the

recondite mystery of cutting a double-breasted swallow-tail coat by

rule and measure. Then, at eighteen, she set up business for herself,

going from house to house as her customers required, working by the

day. Her services were speedily in great demand, and she was never out

of employment. Many a worthy citizen of Belfield well remembers his

first jacket-and-trowsers, the handiwork of Tira Blake. The Sunday

breeches of half the farmers who came to meeting used to be the

product of her skilful labor. Thus for many years (refusing meanwhile

several good offers of marriage) she continued to ply her needle and

shears, working steadily and cheerfully in her vocation, earning good

wages and spending but little, until the thrifty sempstress was

counted well to do, and held in esteem according. Sometimes, when she

got weary, and thought a change of labor would do her good, she would

engage with some lucky dame to help do housework for a month or

two. She was a famous hand at pickling, preserving, and making all

manner of toothsome knick-knacks and dainties. Nor was she deficient

in the pleasure walks of the culinary art. Betsey Pratt, the

tavernkeeper's wife, a special crony of Statira's, used always to send

for her whenever she was in straits, or when, on some grand occasion,

a dinner or supper was to be prepared and served up in more than

ordinary style. So learned was she in all the devices of the pantry

and kitchen, that many a young woman in the parish would have given

half her setting-out, and her whole store of printed cookery-books, to

know by heart Tira Blake's unwritten lore of rules and recipes. So,

wherever she went, she was welcome, albeit not a few stood in fear of

her; for though, when well treated, she was as good-humored as a

kitten, when provoked, especially by a slight or affront, her wrath

was dangerous. Her tongue was sharper than her needle, and her

pickles were not more piquant than her sarcastic wit. Tira, the older

people used to remark, was Tommy Blake's own daughter; and truly, she

did inherit many of her father's qualities, both good and bad, and not

a few of his crotchets and opinions. In fine, she was a shrewd,

sensible, Yankee old maid, who, as she herself was wont to say, was as

well able to take care of 'number one' as e'er a man in town.

Statira never forgot Major Bugbee's kindness to her in her lonely

orphanhood. She preserved for him and for every member of his family

a grateful affection; but her special favorite was James, the Doctor's

brother, who was a little younger than she, and who repaid this

partiality with hearty good-will and esteem. When he grew up and

married, his house became one of Statira's homes; the other being at

her sister's house, which was too remote from Belfield Green to be at

all times convenient. So she had rooms, which she called alike her

own, at both these places, in each of which she kept a part of her

wardrobe and a portion of her other goods and chattels. The children

of both families called her Aunt Statira, but, if the truth were

known, she loved little Frank Bugbee, James's only son, better than

she did the whole brood of her sister Roxy's flaxen-pated

offspring. Nay, she loved him better than all the world besides.

Statira used to call James her right-hand man, asking for his advice

in every matter of importance, and usually acting in accordance with

it. So, when Doctor Bugbee invited her to take charge of his household

affairs, Cornelia joining in the request with earnest importunity, she

did not at once return a favorable reply, though strongly inclined

thereto, but waited until she had consulted James and his wife, who

advised her to accept the proffered trust, giving many sound and

excellent reasons why she ought to do so.

Accordingly, a few months after Mrs. Bugbee's death, Statira began to

sway the sceptre where she had once found refuge from the poor-house;

for though Cornelia remained the titular mistress of the mansion,

Statira was the actual ruler, invested with all the real power.

Cornelia gladly resigned into her more experienced hands the reins of

government, and betook herself to occupations more congenial to her

tastes than housekeeping. Whenever, afterwards, she made a languid

offer to perform some light domestic duty, Statira was accustomed to

reply in such wise that the most perfect concord was maintained

between them. "No, my dear," the latter would say, "do you just leave

these things to me. If there a'n't help enough in the house to do the

work, your pa'll get 'em; and as for overseein', one's better than

two." But sometimes, when little Helen proffered her assistance, Tira

let the child try her hand, taking great pains to instruct her in

housewifery, warmly praising her successful essays, and finding

excuses for every failure. It was not long before a cordial friendship

subsisted between the teacher and her pupil.

The Doctor, of course, experienced great contentment at beholding his

children made happy, his house well kept and ordered, his table spread

with plentiful supplies of savory victuals, and all his domestic

concerns managed with sagacity and prudence, by one upon whose

goodwill and ability to promote his welfare he could rely with

implicit confidence. Even the servants shared in the general

satisfaction; for though, under Tira's vigorous rule, no task or duty

could be safely shunned or slighted, she proved a kind and even an

indulgent mistress to those who showed themselves worthy of her

favor. Old Violet, the mother of Dinah, the little black girl

elsewhere mentioned, yielded at once to Tira Blake the same respectful

obedience that she and her ancestors, for more than a century in due

succession, had been wont to render only to dames of the ancient

Bugbee line. Dinah herself, now a well-grown damsel, black, but

comely, who, during Cornelia's maladministration, had been suffered to

follow too much the devices and desires of her own heart, setting at

naught alike the entreaties and reproofs of her mistress and her

mother's angry scoldings,--even Dinah submitted without a murmur to

Tira's wholesome authority, and abandoned all her evil courses.

Bildad Royce, a crotchety hired-man, whom the Doctor kept to do the

chores and till the garden, albeit at first inclined to be captious,

accorded to the new housekeeper the meed of his approbation.

"I like her well enough to hope she'll stay, mum," quoth he, in reply

to an inquisitive neighbor. "And for my part, Miss Prouty," he added,

nodding and winking at his questioner, "I'd like to see it fixed so

she'd alwus stay; and if the Doctor _doos_ think he can't do no

better'n to have her bimeby, when the time comes, who's a right to say

a word agin it?"

"Goodness me!" exclaimed the unwary Mrs. Prouty,--"do you mean to say

you think he's got any idea of such a thing, Bildad?"

"Yes, I _don't_ mean to say I think he's got any idee of sich a thing,

Bildad," replied Bildad himself, who took great delight in mystifying

people, and who sometimes, in order to express the most unqualified

negation, was accustomed to employ this apparently ambiguous form of

speech. "I said for _my_ part, Miss Prouty,--for _my_ part. As for the

Doctor, he'll prob'bly have his own notions, and foller 'em."