CHAPTER XV.

OUT OF THE WOODS.

What could society do without women and children? Both we found at the

first house, twenty miles from the second. The children buzzed about us;

the mother milked for us one of Maine's vanguard cows. She baked for

us bread, fresh bread,--such bread! not staff of life,--life's

vaulting-pole. She gave us blueberries with cream of cream. Ah, what a

change! We sat on chairs, at a table, and ate from plates. There was a

table-cloth, a salt-cellar made of glass, of glass never seen at

camps near Katahdin. There was a sugar-bowl, a milk-jug, and other

paraphernalia of civilization, including--O memories of Joseph

Bourgogne!--a dome of baked beans, with a crag of pork projecting from

the apex. We partook decorously, with controlled elbows, endeavoring to

appear as if we were accustomed to sit at tables and manage plates. The

men, women, and children of Millinoket were hospitable and delighted to

see strangers, and the men, like all American men in the summer before

a Presidential election, wanted to talk politics. Katahdin's last

full-bodied appearance was here; it rises beyond a breadth of black

forest, a bulkier mass, but not so symmetrical as from the southern

points of view. We slept that night on a feather-bed, and took cold for

want of air, beneath a roof.

By the time we had breakfasted, Cancut arrived with Birch on an

ox-sledge. Here our well-beloved west branch of the Penobscot, called

of yore Norimbagua, is married to the east branch, and of course by

marriage loses his identity, by-and-by, changing from the wild, free,

reckless rover of the forest to a tamish family-man style of river,

useful to float rafts and turn mills. However, during the first moments

of the honeymoon, the happy pair, Mr. Penobscot and Miss Milly Noket,

now a unit under the marital name, are gay enough, and glide along

bowery reaches and in among fair islands, with infinite endearments and

smiles, making the world very sparkling and musical there. By-and-by

they fall to romping, and, to avoid one of their turbulent frolics,

Cancut landed us, as he supposed, on the mainland, to lighten the canoe.

Just as he was sliding away down-stream, we discovered that he had left

us upon an island in the midst of frantic, impassable rapids. "Stop,

stop, John Gilpin!" and luckily he did stop, otherwise he would have

gone on to tidewater, ever thinking that we were before him, while we,

with our forest appetites, would have been glaring hungrily at each

other, or perhaps drawing lots for a cannibal doom. Once again, as we

were shooting a long rapid, a table-top rock caught us in mid-current.

We were wrecked. It was critical. The waves swayed us perilously this

way and that. Birch would be full of water, or overturned, in a moment.

Small chance for a swimmer in such maelströms! All this we saw, but had

no time to shudder at. Aided by the urgent stream, we carefully and

delicately--for a coarse movement would have been death--wormed our boat

off the rock and went fleeting through a labyrinth of new perils, onward

with a wild exhilaration, like galloping through prairie on fire. Of all

the high distinctive national pleasures of America, chasing buffalo,

stump-speaking, and the like, there is none so intense as shooting

rapids in a birch. Whenever I recall our career down the Penobscot, a

longing comes over me to repeat it.

We dropped down stream without further adventures. We passed the second

house, the first village, and other villages, very white and wide-awake,

melodiously named Nickertow, Pattagumpus, and Mattascunk. We spent the

first night at Mattawamkeag. We were again elbowed at a tavern table,

and compelled to struggle with real and not ideal pioneers for fried

beefsteak and soggy doughboys. The last river day was tame, but not

tiresome. We paddled stoutly by relays, stopping only once, at the

neatest of farm-houses, to lunch on the most airy-substantial bread and

baked apples and cream. It is surprising how confidential a traveller

always is on the subject of his gastronomic delights. He will have the

world know how he enjoyed his dinner, perhaps hoping that the world by

sympathy will enjoy its own.

Late in the afternoon of our eighth day from Greenville, Moosehead Lake,

we reached the end of birch-navigation, the great mill-dams of Indian

Oldtown, near Bangor. Acres of great pine logs, marked three crosses and

a dash, were floating here at the boom; we saw what Maine men suppose

timber was made for. According to the view acted upon at Oldtown,

Senaglecouna has been for a century or centuries training up its lordly

pines, that gang-saws, worked by Penobscot, should shriek through their

helpless cylinders, gnashing them into boards and chewing them into

sawdust.

Poor Birch! how out of its element it looked, hoisted on a freight-car

and travelling by rail to Bangor! There we said adieu to Birch and

Cancut. Peace and plenteous provender be with him! Journeys make friends

or foes; and we remember our fat guide, not as one who from time to time

just did not drown us, but as the jolly comrade of eight days crowded

with novelty and beauty, and fine, vigorous, manly life. END.

* * * * *

A WOMAN.

Not perfect, nay! but full of tender wants.--THE PRINCESS

I sat by my window sewing, one bright autumn day, thinking much of

twenty other things, and very little of the long seam that slipped away

from under my fingers slowly, but steadily, when I heard the front-door

open with a quick push, and directly into my open door entered Laura

Lane, with a degree of impetus that explained the previous sound in the

hall. She threw herself into a chair before me, flung her hat on the

floor, threw her shawl across the window-sill, and looked at me without

speaking: in fact, she was quite too much out of breath to speak.

I was used to Laura's impetuousness; so I only smiled and said, "Good

morning."

"Oh!" said Laura, with a long breath, "I have got something to tell you,

Sue."

"That's nice," said I; "news is worth double here in the country; tell

me slowly, to prolong the pleasure."

"You must guess first. I want to have you try your powers for once;

guess, do!"

"Mr. Lincoln defeated?"

"Oh, no,--at least not that I know of; all the returns from this State

are not in yet, of course not from the others; besides, do you think I'd

make such a fuss about politics?"

"You might," said I, thinking of all the beautiful and brilliant women

that in other countries and other times had made "fuss" more potent than

Laura's about politics.

"But I shouldn't," retorted she.

"Then there is a new novel out?"

"No!" (with great indignation).

"Or the parish have resolved to settle Mr. Hermann?"

"How stupid you are, Sue! Everybody knew that yesterday."

"But I am not everybody."

"I shall have to help you, I see," sighed Laura, half provoked.

"Somebody is going to be married."

"Mademoiselle, the great Mademoiselle!"

Laura stared at me. I ought to have remembered she was eighteen, and

not likely to have read Sévigné. I began more seriously, laying down my

seam.

"Is it anybody I know, Laura?"

"Of course, or you wouldn't care about it, and it would be no fun to

tell you."

"Is it you?"

Laura grew indignant.

"Do you think I should bounce in, in this way, to tell you _I_ was

engaged?"

"Why not? shouldn't you be happy about it?"

"Well, if I were, I should"----

Laura dropped her beautiful eyes and colored.

"The thoughts of youth are long, long

thoughts."

I am sure she felt as much strange, sweet shyness sealing her girlish

lips at that moment as when she came, very slowly and silently, a year

after, to tell me she was engaged to Mr. Hermann. I had to smile and

sigh both.

"Tell me, then, Laura; for I cannot guess."

"I'll tell you the gentleman's name, and perhaps you can guess the

lady's then: it is Frank Addison."

"Frank Addison!" echoed I, in surprise; for this young man was one I

knew and loved well, and I could not think who in our quiet village had

sufficient attraction for his fastidious taste.

He was certainly worth marrying, though he had some faults, being as

proud as was endurable, as shy as a child, and altogether endowed with a

full appreciation, to say the least, of his own charms and merits: but

he was sincere, and loyal, and tender; well cultivated, yet not priggish

or pedantic; brave, well-bred, and high-principled; handsome besides. I

knew him thoroughly; I had held him on my lap, fed him with sugar-plums,

soothed his child-sorrows, and scolded his naughtiness, many a time; I

had stood with him by his mother's dying bed and consoled him by my own

tears, for his mother I loved dearly; so, ever since, Frank had been

both near and dear to me, for a mutual sorrow is a tie that may

bind together even a young man and an old maid in close and kindly

friendship. I was the more surprised at his engagement because I thought

he would have been the first to tell me of it; but I reflected that

Laura was his cousin, and relationship has an etiquette of precedence

above any other social link.

"Yes,--Frank Addison! Now guess, Miss Sue! for he is not here to tell

you,--he is in New York; and here in my pocket I have got a letter for

you, but you shan't have it till you have well guessed."

I was--I am ashamed to confess it--but I was not a little comforted

at hearing of that letter. One may shake up a woman's heart with every

alloy of life, grind, break, scatter it, till scarce a throb of its

youth beats there, but to its last bit it is feminine still; and I felt

a sudden sweetness of relief to know that my boy had not forgotten me.

"I don't know whom to guess, Laura; who ever marries after other

people's fancy? If I were to guess Sally Hetheridge, I might come as

near as I shall to the truth."

Laura laughed.

"You know better," said she. "Frank Addison is the last man to marry a

dried-up old tailoress."

"I don't know that he is; according to his theories of women and

marriage, Sally would make him happy. She is true-hearted, I am

sure,--generous, kind, affectionate, sensible, and poor. Frank has

always raved about the beauty of the soul, and the degradation of

marrying money,--therefore, Laura, I believe he is going to marry a

beauty and an heiress. I guess Josephine Bowen."

"Susan!" exclaimed Laura, with a look of intense astonishment, "how

could you guess it?"

"Then it is she?"

"Yes, it is,--and I am so sorry! such a childish, giggling, silly little

creature! I can't think how Frank could fancy her; she is just like Dora

in "David Copperfield,"--a perfect gosling! I am as vexed"----

"But she is exquisitely pretty."

"Pretty! well, that is all; he might as well have bought a nice picture,

or a dolly! I am out of all patience with Frank. I haven't the heart to

congratulate him."

"Don't be unreasonable, Laura; when you get as old as I am, you will

discover how much better and greater facts are than theories. It's all

very well for men to say,--

'Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat,'--

the soul is all they love,--the fair, sweet character, the lofty mind,

the tender woman's heart, and gentle loveliness; but when you come down

to the statistics of love and matrimony, you find Sally Hetheridge at

sixty an old maid, and Miss Bowen at nineteen adored by a dozen men and

engaged to one. No, Laura, if I had ten sisters, and a fairy godmother

for each, I should request that ancient dame to endow them all with

beauty and silliness, sure that then they would achieve a woman's best

destiny,--a home."

Laura's face burned indignantly; she hardly let me finish before she

exclaimed,--

"Susan Lee! I am ashamed of you! Here are you, an old maid, as happy as

anybody, decrying all good gifts to a woman, except beauty, because,

indeed, they stand in the way of her marriage! as if a woman was only

made to be a housekeeper!"

Laura's indignation amused me. I went on.

"Yes, I am happy enough; but I should have been much happier, had I

married. Don't waste your indignation, dear; you are pretty enough

to excuse your being sensible, and you ought to agree with my ideas,

because they excuse Frank, and yours do not."

"I don't want to excuse him; I am really angry about it. I can't bear to

have Frank throw himself away; she is pretty now, but what will she be

in ten years?"

"People in love do not usually enter into such remote calculations; love

is to-day's delirium; it has an element of divine faith in it, in not

caring for the morrow. But, Laura, we can't help this matter, and we

have neither of us any conscience involved in it. Miss Bowen may be

better than we know. At any rate, Frank is happy, and that ought to

satisfy both you and me just now."

Laura's eyes filled with tears. I could see them glisten on the dark

lashes, as she affected to tie her hat, all the time untying it as fast

as ever the knot slid. She was a sympathetic little creature, and loved

Frank very sincerely, having known him as long as she could remember.

She gave me a silent kiss, and went away, leaving the letter, yet

unopened, lying in my lap. I did not open it just then. I was thinking

of Josephine Bowen.

Every summer, for three years, Mr. and Mrs. Bowen had come to Ridgefield

for country-air, bringing with them their adopted daughter, whose

baptismal name had resigned in favor of the pet appellation "Kitten,"--a

name better adapted to her nature and aspect than the _Impératrice_

appellation that belonged to her. She was certainly as charming a little

creature as ever one saw in flesh and blood. Her sweet child's face, her

dimpled, fair cheeks, her rose-bud of a mouth, and great, wistful, blue

eyes, that laughed like flax-flowers in a south-wind, her tiny, round

chin, and low, white forehead, were all adorned by profuse rings and

coils and curls of true gold-yellow, that never would grow long, or be

braided, or stay smooth, or do anything but ripple and twine and push

their shining tendrils out of every bonnet or hat or hood the little

creature wore, like a stray parcel of sunbeams that would shine. Her

delicate, tiny figure was as round as a child's,--her funny hands as

quaint as some fat baby's, with short fingers and dimpled knuckles. She

was a creature as much made to be petted as a King-Charles spaniel,--and

petted she was, far beyond any possibility of a crumpled rose-leaf. Mrs.

Bowen was fat, loving, rather foolish, but the best of friends and the

poorest of enemies; she wanted everybody to be happy, and fat, and well

as she was, and would urge the necessity of wine, and entire idleness,

and horse-exercise, upon a poor minister, just as honestly and

energetically as if he could have afforded them: an idea to the contrary

never crossed her mind spontaneously, but, if introduced there, brought

forth direct results of bottles, bank-bills, and loans of ancient

horses, only to be checked by friendly remonstrance, or the suggestion

that a poor man might be also proud. Mr. Bowen was tall and spare, a

man of much sense and shrewd kindliness, but altogether subject and

submissive to "Kitten's" slightest wish. She never wanted anything; no

princess in a story-book had less to desire; and this entire spoiling

and indulgence seemed to her only the natural course of things. She

took it as an open rose takes sunshine, with so much simplicity,

and heartiness, and beaming content, and perfume of sweet, careless

affection, that she was not given over to any little vanities or

affectations, but was always a dear, good little child, as happy as the

day was long, and quite without a fear or apprehension. I had seen

very little of her in those three summers, for I had been away at the

sea-side, trying to fan the flickering life that alone was left to me

with pungent salt breezes and stinging baptisms of spray, but I had

liked that little pretty well. I did not think her so silly as Laura

did: she seemed to me so purely simple, that I sometimes wondered if her

honest directness and want of guile were folly or not. But I liked to

see her, as she cantered past my door on her pony, the gold tendrils

thick clustered about her throat and under the brim of her black hat,

and her bright blue eyes sparkling with the keen air, and a real

wild-rose bloom on her smiling face. She was a prettier sight even than

my profuse chrysanthemums, whose masses of garnet and yellow and white

nodded languidly to the autumn winds to-day.

I recalled myself from this dream of recollection, better satisfied with

Miss Bowen than I had been before. I could see just how her beauty had

bewitched Frank,--so bright, so tiny, so loving: one always wants to

gather a little, gay, odor-breathing rose-bud for one's own, and such

she was to him.

So then I opened his letter. It was dry and stiff: men's letters almost

always are; they cannot say what they feel; they will be fluent of

statistics, or description, or philosophy, or politics, but as to

feeling,--there they are dumb, except in real love-letters, and, of

course, Frank's was unsatisfactory accordingly. Once, toward the end,

came out a natural sentence: "Oh, Sue! if you knew her, you wouldn't

wonder!" So he had, after all, felt the apology he would not speak; he

had some little deference left for his deserted theories.

Well I knew what touched his pride, and struck that little revealing

spark from his deliberate pen: Josephine Bowen was rich, and he only a

poor lawyer in a country-town: he felt it even in this first flush of

love, and to that feeling I must answer when I wrote him,--not merely to

the announcement, and the delight, and the man's pride. So I answered

his letter at once, and he answered mine in person. I had nothing to say

to him, when I saw him; it was enough to see how perfectly happy and

contented he was,--how the proud, restless eyes, that had always looked

a challenge to all the world, were now tranquil to their depths. Nothing

had interfered with his passion. Mrs. Bowen liked him always, Mr. Bowen

liked him now; nobody had objected, it had not occurred to anybody to

object; money had not been mentioned any more than it would have been in

Arcadia. Strange to say, the good, simple woman, and the good, shrewd

man had both divined Frank's peculiar sensitiveness, and respected it.

There was no period fixed for the engagement, it was indefinite as yet,

and the winter, with all its excitements of South and North, passed by

at length, and the first of April the Bowens moved out to Ridgefield. It

was earlier than usual; but the city was crazed with excitement, and Mr.

Bowen was tried and worn; he wanted quiet. Then I saw a great deal of

Josephine, and in spite of Laura, and her still restless objections to

the child's childish, laughing, inconsequent manner, I grew into liking

her: not that there seemed any great depth to her; she was not specially

intellectual, or witty, or studious, or practical; she did not try to

be anything: perhaps that was her charm to me. I had seen so many women

laboring at themselves to be something, that one who was content to live

without thinking about it was a real phenomenon to me. Nothing bores me

(though I be stoned for the confession, I must make it!) more than a

woman who is bent on improving her mind, or forming her manners, or

moulding her character, or watching her motives, with that deadly-lively

conscientiousness that makes so many good people disagreeable. Why can't

they consider the lilies, which grow by receiving sun and air and dew

from God, and not hopping about over the lots to find the warmest corner

or the wettest hollow, to see how much bigger and brighter they can

grow? It was real rest to me to have this tiny, bright creature come

in to me every day during Frank's office-hours as unintentionally as a

yellow butterfly would come in at the window. Sometimes she strayed to

the kitchen-porch, and, resting her elbows on the window-sill and her

chin on both palms, looked at me with wondering eyes while I made bread

or cake; sometimes she came by the long parlor-window, and sat down on a

_brioche_ at my feet while I sewed, talking in her direct, unconsidered

way, so fresh, and withal so good and pure, I came to thinking the day

very dull that did not bring "Kitten" to see me.

The nineteenth of April, in the evening, my door opened again with an

impetuous bang; but this time it was Frank Addison, his eyes blazing,

his dark cheek flushed, his whole aspect fired and furious.

"Good God, Sue! do you know what they've done in Baltimore?"

"What?" said I, in vague terror, for I had been an alarmist from the

first: I had once lived at the South.

"Fired on a Massachusetts regiment, and killed--nobody knows how many

yet; but killed, and wounded."

I could not speak: it was the lighted train of a powder-magazine burning

before my eyes. Frank began to walk up and down the room.

"I must go! I must! I must!" came involuntarily from his working lips.

"Frank! Frank! remember Josephine."

It was a cowardly thing to do, but I did it. Frank turned ghastly white,

and sat down in a chair opposite me. I had, for the moment, quenched his

ardor; he looked at me with anxious eyes, and drew a long sigh, almost a

groan.

"Josephine!" he said, as if the name were new to him, so vitally did the

idea seize all his faculties.

"Well, dear!" said a sweet little voice at the door.

Frank turned, and seemed to see a ghost; for there in the door-way stood

"Kitten," her face perhaps a shade calmer than ordinary, swinging in one

hand the tasselled hood she wore of an evening, and holding her shawl

together with the other. Over her head we discerned the spare, upright

shape of Mr. Bowen looking grim and penetrative, but not unkindly.

"What is the matter?" went on the little lady.

Nobody answered, but Frank and I looked at each other. She came in now

and went toward him, Mr. Bowen following at a respectful distance, as if

he were her footman.

"I've been looking for you everywhere," said she, with the slightest

possible suggestion of reserve, or perhaps timidity, in her voice.

"Father went first for me, and when you were not at Laura's, or the

office, or the post-office, or Mrs. Sledge's, then I knew you were here;

so I came with him, because--because"--she hesitated the least bit

here--"we love Sue."

Frank still looked at her with his soul in his eyes, as if he wanted to

absorb her utterly into himself and then die. I never saw such a look

before; I hope I never may again; it haunts me to this day.

I can pause now to recall and reason about the curious, exalted

atmosphere that seemed suddenly to have surrounded us, as if bare

spirits communed there, not flesh and blood. Frank did not move; he sat

and looked at her standing near him, so near that her shawl trailed

against his chair; but presently when she wanted to grasp something, she

moved aside and took hold of another chair,--not his: it a little thing,

but it interpreted her.

"Well?" said he, in a hoarse tone.

Just then she moved, as I said, and laid one hand on the back of a

chair: it was the only symptom of emotion she showed; her voice was as

childish-clear and steady as before.

"You want to go, Frank, and I thought you would rather be married to me

first; so I came to find you and tell you I would."

Frank sprang to his feet like a shot man; I cried; Josephine stood

looking at us quite steadily, her head a little bent toward me, her eyes

calm, but very wide open; and Mr. Bowen gave an audible grunt. I suppose

the right thing for Frank to have done in any well-regulated novel would

have been to fall on his knees and call her all sorts of names; but

people never do--that is, any people that I know--just what the

gentlemen in novels do; so he walked off and looked out of the window.

To my aid came the goddess of slang. I stopped snuffling directly.

"Josephine," said I, solemnly, "you are a brick!"

"Well, I should think so!" said Mr. Bowen, slightly sarcastic.

Josey laughed very softly. Frank came back from the window, and then the

three went off together, she holding by her father's arm, Frank on his

other side. I could not but look after them as I stood in the hall-door,

and then I came back and sat down to read the paper Frank had flung on

the floor when he came in. It diverted my mind enough from myself to

enable me to sleep; for I was burning with self-disgust to think of

my cowardice. I, a grown woman, supposed to be more than ordinarily

strong-minded by some people, fairly shamed and routed by a girl Laura

Lane called "Dora"!

In the morning, Frank came directly after breakfast. He had found his

tongue now, certainly,--for words seemed noway to satisfy him, talking

of Josephine; and presently she came, too, as brave and bright as ever,

sewing busily on a long housewife for Frank; and after her, Mrs. Bowen,

making a huge pin-ball in red, white, and blue, and full of the trunk

she was packing for Frank to carry, to be filled with raspberry-jam,

hard gingerbread, old brandy, clove-cordial, guava-jelly, strong

peppermints, quinine, black cake, cod-liver oil, horehound-candy,

Brandreth's pills, damson-leather, and cherry-pectoral, packed in with

flannel and cotton bandages, lint, lancets, old linen, and cambric

handkerchiefs.

I could not help laughing, and was about to remonstrate, when Frank

shook his head at me from behind her. He said afterward he let her go

on that way, because it kept her from crying over Josephine. As for

the trunk, he should give it to Miss Dix as soon as ever he reached

Washington.

In a week, Frank had got his commission as captain of a company in a

volunteer regiment; he went into camp at Dartford, our chief town, and

set to work in earnest at tactics and drill. The Bowens also went to

Dartford, and the last week in May came back for Josey's wedding. I am

a superstitious creature,--most women are,--and it went to my heart

to have them married in May; but I did not say so, for it seemed

imperative, as the regiment were to leave for Washington in June, early.

The day but one before the wedding was one of those warm, soft days that

so rarely come in May. My windows were open, and the faint scent of

springing grass and opening blossoms came in on every southern breath of

wind. Josey had brought her work over to sit beside me. She was hemming

her wedding-veil,--a long cloud of _tulle_; and as she sat there,

pinching the frail stuff in her fingers, and handling her needle with

such deft little ways, as if they were old friends and understood each

other, there was something so youthful, so unconscious, so wistfully

sweet in her aspect, I could not believe her the same resolute, brave

creature I had seen that night in April.

"Josey," said I, "I don't know how you can be willing to let Frank go."

It was a hard thing for me to say, and I said it without thinking.

She leaned back in her chair, and pinched her hem faster than ever.

"I don't know, either," said she. "I suppose it was because I ought. I

don't think I am so willing now, Sue: it was easy at first, for I was

so angry and grieved about those Massachusetts men; but now, when I get

time to think, I do ache over it! I never let him know; for it is just

the same right now, and he thinks so. Besides, I never let myself grieve

much, even to myself, lest he might find it out. I must keep bright till

he goes. It would be so very hard on him, Susy, to think I was crying at

home."

I said no more,--I could not; and happily for me, Frank came in with

a bunch of wild-flowers, that Josey took with a smile as gay as the

columbines, and a blush that outshone the "pinkster-bloomjes," as our

old Dutch "chore-man" called the wild honeysuckle. A perfect shower of

dew fell from them all over her wedding-veil.

The day of her marriage was showery as April, but a gleam of soft,

fitful sunshine streamed into the little church windows, and fell across

the tiny figure that stood by Frank Addison's side, like a ray of

glory, till the golden curls glittered through her veil, and the fresh

lilies-of-the-valley that crowned her hair and ornamented her simple

dress seemed to send out a fresher fragrance, and glow with more pearly

whiteness. Mrs. Bowen, in a square pew, sobbed, and snuffled, and sopped

her eyes with a lace pocket-handkerchief, and spilt cologne all over

her dress, and mashed the flowers on her French hat against the dusty

pew-rail, and behaved generally like a hen that has lost her sole

chicken. Mr. Bowen sat upright in the pew-corner, uttering sonorous

hems, whenever his wife sobbed audibly; he looked as dry as a stick, and

as grim as Bunyan's giant, and chewed cardamom-seeds, as if he were a

ruminating animal.

After the wedding came lunch: it was less formal than dinner, and

nobody wanted to sit down before hot dishes and go through with the

accompanying ceremonies. For my part, I always did hate gregarious

eating: it is well enough for animals, in pasture or pen; but a thing

that has so little that is graceful or dignified about it as this taking

food, especially as the thing is done here in America, ought, in my

opinion, to be a solitary act. I never bring my quinine and iron to my

friends and invite them to share it; why should I ask them to partake

of my beef, mutton, and pork, with the accompanying mastication, the

distortion of face, and the suppings and gulpings of fluid dishes that

many respectable people indulge in? No,--let me, at least, eat alone.

But I did not do so to-day; for Josey, with the most unsentimental air

of hunger, sat down at the table and ate two sandwiches, three pickled

mushrooms, a piece of pie, and a glass of jelly, with a tumbler of ale

besides. Laura Lane sat on the other side of the table, her great

dark eyes intently fixed on Josephine, and a look in which wonder was

delicately shaded with disgust quivering about her mouth. She was a

feeling soul, and thought a girl in love ought to live on strawberries,

honey, and spring-water. I believe she really doubted Josey's affection

for Frank, when she saw her eat a real mortal meal on her wedding-day.

As for me, I am a poor, miserable, unhealthy creature, not amenable to

ordinary dietetic rules, and much given to taking any excitement, above

a certain amount in lieu of rational food; so I sustained myself on a

cup of coffee, and saw Frank also make tolerable play of knife and fork,

though he did take some blanc-mange with his cold chicken, and profusely

peppered his Charlotte-Russe!

Mrs. Bowen alternately wept and ate pie. Mr. Bowen said the jelly tasted

of turpentine, and the chickens must have gone on Noah's voyage, they

were so tough; he growled at the ale, and asked nine questions about the

coffee, all of a derogatory sort, and never once looked at Josephine,

who looked at him every time he was particularly cross, with a rosy

little smile, as if she knew why! The few other people present behaved

after the ordinary fashion; and when we had finished, Frank and

Josephine, Mr. and Mrs. Bowen, Laura Lane and I, all took the train for

Dartford. Laura was to stay two weeks, and I till the regiment left.

An odd time I had, after we were fairly settled in our quiet hotel, with

those two girls. Laura was sentimental, sensitive, rather high-flown,

very shy, and self-conscious; it was not in her to understand Josey at

all. We had a great deal of shopping to do, as our little bride had put

off buying most of her finery till this time, on account of the few

weeks between the fixing of her marriage-day and its arrival. It was

pretty enough to see the _naïve_ vanity with which she selected her

dresses and shawls and laces,--the quite inconsiderate way in which she

spent her money on whatever she wanted. One day we were in a dry-goods'

shop, looking at silks; among them lay one of Marie-Louise blue,--a

plain silk, rich from its heavy texture only, soft, thick, and perfect

in color.

"I will have that one," said Josephine, after she had eyed it a moment,

with her head on one side, like a canary-bird. "How much is it?"

"Two fifty a yard, Miss," said the spruce clerk, with an inaccessible

air.

"I shall look so nice in it!" Josey murmured. "Sue, will seventeen yards

do? it must be very full and long; I can't wear flounces."

"Yes, that's plenty," said I, scarce able to keep down a smile at

Laura's face.

She would as soon have smoked a cigar on the steps of the hotel as have

mentioned before anybody, much less a supercilious clerk, that she

should "look so nice" in anything. Josey never thought of anything

beyond the fact, which was only a fact. So, after getting another dress

of a lavender tint, still self-colored, but corded and rich, because it

went well with her complexion, and a black one, that "father liked to

see against her yellow wig, as he called it," Mrs. Josephine proceeded

to a milliner's, where, to Laura's further astonishment, she bought

bonnets for herself, as if she had been her own doll, with an utter

disregard of proper self-depreciation, trying one after another, and

discarding them for various personal reasons, till at last she fixed on

a little gray straw, trimmed with gray ribbon and white daisies, "for

camp," she said, and another of white lace, a fabric calculated to wear

twice, perhaps, if its floating sprays of clematis did not catch in any

parasol on its first appearance. She called me to see how becoming both

the bonnets were, viewed herself in various ways in the glass, and at

last announced that she looked prettiest in the straw, but the lace was

most elegant. To this succeeded purchases of lace and shawls, that still

farther opened Laura's eyes, and made her face grave. She confided to

me privately, that, after all, I must allow Josephine was silly and

extravagant. I had just come from that little lady's room, where she sat

surrounded by the opened parcels, saying, with the gravity of a child,--

"I do like pretty things, Sue! I like them more now than I used to,

because Frank likes me. I am so glad I'm pretty!"

I don't know how it was, but I could not quite coincide with Laura's

strictures. Josey was extravagant, to be sure; she was vain; but

something so tender and feminine flavored her very faults that they

charmed me. I was not an impartial judge; and I remembered, through all,

that April night, and the calm, resolute, self-poised character that

invested the lovely, girlish face with such dignity, strength, and

simplicity. No, she was not silly; I could not grant that to Laura.

Every day we drove to the camp, and brought Frank home to dinner. Now

and then he stayed with us till the next day, and even Laura could not

wonder at his "infatuation," as she had once called it, when she saw how

thoroughly Josephine forgot herself in her utter devotion to him; over

this, Laura's eyes filled with sad forebodings.

"If anything should happen to him, Sue, it will kill her," she said.

"She never can lose him and live. Poor little thing! how could Mr. Bowen

let her marry him?"

"Mr. Bowen lets her do much as she likes, Laura, and always has, I

imagine."

"Yes, she has been a spoiled child, I know, but it is such a pity!"

"_Has_ she been spoiled? I believe, as a general thing, more children

are spoiled by what the Scotch graphically call 'nagging' than by

indulgence. What do you think Josey would have been, if Mrs. Brooks had

been her mother?"

"I don't know, quite; unhappy, I am sure; for Mrs. Brooks's own children

look as if they had been fed on chopped catechism, and whipped early

every morning, ever since they were born. I never went there without

hearing one or another of them told to sit up, or sit down, or keep

still, or let their aprons alone, or read their Bibles; and Joe Brooks

confided to me in Sunday-school that he called Deacon Smith 'old

bald-head,' one day, in the street, to see if a bear wouldn't come and

eat him up, he was so tired of being a good boy!"

"That's a case in point, I think, Laura; but what a jolly little boy! he

ought to have a week to be naughty in, directly."

"He never will, while his mother owns a rod!" said she, emphatically.

I had beguiled Laura from her subject; for, to tell the truth, it was

one I did not dare to contemplate; it oppressed and distressed me too

much.

After Laura went home, we stayed in Dartford only a week, and then

followed the regiment to Washington. We had been there but a few days,

before it was ordered into service. Frank came into my room one night to

tell me.

"We must be off to-morrow, Sue,--and you must take her back to

Ridgefield at once. I can't have her here. I have told Mr. Bowen. If we

should be beaten,--and we may,--raw troops may take a panic, or may

fight like veterans,--but if we should run, they will make a bee-line

for Washington. I should go mad to have her here with a possibility of

Rebel invasion. She must go; there is no question."

He walked up and down the room, then came back and looked me straight in

the face.

"Susan, if I never come back, you will be her good friend, too?"

"Yes," said I, meeting his eye as coolly as it met mine: I had learned a

lesson of Josey. "I shall see you in the morning?"

"Yes"; and so he went back to her.

Morning came. Josephine was as bright, as calm, as natural, as the June

day itself. She insisted on fastening "her Captain's" straps on his

shoulders, purloined his cumbrous pin-ball and put it out of sight, and

kept even Mrs. Bowen's sobs in subjection by the intense serenity of

her manner. The minutes seemed to go like beats of a fever-pulse;

ten o'clock smote on a distant bell; Josephine had retreated, as if

accidentally, to a little parlor of her own, opening from our common

sitting-room. Frank shook hands with Mr. Bowen; kissed Mrs. Bowen

dutifully, and cordially too; gave me one strong clasp in his arms, and

one kiss; then went after Josephine. I closed the door softly behind

him. In five minutes by the ticking clock he came out, and strode

through the room without a glance at either of us. I had heard her say

"Good bye" in her sweet, clear tone, just as he opened the door; but

some instinct impelled me to go in to her at once: she lay in a dead

faint on the floor.

We left Washington that afternoon, and went straight back to Ridgefield.

Josey was in and out of my small house continually: but for her father

and mother, I think she would have stayed with me from choice. Rare

letters came from Frank, and were always reported to me, but, of course,

never shown. If there was any change in her manner, it was more steadily

affectionate to her father and mother than ever; the fitful, playful

ways of her girlhood were subdued, but, except to me, she showed no

symptom of pain, no show of apprehension: with me alone she sometimes

drooped and sighed. Once she laid her little head on my neck, and,

holding me to her tightly, half sobbed,--

"Oh, I wish--I wish I could see him just for once!"

I could not speak to answer her.

As rumors of a march toward Manassas increased, Mr. and Mrs. Bowen took

her to Dartford: there was no telegraph-line to Ridgefield, and but one

daily mail, and now a day's delay of news might be a vital loss. I could

not go with them; I was too ill. At last came that dreadful day of Bull

Run. Its story of shame and blood, trebly exaggerated, ran like fire

through the land. For twenty-four long hours every heart in Ridgefield

seemed to stand still; then there was the better news of fewer dead

than the first report, and we knew that the enemy had retreated, but no

particulars. Another long, long day, and the papers said Colonel ----'s

regiment was cut to pieces; the fourth mail told another story: the

regiment was safe, but Captains Addison, Black, and--Jones, I think,

were missing. The fifth day brought me a letter from Mr. Bowen. Frank

was dead, shot through the heart, before the panic began, cheering on

his men; he had fallen in the very front rank, and his gallant company,

at the risk of their lives, after losing half their number as wounded or

killed, had brought off his body, and carried it with them in retreat,

to find at last that they had ventured all this for a lifeless corpse!

He did not mention Josephine, but asked me to come to them at once, as

he was obliged to go to Washington. I could not, for I was too ill to

travel without a certainty of being quite useless at my journey's end. I

could but just sit up. Five days after, I had an incoherent sobbing sort

of letter from Mrs. Bowen, to say that they had arranged to have the

funeral at Ridgefield the next day but one,--that Josephine would come

out, with her, the night before, and directly to my house, if I was able

to receive them. I sent word by the morning's mail that I was able, and

went myself to the station to meet them.

They had come alone, and Josey preceded her mother into the little room,

as if she were impatient to have any meeting with a fresh face over. She

was pale as any pale blossom of spring, and as calm. Her curls, tucked

away under the widow's-cap she wore, and clouded by the mass of crape

that shrouded her, left only a narrow line of gold above the dead quiet

of her brow. Her eyes were like the eyes of a sleep-walker: they seemed

to see, but not to feel sight. She smiled mechanically, and put a cold

hand into mine. For any outward expression of emotion, one might have

thought Mrs. Bowen the widow: her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, her

nose was red, her lips tremulous, her whole face stained and washed with

tears, and the skin seemed wrinkled by their salt floods. She had cried

herself sick,--more over Josephine than Frank, as was natural.

It was but a short drive over to my house, but an utterly silent one.

Josephine made no sort of demonstration, except that she stooped to pat

my great dog as we went in. I gave her a room that opened out of mine,

and put Mrs. Bowen by herself. Twice in the night I stole in to look at

her: both times I found her waking, her eyes fixed on the open window,

her face set in its unnatural quiet; she smiled, but did not speak. Mrs.

Bowen told me in the morning that she had neither shed a tear nor slept

since the news came; it seemed to strike her at once into this cold

silence, and so she had remained. About ten, a carriage was sent over

from the village to take them to the funeral. This miserable custom of

ours, that demands the presence of women at such ceremonies, Mrs. Bowen

was the last person to evade; and when I suggested to Josey that she

should stay at home with me, she looked surprised, and said, quietly,

but emphatically, "Oh, no!"

After they were gone, I took my shawl and went out on the lawn. There

was a young pine dense enough to shield me from the sun, sitting under

which I could see the funeral-procession as it wound along the river's

edge up toward the burying-ground, a mile beyond the station. But there

was no sun to trouble me; cool gray clouds brooded ominously over all

the sky; a strong south-wind cried, and wailed, and swept in wild gusts

through the woods, while in its intervals a dreadful quiet brooded over

earth and heaven,--over the broad weltering river, that, swollen by

recent rain, washed the green grass shores with sullen flood,--over

the heavy masses of oak and hickory trees that hung on the farther

hill-side,--over the silent village and its gathering people. The

engine-shriek was borne on the coming wind from far down the valley.

There was an air of hushed expectation and regret in Nature itself that

seemed to fit the hour to its event.

Soon I saw the crowd about the station begin to move, and presently the

funeral-bell swung out its solemn tones of lamentation; its measured,

lingering strokes, mingled with the woful shrieking of the wind and the

sighing of the pine-tree overhead, made a dirge of inexpressible force

and melancholy. A weight of grief seemed to settle on my very breath: it

was not real sorrow; for, though I knew it well, I had not felt yet that

Frank was dead,--it was not real to me,--I could not take to my stunned

perceptions the fact that he was gone. It is the protest of Nature,

dimly conscious of her original eternity, against this interruption of

death, that it should always be such an interruption, so incredible, so

surprising, so new. No,--the anguish that oppressed me now was not the

true anguish of loss, but merely the effect of these adjuncts; the pain

of want, of separation, of reaching in vain after that which is gone, of

vivid dreams and tearful waking,--all this lay in wait for the future,

to be still renewed, still suffered and endured, till time should be no

more. Let all these pangs of recollection attest it,--these involuntary

bursts of longing for the eyes that are gone and the voice that is

still,--these recoils of baffled feeling seeking for the one perfect

sympathy forever fled,--these pleasures dimmed in their first

resplendence for want of one whose joy would have been keener and

sweeter to us than our own,--these bitter sorrows crying like children

in pain for the heart that should have soothed and shared them! No,--

there is no such dreary lie as that which prates of consoling Time! You

who are gone, if in heaven you know how we mortals fare, you know that

life took from you no love, no faith,--that bitterer tears fall for you

to-day than ever wet your new graves,--that the gayer words and the

recalled smiles are only like the flowers that grow above you, symbols

of the deeper roots we strike in your past existence,--that to the

true soul there is no such thing as forgetfulness, no such mercy as

diminishing regret!

Slowly the long procession wound up the river,--here, black with plumed

hearse and sable mourners,--there, gay with regimental band and bright

uniforms,--no stately, proper funeral, ordered by custom and marshalled

by propriety, but a straggling array of vehicles: here, the doctor's old

chaise,--there, an open wagon, a dusty buggy, a long, open omnibus,

such as the village-stable kept for pleasure-parties or for parties of

mourning who wanted to go _en masse_.

All that knew Frank, in or about Ridgefield, and all who had sons or

brothers in the army, swarmed to do him honor; and the quaint, homely

array crept slowly through the valley, to the sound of tolling bell and

moaning wind and the low rush of the swollen river,--the first taste

of war's desolation that had fallen upon us, the first dark wave of a

whelming tide!

As it passed out of sight, I heard the wheels cease, one by one, their

crunch and grind on the gravelled road up the slope of the grave-yard.

I knew they had reached that hill-side where the dead of Ridgefield

lie calmer than its living; and presently the long-drawn notes of that

hymn-tune consecrated to such occasions--old China--rose and fell in

despairing cadences on my ear. If ever any music was invented for the

express purpose of making mourners as distracted as any external thing

can make them, it is the bitter, hopeless, unrestrained wail of this

tune. There is neither peace nor resignation in it, but the very

exhaustion of raving sorrow that heeds neither God nor man, but

cries out, with the soulless agony of a wind-harp, its refusal to be

comforted.

At length it was over, and still in that same dead calm Josephine came

home to me. Mrs. Bowen was frightened, Mr. Bowen distressed. I could not

think what to do, at first; but remembering how sometimes a little thing

had utterly broken me down from a regained calmness after loss, some

homely association, some recall of the past, I begged of Mr. Bowen to

bring up from the village Frank's knapsack, which he had found in one of

his men's hands,--the poor fellow having taken care of that, while he

lost his own: "For the captain's wife," he said. As soon as it came, I

took from it Frank's coat, and his cap and sword. My heart was in my

mouth as I entered Josephine's room, and saw the fixed quiet on her face

where she sat. I walked in, however, with no delay, and laid the things

down on her bed, close to where she sat. She gave one startled look at

them and then at me; her face relaxed from all its quiet lines; she sank

on her knees by the bedside, and, burying her head in her arms, cried,

and cried, and cried, so helplessly, so utterly without restraint, that

I cried, too. It was impossible for me to help it. At last the tears

exhausted themselves; the dreadful sobs ceased to convulse her; all

drenched and tired, she lifted her face from its rest, and held out her

arms to me. I took her up, and put her to bed like a child. I hung the

coat and cap and sword where she could see them. I made her take a cup

of broth, and before long, with her eyes fixed on the things I had hung

up, she fell asleep, and slept heavily, without waking, till the next

morning.

I feared almost to enter her room when I heard her stir; I had dreaded

her waking,--that terrible hour that all know who have suffered, the dim

awakening shadow that darkens so swiftly to black reality; but I need

not have dreaded it for her. She told me afterward that in all that

sleep she never lost the knowledge of her grief; she did not come into

it as a surprise. Frank had seemed to be with her, distant, sad, yet

consoling; she felt that he was gone, but not utterly,--that there was

drear separation and loneliness, but not forever.

When I went in, she lay there awake, looking at her trophy, as she came

to call it, her eyes with all their light quenched and sodden out with

crying, her face pale and unalterably sad, but natural in its sweetness

and mobility. She drew me down to her and kissed me.

"May I get up?" she asked; and then, without waiting for an answer, went

on,--"I have been selfish, Sue; I will try to be better now; I won't

run away from my battle. Oh, how glad I am he didn't run away! It is

dreadful now, dreadful! Perhaps, if I had to choose if he should have

run away or--or this, I should have wanted him to run,--I'm afraid I

should. But I am glad now. If God wanted him, I'm glad he went from the

front ranks. Oh, those poor women whose husbands ran away, and were

killed, too!"

She seemed to be so comforted by that one thought! It was a strange

trait in the little creature; I could not quite fathom it.

After this, she came down-stairs and went about among us, busying

herself in various little ways. She never went to the grave-yard; but

whenever she was a little tired, I was sure to find her sitting in her

room with her eyes on that cap and coat and sword. Letters of condolence

poured in, but she would not read them or answer them, and they all fell

into my hands. I could not wonder; for, of all cruel conventionalities,

visits and letters of condolence seem to me the most cruel. If friends

can be useful in lifting off the little painful cares that throng in the

house of death till its presence is banished, let them go and do their

work quietly and cheerfully; but to make a call or write a note, to

measure your sorrow and express theirs, seems to me on a par with

pulling a wounded man's bandages off and probing his hurt, to hear him

cry out and hear yourself say how bad it must be!

Laura Lane was admitted, for Frank's sake, as she had been his closest

and dearest relative. The day she came, Josey had a severe headache, and

looked wretchedly. Laura was shocked, and showed it so obviously, that,

had there been any real cause for her alarm, I should have turned her

out of the room without ceremony, almost before she was fairly in it. As

soon as she left, Josey looked at me and smiled.

"Laura thinks I am going to die," said she; "but I'm not. If I could,

I wouldn't, Sue; for poor father and mother want me, and so will the

soldiers by-and-by." A weary, heart-breaking look quivered in her face

as she went on, half whispering,--"But I should--I _should_ like to see

him!"

In September she went away. I had expected it ever since she spoke of

the soldiers needing her. Mrs. Bowen went to the sea-side for her annual

asthma. Mr. Bowen went with Josephine to Washington. There, by some

talismanic influence, she got admission to the hospitals, though she

was very pretty, and under thirty. I think perhaps her pale face and

widow's-dress, and her sad, quiet manner, were her secret of success.

She worked here like a sprite; nothing daunted or disgusted her. She

followed the army to Yorktown, and nursed on the transport-ships. One

man said, I was told, that it was "jes' like havin' an apple-tree blow

raound, to see that Mis' Addison; she was so kinder cheery an' pooty,

an' knew sech a sight abaout nussin', it did a feller lots of good only

to look at her chirpin' abaout."

Now and then she wrote to me, and almost always ended by declaring she

was "quite well, and almost happy." If ever she met with one of Frank's

men,--and all who were left reënlisted for the war,--he was sure to be

nursed like a prince, and petted with all sorts of luxuries, and told

it was for his old captain's sake. Mr. and Mrs. Bowen followed her

everywhere, as near as they could get to her, and afforded unfailing

supplies of such extra hospital-stores as she wanted; they lavished on

her time and money and love enough to have satisfied three women, but

Josey found use for it all--for her work. Two months ago, they all came

back to Dartford. A hospital had been set up there, and some one was

needed to put it in operation; her experience would be doubly useful

there, and it was pleasant for her to be so near Frank's home, to be

among his friends and hers.

I went in, to do what I could, being stronger than usual, and found

her hard at work. Her face retained its rounded outline, her lips had

recovered their bloom, her curls now and then strayed from the net under

which she carefully tucked them, and made her look as girlish as ever,

but the girl's expression was gone; that tender, patient, resolute look

was born of a woman's stern experience; and though she had laid aside

her widow's-cap, because it was inconvenient, her face was so sad in its

repose, so lonely and inexpectant, she scarce needed any outward symbol

to proclaim her widowhood. Yet under all this new character lay still

some of those childish tastes that made, as it were, the "fresh perfume"

of her nature: everything that came in her way was petted; a little

white kitten followed her about the wards, and ran to meet her, whenever

she came in, with joyful demonstrations; a great dog waited for her at

home, and escorted her to and from the hospital; and three canaries hung

in her chamber;--and I confess here, what I would not to Laura, that she

retains yet a strong taste for sugar-plums, gingerbread, and the "Lady's

Book." She kept only so much of what Laura called her vanity as to be

exquisitely neat and particular in every detail of dress; and though a

black gown, and a white linen apron, collar, and cuffs do not afford

much room for display, yet these were always so speckless and spotless

that her whole aspect was refreshing.

Last week there was a severe operation performed in the hospital, and

Josephine had to be present. She held the poor fellow's hand till he

was insensible from the kindly chloroform they gave him, and, after the

surgeons were through, sat by him till night, with such a calm, cheerful

face, giving him wine and broth, and watching every indication of pulse

or skin, till he really rallied, and is now doing well.

As I came over, the next day, I met Doctor Rivers at the door of her

ward.

"Really," said he, "that little Mrs. Addison is a true heroine!"

The kitten purred about my feet, and as I smiled assent to him, I said

inwardly to myself,--

"Really, she is a true woman!"

ABOUT WARWICK.

Between bright, new Leamington, the growth of the present century,

and rusty Warwick, founded by King Cymbeline in the twilight ages, a

thousand years before the mediaeval darkness, there are two roads,

either of which may be measured by a sober-paced pedestrian in less than

half an hour.

One of these avenues flows out of the midst of the smart parades and

crescents of the former town,--along by hedges and beneath the shadow of

great elms, past stuccoed Elizabethan villas and wayside ale-houses, and

through a hamlet of modern aspect,--and runs straight into the principal

thoroughfare of Warwick. The battlemented turrets of the castle,

embowered half-way up in foliage, and the tall, slender tower of St.

Mary's Church, rising from among clustered roofs, have been visible

almost from the commencement of the walk. Near the entrance of the town

stands St. John's School-House, a picturesque old edifice of stone, with

four peaked gables in a row, alternately plain and ornamented, and wide,

projecting windows, and a spacious and venerable porch, all overgrown

with moss and ivy, and shut in from the world by a high stone fence, not

less mossy than the gabled front. There is an iron gate, through the

rusty open-work of which you see a grassy lawn, and almost expect to

meet the shy, curious eyes of the little boys of past generations,

peeping forth from their infantile antiquity into the strangeness of our

present life. I find a peculiar charm in these long-established English

schools, where the school-boy of to-day sits side by side, as it were,

with his great-grandsire, on the same old benches, and often, I believe,

thumbs a later, but unimproved edition of the same old grammar or

arithmetic. The new-fangled notions of a Yankee school-committee would

madden many a pedagogue, and shake down the roof of many a time-honored

seat of learning, in the mother-country.

At this point, however, we will turn back, in order to follow up the

other road from Leamington, which was the one that I loved best to take.

It pursues a straight and level course, bordered by wide gravel-walks

and overhung by the frequent elm, with here a cottage and there a villa,

on one side a wooded plantation, and on the other a rich field of grass

or grain, until, turning at right angles, it brings you to an arched

bridge over the Avon. Its parapet is a balustrade carved out of

freestone, into the soft substance of which a multitude of persons have

engraved their names or initials, many of them now illegible, while

others, more deeply cut, are illuminated with fresh green moss. These

tokens indicate a famous spot; and casting our eyes along the smooth

gleam and shadow of the quiet stream, through a vista of willows that

droop on either side into the water, we behold the gray magnificence of

Warwick Castle, uplifting itself among stately trees, and rearing its

turrets high above their loftiest branches. We can scarcely think the

scene real, so completely do those machicolated towers, the long line of

battlements, the massive buttresses, the high-windowed walls, shape out

our indistinct ideas of the antique time. It might rather seem as if the

sleepy river (being Shakspeare's Avon, and often, no doubt, the mirror

of his gorgeous visions) were dreaming now of a lordly residence that

stood here many centuries ago; and this fantasy is strengthened,

when you observe that the image in the tranquil water has all the

distinctness of the actual structure. Either might be the reflection of

the other. Wherever Time has gnawed one of the stones, you see the

mark of his tooth just as plainly in the sunken reflection. Each is so

perfect, that the upper vision seems a castle in the air, and the lower

one an old stronghold of feudalism, miraculously kept from decay in an

enchanted river.

A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge, that projects from the bank a little on

the hither side of the castle, has the effect of making the scene appear

more entirely apart from the every-day world, for it ends abruptly in

the middle of the stream,--so that, if a cavalcade of the knights and

ladies of romance should issue from the old walls, they could never

tread on earthly ground, any more than we, approaching from the side of

modern realism, can overleap the gulf between our domain and theirs.

Yet, if we seek to disenchant ourselves, it may readily be done.

Crossing the bridge on which we stand, and passing a little farther on,

we come to the entrance of the castle, abutting on the highway, and

hospitably open at certain hours to all curious pilgrims who choose to

disburse half a crown or so towards the support of the Earl's domestics.

The sight of that long series of historic rooms, full of such splendors

and rarities as a great English family necessarily gathers about itself,

in its hereditary abode, and in the lapse of ages, is well worth the

money, or ten times as much, if indeed the value of the spectacle could

be reckoned in money's-worth. But after the attendant has hurried you

from end to end of the edifice, repeating a guide-book by rote, and

exorcising each successive hall of its poetic glamour and witchcraft

by the mere tone in which he talks about it, you will make the doleful

discovery that Warwick Castle has ceased to be a dream. It is better,

methinks, to linger on the bridge, gazing at Caesar's Tower and Guy's

Tower in the dim English sunshine above, and in the placid Avon below,

and still keep them as thoughts in your own mind, than climb to their

summits, or touch even a stone of their actual substance. They will have

all the more reality for you, as stalwart relics of immemorial time, if

you are reverent enough to leave them in the intangible sanctity of a

poetic vision.

From the bridge over the Avon, the road passes in front of the

castle-gate, and soon enters the principal street of Warwick, a little

beyond St. John's School-House, already described. Chester itself, most

antique of English towns, can hardly show quainter architectural shapes

than many of the buildings that border this street. They are mostly of

the timber-and-plaster kind, with bowed and decrepit ridge-poles, and a

whole chronology of various patchwork in their walls; their low-browed

door-ways open upon a sunken floor; their projecting stories peep, as

it were, over one another's shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of

peaked gables; they have curious windows, breaking out irregularly all

over the house, some even in the roof, set in their own little peaks,

opening lattice-wise, and furnished with twenty small panes of

lozenge-shaped glass. The architecture of these edifices (a visible

oaken framework, showing the whole skeleton of the house,--as if a man's

bones should be arranged on his outside, and his flesh seen through the

interstices) is often imitated by modern builders, and with sufficiently

picturesque effect. The objection is, that such houses, like all

imitations of by-gone styles, have an air of affectation; they do not

seem to be built in earnest; they are no better than playthings, or

overgrown baby-houses, in which nobody should be expected to encounter

the serious realities of either birth or death. Besides, originating

nothing, we leave no fashions for another age to copy, when we ourselves

shall have grown antique.

Old as it looks, all this portion of Warwick has overbrimmed, as it

were, from the original settlement, being outside of the ancient wall.

The street soon runs under an arched gateway, with a church or some

other venerable structure above it, and admits us into the heart of

the town. At one of my first visits, I witnessed a military display. A

regiment of Warwickshire militia, probably commanded by the Earl, was

going through its drill in the market-place; and on the collar of one of

the officers was embroidered the Bear and Ragged Staff, which has been

the cognizance of the Warwick earldom from time immemorial. The soldiers

were sturdy young men, with the simple, stolid, yet kindly, faces of

English rustics, looking exceedingly well in a body, but slouching into

a yeoman-like carriage and appearance, the moment they were dismissed

from drill. Squads of them were distributed everywhere about the

streets, and sentinels were posted at various points; and I saw a

sergeant, with a great key in his hand, (big enough to have been the key

of the castle's main entrance when the gate was thickest and heaviest,)

apparently setting a guard. Thus, centuries after feudal times are

past, we find warriors still gathering under the old castle-walls, and

commanded by a feudal lord, just as in the days of the King-Maker, who,

no doubt, often mustered his retainers in the same market-place where I

beheld this modern regiment.

The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned aspect than the

suburbs through which we approach it; and the High Street has shops with

modern plate-glass, and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting as

few projections to hang a thought or sentiment upon as if an architect

of to-day had planned them. And, indeed, so far as their surface goes,

they are perhaps new enough to stand unabashed in an American street;

but behind these renovated faces, with their monotonous lack of

expression, there is probably the substance of the same old town that

wore a Gothic exterior in the Middle Ages. The street is an emblem of

England itself. What seems new in it is chiefly a skilful and fortunate

adaptation of what such a people as ourselves would destroy. The new

things are based and supported on sturdy old things, and derive a

massive strength from their deep and immemorial foundations, though with

such limitations and impediments as only an Englishman could endure.

But he likes to feel the weight of all the past upon his back; and,

moreover, the antiquity that overburdens him has taken root in his

being, and has grown to be rather a hump than a pack, so that there is

no getting rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. In

my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable under the

mouldy accretion, he had better stumble on with it as long as he can.

He presents a spectacle which is by no means without its charm for a

disinterested and unincumbered observer.

When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom or institution, appears

in its pristine form, without any attempt at intermarrying it with

modern fashions, an American cannot but admire the picturesque effect

produced by the sudden cropping up of an apparently dead-and-buried

state of society into the actual present, of which he is himself a part.

We need not go far in Warwick without encountering an instance of the

kind. Proceeding westward through the town, we find ourselves confronted

by a huge mass of natural rock, hewn into something like architectural

shape, and penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well have been one

of King Cymbeline's original gateways; and on the top of the rock, over

the archway, sits a small, old church, communicating with an ancient

edifice, or assemblage of edifices, that look down from a similar

elevation on the side of the street. A range of trees half hides the

latter establishment from the sun. It presents a curious and venerable

specimen of the timber-and-plaster style of building, in which some of

the finest old houses in England are constructed; the front projects

into porticos and vestibules, and rises into many gables, some in a row,

and others crowning semi-detached portions of the structure; the windows

mostly open on hinges, but show a delightful irregularity of shape and

position; a multiplicity of chimneys break through the roof at their own

will, or, at least, without any settled purpose of the architect. The

whole affair looks very old,--so old, indeed, that the front bulges

forth, as if the timber framework were a little weary, at last, of

standing erect so long; but the state of repair is so perfect, and there

is such an indescribable aspect of continuous vitality within the system

of this aged house, that you feel confident that there may be safe

shelter yet, and perhaps for centuries to come, under its time-honored

roof. And on a bench, sluggishly enjoying the sunshine, and looking into

the street of Warwick as from a life apart, a few old men are generally

to be seen, wrapped in long cloaks, on which you may detect the

glistening of a silver badge representing the Bear and Ragged Staff.

These decorated worthies are some of the twelve brethren of Leicester's

Hospital,--a community which subsists to-day under the identical modes

that were established for it in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of

course retains many features of a social life that has vanished almost

everywhere else.

The edifice itself dates from a much older period than the charitable

institution of which it is now the home. It was the seat of a religious

fraternity far back in the Middle Ages, and continued so till Henry

VIII. turned all the priesthood of England out-of-doors, and put the

most unscrupulous of his favorites into their vacant abodes. In many

instances, the old monks had chosen the sites of their domiciles so

well, and built them on such a broad system of beauty and convenience,

that their lay-occupants found it easy to convert them into stately and

comfortable homes; and as such they still exist, with something of the

antique reverence lingering about them. The structure now before us

seems to have been first granted to Sir Nicholas Lestrange, who perhaps

intended, like other men, to establish his household gods in the niches

whence he had thrown down the images of saints, and to lay his hearth

where an altar had stood. But there was probably a natural reluctance

in those days (when Catholicism, so lately repudiated, must needs Lave

retained an influence over all but the most obdurate characters) to

bring one's hopes of domestic prosperity and a fortunate lineage into

direct hostility with the awful claims of the ancient religion. At all

events, there is still a superstitious idea, betwixt a fantasy and a

belief, that the possession of former Church-property has drawn a curse

along with it, not only among the posterity of those to whom it was

originally granted, but wherever it has subsequently been transferred,

even if honestly bought and paid for. There are families, now inhabiting

some of the beautiful old abbeys, who appear to indulge a species of

pride in recording the strange deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that

have occurred among their predecessors, and may be supposed likely to

dog their own pathway down the ages of futurity. Whether Sir Nicholas

Lestrange, in the beef-eating days of Old Harry and Elizabeth, was a

nervous man, and subject to apprehensions of this kind, I cannot tell;

but it is certain that he speedily rid himself of the spoils of the

Church, and that, within twenty years afterwards, the edifice became the

property of the famous Dudley, Earl of Leicester, brother of the Earl of

Warwick. He devoted the ancient religious precinct to a charitable use,

endowing it with an ample revenue, and making it the perpetual home of

twelve poor, honest, and war-broken soldiers, mostly his own retainers,

and natives either of Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans,

or others wonderfully like them, still occupy their monkish dormitories

and haunt the time-darkened corridors and galleries of the hospital,

leading a life of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned

cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges which the Earl of

Leicester gave to the original twelve. He is said to have been a bad man

in his day; but he has succeeded in prolonging one good deed into what

was to him a distant future.

On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, there is the date,

1571, and several coats-of-arms, either the Earl's or those of his

kindred, and immediately above the door-way a stone sculpture of the

Bear and Ragged Staff.

Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quadrangle, or

inclosed court, such as always formed the central part of a great

family-residence in Queen Elizabeth's time, and earlier. There can

hardly be a more perfect specimen of such an establishment than

Leicester's Hospital. The quadrangle is a sort of sky-roofed hall, to

which there is convenient access from all parts of the house. The four

inner fronts, with their high, steep roofs and sharp gables, look into

it from antique windows, and through open corridors and galleries along

the sides; and there seems to be a richer display of architectural

devices and ornaments, quainter carvings in oak, and more fantastic

shapes of the timber framework, than on the side towards the street. On

the wall opposite the arched entrance are the following inscriptions,

comprising such moral rules, I presume, as were deemed most essential

for the daily observance of the community: "HONOR ALL MEN"--"FEAR

GOD"--"HONOR THE KING"--"LOVE THE BROTHERHOOD"; and again, as if this

latter injunction needed emphasis and repetition among a household of

aged people soured with the hard fortune of their previous lives,--"BE

KINDLY AFFECTIONED ONE TO ANOTHER." One sentence, over a door

communicating with the Master's side of the house, is addressed to

that dignitary,--"HE THAT RULETH OVER MEN MUST BE JUST." All these

are charactered in black-letter, and form part of the elaborate

ornamentation of the Louse. Everywhere--on the walls, over windows and

doors, and at all points where there is room to place them--appear

escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their proper

colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with their splendor. One

of these devices is a large image of a porcupine on an heraldic wreath,

being the crest of the Lords de Lisle. But especially is the cognizance

of the Bear and Ragged Staff repeated over and over, and over again and

again, in a great variety of attitudes, at full-length and half-length,

in paint and in oaken sculpture, in bas-relief and rounded image.

The founder of the hospital was certainly disposed to reckon his own

beneficence as among the hereditary glories of his race; and had he

lived and died a half-century earlier, he would have kept up an old

Catholic custom by enjoining the twelve bedesmen to pray for the welfare

of his soul.

At my first visit, some of the brethren were seated on the bench outside

of the edifice, looking down into the street; but they did not vouchsafe

me a word, and seemed so estranged from modern life, so enveloped in

antique customs and old-fashioned cloaks, that to converse with them

would have been like shouting across the gulf between our age and

Queen Elizabeth's. So I passed into the quadrangle, and found it quite

solitary, except that a plain and neat old woman happened to be crossing

it, with an aspect of business and carefulness that bespoke her a woman

of this world, and not merely a shadow of the past. Asking her if I

could come in, she answered very readily and civilly that I might, and

said that I was free to look about me, hinting a hope, however, that I

would not open the private doors of the brotherhood, as some visitors

were in the habit of doing. Under her guidance, I went into what was

formerly the great hall of the establishment, where King James I. had

once been feasted by an Earl of Warwick, as is commemorated by an

inscription on the cobwebbed and dingy wall. It is a very spacious and

barn-like apartment, with a brick floor, and a vaulted roof, the rafters

of which are oaken beams, wonderfully carved, but hardly visible in

the duskiness that broods aloft. The hall may have made a splendid

appearance, when it was decorated with rich tapestry, and illuminated

with chandeliers, cressets, and torches glistening upon silver dishes,

while King James sat at supper among his brilliantly dressed nobles;

but it has come to base uses in these latter days,--being improved,

in Yankee phrase, as a brewery and wash-room, and as a cellar for the

brethren's separate allotments of coal.

The old lady here left me to myself, and I returned into the quadrangle.

It was very quiet, very handsome, in its own obsolete style, and must be

an exceedingly comfortable place for the old people to lounge in, when

the inclement winds render it inexpedient to walk abroad. There are

shrubs against the wall, on one side; and on another is a cloistered

walk, adorned with stags' heads and antlers, and running beneath a

covered gallery, up to which ascends a balustraded staircase. In the

portion of the edifice opposite the entrance-arch are the apartments

of the Master; and looking into the window, (as the old woman, at no

request of mine, had specially informed me that I might,) I saw a low,

but vastly comfortable parlor, very handsomely furnished, and altogether

a luxurious place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, the antique

breadth of which extended almost from wall to wall of the room, though

now fitted up in such a way that the modern coal-grate looked very

diminutive in the midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed

to me, that, among these venerable surroundings, availing himself of

whatever was good in former things, and eking out their imperfection

with the results of modern ingenuity, the Master might lead a not

unenviable life. On the cloistered side of the quadrangle, where the

dark oak panels made the inclosed space dusky, I beheld a curtained

window reddened by a great blaze from within, and heard the bubbling and

squeaking of something--doubtless very nice and succulent--that was

being cooked at the kitchen-fire. I think, indeed, that a whiff or

two of the savory fragrance reached my nostrils; at all events, the

impression grew upon me that Leicester's Hospital is one of the jolliest

old domiciles in England.

I was about to depart, when another old woman, very plainly dressed,

but fat, comfortable, and with a cheerful twinkle in her eyes, came in

through the arch, and looked curiously at me. This repeated apparition

of the gentle sex (though by no means under its loveliest guise) had

still an agreeable effect in modifying my ideas of an institution which

I had supposed to be of a stern and monastic character. She asked

whether I wished to see the hospital, and said that the porter, whose

office it was to attend to visitors, was dead, and would be buried that

very day, so that the whole establishment could not conveniently be

shown me. She kindly invited me, however, to visit the apartment

occupied by her husband and herself; so I followed her up the antique

staircase, along the gallery, and into a small, oak-panelled parlor,

where sat an old man in a long blue garment, who arose and saluted me

with much courtesy. He seemed a very quiet person, and yet had a look of

travel and adventure, and gray experience, such as I could have fancied

in a palmer of ancient times, who might likewise have worn a similar

costume. The little room was carpeted and neatly furnished; a portrait

of its occupant was hanging on the wall; and on a table were two swords

crossed,--one, probably, his own battle-weapon, and the other, which

I drew half out of the scabbard, had an inscription on the blade,

purporting that it had been taken from the field of Waterloo. My

kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit all the particulars of their

housekeeping, and led me into the bed-room, which was in the nicest

order, with a snow-white quilt upon the bed; and in a little intervening

room was a washing and bathing apparatus,--a convenience (judging from

the personal aspect and atmosphere of such parties) seldom to be met

with in the humbler ranks of British life.

The old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of somebody to talk with;

but the good woman availed herself of the privilege far more copiously

than the veteran himself, insomuch that he felt it expedient to give her

an occasional nudge with his elbow in her well-padded ribs. "Don't you

be so talkative!" quoth he; and, indeed, he could hardly find space for

a word, and quite as little after his admonition as before. Her nimble

tongue ran over the whole system of life in the hospital. The brethren,

she said, had a yearly stipend, (the amount of which she did not

mention,) and such decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages,

free; and instead of being pestered with a great many rules, and made

to dine together at a great table, they could manage their little

household-matters as they liked, buying their own dinners, and having

them cooked in the general kitchen, and eating them snugly in their own

parlors. "And," added she, rightly deeming this the crowning privilege,

"with the Master's permission, they can have their wives to take care of

them; and no harm comes of it; and what more can an old man desire?"

It was evident enough that the good dame found herself in what she

considered very rich clover, and, moreover, had plenty of small

occupations to keep her from getting rusty and dull; but the veteran

impressed me as deriving far less enjoyment from the monotonous ease,

without fear of change or hope of improvement, that had followed upon

thirty years of peril and vicissitude. I fancied, too, that, while

pleased with the novelty of a stranger's visit, he was still a little

shy of becoming a spectacle for the stranger's curiosity; for, if he

chose to be morbid about the matter, the establishment was but an

almshouse, in spite of its old-fashioned magnificence, and his fine blue

cloak only a pauper's garment, with a silver badge on it that perhaps

galled his shoulder. In truth, the badge and the peculiar garb, though

quite in accordance with the manners of the Earl of Leicester's age,

are repugnant to modern prejudices, and might fitly and humanely be

abolished.

A year or two afterwards I paid another visit to the hospital, and found

a new porter established in office, and already capable of talking like

a guide-book about the history, antiquities, and present condition of

the charity. He informed me that the twelve brethren are selected from

among old soldiers of good character, whose private resources must

not exceed an income of five pounds; thus excluding all commissioned

officers, whose half-pay would of course be more than that amount. They

receive from the hospital an annuity of eighty pounds each, besides

their apartments, a garment of fine blue cloth, an annual abundance of

ale, and a privilege at the kitchen-fire; so that, considering the class

from which they are taken, they may well reckon themselves among the

fortunate of the earth. Furthermore, they are invested with political

rights, acquiring a vote for member of Parliament in virtue either

of their income or brotherhood. On the other hand, as regards their

personal freedom and conduct, they are subject to a supervision which

the Master of the hospital might render extremely annoying, were he so

inclined; but the military restraint under which they have spent the

active portion of their lives makes it easier for them to endure the

domestic discipline here imposed upon their age. The porter bore his

testimony (whatever were its value) to their being as contented and

happy as such a set of old people could possibly be, and affirmed that

they spent much time in burnishing their silver badges, and were as

proud of them as a nobleman of his star. These badges, by-the-by, except

one that was stolen and replaced in Queen Anne's time, are the very same

that decorated the original twelve brethren.

I have seldom met with a better guide than my friend the porter.

He appeared to take a genuine interest in the peculiarities of the

establishment, and yet had an existence apart from them, so that he

could the better estimate what those peculiarities were. To be sure, his

knowledge and observation were confined to external things, but, so

far, had a sufficiently extensive scope. He led me up the staircase

and exhibited portions of the timber framework of the edifice that are

reckoned to be eight or nine hundred years old, and are still neither

worm-eaten nor decayed; and traced out what had been a great hall, in

the days of the Catholic fraternity, though its area is now filled up

with the apartments of the twelve brethren; and pointed to ornaments of

sculptured oak, done in an ancient religious style of art, but hardly

visible amid the vaulted dimness of the roof. Thence we went to the

chapel--the Gothic church which I noted several pages back--surmounting

the gateway that stretches half across the street. Here the brethren

attend daily prayer, and have each a prayer-book of the finest paper,

with a fair, large type for their old eyes. The interior of the chapel

is very plain, with a picture of no merit for an altar-piece, and

a single old pane of painted glass in the great eastern window,

representing--no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such cases--but

that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester. Nevertheless, amid so many

tangible proofs of his human sympathy, one comes to doubt whether the

Earl could have been such a hardened reprobate, after all.

We ascended the tower of the chapel, and looked down between its

battlements into the street, a hundred feet below us; while clambering

half-way up were foxglove-flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts of

grass, that had rooted themselves into the roughnesses of the stone

foundation. Far around us lay a rich and lovely English landscape, with

many a church-spire and noble country-seat, and several objects of high

historic interest. Edge Hill, where the Puritans defeated Charles I., is

in sight on the edge of the horizon, and much nearer stands the house

where Cromwell lodged on the night before the battle. Right under our

eyes, and half-enveloping the town with its high-shouldering wall, so

that all the closely compacted streets seemed but a precinct of the

estate, was the Earl of Warwick's delightful park, a wide extent of

sunny lawns, interspersed with broad contiguities of forest-shade. Some

of the cedars of Lebanon were there,--a growth of trees in which the

Warwick family take an hereditary pride. The two highest towers of the

castle heave themselves up out of a mass of foliage, and look down in a

lordly manner upon the plebeian roofs of the town, a part of which are

slate-covered, (these are the modern houses,) and a part are coated with

old red tiles, denoting the more ancient edifices. A hundred and sixty

or seventy years ago, a great fire destroyed a considerable portion

of the town, and doubtless annihilated many structures of a remote

antiquity; at least, there was a possibility of very old houses in the

long past of Warwick, which King Cymbeline is said to have founded in

the year ONE of the Christian era!

And this historic fact or poetic fiction, whichever it may be, brings to

mind a more indestructible reality than anything else that has occurred

within the present field of our vision; though this includes the scene

of Guy of Warwick's legendary exploits, and some of those of the Round

Table, to say nothing of the Battle of Edge Hill. For perhaps it was

in the landscape now under our eyes that Post-humus wandered with the

King's daughter, the sweet, chaste, faithful, and courageous Imogen, the

tenderest and womanliest woman that Shakspeare ever made immortal in

the world. The silver Avon, which we see flowing so quietly by the gray

castle, may have held their images in its bosom.

The day, though it began brightly, had long been overcast, and the

clouds now spat down a few spiteful drops upon us, besides that the

east-wind was very chill; so we descended the winding tower-stair, and

went next into the garden, one side of which is shut in by almost the

only remaining portion of the old city-wall. A part of the garden-ground

is devoted to grass and shrubbery, and permeated by gravel-walks, in the

centre of one of which is a beautiful stone vase of Egyptian sculpture,

having formerly stood on the top of a Nilometer, or graduated pillar

for measuring the rise and fall of the River Nile. On the pedestal is

a Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who (his vicarage of Hatton being so

close at hand) was probably often the Master's guest, and smoked his

interminable pipe along these garden-walks. Of the vegetable-garden,

which lies adjacent, the lion's share is appropriated to the Master, and

twelve small, separate patches to the individual brethren, who cultivate

them at their own judgment and by their own labor; and their beans

and cauliflowers have a better flavor, I doubt not, than if they had

received them directly from the dead hand of the Earl of Leicester, like

the rest of their food. In the farther part of the garden is an arbor

for the old men's pleasure and convenience, and I should like well to

sit down among them there, and find out what is really the bitter and

the sweet of such a sort of life. As for the old gentlemen themselves,

they put me queerly in mind of the Salem Custom-House, and the venerable

personages whom I found so quietly at anchor there.

The Master's residence, forming one entire side of the quadrangle,

fronts on the garden, and wears an aspect at once stately and homely.

It can hardly have undergone any perceptible change with in three

centuries; but the garden, into which its old windows look, has probably

put off a great many eccentricities and quaintnesses, in the way of

cunningly clipped shrubbery, since the gardener of Queen Elizabeth's

reign threw down his rusty shears and took his departure. The present

Master's name is Harris; he is a descendant of the founder's family, a

gentleman of independent fortune, and a clergyman of the Established

Church, as the regulations of the hospital require him to be. I know

not what are his official emoluments; but, according to all English

precedent, an ancient charitable fund is certain to be held directly for

the behoof of those who administer it, and perhaps incidentally, in a

moderate way, for the nominal beneficiaries; and, in the case before us,

the brethren being so comfortably provided for, the Master is likely to

be at least as comfortable as all the twelve together. Yet I ought not,

even in a distant land, to fling an idle gibe against a gentleman of

whom I really know nothing, except that the people under his charge bear

all possible tokens of being tended and cared for as sedulously as if

each of them sat by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter bustling

round the hearth to make ready his porridge and his titbits. It is

delightful to think of the good life which a suitable man, in the

Master's position, has an opportunity to lead,--linked to time-honored

customs, welded in with an ancient system, never dreaming of radical

change, and bringing all the mellowness and richness of the past down

into these railway-days, which do not compel him or his community

to move a whit quicker than of yore. Everybody can appreciate the

advantages of going ahead; it might be well, sometimes, to think whether

there is not a word or two to be said in favor of standing still, or

going to sleep.

From the garden we went into the kitchen, where the fire was burning

hospitably, and diffused a genial warmth far and wide, together with the

fragrance of some old English roast-beef, which, I think must at that

moment have been nearly to a turn. The kitchen is a lofty, spacious,

and noble room, partitioned off round the fireplace by a sort of

semicircular oaken screen, or, rather, an arrangement of heavy and

high-backed settles, with an ever open entrance between them, on either

side of which is the omnipresent image of the Bear and Ragged Staff,

three feet high, and excellently carved in oak, now black with time and

unctuous kitchen-smoke. The ponderous mantel-piece, likewise of carved

oak, towers high towards the dusky ceiling, and extends its mighty

breadth to take in a vast area of hearth, the arch of the fireplace

being positively so immense that I could compare it to nothing but the

city-gateway. Above its cavernous opening were crossed two ancient

halberds, the weapons, possibly, of soldiers who had fought under

Leicester in the Low Countries; and elsewhere on the walls were

displayed several muskets, which some of the present inmates of the

hospital may have levelled against the French. Another ornament of the

mantel-piece was a square of silken needlework or embroidery, faded

nearly white, but dimly representing that wearisome Bear and Ragged

Staff, which we should hardly look twice at, only that it was wrought by

the fair fingers of poor Amy Robsart, and beautifully framed in oak from

Kenilworth Castle at the expense of a Mr. Conner, a countryman of our

own. Certainly, no Englishman would be capable of this little bit of

enthusiasm. Finally, the kitchen-firelight glistens on a splendid

display of copper flagons, all of generous capacity, and one of them

about as big as a half-barrel; the smaller vessels contain the customary

allowance of ale, and the larger one is filled with that foaming liquor

on four festive occasions of the year, and emptied amain by the jolly

brotherhood. I should be glad to see them do it; but it would be an

exploit fitter for Queen Elizabeth's age than these degenerate times.

The kitchen is the social hall of the twelve brethren. In the day-time,

they bring their little messes to be cooked here, and eat them in their

own parlors; but after a certain hour, the great hearth is cleared and

swept, and the old men assemble round its blaze, each with his tankard

and his pipe, and hold high converse through the evening. If the Master

be a fit man for his office, methinks he will sometimes sit down

sociably among them; for there is an elbow-chair by the fireside which

it would not demean his dignity to fill, since it was occupied by King

James at the great festival of nearly three centuries ago. A sip of the

ale and a whiff of the tobacco-pipe would put him in friendly relations

with his venerable household; and then we can fancy him instructing them

by pithy apothegms and religious texts which were first uttered here by

some Catholic priest and have impregnated the atmosphere ever since. If

a joke goes round, it shall be of an elder coinage than Joe Miller's, as

old as Lord Bacon's collection, or as the jest-book that Master Slender

asked for when he lacked small-talk for sweet Anne Page. No news shall

be spoken of, later than the drifting ashore, on the northern coast,

of sonic stern-post or figure-head, a barnacled fragment of one of the

great galleons of the Spanish Armada. What a tremor would pass through

the antique group, if a damp newspaper should suddenly be spread to dry

before the fire! They would feel as if either that printed sheet or they

themselves must be an unreality. What a mysterious awe, if the shriek

of the railway-train, as it reaches the Warwick station, should ever so

faintly invade their ears! Movement of any kind seems inconsistent with

the stability of such an institution. Nevertheless, I trust that the

ages will carry it along with them; because it is such a pleasant kind

of dream for an American to find his way thither, and behold a piece of

the sixteenth century set into our prosaic times, and then to depart,

and think of its arched door-way as a spell-guarded entrance which will

never be accessible or visible to him any more.

Not far from the market-place of Warwick stands the great church of St.

Mary's: a vast edifice, indeed, and almost worthy to be a cathedral.

People who pretend to skill in such matters say that it is in a poor

style of architecture, though designed (or, at least, extensively

restored) by Sir Christopher Wren; but I thought it very striking, with

its wide, high, and elaborate windows, its tall tower, its immense

length, and (for it was long before I outgrew this Americanism, the

love of an old thing merely for the sake of its age) the tinge of gray

antiquity over the whole. Once, while I stood gazing up at the tower,

the clock struck twelve with a very deep intonation, and immediately

some chimes began to play, and kept up their resounding music for five

minutes, as measured by the hand upon the dial. It was a very delightful

harmony, as airy as the notes of birds, and seemed a not unbecoming

freak of half-sportive fancy in the huge, ancient, and solemn church;

although I have seen an old-fashioned parlor-clock that did precisely

the same thing, in its small way.

The great attraction of this edifice is the Beauchamp (or, as the

English, who delight in vulgarizing their fine old Norman names, call

it, the Beechum) Chapel, where the Earls of Warwick and their kindred

have been buried, from four hundred years back till within a recent

period. It is a stately and very elaborate chapel, with a large window

of ancient painted glass, as perfectly preserved as any that I remember

seeing in England, and remarkably vivid in its colors. Here are several

monuments with marble figures recumbent upon them, representing the

Earls in their knightly armor, and their dames in the ruffs and

court-finery of their day, looking hardly stiffer in stone than they

must needs have been in their starched linen and embroidery. The

renowned Earl of Leicester of Queen Elizabeth's time, the benefactor

of the hospital, reclines at full length on the tablet of one of these

tombs, side by side with his Countess,--not Amy Robsart, but a lady who

(unless I have confused the story with some other mouldy scandal) is

said to have avenged poor Amy's murder by poisoning the Earl himself.

Be that as it may, both figures, and especially the Earl, look like the

very types of ancient Honor and Conjugal Faith. In consideration of

his long-enduring kindness to the twelve brethren, I cannot consent to

believe him as wicked as he is usually depicted; and it seems a marvel,

now that so many well-established historical verdicts have been

reversed, why some enterprising writer does not make out Leicester to

have been the pattern nobleman of his age.

In the centre of the chapel is the magnificent memorial of its founder,

Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick in the time of Henry VI. On a richly

ornamented altar-tomb of gray marble lies the bronze figure of a knight

in gilded armor, most admirably executed: for the sculptors of those

days had wonderful skill in their own style, and could make so life-like

an image of a warrior, in brass or marble, that, if a trumpet were

sounded over his tomb, you would expect him to start up and handle his

sword. The Earl whom we now speak of, however, has slept soundly in

spite of a more serious disturbance than any blast of a trumpet, unless

it were the final one. Some centuries after his death, the floor of the

chapel fell down and broke open the stone coffin in which he was buried;

and among the fragments appeared the Earl of Warwick, with the color

scarcely faded out of his checks, his eyes a little sunken, but in other

respects looking as natural as if he had died yesterday. But exposure to

the atmosphere appeared to begin and finish the long-delayed process of

decay in a moment, causing him to vanish like a bubble; so that, almost

before there had been time to wonder at him, there was nothing left of

the stalwart Earl save his hair. This sole relic the ladies of Warwick

made prize of, and braided it into rings and brooches for their own

adornment; and thus, with a chapel and a ponderous tomb built on purpose

to protect his remains, this great nobleman could not help being brought

untimely to the light of day, nor even keep his love-locks on his skull

after he had so long done with love. There seems to be a fatality that

disturbs people in their sepulchres, when they have been over-careful to

render them magnificent and impregnable,--as witness the builders of

the Pyramids, and Hadrian, Augustus, and the Scipios, and most other

personages whose mausoleums have been conspicuous enough to attract the

violator; and as for dead men's hair, I have seen a lock of King Edward

the Fourth's, of a reddish-brown color, which perhaps was once twisted

round the delicate forefinger of Mistress Shore.

The direct lineage of the renowned characters that lie buried in this

splendid chapel has long been extinct. The earldom is now held by

the Grevilles, descendants of the Lord Brooke who was slain in the

Parliamentary War; and they have recently (that is to say, within

a century) built a burial-vault on the other side of the church,

calculated (as the sexton assured me, with a nod as if be were pleased)

to afford suitable and respectful accommodation to as many as fourscore

coffins. Thank Heaven, the old man did not call them "CASKETS"!--a vile

modern phrase, which compels a person of sense and good taste to shrink

more disgustfully than ever before from the idea of being buried at

all. But as regards those eighty coffins, only sixteen have as yet

been contributed; and it may be a question with some minds, not merely

whether the Grevilles will hold the earldom of Warwick until the

full number shall be made up, but whether earldoms and all manner of

lordships will not have faded out of England long before those many

generations shall have passed from the castle to the vault. I hope not.

A titled and landed aristocracy, if anywise an evil and an incumbrance,

is so only to the nation which is doomed to bear it on its shoulders;

and an American, whose sole relation to it is to admire its picturesque

effect upon society, ought to be the last man to quarrel with what

affords him so much gratuitous enjoyment. Nevertheless, conservative

as England is, and though I scarce ever found an Englishman who seemed

really to desire change, there was continually a dull sound in my ears

as if the old foundations of things were crumbling away. Some time or

other,--by no irreverent effort of violence, but, rather, in spite of

all pious efforts to uphold a heterogeneous pile of institutions that

will have outlasted their vitality,--at some unexpected moment, there

must come a terrible crash. The sole reason why I should desire it to

happen in my day is, that I might be there to see! But the ruin of my

own country is, perhaps, all that I am destined to witness; and that

immense catastrophe (though I am strong in the faith that there is a

national lifetime of a thousand years in us yet) would serve any man

well enough as his final spectacle on earth.

If the visitor is inclined to carry away any little memorial of Warwick,

he had better go to an Old Curiosity Shop in the High Street, where

there is a vast quantity of obsolete gewgaws, great and small, and many

of them so pretty and ingenious that you wonder how they came to be

thrown aside and forgotten. As regards its minor tastes, the world

changes, but does not improve; it appears to me, indeed, that there have

been epochs of far more exquisite fancy than the present one, in matters

of personal ornament, and such delicate trifles as we put upon a

drawing-room table, a mantel-piece, or a what-not. The shop in question

is near the East Gate, but is hardly to be found without careful

search, being denoted only by the name of "REDFERN," painted not very

conspicuously in the top-light of the door. Immediately on entering, we

find ourselves among a confusion of old rubbish and valuables, ancient

armor, historic portraits, ebony cabinets inlaid with pearl, tall,

ghostly clocks, hideous old China, dim looking-glasses in frames of

tarnished magnificence,--a thousand objects of strange aspect, and

others that almost frighten you by their likeness in unlikeness to

things now in use. It is impossible to give an idea of the variety of

articles, so thickly strewn about that we can scarcely move without

overthrowing some great curiosity with a crash, or sweeping away some

small one hitched to our sleeves. Three stories of the entire house are

crowded in like manner. The collection, even as we see it exposed to

view, must have been got together at great cost; but the real treasures

of the establishment lie in secret repositories, whence they are not

likely to be drawn forth at an ordinary summons; though, if a gentleman

with a competently long purse should call for them, I doubt not that

the signet-ring of Joseph's friend Pharaoh, or the Duke of Alva's

leading-staff, or the dagger that killed the Duke of Buckingham, or

any other almost incredible thing, might make its appearance. Gold

snuff-boxes, antique gems, jewelled goblets, Venetian wine-glasses,

(which burst when poison is poured into them, and therefore must not be

used for modern wine-drinking,) jasper-handled knives, painted Sevres

teacups,--in short, there are all sorts of things that a virtuoso

ransacks the world to discover.

It would be easier to spend a hundred pounds in Mr. Redfern's shop than

to keep it in one's pocket; but, for my part, I contented myself with

buying a little old spoon of silver-gilt, and fantastically shaped, and

got it at all the more reasonable rate because there happened to be no

legend attached to it. I could supply any deficiency of that kind at

much less expense than re-gilding the spoon!

* * * * *

LYRICS OF THE STREET.

III.

THE CHARITABLE VISITOR.

She carries no flag of fashion, her clothes are but passing plain,

Though she comes from a city palace all jubilant with her reign.

She threads a bewildering alley, with ashes and dust thrown out,

And fighting and cursing children, who mock as she moves about.

Why walk you this way, my lady, in the snow and slippery ice?

These are not the shrines of virtue,--here misery lives, and vice:

Rum helps the heart of starvation to a courage bold and bad;

And women are loud and brawling, while men sit maudlin and mad.

I see in the corner yonder the boy with the broken arm,

And the mother whose blind wrath did it, strange guardian from childish

harm.

That face will grow bright at your coming, but your steward might come

as well,

Or better the Sunday teacher that helped him to read and spell.

Oh! I do not come of my willing, with froward and restless feet;

I have pleasant tasks in my chamber, and friends well-beloved to greet.

To follow the dear Lord Jesus I walk in the storm and snow;

Where I find the trace of His footsteps, there lilies and roses grow.

He said that to give was blessed, more blessed than to receive;

But what could He take, dear angels, of all that we had to give,

Save a little pause of attention, and a little thrill of delight,

When the dead were waked from their slumbers, and the blind recalled to

sight?

Say, the King came forth with the morning, and opened His palace-doors,

Thence flinging His gifts like sunbeams that break upon marble floors;

But the wind with wild pinions caught them, and carried them round

about:

Though I looked till mine eyes were dazzled, I never could make them out.

But He bade me go far and find them, "go seek them with zeal and pain;

The hand is most welcome to me that brings me mine own again;

And those who follow them farthest, with faithful searching and sight,

Are brought with joy to my presence, and sit at my feet all night."