Harper’s magazine: [1879-1880]

Table of contents

- Fortunes of the Bonapartes

- The New York Cooking School

- Will's Will, and His Two Thankgivings

- The City of Atlanta

- The Palestine of To-Day

- Sea-Drift From a New England Port

- White Wings: A Yachting Romance

- The Connemara Hills. II.

- Old Baltimore and Its Merchants

- The Isms of Forty Years Ago

- Compulsory Education in Brooklyn

- Ferdinand De Lesseps as Minister at Rome in 1849

- The Shepherds of Colorado

- First Families of the Atlantic

- The Ghost of the Nineteenth Century

- Editor's Easy Chair - Chair for January

Fortunes of the Bonapartes

[Page 1.1]

About ninety years ago a great trouble, as of a strange and unearthly sunrise, was moving over the face of France. The evils of despotism had grown intolerable precisely at the moment when despotism had grown too weak to defend itself. Aristocratic privilege [Page 1.2] had attained a development which seems almost incredible, and yet the aristocray had lost all real power in the state. There was a glittering and splendid court, without the means of paying for its expenses. There was a great army, commanded by the most accomplished [Page 2.1] nobility in the world, and composed of a soldiery the most mutinous in history. The system of taxes was the most onerous ever known, but the treasury was forever empty: the most powerful forcing-pump can do nothing after a vacuum is attainded. During the last two or three reigns the misery of the people had increased in direct proportion with the splendor of the court. Occasional insurrections and riots had been promptly punished by the gallows or a volley of musketry, and the wild people had gone back whipped to their wretchedness. But now all this was changed. A growth of philosophers and lovers of men had arisen, peculiar to the country and the age. An odd sort of cultus—the Religion of Humanity—had taken the place of other forms of worship, and was working singular results. It began among solitary dreamers in squalid garrets, and had at last spread to palaces, and infected thrones. The unhealthy dreams of Rousseau had turned the heads of dukes and princes. The visit of Dr. Franklin to Paris was one long homage of privilege to democracy. These amiable aristocrats, these innocent tyrants, were playing with the lightning, of whose properties they were [Page 2.2] utterly ignorant. The purest democrat in the cabinet was the King. `It is only you and I,' he said to M. Turgot, `who love the people.' When Joseph II. of Austria visited France, he ws amazed at this delirium. He had democratic tendencies himself, but knew where to draw the line. When his sister, the Queen, wanted him to meet Franklin, he replied: `Madame, the trade I live by is to be a royalist.'

Among the high and the low the age of fable had returned. The aristocracy of birth and of learning had caught from the philosophers the habit of considering the people good and gentle, to whom all things must be yielded. The people had taken philosophy their own way, with a difference, and considered the aristocracy bloody-minded robbers, deserving of pillage and death. Even the Queen and the court loved the people—and the people believed the filthiest calumnies on the Queen and court. But over all, rich and poor alike, there floated this strange dream of a better time which was soon to come. The way in which it was to be realized differed according to the imaginations of individuals and classes. Some believed in an idyllic return of Saturnian reigns. [Page 3.1] where the only law was to be Liberty, Equality, and Brotherly Love; others, like M. Marat, the farrier of Monseigneur D'Artois, thought the first specific was the taking off of `260,000 aristocrat heads.' The scheme of this great revolution will always remain the warning and the amazement of the world. It pursued its remorseless course without human let or hinderance, and apparently alo without human aid. The loftiest virtue, the most extraordinary talent, produced scarcely any effect upon it. The innocent enthusiasts went softly bleating of Liberty and Fraternity to their doom. The most ferocious scoundrels followed their own victims to the Place de la Révolution. Anarchy raged, all-devouring, until, aliment lacking elsewhere, it turned and devoured itself, and the exhausted and agonized land was ready again for a master. Great thing were certainly accomplished for France in the midst of that terror and destruction. No event in the world's history so dwarfs and belittles all criticim and comment; and the most marvelous thing about it all is that many of the objects seen in the rosy mist of fancy by the dreamers of 1789 have actually come to [Page 3.2] pass, as the result and consequence of those horrible atrocities which dismayed the world a few years afterward.

The profit to the world at large of this vast upheaval is, however, not the matter which we propose just now to consider, but rather its effect upon the fortunes of a single family of poor estate in Corsica. When the mob burst into the Tuileries on the memorable 10th of August, and the monarchy of France looked its last out of the palace windows before betaking itself to the cruel protection of the Legislature, the eyes of poor Louis XVI. might have beheld in the street, among the crowd of curious spectators, the man for whose advantage the throne of St. Louis was crumbling into dust. He was a captain of artillery, off duty at the moment, who had come to see the riot with those intelligent eyes of his, and whose name was Napoleon Bonaparte. He was rather a fierce patriot too, in those days, and sympathized strongly with the mob, so far as death to tyrants and liberty to the people were concerned. But his love of orderly and efficient fighting was more natural to him than his passion for the people, and when he saw the gallant Swiss of the palace [Page 4.1] making their brave defense against overpowering numbers, he could not help saying to himself,`If I commanded those fine fellows, I would make short work of all that canaille.' But there was no one to command them, and the monarchy fell to pieces, and the Swiss were murdered, and waited many years for Thorwaldsen and Carlyle to make them immortal. The time came quite soon enough for the artillery officer to justify his confident estimate of himself and a mob of Paris.

The family of Bonapartes were of pure Italian race; there was not a drop of French blood in any of them. Their ancestors had come from the main-land in the early history of Corsica, and their names are found in the remote annals of Ajaccio. Carlo Bonaparte was a poor gentleman of excellent breeding and character, who married in his youth a young and romantic girl named Letizia Ramolino, who followed him in his campaigns up to the moment of the birth of Napoleon. It is impossible to say how much the history of Europe owes to the high heart and indomitable spirit of this soldierly woman. She never relinguished her authority in her family. When all her children were princes and potentates, she was still the severe, stern Madame [Page 4.2] Mère. The beauty and grace of Josephine Beauharnais never conquered her; the sweet Tyrolese prettiness of Maria Louisa won from her only a sort of contemptuous indulgence. When her mighty son ruled the continent, she was the only human being whose chidings he regarded or endured. She was faithful in her rebukes while the sun shone, and when calamity came, her undaunted spirit was still true and devoted to the fallen. Her provincial habit of economy stood her in good stead in her vigorous old age; she was rich when the Empire had passed away, and her grandchildren needed her aid. It must have been from her that Napoleon took his extraordinary character, for Carlo Bonaparte, though a brave soldier and an ardent patriot in his youth, was of any easy and genial temper, inclined to take the world as he found it, and not to insist too much on having it go in his epecial way. After the cause of Corsican liberty was lost by the success of the French arms, he accepted the situation without regret, and becoming intimate with the conquerors, he placed as many of his family as possible on the French pension list. His sons Napoleon and Louis were given scholarhips at Brienne and at Autun, and his eldest daughter, Élise, entered the royal institution at St. Cyr. While yet in the prime of life, he died of the same deadly disease which was to finish Napoleon's days at St. Helena; and the heroic mother, her responsibilities becoming still heavier by this blow, lived for eight years longer amid the confusion and civil tumult which had become chronic in Corsica; and then, after the capture of the island by the English in 1793, she made her escape with her children to Marseilles, where she lived several years in great penury.

Her family of five sons and three daughters would have been a heavy burden upon her resources if they had been children of [Page 5.1] the ordinary sort. But the two elder sons rapidly made their way, and always evinced a parental interest in their juniors. The oldest, Joseph, had been educated at the seminary of Autun and the university of Pisa, through the friendly patronage of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The year after the family moved to Marseilles he made a happy and brilliant marriage, gaining the hand of one of the greatest heiresses of the South, Mademoiselle Marie Julie Clary. Her father, whose destiny it was to have two kings for sons-in-law, and to leave behind him for many generations a royal posterity, was a Marseilles merchant. Four years after the wedding of Joseph Bonaparte, a younger sister, Mademoiselle Désirée, was sought in marriage by the dashing and magnificent soldier Bernadotte, who, after serving with distinction under Custine, Kleber, and Bonaparte, had been sent as ambassador to Vienna, and for whom still higher honors were in store—minister, marshall, and King of Sweden. But in spite of Joseph Bonaparte's learning and wealth, and the success of his matrimonial venture, the head of the family was the second son, and all the house acknowledged his supremacy from the first. This is of itself enough to show how powerfully his personality impressed itself upon those around him, for there is no principle more firmly fixed in the minds of the people of Corsic and Southern France than the dignity and authority of the first-born son of the house. No mere material success of a cadet ever disturbs this natural precedence; one of the most touching passages of M. Dandet's great romance is the scene where the millionaire brother acknowledges his allegiance to the worthless vagabond who was born before him. But it does not seem that from early youth any one disputed the claim of Napoleon to be the head of his family; though disobedience sometimes [Page 5.2] rose to rebellion, it was always felt to be such on both side. He was not, on the whole, an ungentle patriarch to those of his blood; and when they were all young and poor together, he was self-sacrificing, generous, and kind to his brothers and sisters. It was little in the way of money that he could spare from his scanty wages as a subaltern of artillery, but he spared what he could, and where it was possible he spent much of his time with them, and superintended their studies. He was able to give them a good deal of care, for in those years of utter disorganization of society the discipline of the army was shamefully lax, and the young officers spent as much time at home and in their debating clubs as they did at their barracks. Joseph and Lucien were by their age somewhat removed from his active control, but over Louis and Jerome and his sisters he exercised an authority which was justified by his affection and his care. Never was careful training more needed in any family in the world, for every one of these children was to govern remote and distant principalities and kingdoms, and to mingle with the [Page 6.1] purple-born monarchs of immemorial descent as equals and as superiors.

No family in history was ever raised to such lofty fortunes so suddenly; and few families that ever existed could have sustained themselves at such altitudes with so much of ability, cleverness, and dignity.

The first great opportunity offered to Napoleon Bonaparte was on the 5th of October, called in the fanciful calendar of the Revolution the 13th Vendémiaire—the month of the vintage. He had previously distinguished himself by a remarkable exploit at the siege of Toulon, and had shown great capacity in a short campaign in Piedmont. But achievements like those only commended him to the notice of soldiers. He had now an opportunity to bring artillery into politics, and he did it with terrible effect. The Convention was confronted with the armed mob which had place it in power, and which proposed to direct it, as the Jacobin mobs had directed its predecessors. The moment was critical. The victors of Thermidor would have been outcasts and fugitives in another day, had Barras not thought of his young friend Bonaparte, who `could handle artillery better than any man in France.' Napoleon was in the gallery, and heard his name mentioned, [Page 6.2] and retired in great disturbance of mind to consider what he should do. Honor or the guillotine was in the throw. By the next sunset he would be either a prisoner condemned to speedy death as a traitor, or a man necessary to the Directory. He decided—as such a man must decide—for action. He instantly dispatched his adjutant, Murat—a young officer who knew how to ride—to Sablon for the artillery. He got there just in time, with not a minute to spare: the sections were on his heels. The guns were posted in the night at every available point, and the next day, after several hour of threatening demonstrations, the contest began, and in an hour the guns of Bonaparte had blown to the four winds a far more formidable attack than any of those before which the monarchy had gone down. The Convention was saved, but the sallow, silent young man whose cannon had made peace in the streets had a claim for salvage which would be presented in due time. This was the true beginning of his career, and also the beginning of the end of the short-lived Republic. Public opinion had risen against the government; the government had blown public opinion in pieces with artillery; and the young man who could handle artillery in that way was sure of his future. When his time should come, he could no doubt serve the government as he had served its assailants.

The flight of the eagle was taken, and there was no longer any check or pause in his career until all was over. His success in Paris gave him access to the best official society, and he there met the lovely and accomplished widow of one Vicomte de Beauharnais, who was one of the brightest ornaments of the Thermidorean circle. His wooing was abrupt and energetic as that of a young lion. The lady of his love was bewildered and alarmed at the violence of his devotion, and by the extraordinary assurance with which he promised her to win glory and power with his sword. She was six year his senior, and naturally distrusted this [Page 7.1] youthful arrogance. But her indolent creole temperament yielded to his impetuous suit, and Barras's wedding present was the command-in-chief of the Army of Italy. The honey-moon was of the briefest; the wedding was on the 9th of March, and a few days afterward he was at his head-quarters at Nice.

From this time began that marvellous career which seems already fabulous. In a fortnight after crossing the frontier he had won four victories, and conquered Sardinia, and he kept up in the same colossal fashion the series of conquests thus begun. It is to be hoped the world will never see again such a spectacle of prodigious ability. His treachery, his rapacity, his cold-blooded selfishness, his duplicity and cruelty, are as marvellous as his unending success. He treated the Directory with utter contempt, and sent them such loads of treasure that they pardoned his insults. He flattered the prelates of Rome with words which they still quote with pleasure, and he spoke of them at the same time as `babbling dotards.' He never lost an opportunity to laud the Italian pepople in his proclamations; but not content [Page 7.2] with plundering and betraying them, he called them, in a letter to Talleyrand, `an indolent, superstitious, buffoonish, cowardly population.' What he said in his own speeches and proclamations he admits `is mere romance.' He was utterly cynical in his orders to his officers. When he commanded Pierrée to seize the navy of Venice—a power with which he had no cause of quarrel whatever—he wrote: `Seize everything; but take care to call it always the Venetian navy, and constantly have on your your lips the unity of the two republics!' But he was regal in all his qualities and crimes. When he had established himself at Montebello, near Milan, and Madame Bonaparte had joined him, he kept the greatest court in Europe. Only a year before, he was a poor unfriended officer on the Paris pavement, cramped in his circumtances, uncertain of his livelihood. But even his enemies admit that he kept his court at Milan like a king. He surrounded himself with savans and artists, with generals and beauties. He dined in public, like sovereigns of the ancient régime, and received the homage of the people as if [Page 8.1] his ancestors had been demigods. He never had to learn the trick of royalty. It was not the ermine or the crown that gave him in after-days his `motions and habitudes kingly.' He was an imperator—a commander—long before the Pope anointed him Emperor of the French.

His interests at home were jealously and intelligently guarded by his brothers Joseph and Lucien, who had become men of importance in the government before his return from Italy; and when he was absent in Egypt it was his brother Joseph who dispatched the wily Greek Bourbaki in hot haste to warn him that the fullnes of time was come for him to make an end of the Directory. The success of the 18th Brumaire was due in great part to the fact that the three allies upon whom he most implicitly counted inside the government were his own brothers, bound to him by every tie of affection and interest. Joseph had declined the mission to Berlin, to remain in Paris as a member of the Council of Five Hundred; Lucien was President of it, and young Louis was also a member. His brothers were his principal go-betweens in that drama of unparalleled treachery by which the Directors were divided and disarmed. On the final day at St. Cloud, when Napoleon had failed in his attempt to intimidate the Assembly, and had been borne fainting from the hall, it was Lucien who, mounting on horseback, presented himself to the troops as the representative of the law, and commanded them to disperse by the bayonet the Assembly he had betrayed. He showed on this occasion far greater courage and presence of mind than Napoleon, and roused the soldiers to enthusiasm by a piece of comedy which now seems absurd enough. He seized a sword, at the end of his harangue, and cried: `I swear to thrust this through the heart of my brother if he should ever strike a blow at the liberties of France.' The soldiers applauded; Murat hurried them forward at a quick step. The drums beat a charge, to drown the voices of the outraged legislators, and the liberties of France were at an end for many long years.

In the recently published memoirs of Madame De Remusat some curious details are given of the social life of the Tuileries after the Bonapartes had taken possession of the palace. It made a singular impression upon this high-born lady [Page 8.2] —the swarms of uneducated and rough-riding soldiers, mingled with the few noblemen who, like Talleyrand, adhered to the new régime for the place and power it afforded them, and the crowds of pretty women with whom the First Consul loved to be surrounded. Something of this incongruity seems to have struck Napoleon himself. He liked fine dresses for his court and his officers, but was best pleased when he himself was dressed shabbily. He said, one day of ceremony, to Madame De Remusat, `The right to be simply dressed does not belong to everybody.' At another time, while his marshals were squabbling for precedence, he said, `It is very convenient to govern Frenchmen by vanity.' He seemed, then as always, to regard himself as a man apart, not subject to the laws which governed the rest of the human race. After the death of his nephew and presumptive heir, the son of King Louis of Holland, when Talleyrand proposed he should show some signs of mourning, he said, abruptly, `I do not amuse myself by thinking about the dead.' In reply to some remonstrance from his wife about his too open immoralities, he said, with perfect calmness, `I need distractions. I am not a man like other men, for whom laws are made.'

Lucien, with all his adroit devotion, was the only brother of Napoleon who did not become a king. He was, it is true, Minister of the Interior during the early years of the Consulate; but his independence soon embroiled him with the First Consul, and after a short but brilliant service as ambassador and tribune, he married the divorced wife of the great broker Jouberthon, against his brother's positive prohibition, and encountered his bitter and malignant hostility for the rest of his days. He never surrendered his dignity and manhood; and after the Consulate had blossomed into the Empire, and Napoleon was disposing of crowns and thrones among his family with a lavish hand, Lucien alone had the courage to refuse these glittering bribes which were offered as the price of his honor. The Emperor knew his value, and wished to employ him; he offered him a crown—the crown was not specified, but he always had a supply on hand, or made them when he wished—a princely husband for his daughter, and a duchy for his wife if he would divorce her. But Lucien declined; and the Emperor, in a [Page 9.1] whirling rage, struck his name out of the imperial almanac—`strangering him with his curse.' Misfortune united them only for a moment, after Waterloo, and Lucien, whom the Pope had made Prince of Canino, passed the evening of his life tranquilly in archæological studies in Italy, where he died in 1840, leaving a numerous and amiable family, many members of which became famous in the world of literature and science, and married with members of the highest aristocracy of Italy. The celebrated Madame Ratazzi was his granddaughter; and the shooting by his son Prince Pierre Napoleon of a small and sufficiently worthless journalist named Victor Noir contributed powerfully to shake the popularity of the Bonaparte [Page 9.2] dynasty in 1870. Pierre afterward went to England, in straitened circumstances, and his wife, the daughter of a blanchisseuse of the St. Antoine quarter, opened a millinery shop in the British capital, not of the first class, where English tradesmen's wives could enjoy the luxury of scolding a princess if their gowns did not fit, which was more than probable.

It may be said that none of the brother were especially happy in their thrones. Joseph had the capacity to make a very repectable king in quiet time. He had a happy gift of pleasing, and sufficient dignity and ease of manner to fulfill with credit and distinction the sort of duties which devolve on kings at ordinary periods. [Page 10.1] He was the most finished diplomatist of the family, and conducted many difficult negotiations with credit and success. He was the safe and vigilant guardian of his brother's interests in Paris while he was spreading his conquests over the world; and when the Emperor returned from Austerlitz, radiant with the intolerable glory of that prodigious victory, and, as it seemed afterward, with his head a little turned with a success too great for a mortal brain to bear, in the first batch of kings that he made to celebrate his triumph, he gave Joseph the crown of Naples. He went reluctantly to his kingdom, but soon came to like its soft air and pleasant people, and regretted it when two years later, he was forced to leave them to go to Spain. His royal robes were little more than a livery, after all, for he must go wherever his fraternal tyrant bade him, and he went with a heavy heart to take his new post in the monarchy of Pelayo and Isabel the Catholic. It is related that when the brothers stood together at the foot of the grand staircase of the Palace del Oriente, with its massive steps of white and black marble, its balusters adorned with the twined collars of the Golden Fleece, and its alabaster lions guarding the landings, above which flame the frescoes of Giacinto representing the monarchy of Spain rendering homage to Religion, the Emperor laid his conquering hand upon the sculptured mane of one of the lions and cried, in exultation, `At last I hold thee, my Spain!' And then turning to Joseph, he said, in a tone half of pleasantry and half of envy, `My brother, thou wilt be better lodged than I.' It is probable that the Emperor had more gratification in that fleeting moment than his brother during his whole troubled kinghood. Three times in five years he was driven from his rebellious country; and finally, when misfortunes were thickening fast about the imperial standard, he hastened to Paris once more, and offered, in a vain impulse of brotherly affection, to take Napoleon's place as a prisoner—as if the finest cat that ever lived could possibly be mistaken for the royal Bengal tiger! The brothers parted with au revoir en Amérique, and Joseph, under the name of the Comte de Survilliers, sailed for America, where, after years of patient waiting, he heard the fatal new from the African seas that he should never meet again his loving [Page 10.2] and imperious master and idol. The time he spent in America, partly at Bordentown and partly in the Adirondack woods, was the happiest and most tranquil of his troubled life; but he wearied of its monotony at last, and hearing that the Duke of Reichstadt was rapidly failing in health, he hurried off to Europe again; and after a dozen years more of journeys, and protests, and wrangling, and nerveless intrigues for a cause in which his heart was no longer enlisted, he died in Florence at a good old age.

Still more unhappy was the lot of Louis. In his youth he was a gay and dashing soldier, yet fond of books and the society of women, with tastes and habits that promised happiness. But the baleful shadow of his brother's greatness blasted his life. He was early raised to heights too giddy for him, and he was forced to marry Hortense Beauharnais, for whom he had neither sympathy nor respect. When the crown of Holland was given him, his evil star seemed to culminate, for while the Emperor was making the farewell speech which informed him, with little pretense of concealment, that he was to govern the Dutch as a French satrap rather than as an independent sovereign, the cold eyes of Admiral Verhuel were regarding him, and the injury which was to defile two thrones was already plotted. He endeavored loyally to be a good king to Holland and a good husband to Hortense, but his intentions in either direction met with no appreciation, and it was only after he had lost both wife and crown that he found some measure of comfort in life. He parted finally from Hortense the year before Louis Napoleon was born, and be betook himself to a sentimental sort of literature and philosophy. His first-born son died in infancy. His second son, for the possession of whom he had a bitter litigation with Hortense, died in the bloom of his early manhood at Forli, in Italy, and he had little pleasure in Louis Napoleon, whom he at firt refused to recognize as his son, but whom later he took to his heart with the senile fondness of an unhappy man.

Jerome, the Benjamin of the family, had, first and last, the easiest and most satisfactory life, in spite of the vicissitudes inseparable from a fate so exceptional. He grew to adolescence in the full blaze of his brother's successes, was carefully educated, and became a lieutenant in the [Page 11.1] navy at seventeen years of age. At nineteen he committed the escapade of marrying Miss Patterson, of Baltimore, and after a year or so of wedded felicity he went home with her, doubtless expecting a wigging from his august elders, but imagining that her beauty and grace would commend his wife to them as soon as she was seen. But they never gave her the opportunity—Madame Mère had already filed her legal protest against the marriage, and Napoleon ordered his sister-in-law back to England without granting her audience. Jerome, like the great Gibbon, sighed as a lover, perhaps, but he obeyed like a son and a soldier, and never saw his young wife again until long years afterward, when, walking in the Pitti gallery with his second spouse, Caroline of Würtemberg, he came across this ghost of his adventurous youth. No words were exchanged between them, and he hurried away from Florence. His obedience was rewarded by rapid and repeated promotions to general, marshal, prince, and finally King of Westphalia, and the heirship of the Empire, although by his will the Emperor changed this arrangement in favor of the children of Hortense. Jerome never took his monarchy very seriously, and annoyed the Emperor by his frivolities at his little capital of Cassel. But on the day of trial he showed good qualities, and after his prowess at Ligny and Waterloo, Napoleon embraced him and said, `My brother, I have learned to know you too late.' His life was a quiet and undistinguished one until the Empire was re-established by his nephew, when he [Page 11.2] became once more Prince, Imperial Highness, and Marshall of France, and died in state at the Invalides. He was, in spite of his few days of creditable fighting, an unheroic personage. A good deal of romance has been wasted upon his relations with Miss Patterson. There was nothing remarkable in a boy of nineteen making an imprudent marriage, or in being bullied and bribed to desert his wife afterward. Her part of the play was scarcely less sordid. Her recently printed letters show that she married him for his name and rank, and that after he had cast her off she got a divorce, because the attentions she had received from people of rank in England inspired the idea that she might marry advantageously again.

The sisters of Napoleon were too valuable as counters in his game to be allowed to give their hands where they liked. Elise, it is true, chose for herself before his period of omnipotence, and became the wife of young Bacciochi, a poor Corsican officer, who lived to share with her a throne which was scarcely wide enough for two. She was made Princess of Piombino and Lucca, and Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and left a family who afterward held positions at the court of Napoleon III. The life of Pauline, the second sister, if written as only herself or the recording angel might have done it, would probably have surpassed anything that the Sieur De Brantôme has left for the wonder and the scandalized amusement of mankind. While she was yet little more than a child her hand was disputed by Junot, Duphot, Fréron, and Leclerc. She chose the last, and accompanied him to Santo Domingo, undeterred by pestilence and massacres, and after faithfully nursing him through his fatal illness, she brought his remains back to France for burial. She was then taken in hand by her brother, who needed to strengthen his interest in Rome, and married to Prince Camillo Borghese—a union unhappy from the wedding benediction. Perhaps she had loved Leclerc—she certainly adored [Page 12.1] her brother—but the rest of the world of men, with the exception of poor Borghese, seemed to her alike creatures of her conquest and her insatiable curiosity. She was one of the most beautiful women of her time. She posed to Canova for his `Venus Victrix,' and the great sculptor was reported to have said that, with such models, statues could be made by journeymen. She had many virtues; she was amiable, generous, enlightened, and intelligent; she loved letters and art, and, as [Page 12.2] Duchess of Guastalla, kept a brilliant and popular court. The ablest politician of the three sisters, and the least personally interesting, was Caroline, who married Murat, and became successively Duchess of Cleves and Queen of Naples. She was splendidly educated, brave as a lioness in battle, and possessed of a singular administrative ability; but she betrayed her brother too readily when fortune frowned, and she married General MacDonald too soon after her husband's tragic death. [Page 13.1]

The marriages of the Bonapartes play an importrant part in the story of their fortunes, and none of them were so signficant and important as those of the Emperor. To one who, like him, looked upon the world as made for him, and upon laws merely as something which were good for him to impose upon others, it must have appeared that his two wives were admirably planned for his use. Josephine de Beauharnais was an ideal wife for a young and rising man of genius. She had everything which would appeal to a fancy like his, at once selfish and passionate. She had beauty, rank, the power of pleasing, and a certain indolent grace that promised an obedience reasonably free from jealousy. Up to the time that he mounted the imperial throne and seated her by his side, she was all that his narrow heart and boundless ambition could desire. But after the marvellous victory of Wagram had opened up to his fevered imagination still wider perspectives of dominion, he looked for another style of wife, and found her in Maria Louisa of Austria. Her blonde beauty, formed of pink and white color and roundly curving lines and the golden floss of a child's hair, appealed strongly to his jaded taste. He was not old, but, as he said to the Directory, `one ages fast upon the field of battle,' and he wanted some such solace as this soft, unintellectual beauty (somebody has called it the Alderney style of prettiness) in his home, if such a word may be used of the Tuileries. Besides, he doubtless felt that an emperor should have an emperor's daughter to wife, and this was a young girl who had a hundred monarchs for her ancestors, and yet she would be gentle and obedient, and not argue with him or answer him, and would give him heirs. He was genuinely attached to her, and if he knew nothing about her, and had no premonition of Count Neipperg, it was all the better for him. She also was quite taken by storm with him, and for a while the novelty of being loved by an ogre—for such she had always considered him—was agreeable to her. But her tumultuous glory was quite too much for the daily food of such a human small being as the Empress, and she was doubtless relieved when the indignant soul left his body at Longwood, and she was free to follow her ignoble little heart and marry Neipperg. [Page 13.2]

Josephine would have had her revenge if she could have foreseen the course of history for even a few years. It is she, and not the pretty Austrian, who will be known forever as the wife of Napoleon. It is her statue that rises in marble in the public places of Paris. It is her name and those of her children that mark the great avenues of the metropolis—Avenue Joséphine, La Reine Hortense, Boulevard du Prince Eugène. Though she was ousted remorselessly from a throne to make room for Maria Louisa, it was her children—the children of the creole proscript— who should become the tenants of palaces, and not those of her rival. The Duke of Reichstadt was to pass a youth of inglorious pleasure, and was to die before his prime, and leave no son to inherit his claim to empire; while the Beauharnais line was to stretch out like the swarm of kings seen by the Thane of Cawdor in his vision. Eugene, her heroic on, after the fall of the Napoleons, returned to the court of his father-in-law, the King of Bavaria, and became Prince of Eichstädt, Duke of Leuchtenberg, and first nobleman of the kingdom. His daughter, united to the son of Bernadotte, became Queen of Sweden; another became a princess [Page 14.1] of Hohenzollern, and a third Empress of Brazil. His oldet son won the hand of the Queen of Portugal, and the younger married a daughter of the Czar Nicholas of Russia. And whatever doubt might be thrown on the purity of the Napoleonic descent by which the Emperor Napoleon III. claimed the throne, he was unquestionably the son of Hortense, and was Beauharnais and Tascherla-Pagerie beyond challenge. The grandson [Page 14.2] of Josephine, Louis Napoleon, ruled France in peace and with a sort of splendor for the space of twenty-two year, while the period of the first Napoleon's reign, counting Consulate and Empire together, was but fifteen—though so powerful was the personal imprint made by the uncle, and so vague was the individual character of the nephew, that the shorter reign seems like an age, and the longer like an episode. [Page 15.1]

The exiles which followed their respective reigns were singularly in keeping with their different characters. The part of Louis Napoleon's career which followed Sedan was scarcely less happy than that which preceded it. He grew stout at Wilhelmshöhe, and when removed to Chiselhurst he led the tranquil life of a bougeois retired from business, until his peaceful end. But for Napoleon, the imprisonment on that bleak rock in a distant sea was the fitting close of a tragedy more vast than human annals ever before recorded. The great myth ended in darkness and mystery, and the hero, unseen by Europe, preserved to the last the fabulous character with which friend and foe had alike invested him. To the French people he was their Prometheus chained to a thunder-blasted rock on the vague limits of the world, tormented by vultures, but still godlike in his pains. To England he was an enemy of preternatural force and treachery, who could only be kept from harmful activity by the inviolable bars of thousands of miles of sea. His exile and death are therefore among the most picturesque and moving scenes of his history, and the English artist Haydon painted the most fortunate of his portraits in that famous picture which represents the imprisoned conqueror looking out from his rocky realm, with unutterable thoughts, upon the dreadful and implacable sea, which even he could never tame nor conciliate.

For pictures, as for men, there are advantages and disadvantages in being copies. They can never have the fire and spirit, the brilliancy and charm, of the original, but they can be more correct; they can profit by criticism, and avoid the errors of the creating genius. Louis Napoleon came into the world with his work marked out for him—to be as nearly as possible like his uncle in fate and achievements. He had scarcely any natural qualifications for the part; he was of a gentle and dreamy nature, not fitted, one would say, for war or government. But he had his name, his share in the infatuation of France for the Napoleon legend, and an obstinate though quiet will to be Emperor. He studied artillery because his uncle did. He wrote a socialist book because his uncle had written Le Souper de Beaucaire in his youth. He parodied the descent from Elba with the ridiculous attempts of Strasburg and Boulogne. [Page 15.2] Because his uncle had carried the eagles of France in triumph over three continents, he taught a tame eagle to swoop down on his hat for fresh meat. But he was not always ridiculous in his imitations. He managed his first election as President, in 1848, with admirable skill and cunning. He swore oaths of allegiance with the same imperturbable and treacherous coolness which were so remarkable in the founder of the family. One who reads the story of the 18th Brumaire and the Coup d'Étât of December is startled with the absolute similarity of conditions and processes by which the two usurpers gained the supreme power. There was the same pretense of a conspiracy, the same accusation of the legislature, the same corruption of the army, the same outrage upon the civil authorities; and to make the resemblance still more remarkable, the actor who played the part of first assistant in the treason was in the one case Lucien, and in the other case De Morny. The candid reader must admit that the nephew had bettered his intructions. The Coup d'Étât was a much more perfect and workman-like performance than the 18th Brumaire. The great Napoleon was lamentably weak before the Assembly, and his nephew, hiding himself in the Élysées, and pulling the strings of the plot, made a more satisfactory piece of work than the original which he followed. The wonder is that the same net, spread in the same way, in the sight of the same bird, should have twice secured its prey, unless we conclude that they were both `providential' men, and that France had need of such discipline.

The resemblance in their marriages was not so strong, though in this respect also Napoleon III. pretended to follow copy. Eugénie de Montijo, Countess of Téba, was a beautiful woman of twenty-seven, who had had a youth of vicissitudes, and was well known in many capitals for her beauty, grace, and rank, which, having no fortune to support them, gained her and her mother only the undeserved title of adventuresses. The malice of party has raged fiercely againt this lady's name, but there is not a particle of proof to sustain it. Her ability, her affectionate devotion to the interests of her family, and her religious fervor are, so far as the world knows, as unquestionable as her beauty and her personal charm. No [Page 16.1] queen in history has better fulfilled a queen's duty as leader of the fashions; and while she reigned, the dress of women was at once beautiful, decent, and convenient. Hers was the prettiest face, the most graceful bearing, the most winning smile, in all that dazzling court of the Tuileries. But he had a Spaniard's love of political intrigue, and an Andalusian's bigotry, and she contributed powerfully to engage her husband in the evil way that led his policy to Rome and his army to Sedan. There is a story told by Arsène Houssaye—certainly no unfriendly chronicler—that at the cabinet council called to decide the question of peace and war, after the final interview of Benedetti with King William at Ems, the peace party carried the day, and the Emperor went to [Page 16.2] bed. But the Empress, being left behind with the council, won over to her war-like view the gallant De Grammont and the absurd Lebœuf, and reversed the decision, and then went in triumph to the Emperor's chamber, where he was sleeping the sleep of the just, and gained his assent to the fatal declaration which was made next day by the jaunty De Grammont, with his hands in his pockets, and by Ollivier, with his cœur léger.

The Empire attained its most resplendent bloom the year before its fall. In 1869 occurred the centennial anniversary of the birth of Napoleon, and the grand fête of the 15th of August was celebrated that year with extraordinary glare and tinsel. The Champs Élysées were like a region of fairy-land at night. The spouting [Page 17.1] fountains of the Place de la Concorde, played upon by vari-colored lights, seemed in turn of gold, of diamonds, and of blood, like the legend they were celebrating. The grand sweep of the avenue to the Place de l'Étoile was one sea of glimmering radiance, and the Arch of Triumph at the crest of the hill was transfigured by the magic of lime light into a vast dome of porcelain and mother-of-pearl, a temple standing in the midst of the opulence and art of new Paris, dedicated to the worship of the material splendor of Napoleonism. There were peace and plenty in the land, a submissive majority in the legislature. The old nobility had greatly overcome their hostility, and as for the people, when they were asked if they were content with the Empire, seven millions of them said Yes! [Page 17.2] Only a year later, the writer of these pages was in Paris on the Fête Napoléon again. There was no celebration of the day. A few servants of the edility were tearing down the pipes and gas-fixtures which had been planned to celebrate the entry of the French army into Berlin. At every corner panic-stricken groups were reading the bulletins, in which a false coloring was given to terrible defeats. A beaten army was rolling back toward Paris, shouting, as beaten armies always shout, `Treason,' and the Emperor, stunned and helpless, abandoning the commamnd to others, was muttering with the iteration of idiocy: `I have been deceived! They also have mitrailleuses!'

A few days later the Empire was at its end. Dr. Evans the famous American dentist, was entertaining some friends at [Page 18.1] dinner—for one must dine, though kingdoms are crashing like potsherds. A servant enters and announces a lady, who insists on seeing him. He at last rises and goes out, somewhat petulantly, to see this importunate, and when her veil is raised it discloses the beautiful face of the Empress, convulsed with grief and agitation. The mob is in the Tuileries again, after its old habit, and the Empress owes her life to two foreigners—an American, Evans, and an Italian, the Chevalier Nigra. The latter displayed a marvellous presence of mind. On entering a carriage near the Tuileries a street gamin recognized the Empress, and cried, `Voilà l'Impératrice!' Nigra cuffed him and said, `You [Page 18.2] little scoundrel, I'll teach you to say Vive la Prusse!' Others followed his example, and before the astonished urchin could get his breath and insist on his story, the carriage was out of sight.

Napoleon III., in surrendering to the King of Prussia, began his note with the words, `Having been unable to die with my troops.' It is a strange fact that of all this race of warriors, the only one to whom a soldier's death has been allotted was the gentlest of them all, who was slain by savage enemies in a quarrel not his own. Except in its tragic close, his life ran in curious parallelism with that of the Duke of Reichstadt. Both were born in the purple, their advent heralded [Page 19.1] by the booming of cannon and the flutter of a thousand banners. Both lost in their tender youth father and empire alike; both found in a foreign monarchy the education and practice in arms denied them in France. Both possessed, with their fathers' claims to a chimerical royalty, their mothers' gentleness and grace. Both died in the morning of life, one at twenty-three and the other at twenty-one, having known nothing of the common joys of life. They stand, as Napoleon II. and Napoleon IV., the visionary simulacra of emperors, in a line in which they dreamed of usefulness and glory. The beginning of their lives might well have inspired the envy of the world, and the end claims no sentiment but that of tender pity. Even the soldierly death of poor Prince Louis, the only Bonaparte who has died on the field, had in it nothing glorious. He pined and chafed in [Page 19.2] inaction at Chiselhurst. His very virtues, his studiousness, his gentle obedience to his mother, though they were the natural expression of his delicate and sensitive nature, seemed to grow irksome even to himself. He felt he must do something to prove that he was a Bonaparte—a man of action and of war. There have been wars enough in Europe of late, but he could not enlist under the flag that pleased him, like any other young soldier of fortune. He must observe all national susceptibilities, because of the great political future before him. At last the victory of Cetywayo at Isandula gave him his opportunity. The doughty savage had no friends whose hostility could embarrass any Emperor of France. Prince Louis says, in a letter recently published, `I took counsel of no one, and came to the decision in forty-eight hour.' The poor lad imagined he was a person of [Page 20.1] great energy for deciding so important a matter so promptly, and dwells upon it. `Nothing could make me hesitate for a moment—a fact which will not astonish those who know me. But how many people know me?' It is pitiful to see this gentle, tender soul deceiving itself in this way. `I am truly ashamed of having to speak thus of myself,' he continues, `but I desire to dispel the doubts which have on some occasions been manifested concerning the energy of my will......When one belongs to a race of warriors, it is only with the steel in your hand that you can prove what you are.' And so he went away, after seriously making his will, and confessing his little sins, and embracing the mother who loved him. He had letters from the Duke of Cambridge to Lord Chelmsford telling him in effect to let the Prince amuse himself, but not run any risk; and to the common eye his holiday was no more dangerous than a game of polo. But in his first skirmish he fell, hacked to swift death by Zulu spears. The whole world was sorry for him, and England was quite nervous in her grief; and in her eager desire to punish somebody for it, she seems to have made a scape-goat of the young Lieutenant Carey, who, in the hurry of mounting, thought more of his own life and his own mother than he did of the life of Prince Louis and the grief of an empress. Would her Majesty the Queen have been better pleased if, in addition to the Prince, she had lost the whole squad? It appears that she would.

We have two recollections of this unfortunate Prince, to which his cruel fate has given a pathetic significance. One was the opening of the Legislative Body in the year 1866, when the Emperor first associated his son with him officially. The splended Throne-Room of the Louvre was crowded with the most brilliant company of Christendom, with the great officers of state, of the army, and the imperial household. The Emperor entered and took his place on the raised dais; at his left sat the stout Prince Napoleon Jerome, and in an episcopal robe of violet silk the young and Apollo-like ecclesiastic, since Cardinal Bonaparte, son of the Prince of Canino; while on his right sat the little Prince, then ten years of age—as sweet and gentle a child as ever delighted a mother's heart. A year or two afterward, on the reserved terrace of the [Page 20.2] Tuileries, we saw two boys playing with their velocipedes, and keenly enjoying the air and the exercise. One of them was the Prince Imperial, and the other Don Alfonso of Spain; the former seemed secure in the prospect of the most conspicuous throne in the world, the other had just been driven, finally as it seemed, from a land which had decreed eternal banishment to his race. We can not fathom the immutable will that rules the event of human fortunes; who could have dreamed that in these few years the one of those boys would be lying dead in an African corn field, and the other, we know not how firmly, established in the palace of his ancestors?

The shadow of the imperial crown—of which it is not wise to speak contemptuously, for no one knows in what shock of elements the shadow may become substance—now rests upon the brow of Prince Napoleon (Jerome), who is in many points of view the most interesting and picturesque character of all the Bonapartes. He is the only one with royal blood in his veins, that is to say, with the especial kingly ichor which dates from beyond the culbute générale of 1789. He is the only orator among them all, if we except Lucien. He is a brilliant and able speaker, and his talent was so marked in the Senate that his detractors asked, `Who writes his speeches?' until one day, in a running debate of an hour, which was from its very nature impromptu, he surpassed himself, and unhorsed every assailant. He enjoyed that day his one sweetest taste of popularity. The students of the Latin Quarter crowded to the gates of the Palais Bourbon, and cheered him wildly as he left the hall. He had another oratorical success at the unveiling of the Napoleon statue at Ajaccio in 1865; but the radical sentiments he uttered there were so little to the taste of his imperial cousins that a sharp rebuke from the Emperor's hand appeared in the Moniteur, and the haughty Prince resigned every public function he had held. He played at opposition and liberality from that time forward, and was called in France the Red Prince, until the name was taken by the fiery-whiskered Carl of Prussia. Napoleon Jerome has been a great traveller, also. He has classical tastes, and built in Paris, near the Bal Mabille, a Pompeiian house, a perfect reproduction of a nobleman's town house on the Bay of Naples two thousand years [Page 21.1] ago. He look wonderfully like his great uncle, only much larger every way, so that Béranger called him `a Napoleon medal dipped in German fat,' and another witty person described him as a Napoleon soufflé He is a man of remarkable energy in speech, and equally remarkable indolence in action. A gentleman who met him with his cousin at a country house in England, several years before the Second Empire, was struck by the contrast between them. Napoleon Jerome talked on every subject which was mentioned with great dash and spirit, while Louis Napoleon sat silent and pulled his mustache. But when the company mounted for the day's hunt, the cousins seemed to change characters. Jerome was the timid, careful, nervous rider, while Louis became a centaur, and cared no more for ditches and fences than for the thistle-down in his path.

An incident is told of the death of the Prince Imperial that gives rise to a long train of memories and suggestions. It is said that his comrades found upon his dead body, stripped of everything else, an amulet in a locket covered with miniatures, [Page 21.2] which the savages in their superstition had spared, for the Zulus believe that an amulet taken from a slain enemy will bring his fate upon the conqueror. It is understood that this locket contains the Charlemagne relic, famous in the Napoleon annals, which the great Emperor gave to Fastrada his wife a thousand years ago, which Otto III. took from his tomb, and which the city of Aix-la-Chapelle presented to Napoleon, and he in turn gave to his beloved Hortense, Queen of Holland. It was said to possess the magic power of keeping peace in the family, and occasional lapses need not invalidate the claim. Napoleon III., receiving it from his mother, cherished it in exile and captivity, and finally after his grandeur and fall bequeathed it by a special clause in his will to his heir. His unhappy son, inheriting it with the family glories and disasters, wore it to his last fatal field. It would be curious to know if the esprit fort, the rationalist Napoleon Jerome, will now put on this amulet so deeply connected with the history of his family, so closely associated with all its splendors and all its catastrophes.

The New York Cooking School

by F. E. Fryatt

[Page 22.1]

In the spring of the year 1873, Miss Juliet Corson, who was at the time secretary of a benevolent institution in this city devoted to teaching women useful occupations, became interested in the question of diverting some of the surplus of female labor into domestic channels. For two years her lessons were given in charitable establishiments. Keenly appreciating the fact that in the profession of cookery might be opened a new and honorable field of labor for women, and hoping by uniting the best foreign methods into one practical intelligible system, variously modified, and promulgated among the people, to introduce a culinary reform in this country that would benefit all, but more especially the working classes, Miss Corson, in the fall of 1876, opened a cooking school in New York, and there gave the first lessons to the wives and daughters of working men in the kind of cookery best adapted to their needs.

In August, 1877, just after the great railroad strike, Miss Corson published for free circulation fifty thousand copies of a pamphlet entitled, `Fifteen-Cent Dinners for Working Men's Families.'

This work was eagerly welcomed by numbers of the class it was intended to benefit, as many as two hundred persons applying for it at her house in a single day; but later Miss Corson was repeatedly threatened and warned to desist from either circulating it or speaking in public, by political demagogues and socialists, who inflamed the minds of the working men by assuring them that the author was in league with the capitalists, and if they listened to her, and learned how to live better on less money, employers would immediately reduce their wages. This influence lasted only for a short period, the common-sense of the laboring-man coming to his rescue. Miss Corson's free lectures are now attended by large and respectful audiences of this class, and she is also in constant receipt of letters of commendation and inquiry from the same source. At the school in St. Mark's Place young women and children from the mission schools were given free lessons in kitchen and dining-room work, the training they received being most admirable and complete. A department devoted to teaching plain cooking to cooks and the daughters and wives of working-men, [Page 22.2] opened March 13, 1877, was so successful in its results that a number of ladies who had become interested in its progress felt justified in establishing it as a permanent institution. Accordingly it was incorporated in May, 1878, and its guiding spirit is the brave, modest, intelligent woman, the pioneer of culinary reform, since it is to her efforts New York is indebted for this school of model cookery, the benefactor of the working classes, for she teaches them how to make two dishes where formerly they made but one; and the friend of women, for she has shown them the way to a useful and honorable profession.

In no other country in the world is there such an abundance of food, or such a wasteful extravagance, as in our own favored land. Says Miss Corson, in one of her culinary works: `In Europe provinces would live upon what is wasted in towns here,' and it is in this point she hopes to work reform. It may be also said, in no country is there such a variety of food, yet in spite of this fact it is not uncommon to hear a housekeeper exclaim, as if she were at her wits' end, `What shall we have for dinner to-day?—there are only beef, mutton, and pork to choose from, after all.' As if our market were not teeming with everything of the best from `flood and field.'

What are the causes of this too common complaint? The too close adherence to the notions of our ancestors, who laid it down as a rule that only certain cuts and qualities could be used for the `boil, bake—or rather roast—and fry' in their kitchens; the disposition to avoid trouble, as if anything excellent could be arrived at without trouble; and intolerance of innovation in the shape of anything savoring of foreign cookery.

`Come with me to the New York Cooking School to-morrow,' said I, recently, to one of these disconsolate houekeepers. `Miss Corson takes her class to Fulton Market for a marketing lesson. It is the very thing you need. Then, after lunch, attend the cooking lesson, and learn to make a new dish to set before your husband. You will be so delighted, you will join the Ladies' Class at once.'

`How glad I am to know this!' said my friend, brightening up. `I can not tell one piece from another, and that [Page 23.1] leaves me entirely at the mercy of the butcher. Henry has declared a dozen times that he would have to take the matter in hand himself. In regard to the cooking, I am not so much at a loss. I have managed to learn the standard dishes myself, but one does need more variety than the ordinary routine gives. I'll go, and add some new dishes to my list.'

The course of lessons in the Ladies' Classes has been adapted to the use of those who desire to combine some of the elegancies of artistic cookery with those economical interests which it is the duty of every woman to study, and embraces marketing, cooking, and carving. Lessons on Ladies' Day, and private class instruction where pupils choose bills of fare, pay for materials used, and own finished dishes, and single private lessons, are given, economy in all being inculcated as a virtue.

It was a merry group that picked their way daintily through the market to a poultry stand next morning, headed by Miss Juliet Corson; half a dozen charming young girls chattering and sparkling with the novelty of the trip; and several sedate young housekeepers, fully impressed with their own dignity and the importance [Page 23.2] of the occasion, among them my young friend.

Some poultry was taken down and laid on the stall. In a twinkling all mirth was hushed, and a dozen heads bent forward in grave attention, as Miss Corson spoke the first words of the lesson.

`Fresh poultry.' said the lady, `may be known by its full bright eyes, pliable feet, and moist skin; the best is plump, fat, and nearly white. The feet and neck of a chicken suitable for broiling are large in proportion to its size; the tip of the breast-bone is soft and easily bent between the fingers.'

As Miss Corson concluded, there was a general putting forth of slender hands to test the youth and tenderness of a pair of fowl brought down for their inspection. The young girls smiled at each other, but a fine judicial expression stole over the countenances of the young matrons, as one of them, pronouncing the pair excellent, bought them, and ordered them to be sent home.

Turkeys, ducks, geese, pigeons, grouse, and other game were then discussed; and then passing on to the vegetable stands, the class was informed concerning roots, tubers, and green vegetables. [Page 24.1]

`Roots and tubers must be plump, even-sized, with fresh, unshrivelled skins, and are good from ripening time until they begin to sprout. All green vegetables should be very crisp, fresh, and juicy, and are best just before flowering.'

Mushrooms, sweet herbs, okras, chives, cresses, and other products of mother earth claimed successive attention; and then the procession filed away to the meat stalls. As we passed a group of loungers, various comments reached my ear.

`Whatever be those, Bill?' whispered a rough voice, as softly as it could.

`One of yer Sunday schools out for an airin',' replied another, oracularly, its owner a picturesque young fellow in a Turkish fez.

As we assembled around a stall laden with `good store of meats,' most of the young girls wore a puzzled air, but the matrons assumed an impenetrable gravity, which might mean any amount of knowledge, or answer very well to cover its absence.

`I know corned beef when I see it.' said one of the girls, triumphantly, to her neighbor.

`And I know a marrow-bone, girls. But listen: Miss Corson is explaining about beef.'

`Beef should be of a bright red color, well streaked or marked with yellowish fat, and surrounded with a thick outside layer of fat. Good mutton is bright red, with plenty of hard, white fat. Veal and pork should be of a bright flesh-color, with an abundance of hard, white, semi-transparent fat. Lamb of the best kind [Page 24.2] has delicate rosy meat, and white, almost transparent, fat.

At this point my young housekeeper, to show what she had learned, selected and bought a breast of lamb for her lesson in the afternoon.

At the close of the lesson in meats, the class were led by a circuitous route to the outer fish stalls, upon which were piled heaps of shell, river, lake, and sea fish. The fish arcade, with its tanks of water filled with speckled trout, and its finny treasures of every sort, awakened the liveliest interest in every member of the class.

`Fish, when fresh, have firm flesh, bright, clear eyes, rigid fins, and ruddy gills,' commenced Miss Corson. `Lobsters and crabs must be bright in color and lively in movement, like these.'

As the lesson proceeded, a hundred questions were asked, ill-natured crabs and snappish lobsters were poked at with pencils, stupid clams and reticent oysters were interviewed right merrily, and a vacant-looking cod was invited to tell when he arrived from sea. When we were leaving, a young girl timidly ordered a red snapper for baking, as Lent was near at hand; and we then proceeded up town rejoicing.

After luncheon I escorted my young housekeeper to the Cooking School. It was a pleasant scene into which I ushered her. Fifteen or twenty ladies were seated in rows before a long wooden counter or table, behind which stood Miss Corson, a fine, pleasant-looking lady, engaged in explaining the mysteries of a `consommé à La Royale.' On the right hand a large, [Page 25.1] brightly polished range, with shining copper saucepans and boilers, from which already issued savory odors. On the left a tall cupboard for dishes, casters, smaller utensil, etc., and near by, on the wall, a blackboard inscribed with the lesson of the day. Two assistants—a clever young man in a white apron, and a bright little girl in a French cap—aid Miss Corson in her demonstrations.

As the lesson proceeded, the clear, concise instructions accompanying it, the exquisite neatness and method of every [Page 25.2] stage, filled my friend with surprised admiration. When Miss Corson, taking a breast of lamb, deftly boned, trimmed it of superfluous fat, seasoned and spread it with a dressing of bread, chopped onion, and fine herbs, rolled it up and secured it with stout twine, placed it in a saucepan on a bed of celery, carrot, turnip, parsley, and onion cut in small pieces, adding two thin slices of bacon and the juice of a lemon, and covered the whole with boiling water, my young housekeeper clapped her hands mentally, and looking [Page 26.1] at me with beaming eyes, exclaimed: `I mean to try that dish tomorrow. I am sure it must be delicious, and one can buy that part of lamb or mutton at so much less cost than the loin or hindquarter.'

The next dish was baked red snapper. `An excellent Southern fish, though others may be cooked in the same style,' said Miss Corson, as she scored its sides, and inlaid the cuts with strips of pork, and proceeded to fill its interior with a dressing of soaked bread seasoned with thyme. Like the preceding dish, the fish was laid on a bed of vegetables in a baking-pan, a small dipper of hot water poured in, and the fish placed in the oven.

`Ah, every one knows how to do that—even I do,' whispered my friend, as Miss Corson announced that she was going to prepare a piece of beef for roasting. A new light, however, dawned on her countenance [Page 26.2] as Miss Corson, after taking the ribs out and securing the meat in place with strong twine, said, `Never use skewers, as they cause the meat juices to escape.' The preparation of `salade à la Romaine' also afforded a bit of valuable information not known to the average American housekeeper. `Never touch lettuce with a knife, as it impairs the flavor and destroys the crispness of the leaf; always tear it apart with the fingers,' said Miss Corson, daintily suiting the action to the words.

A lesson in bechamel and Spanish sauces was then given, followed by `apple méringues' and `kisses' for dessert. The dishes were handed around for inspection, and the session was over. A hum of soft voices mingled with a ripple of low laughter, as the ladies, flocking around the table, delightedly sniffed and tasted the the results of the lesson.

`Have you learned anything, my dear?' said I to my friend, as we passed out to the street.

`I am brimful of ideas, and mean to take a full course of lessons. Ah! how many trials I might have been spared had I learned how to cook and keep house before! But I never dared go near old Violet's [Page 27.1] kitchen; she would have driven me out with the broom or a carving knife. Ah! there is no monarchy more absolute than a favorite old cook's. Thank Heaven, my Ellen is stupid and good-natured!'

`If she is willing to learn, I would send her to the Cooks' Class at once. There's our Bridget, for example, just as you decribe Ellen. When I proposed to her to take lessons, and decribed what it was like, the honest creature exclaimed:``Faix, ma'am, an' its me that will go to plaze ye; an' if Bridget Ryan don't have the makin's of a fust-class cook afther the tachin', may the divil—savin' your prisince—run away wid her!'' Send Ellen, and give her a trial to-morrow. Bridget is growing such a treasure, one does not mind the cost of teaching at all.'

I dropped in next day upon the Cooks' Class, taking a young friend with me who was about to be married. I met her on my way down town, and in the course of conversation about her future life she told me she intended to save up money to buy a billiard table, remarking, innocently; `It will be such a good thing to keep my husband at home with. You know, if he has the proper sort of amusement at home, he won't go off to clubs, and all that sort of thing.'

`My dear girl,' replied I, `did you ever hear the old saying, ``The way to reach a man is through his stomach''? Learn to be a good economical cook and housekeeper.'

`Why, how can I do that? I have no time, and Ann won't let me put my head in the kitchen.'

`Come with me to the Cooking School: it is the Plain Cooks' Class this afternoon. The instruction is not only for domestics, but for young housewives beginning, or about to begin, married life in comfortable circumtances—for intance, as you and Charlie expect to.'

The room as we entered looked cheerful enough, with its neat table, warm range, and copper utensils sending forth a cloud of fragrant steam. Five or six neatly dressed women sat watching Miss Corson intently, among them Bridget and Ellen, with faces beaming and smiling till they showed rows of teeth as white as the snowy aprons under which their hands were folded. A couple of prettily dressed, sweet-looking girls also listened with great interest to the lesson; and all seemed pleased but one woman, [Page 27.2] who sat near the table with hands folded on her chest, nose in the air, and a general air of protest about her whole body, that said as plain as words: `I don't belave in none o' your nonsince, I'm here because of the missus. The likes o' ye can't tache me nothin'.'

The first dish was `roast duck and water-cresses.' Directions were given for drawing, trussing, dressing, and roasting. A fowl was then prepared for boiling, with oyster sauce. This was followed by a pair of pigeons, which furnished a boning lesson.

`If a cook,' said Miss Corson, as she prepared the pigeons, `can draw her birds without mangling or soiling them, and then prepare them so as to combine an inviting appearance with an enjoyable flavor, she proves that she has pursued her art with taste and discretion; so it will be well to attend carefully to the intruction given in this lesson.'

Two pigeons were next in order for broiling. These were split down the back, the entrails removed, the birds wiped clean with a damp cloth, and placed in readiness for the gridiron. A fowl was then cut in joints, a lesson in fricassee given, and the class broke up with expressions of admiration for the `nate, tidy body,' the `knowledgeable leddy,' and the `wise young woman,' as they variously called their instructor.

It is generally suppoed that small children, from their volatile temperaments and forgetfulness, can not be taught or trusted with cookery. Miss Corson has proved quite the contrary. Last year she had a class of children from the New York Home for Soldiers' Families; this year ten of them do the entire cooking for the inmates, at least 150, in that institution. In all the classes of the New York Cooking School no pupils are more industrious, helpful, and intelligent than the little children from the mission schools and charitable institutions.

In point of fact, the children's classes are the most charming and useful and important, for the wholeome effect they will have on the strata of society they represent. The artisan course of instruction for these little folks and elder girls comprises the preparation and cooking of simple dishes, setting the table, bringing in the dinner, waiting at table, removing and washing soiled dishes, and regulating kitchen and dining-room. [Page 28.1]

Let us go and take a peep at the children. A little flock, under the guidance of a kindly matron, is passing down to the basement; we enter with them. How merrily they babble as they divest themselves of hats and shawls! What a ripple and trill of childish laughter as they strive for the first rows of chairs! Listen: a sudden hush, a settling down in seats, and a smoothing of aprons, as Miss Corson appears, and, doffing bonnet and cloak, takes her position behind the table, with a cheery `Good-afternoon, children.'

The lesson of the day, says the black-board, is `Fried Fillets of Flounder,' `Maître d'Hôtel Butter,' `Grilled Fish Bones,' and `Caramel Custards.'

Two or three girls are usually chosen—different ones at each lesson—to assist in making the dishes; so when the material was laid on the table, and the lesson announced, Miss Corson said, `What little [Page 28.2] girl is anxious to help me cut the fillets?—some one with strong hands.'

A dozen hands were held up at once. Selecting one of the eldest girls, who came around and stood by her side, Miss Corson, taking up a sharp, thin-bladed knife, deftly cut off the whole side piece or fillet of the fish entire, and then handing the knife to the watchful girl at her side, gave minute directions from time to time, which were followed so accurately that the remaining three fillets were soon lying, skin side down, on the counter. Miss Corson, then taking the knife, showed the class how to cut the fillets clean from the skin.

Meanwhile another little girl is called for to make the breading. With flushed cheeks and an air of importance, a little wee thing steps up, seizes the roller, and vigorously rolls the bread-crumbs to powder, beats and egg up with a spoonful of water, and retires. The elder girl, who by this time has prepared the remaining fillets, breads them, dips them in the egg, and in the bread again, and lays them on a dish, in readiness to be fried a delicate brown in smoking-hot lard.

`Now, children, you observe that we have a nice bone left; shall we throw it away, or use it? I think it would be nice grilled. We will take some mustard, salt, pepper, salad-oil, and vinegar—make a paste of them, and spread it over the bone. Then let us broil it on an oiled gridiron, and afterward serve it with sprigs of parsley or slices of lemon. Now, besides the fillets from the fish, we have this, making two delicious dishes where people commonly make but one.'

The children looked very wise, a little hungry for the coming feast, and exceedingly interested. An unusual flutter took place, however, when two little girls were called for to make `lemon custards,' and one to make `Maître d'Hôtel Butter.' All the hands went up at once at the mere mention of custards. The fortunate girls who were chosen marched around behind the counter, and the resigned remainder subsided into placid attention.

One of the little maids beat the eggs lustily, while the other, sweetening and flavoring a quart of milk according to direction, set it on the fire to boil, stirring it carefully; then a sieve was held over the beaten eggs, the milk with its lemon rind and sugar strained therein, then poured into cups, which were placed [Page 29.1] in a baking pan with hot water surrounding them. The little girl then cautiously slid the pan into the oven, her face aglow with pride in the safe performance of her task. Meanwhile the third little damsel had chopped her parsley, mixed it with an ounce of butter, a tea-spoonful of lemon juice, and a little salt and pepper, after which she retired to her seat, and another small child came forward to drop the fillets in the smoking lard. All the class waited for the lemon custards, casting troubled glances at the clock. As they were slowly drawn forth from the oven and placed upon the table, the lesson concluded, the children crowded around to taste and receive their shares of the finished results of the lesson. Little tin pails popped up mysteriously to receive the well-earned dainties. Hats and shawls were hastily donned, the little ones hurried out of doors, and pausing on the pavement, cooed and fluttered with satisfaction over the contents of [Page 29.2] their little pails like so many doves in a dovecote pecking corn.

Watching the innocent for a moment, we hurried away, feeling that the New York Cooking School is an institution worthy of good people's patronage and praise, not only for its sending out young housekeepers educated in the economic principles of cookery, but because of the grand work it is doing in teaching the children of the poorer classes.

Will's Will, and His Two Thankgivings

by Rose Terry Cooke

[Page 112.2]

`He' got the dreadfulest will, Parson Roberts! I'm e'en-a'most afeard of him ef he says he will do anything, for he'll do it, whether or no; and here I be, a widder, and next to nothin' left in the way of means;' and then the poor little woman burst into tears. Mr. Roberts was a young man, and an honest man, so he did not say anything: his repertory of spiritual consolations was as yet small, and strictly conventional. There was nothing in it fitted to this particular distress of a willful son, which really seemed a greater trouble to Mrs. White than the death of Joel, who had just expired in the lean-to bedroom. Joel had not been a help or a comfort to her for the last ten years. He had at last died `of the tremens,' as she phrased it, and left her with only the little brown house that had three rooms and a loft in it, and a half acre of garden ground.

It was a bleak November day, the air sour and dark, the trees leafless, the earth sodden with chill rains, and a dreadful silence and peace settling down on this small shelter by the road-side that had for a week past resounded with shrieks and groans. Mr. Roberts had been sent [Page 113.1] for at the last moment, with that vague idea of ghostly help at the very extremity that we all feel, whether we believe in it or not; but he had come too late for even an attempt at healing the sin-sick spirit: it had fled far away, and now he stood gazing out of the window at the dreary landscape, listening to the wind that cried in the spout, and the widow's moans in the kitchen, with about as much idea how to exhort the one as the other; but he did the best thing after all; he knelt down at the next chair and prayed fervently for a comfort and help beyond man's power to give, and Mrs. White's soul grew calm with the very lifting of her thoughts into a purer atmosphere. Two days after, the funeral was held. A scant assemblage of neighbors came in to listen to the reading of Scripture and singing, which was purposely made as inappropriate as possible, for to utter that which was really the right thing, as far as honesty went, would have been a gratuitous insult to the living, and useless to the dead; but Mr. Roberts grew fairly eloquent in the fervor of his prayer for the mother and her son, and Will White bent his handsome curly head lower still to hide the real emotion that glittered in his eyes and flushed his face as Mr. Roberts asked the Lord that he might be a help and a stay to the old age and weaknes of his remaining parent. The widow rather resented the terms in which he alluded to her age, for she was `only forty-seven,' as she said to herself, and felt quite competent for all future emergencies if Will would behave himself; but of course this little chagrin could not express itself, and Mr. Roberts never was aware of it; so the prayer did her no special good in its utterance, but it woke up Will to a sense of manliness and responsibility that answered the petition while yet it was spoken.

`I'll do it,' he thought. And when he took his place behind the coffin, with his mother on his arm, there was a look of resolution and courage on his boyish face that struck the few who saw him, though they did not understand it.

`Sakes!' said Mrs. Ellis, under her breath, to another widow who walked with her. `Jest look at Will White! hain't he growed awful old lately?'

`Well, he does appear aged some,' piped Mrs. Crane, feebly; `but it's a good deal for a boy like him to have sech a terrible shiftless pa as his'n was. He's [Page 113.2] had to buckle to more'n most of 'em, I expect.'

`No, he hain't,' was the sharp response. `He's run wild; she hasn't never had no government at all. He's done what he darn please right along, and he won't never be no good—you see'f he is. She'll slave an' slave for that feller just as she did for Joel, and he'll hev his own way, for all her, till the day after never. I wouldn't stand in her shoes for nothin'. Mercy to me! if it ain't a-nowin'! Come, Miss Crane, hurry up. I can't stay through the prayer; I shall have rheumatiz for certain ef I do.'

And snow it did, bitterly and continuously, all that night and the next day, which was the old and honored festival of New England—Thanksgiving-day.

Will had to shovel a path to the woodpile, and spent the dark cold morning bringing wood into the back shed; for Deacon Peters had sent a load last week to Mrs. White in behalf of the church, and in odd hours Will had sawed and split it. While he put it out of reach of the weather, his mother went about slowly, getting such dinner as she could. In the village, not a mile away, fires were bright, pantries overflowing, families gathering in the old homes, children laughing, tables spread with every homely dainty accordant with the season; but the widow White and Will sat down to a dinner of boiled pork and potatoes, and a pot of sage tea.

They did not say anything to each other while the scanty meal was eaten—it is not New England fashion to be social at meals, and there was nothing to warm their hearts in the poverty and solitude of their condition; and when at last it was over, and the dishes disposed of, Will sat down by the fire and cracked some nuts he had gathered a week before, and picked out the fresh meats for his mother. It was an unusual attention, and his mother thanked him with a tearful sort of smile; but he had lapsed into such a reverie he did not hear her, and she took up her knitting and stared out of the window at the rapid flakes that made a dizzy whirl in upper air, but fell soft as wool upon the shrouded earth, and hid its woes and scars with deep fleeces. The little woman's great soft eyes grew darker as she gazed, her thin lips quivered, and her needles flew: she was looking back into a dreary past, forward into a threatening future. [Page 114.1] Nominally she believed and trusted in God; but, like a great many of the rest of us, she did not always live up to her profession or intention, and just now her fears hid Him as the snow hid His heavens, and sight got the better of faith decidedly.

`Mother!' said Will.

Mrs. White jumped. She had just seen herself dying in the poor-house, and Will lost at sea; no wonder she started.

`Why, Will, how you start me!' she chirped; but Will did not apologize.

`Mother, we won't ever have such a mean Thanksgiving again, now I tell ye. When I'm ten years older, we'll have as good a dinner as Squire Hall, and we'll have it in a good house too.'

`Oh, William White, how you do talk! Why, we're more'n likely to be in the town-house afore that time comes.'

`Now, mother, you shut up! I tell you, we'll have a good house and a good dinner this day ten years, as sure as I'm alive.'

`But mabbe you'll die, Will.'

`No, I sha'n't. I know I sha'n't. I ain't goin' to make no calculations about that. I've sot my mind on that dinner, and we'll have it.'

`Oh, Will, you're awful presumptuous. You ain't nothin' but a mortal boy, and you're leavin' the Lord out of your calculations entire, seems to me.'

`Spellin'-book says the Lord helps them that helps themselves, and it looks sensible, and I'm a-goin' to try it on.'

`Well, I hope you'll fetch it, dear,' sighed the widow, hopelessly.

`I will,' was the confident answer; and though the widow's soul recoiled from the audacity of the boy's speech, yet its courage thrilled her. She turned away from the storm, lit the tallow candle, and put another stick into the stove—small symptoms of the cheer that was kindled within her; but then the cheer was small and frail, it might not last.

Like many another woman, she had never known more than the surface life of the child she had borne and nursed. Hard work; a husband who abused and impoverished her; a succession of drooping, sickly babies, over whose births she mourned far more than over their deaths; the hourly fight for life that absorbs the poor and suffering—all these had kept her from the close and tender intimacy with her only living child that might have given her a better understanding of [Page 114.2] the resolution, strength, capacity, and tenderness of the nature that lay hidden under the rude health and undisciplined spirit of a boy who spent most of his time out-of-doors, and was an adept at all the sports and occupations of country boys, and withal a quick scholar at the district school, though hitherto his mischief and merriment had made for him a bad record that overshadowed his good lessons.

But his father's death was a crisis in Will's life; his careless boyhood fell away from him like a masker's mantle, besides that dreadful and disgraceful death-bed, and the deep affection for his mother, that had been only a dormant instinct, sprang into conscious existence and action.

The widow White went to bed that night with more reason for thanksgiving than she was aware of—far more than Judge Hall had, whose only son came home from college ostensibly to keep the holiday, but never went back, having been expelled for the best reasons; more than Mrs. Payne could find for herself in the aspect of her beautiful daughter, who brought home with her from a New York visit an elegant youth in the character of her promised husband, and saw him become wildly drunk at the dinner table; yet both that father and that mother held the Widow White, in the expressive language of Scripture, among those `whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.'

The first fruits of Will's resolve were shown the next morning with commendable promptness; he shouldered his spade, and went into the village to clear paths. It was not a very lucrative piece of work; he got a hot cup of coffee at one place, half a pie at another, a dime here, and a few cents there, till they counted up to twenty-five, and when he came home at night to a supper of cold pork, rye bread, and baked potatoes, he was hungry enough, in spite of the pie and coffee, to enjoy his meal heartily.

This was only the beginning. His quick wit and ingenuity devised plenty of small industries that would pay: in the long winter evenings he carved fairy sets of furniture with his pocket-knife out of red cedar, and sold them in a Dartford toy-shop; he snared partridges, and sent them to the hotels; he caught rabbits in traps, and many a good woman in Crampton was glad to buy those for a pie or [Page 115.1] stew, and sell her chickens at a profit, instead of eating them. Then when he had made a little money, he invested it in a basket, a bundle of papers, and half a bushel of popping corn, and sold various small wares besides corn and papers on the Dartford trains, driving quite a heavy trade, when the time came, in Christmas greens, for the winter was mild, and severe frosts held off till January, and Will knew well where the ground-pine trailed it verdant wreaths along the hill-side, and the coral pine laid soft fingers on the dead grass. Toward spring he hunted the spicy berries of the winter-green, and sold them in rough baskets of birch bark; and bunches of the first arbutus blossoms brought him a quick return in silver for their fragrant bloom. He not only helped support his mother, who helped herself meantime in doing whatever came to her hand about Crampton—washing, ironing, sewing, or even sick-nursing—but he had laid up ten dollars in the Dartford Dime Savings-Bank by the first of June, and then he obtained steady work.

He was handy and helpful on the train always; more than once he had `spelled' a brakeman who wanted to go home over a train, and with his quick perception he had learned their duties. Now a conductor had been promoted to a longer line and better pay, a brakeman took his place, and the vacancy at the brakes was offered to Will. Steady wages and steady work; this was more than he had hoped for so soon, and he knew well it was worth far more to him than his precarious earnings in the cars, so he jumped at the offer. He was almost sixteen now, large for his age, well built, active, and handsome; even his rough dress and dusty face and hands could not disguise the rich curls, the sparkling eye, the merry laugh, and regular features that made the widow White so proud of her boy. Everybody that worked with him liked him, and he made himself agreeable whenever he came in contact with any of the passengers. Civility, cheerful and helpful, invariably smooths the way of this world, and Will was always ready to help an old lady down the steps, to carry a baby for some tired mother, to take a school-girl's books while she gathered up her skirts daintily to enter the car, or to give some stout old gentleman a lift with his strong young arm. But when Annie Hall began to go to Dartford Seminary, and went in an out daily on Will's train, [Page 115.2] he began to think he liked to help her better than anybody else, and between the stations cast many a furtive glance through the end window at her, though ordinarily her position only afforded a view of her heavy braids of soft light hair, the slender throat below, and the jaunty hat on top of them.

Now and then, when other girls joined her, she turned about and bewitched him with a view of her soft sad blue eyes, her delicate coloring, and the plaintive smile she affected; for Miss Annie was a sentimental chit, who read mild poetry, cried because tears were so sweet, and talked of an early death as the great blessing to a heart too feeling to endure the toils of life. This was all very well for Judge Hall's daughter, who had never known a want or had a care in her life; and the gentle sadness of spirit which she cherished suited her soft eyes, fair pale face, and pink lips wonderfully, and set a halo round about her in the eyes of Will White, who was working hard for his living, and was merry as a cricket by the fireside.

Will began to look for her with a beating heart, to find things very disagreeable all day if she failed to come, and to hate Saturday as the worst day of the week.

In short, he fell heartily in love before he knew it; and whereas his ambition had hitherto been to be rich, now he wanted also to be distinguished. But could he, a brakeman on this little local road, ever be or do anything that should put him on a level with Squire Hall's daughter? Luckily for him, he had been born in America, and what is the use of a republic if everybody can not be as good as anybody else? He had read all sorts of tales of The Butter Boy of Boston, The Miller's Boy of Maine, The Tanner of Tinkton, and The Hunter Boy of the Prairie, all of whom had been either Governor, Chief Justice, or President, and why should he depair? Had he not in his very early youth been found crying in a corner, and after some persuasion explained his mystic grief by sobbing, `Ow! ow! I've got to grow up to be the President'? To feel the strong necessity of becoming Squire Hall's son-in-law was not as painful a prospect, and seemed no less possible or probable.

By the end of his first winter on the train he had opportunity to do the squire service; for Sam Hall, the youth previously mentioned as sent home Thanksgiving-day from college, had carried out [Page 116.1] his promise of a reckless and evil future, and in some drunken fight in a New York saloon been beaten terribly, and brought home to his father's house in Crampton a mere wreck; fever had set in, and though his injuries were not necessarily fatal, his native constitution was feeble, and the fever took mortal hold of what dissipation and blows had left of it. The widow White was sent for to help nurse poor Sam, for the judge was lame with rheumatism, and Mrs. Hall always delicate. But there were watchers needed, and the young men of Crampton came in for that office, Will White more frequently than any other, for he was so handy, so careful, so tender of the miserable boy's aches and pains, that Sam would have been glad to have him there always, and the judge was grateful in his own pompous way, while Annie condescended to turn her tearful eyes on him with a faint smile whenever they met—a smile that sent Will temporarily into ecstasy, and glorified the cars, the station, the steps, and even the creaking brake-wheel, while it lasted. Certainly Annie did look exquisitely lovely in her rich soft furs and heavy winter garments; a tea-rose could not have showed more fair out of dark folding mosses. But when Sam died, and the touching symbols of grief shrouded her in clinging robes of blackness and gloom, she looked to Will like a real angel, love and pity so transfigured her girlish beauty; and if it had been suggested to this infatuated brakeboy of the road that angels never wore crape and cashmere, he would have indignantly retorted that they ought to.

Judge Hall had solemnly thanked the young man, and liberally paid his mother, thinking—if he thought anything—that his affairs with that family were concluded. Deluded man! the play had but just begun. Will could contain his passion in silence no longer; the opening spring brought Annie to her daily journeys again, temporarily interrupted by Sams's illness and death, and afforded opportunity for a series of small attentions on Will's part, impertinent enough, considering their mutual positions, but chiming so well with Annie's romantic ideas, trained long on a course of flabby novels and weakly as well as weekly story papers, that she accepted them with a blushing condescension pretty enough to see, and maddeningly lovely to Will. Tiny gifts they were that dropped into her lunch basket [Page 116.2] as she passed him, or were tucked into the strap of her books, which he held while she tripped up the car stepsp—birch-bark boxes filled with winter-green berries or butternut meats; bunches of the pinkest arbutus nestled in the plumes of standing ground-pine; now and then a red Spitzbergen apple carefully preserved in dry straw for this sacred purpose long after apples in general had gone: simple tokens of an admiration that deepened daily, and shone without disguise from Will's handsome eyes whenever Annie caught their glance.

But though he forgot it, there were other Crampton people besides Judge Hall's daughter who came and went on the Dartford train, and among them a maiden cousin of the judge's wife, old Miss Cynthia Swett. Her youth had never been disturbed with love affairs. Proud, poor, and homely besidies, nobody had ever approached her with any pretension of affection or passion, and she had not a spark of sympathy for such weaknesses; but she had very sharp eyes to perceive them, and an equally sharp tongue to interfere. Business—for she was the Crampton milliner—took her in and out to Dartford frequently, and very soon she observed poor Will's devotion to Miss Annie, marked the shy greetings, the gracious response, the berries, flowers, and apples, that she knew Annie never gathered for herself, and with the perseverance of a spider she waited for more positive evidence.

Nor waa Miss Cynthia the only observer. Lovers are like ostriches, which hide their heads in a bush, and think nobody sees them. Will's love was already a matter of jest to his comrades on the train; the conductor smiled grimly when he saw him wait anxiously till the last moment at Crampton Station for the slight figure that lit up his face like a burst of sunshine when it appeared, and more than one frequent passenger exchanged mild jokes about the brakeman's love-making. One day Miss Cynthia chanced to overhear a few remarks of this nature, which made her mistress of the situation. The very next morning she posted over to Judge Hall's, and walked into the sitting-room brimful of portentous news. Now the judge's office opened from this family room, and on a chilly day like this—one of those June days that belie the season—his door was always left open to get the [Page 117.1] benefit of the wood fire blazing in that sitting-room fire-place; for nothing less than a coal stove warmed the office in winter, which was taken down in summer, of course; but the judge was terribly rheumatic, and loved the dry air of the fire on a damp day, even if it were in August. This Miss Cynthia knew very well, so she did not follow up her cousin to the dairy, or the kitchen, or the garden, as was her wont, but waited patiently for her to appear.

It was not long before Mrs. Hall came in, and Cynthia proceeded to unfold her budget. She sat very near the open door into the office, and the gentle, anxious mother, as soon as she perceived the communication concerned her Annie, rose to shut it.

`Leave that door open!' growled the judge, who sat suspiciously near.

And trembling, Mrs. Hall whispered to Cynthia: `Speak a little lower, Cynthia.'

`Speak a little louder!' thundered the squire. `What are you saying about Annie?'

And nothing daunted, the resolute spinster proceeded to lay before these parents the shocking fact, extenuated, and set down in full malice, that their precious daughter was flirting openly and wickedly with a brakeman on the Dartford train, and that their love passages were the scorn and ridicule of all the passengers, far and near.

The judge was furious, and Mrs. Hall drowned in tears.

`Now, ef I was you—' suggested the spinster.

`Which you ain't,' severely snapped the judge, but to no purpose; she merely resumed the thread of her words like an echo:

`Ef I was you, I wouldn't say nothing to Annie; she's awful romantic, and sentimental, and all that, and it'll only set her on't right off. She's jest the one to keep it up ef she knows you don't favor it none. Ef I was you—'

`You wouldn't be a fool!' growled the judge. `I haven't been married twenty-five years for nothing, Cynthy Swett. I know women-folks by this time.'

`Well, I shouldn't wonder ef you did, judge; but it doos beat all things to think of her takin' up with old Joel White's boy.'

`I dono but what he's a decent-behaved boy,' gently chirped the weeping mother, anxious to excuse Annie. `He [Page 117.2] was real good to Sam, you know, husband; he set up with him more frequent than anybody.'

`Well, well, that isn't to the purpose, wife. I paid his mother more'n was really reasonable, because of that: we're quits as far as that goes. I won't have him foolin' round Annie, anyway; but I know how to manage it. I don't say but what I'm obleeged to you, Cynthy. I'm glad to know of it, but I can take care of it myself now.' And with a majestic wave of the hand the judge dismissed the subject, and the two `women-folks' retired to discuss it after their own fashion in Mrs. Hall's bedroom.

The judge, it must be owned, went about the matter very cannily. He said nothing, but used his influence among the officials—for he was a director and heavy stockholder on the Eastern Railraod, of which the Crampton and Dartford line was a branch—and in a week or two Will was promoted to the conductorship of a freight train, which never even passed the morning express, or was passed by it.

He was pleased and pained both. His wages were increased, but he could not see Annie; and though he was conscious that thus he made one step toward her, he was actually thrust away from her sweet presence. Only Sundays could he be at home, and the very first Sunday she was not in church. She and her mother had gone to Dartford shopping, Mrs. White said, and staid over to hear a wonderful preacher.

But the second Sunday he found his usually placid mother boiling with indignation. For all his boasted knowledge of women, the squire had not reckoned on Miss Cynthia's tongue, or the power of gossip in a little country village. Filled with a lively view of her own penetration and importance, the spinster had revealed her discovery and her counselling with Judge Hall to at least three dear friends, under vows of secrecy; but each of them found out that the other two knew as much as she, and indignant at Cynthia's want of reticence, concluded not to keep such a general secret any longer; and of course a friend felt it to be a duty that Mrs. White should know why Will had been removed to the freight train, and Annie sent to the boarding-chool, for such Cynthia had been sure would be the next move. And from hand to hand the suggestion had grown into certainty, the school selected, and the date of Annie's departure fixed— [Page 118.1] all of which would have been as much news to the Hall family as it was to the widow White. But grief and indignation overpowered the poor woman afresh as she poured out the story to Will.

`How could you think on't, William? Why, Squire Hall wouldn't scurce let an angel out o'heaven have his girl. Now did you expect he'd so much as let you look at her?'

Will's face darkened with resolve and a certain righteous anger. `Judge Hall is nothing but a man, anyway, mother. I sha'n't ask him whom I shall marry—not much! This is a free country, if it's anything. And now my mind's made up: I will marry Annie Hall before I die, whether or no.'

`Oh, Will! Will! now don't you be so masterful. Oh dear! I had ought to have broke your will whilst you was a boy, and you'd ha'been spared lots. Dear me!'

`I shouldn't be worth a cent, mother, if I hadn't a will of my own; and as long as I don't set myself to do anything worse than make a good home for you and marry Annie, I don't think you had ought to complain. I haven't forgot about that Thankgiving-day.' And Will laughed out in such a cheery, brave way, his mother almost smiled; but she shook her head withal, for her common-sense stood in the way of her sympathies.

But Will was not to be daunted. He slept precious little that night; his brain was busy with plans for the future. He recognized it as the firt necessity that Annie should not be allowed to forget him. For the present he must keep his situation. Next winter a series of evening schools for adults was to begin in Dartford, and his train brought him there for the night. He must attend these, and work hard to lay the foundation of an education, for the fruit of the tree of knowledge is the hereditary longing of man, and the end of his repose, even unto this day. These two things he was set upon; and ascertaining that Annie was still at home, he rose long before dawn on Monday morning, walked over to Squam Pond, and coming back by early daylight, hung on the side door of Squire Hall's mansion a basket of dripping water-lily buds and leaves, fragrant and pure as the ideal he carried in his heart, and directed on a rude label of bark to Annie. This was the beginning of his siege. Scarcely a week passed but some token of a watchful affection [Page 118.2] reached the girl, if it was only an exquisite flower from a hot-house, or a bunch of speckless and translucent grapes, for even these small gifts bore heavily on Will's small means, though he grudged nothing to attain his object.

Still, all his efforts might have been useless but for an ally in the enemy's camp he knew nothing of. There is a certain impartiality in gossip that sometimes does duty as a virtue; talk is like air, it goes everywhere, often where it would willingly be kept from going; and in all the buzz and bustle there was in Crampton about Annie's stifled love affair, it was impossible but that something should reach her ears and fire her imagination. To be the heroine of a real romance, with a devoted lover and a cruel father, seemed to her the height of bliss. She did not know how much easier it is to read a three-volume novel than to live one; and it was mightily pleasant to receive these anonymous gifts, knowing perfectly well whom they came from and brood over them with all the romantic fancies and visions of `sweet seventeen.'

It was not quite so agreeable when the judge, going out one morning unusually early, dicovered a bouquet with her name attached hanging to the door-knob, and hurled it, with an ignominous expletive, into the pig-pen across the road—a place of deposit from which she could not rescue even a fragment to weep over. But the angry father `builded better than he knew;' that spark of opposition kindled the tinder ready for conflagration in her girlish heart, and the destroyed bouquet was the first gun fired in a long internecine war. In vain did the judge lie in wait for tokens of communication between the lovers; a quicker wit than his forestalled him. And when, in a fit of desperation, he did at last send Annie away to school, he could not forbid the express company or the mail to carry the constant tokens which kept up her interest in and recollection of the handsome, spirited young fellow who evidently adored her, though afar off.

In the mean time Will improved his opportunities at Dartford; he studied with unflagging zeal; and his naturally quick mind, stimulated by the ardor of passion and the force of that will his mother so lamented, seemed to defy obstacles and literally devour the way. In a year from the time he was made conductor on the [Page 119.1] freight train he gave up his situation, and went into a physician's office, where what work he did was taken as an equivalent for his board, and he was allowed time to recite in certain classes at the Dartford High School the lessons he learned while he mounted guard in Dr. Hyde's office. Some writing he got to help him along—for the only thing his mother ever had time to teach him was her own fair and even handwriting—and some occasional bits of bracket-sawing fell in his way, so that with his small savings from the wages he had received he kept decently clothed; and when Annie Hall met one day in the streets of Dartford, as she was on her way home from school, a tall, handsome, well-set-up youth, in a suit of light summer clothes, who lifted his hat to her with the grace of a polished gentleman and the devotion of a lover in all his aspect, she blushed up to her eyes, and smiled like an amiable rose-bud. Will had studied manners as well as his school-books, and improved outwardly as well as inwardly thereby, for manners imply a man behind them, though the implication sometimes fails.

But however strong a will may be, or however eager a lover's wishes, time does not speed the faster or delay the longer for wish or will: peace is for the heart that can steady its own beats to the great pendulum, not for that which throbs fast with fever or lags heavily with pain. The slow years went on, and at last Will had studied and slaved enough to get into the Dartford Medical College as a student, paying his way partly by certain services in and about the building. He loved the profession he had chosen, and bent all his soul to acquiring it. The professors regarded him with favor, for he evidently was in earnest. If they had known how he longed sometimes to join the other students in their frolics and wild exploits, those grave faces would have darkened. Will was a boy at heart still, and ready for fun as the wildest of his companions, but his strong resolution held him with iron bands to the work he had set his life on. Success meant Annie for his wife, and a home for his mother; it was not to be perilled for an impulse of the moment or a passing gratification. So he studied on, and by dint of applying his native common-sense to the theories of the books and lectures through which he plodded, he learned far more than the rest of his class, and in three year was installed [Page 119.2] once more in Dr. Hyde's office, as his assistant. Five times Thanksgiving had come and gone since the sad day he had made that promise to his mother, and he seemed little nearer its fulfillment; but he did not despair, and suddenly the sky brightened for him. An elder brother of Dr. Hyde had long ago gone to California, and acquiring a fortune, had settled in one of the southern towns, and made for himself a beautiful and luxurious home. The doctor had always wanted to visit him, but never found the time; and about six months after Will came to help him, a letter from one of his nieces arrived, saying that her father had been seized with paralysis, and though he had rallied from the first shock, life seemed so insecure to him he must see his brother as soon as possible. So Dr. Hyde, who was a childless widower, made his few arrangements rapidly, put his practice into Will's hands, and obeyed the summons.

This was indeed a stroke of fortune. Dr. White had made already a favorable impression in Dartford, and when on one or two occasions of grave importance the celebrated Dr. Packard, of New York, was called to counsel with him, he expressed himself with great urbanity, and strong approbation of Dr. White's treatment of the cases, adding that he himself could have done no more. This, indeed, was a feather in Will's cap, and did him more good than a year's experience with the rather distrustful clients among those left to his care. He took courage, and whatever time his practice left him he devoted still to study, for which Dr. Hyde's fine library offered him every facility.

In the mean time Annie Hall had grown up into a beautiful young woman, and plenty of lovers `cam down the glen;' but to each and all she turned a deaf ear. If she was romantic, her heart was faithful; and though she would not own even to herself where its constancy belonged, she still felt very positively that no other man moved or interested her; and though Judge Hall sometimes wondered what made his little girl so very fastidious, he did not want to lose her, and she had her own way in peace. Through all these years the slight and nameless tokens of remembrance had never ceased; no festival of the year was unmarked by them, and never a Thanksgiving passed without Will White's appearance in the village church, beside his mother, and one deep [Page 120.1] bow and eloquent look always awaited Annie at the church door. The judge never went to church on Thanksgiving-day, and Cynthia invariably spent it in Dartford, so Annie had her bit of romance in peace.

But it was not always to be so. The judge was seized with a severe attack of pneumonia the winter after Dr. Hyde left Dartford, and as the Crampton doctor was helpless with a broken leg, Dr. Hyde was sent for, and his substitute, Dr. White, came instead. Judge Hall was too ill to recognize him, and Mrs. Hall too glad to have a doctor at all, to think of past misfortunes; and Annie received him with a blush that was exquisite, and a smile radiant enough to illuminate any man's soul. Will went about his task with skill and energy. The judge was very ill indeed, and for several days hung between life and death; but at last the balance turned toward this world, and, weak as a baby, the pompous old man crept back into life by the slowest progress; but it meant living, and that was enough. Mrs. Hall blessed the doctor over and over, and cried herself into joyful hysterics. Annie went up to him with both hands out, and a face speaking far more than her words.

`I don't know how to thank you, Dr. White,' she said, softly.

`Shall I tell you?' significantly inquired the doctor.

Annie did not answer, but I am inclined to think he took her silence for consent, since half an hour afterward Miss Cynthia, who had arrived in the nick of time to soothe and scold away Mrs. Hall's hysterics, burst into the library, when that congenial task was over, to find Annie, and found her, indeed, with her head on Dr. White's shoulder, and his arm about her waist.

`For mercy's sakes!' she screamed, and fled, slamming the door behind her.

Annie laughed, and Will whistled; they were both aware of an enemy, but did not care to acknowledge it.

The judge recovered well enough now without further need of a doctor; but as soon as he was about again, Miss Cynthia felt it her duty to tell him of her new discovery. He had almost forgotten Will White in the last few years, but now he was furious: to think this `fellow' should not only have been his physician, taking advantage of his unconscious condition to [Page 120.2] establish himself there, but that he should actually have had the impudence to make love to Annie, and she the audacity to accept it—this was more than flesh and blood could bear! He stormed at his wife, and raged at Annie. Mrs. Hall cried, of course; but Annie stood still, calm, though very pale, and looked straight in his face. This was too much; he could not bear it.

`Do you hear me, miss?' he roared. `I forbid you to speak to that fellow again! Marry him, indeed! indeed you won't!'

`I shall,' said Annie, tranquilly.

The judge turned purple. If a pin on his table had peeked up in his face, and gone off like a pistol, he would not have been more astounded; never before had his will been defied by anybody. `Wh-wh-what do you mean, you little hussy?' he stammered, fairly choked with fury.

`Just what I said, father. I have promised Will White to marry him, and I mean to keep my promise.'

The judge swore a loud and mighty oath: it was not his habit, and Annie was both shocked and startled. He saw it in her start of surprise and look of dismay, and went on. `Don't you dare to look at him, again, much less to—' His head began to swim, and his sight grew dark; he fell to the floor insnsible.

When he awoke, the scene was changed; he lay on his own bed, weak as a man could be, unable to lift hand or foot, even to fully open the lids from under which he peered doubtfully about him. Annie and Dr. White stood by a little table, the doctor dropping some medicine, and Annie looking on. Presently she spoke, in a guarded voice; but the judge heard her.

`Will he live?' she said.

The doctor looked up at her tenderly. `Yes, dear, he will get over this attack, at least, and he may live for years; but he will have to be careful: apoplexy is not a matter to trifle with.'

`But I am so glad he is better!' earnestly answered the girl.

`And so am I, Annie. I want him to like me, you know.'

The judge could not believe his ears; for years he had hated this young fellow—whenever he happened to think of him, that is; within a few weeks past he was conscious that his most fervent wish had been to get him out of the way in some manner—neither death nor exile would have been objectionable—and yet the man [Page 121.1] wanted him to live, and had been doing his best to save him from death. The judge shut his eyes, and feebly meditated this matter, but he said nothing. `Night brings counsel,' says the proverb; and so may sickness, for it has the night's silence and leisure for thought.

When the judge got better, and crept about with a staff, he found he had learned a lesson from the death so closely faced. He did not say anything to Annie, but it was significant that he kept silence. Mrs. Hall could not understand it, and Cynthia said `he'd got a warnin'.' Perhaps she was right: he had certainly got an enlightening, if nothing more; and Annie, who daily expected he would resume the conversation so sadly interrupted, began to wonder if the fit had really erased from his memory the passion and fury which had brought it on. But they all misunderstood him; he was chewing a cud of bitter thought and fancy all this time. To have been on the edge of death is to see things differently after we return from that low brink. Judge Hall had learned there to respect the calm judgment and strong character of his daughter's lover. He knew well what an advantage Will White might take any day of Annie's very willful nature—a nature hitherto dormant because never thwarted, but which he himself had discovered only of late. He could see that this young man had worked himself into a position where he would soon be independent. He knew, too, that his own days were numbered: another shock of apoplexy would be his death-signal; and the judge took such counsel with his own heart as drove him to read his Bible with different eyes from those that had made its perusal a mere ceremonial observance before.

A year went on now in quiet. Will was not yet ready to take Annie away from her home, but letters went constantly back and forth between them. The judge grew more and more gentle and gracious from week to week. Annie loved him as never before, and Mrs. Hall gazed at him with a mild and tearful awe that found broken expression to Miss Cynthia:

`He's a-ripenin' for heaven, Cynthy, he is. He's a changed man. Why, he's jest like a cosset lamb about the house; he don't take me to do as he used to—not once in a week.'

`Well, I told ye he'd got a warnin'. Folks that is so masterful as he was has [Page 121.2] to get a good knock 'most always before they die. I dono but what the judge was a Christian before now; he was a profesor, I know, but he didn't seem to be no great fist at it; didn't make a business on't, so to speak. But now he's seen his latter end clus to, as you may say, and it's quite affectin' to him. I shouldn't wonder but what he's experienced religion over agin.'

`Dear me! I do hope he ain't a-goin' to die jest as he gits real pleasant to live with,' quavered Mrs. Hall.

`Law sakes, Sophrony! why don't you take it t'other eend fust? Folks ain't noway fit for the next world ef they ain't fit for this—leastways not for the heavenly part on't. I should think, now, you'd have rec'lected his immortal soul fust thing.'

Mrs. Hall sighed, self-convicted. Poor little woman, her first natural thought had been of the years she had been in bondage through fear, and the sad recall of what might have been had the judge been kinder and more reasonable. She could not excuse herself to her own simple, humble soul; so she let Cynthia bristle up with her superior spiritaul consciousness, and said no more.

When Dr. Hyde had been away almost two years, he wrote home to say that his brother, after lingering beyond any precedent, had at last died, his wife having preceded him to the grave but a few weeks, and both had extracted from the doctor a promise that he would stay with his four young nieces, and manage their large property for them till their marriages should take place. Dr. Hyde had already laid by a snug little sum in the Dartford Bank for his old age, his brother left him as much more, safely invested, and the good-will of his practice and his comfortable old house were worth something besides, so that he had no need to work at his profession any longer. His ties in Dartford were few and slight; he had already learned to love his nieces, and to feel at home with them. He wrote to offer Will his house and practice on terms that were reasonable enough, and only demanded partial payments year by year. There was no doubt in Dr. White's mind that he ought to accept this offer; and when another year of patient economy and steady work had passed by, he was able to send even a larger sum to Dr. Hyde than he had promised, and to keep half of the house, which hitherto he had leased to [Page 122.1] two families, and install his mother as houekeeper.

It wanted now a year of the ten he had promised himself to achieve a home. He had succeeded beyond his hopes. But before Thanksgiving-day came he was called again to Crampton. Judge Hall was stricken once more with apoplexy. This time he rallied more slowly than before, and Will spent his Thankgiving away from his mother for the first time in years, watching the faint spark of life flicker, tremble, gather strength, and at last burn up again in this old man's bosom. The judge returned to this world's affairs more humble and grateful than ever. He knew his time was short; and a month after, sitting by his bedroon fire, the wreck of his old pompous, dogmatic, ruddy self, he called Annie, in a broken whisper. She dropped her work, and came.

`Annie,' he said, feebly, `you've been a good, patient girl; but I don't suppose you've given up that fellow?'

`No, father.'

`Well, you haven't fretted and pestered me a bit; and I'm free to say I think better of him than I did. If you will have him, why I don't say but what I'm willing now.'

Annie bent over and kissed him tenderly. She could not say anything.

`But, Annie,' the judge went on, `don't never set up your will against his as you have against mine. If you do, I tell ye you'll come to grief: his is the biggest; he's rightly named.'

`Perhaps I sha'nt want to,' laughed Annie, shyly.

`Don't lot on that: you're a woman, and they all want their way, from Eve down,' muttered the old man with gentle sarcasm. [Page 122.2]

`Then I'll make his way my way, daddy, and we shall both be suited.'

`Hm!' said the judge, contemptuously.

But he did not live to see it. The Will that orders us all, even our willfulness and our resolves, sent the third and last summons before spring ripened into summer, and the judge was gathered to his fathers.

When the tenth Thanksgiving after that solitary feast in the kitchen came about, Will White, his mother, his wife, and his wife's mother were seated around the table in Judge Hall's dining-room, for the house belonged now to Annie, and Will had taken the Crampton doctor's place, as the judge's money was enough to set them far above want, and Annie loved her old home too well to leave it, besides which Dr. Grey had six children and an ailing wife, and was glad enough to exchange Crampton for Dartford.

The dinner was abundant and elegant, but, with a touch of unconscious poetry, the widow White had placed before Will a covered dish; he lifted the lid, and saw before him a piece of boiled salt pork and a few potatoes.

Will's eyes dimmed as he looked from the dish to his mother.

`I told you so, mother!' he said, with a thrill in his voice.

`Oh, my dear! my dear! 'twa'n't all your will, Will; don't lot on it: the Lord helped you, my son, or you wouldn't have been here to-day.'

`The Lord helps those that help themselves, mother,' said Will, reverently; and then he bent his head and gave fervent thanks to Him who had worked it in him both to will and to do, and given them all such great cause to keep this second Thankgiving.

The City of Atlanta

by Ernest Ingersoll

[Page 30.1]

ATLANTA, the present metropolis of Georgia, has had a history peculiar for a Southern town. Those who have spoken of the city as the `Chicago of the South,' appear to have struck not very wide of the mark. Forty years ago there was nothing at all here. Maps of the period, very minute and careful in their topography, show no such place. All the wagon roads centred at Decatur, at Marietta, and at Canton. Creeks and Cherokees occupied the whole region, and there was hardly even a cross-roads at this point. The turnpike between Georgia and Tennessee did not pass through it, and no large river furnished facilities for navigation, or offered power to move machinery. How, then, did Atlanta come to exist at all; and, much more, how did she succeed, like the goddess whose name she suggests, in outstripping all her older sisters, Augusta, Savannah, Macon, and the rest?

The answer is found in one word—railways.

Atlanta is a `flat' town, and was put where she is by act of Legislature rather [Page 30.2] than by the natural course of events. It is an interesting and exceptional example of prosperity ensuing from forced conditions, and came about in this wise: When the experiment of steam locomotion had proved a success in England, and was being introduced on this side of the Atlantic, Georgians were quick to perceive that they needed this new invention, and as early as 1833 charters were granted to several interior railway companies. It was also seen that the State required railway communication with the West and Northwest, in the shape of a trunk line, in the advantages of which all the interior roads could share. The Legislature was therefore consulted, and in 1835 an act was approved authorizing the construction of a railway from the Tennessee line, near the Tennessee River, to the southwestern bank of the Chattahoochee River, `at a point most eligible for the running of branch roads thence to Athens, Madison, Milledgeville, Forsyth, and Columbus.' A Survey was made accordingly, and it was found that at this point, seven miles east of the Chattahoochee, spurs of the Blue Ridge intersected in such a manner that a natural centre occurred [Page 31.1] for all the most likely routes of railway communication then surveyed or likely to be laid out. Here, then, right out in the woods, it was resolved to begin the `State' railway north to the Tennessee line, and the spot naturally came to be known as Terminus.'

Passengers on the Air Line road to Washington will remember a little breakfast station called Central, up in the mountains of Western South Carolina. As the train comes round the bend of the hill, and slows up, a dinner-bell is heard, and the eye takes in a white building, with a long cool piazza, where stands a man whose genial smiling face and fat throat, whose generous amplitude of waist and solid support of legs, augur well for the fare that awaits within. He rings the bell steadily with one hand, and with the other busily welcomes the passengers as though they were all old friends. Then how urgently he presses upon you a choice of good things! how distressed he is if you do not eat as heartily as he thinks you ought! how solicitous to assure you that there is time enough! and with what benignity, mildly protesting against the necessity, does he take your fifty cents! Do you wonder that he is known from one end of the Cotton States to the other, and that everybody loves `Cousin John' Thrasher? The path to a man's heart lies through his stomach, it is said, and this generous, easy-natured caterer has secured the right of way in this part of the world. Well, the point of this digression is that `Cousin John' is the original oldest inhabitant of Atlanta, because in 1839 he came here and built the first house. Soon after, other families settled at Terminus, and Mr. Thrasher opened a store; but he had little faith in the future of the village, for in 1842 `Cousin John' sold out, for a few hundreds, land now worth half a million or more, and departed.

Patience fails to recount the growth of the settlement into a village, and the expansion of the village into the city which now calls itself a metropolis. It seems to have been essentially a pioneer town, owing its life wholly to the railways, augmenting its size as new lines were opened and the business of the older roads increased. It was in 1842 that the first locomotive was seen in Atlanta. It did not come, as locomotives usually do, upon tracks laid up to that point, but was [Page 31.2] dragged across the country from Madison—then the terminus of the Georgia Railroad—upon a wagon drawn by sixteen mules. To most of the rustics of that region a locomotive was a novel sight, and they gathered in a great crowd to witness its trial trip. The engineer saw a chance for a practical joke, and claiming that he must have help to get the machine started for the first time, persuaded a great number of young men to push. Their first efforts were of no avail, and the crowd began to jeer at the engineer. But he induced them to make a second trial, and just as they were putting forth their strength prodigiously, he turned on the steam, and sprang from under them, leaving a sprawling and dusty crowd to take his place as the butt of rustic raillery.

This same year also witnesed the first sale of real estate by public auction, and one of those three town lots, bought then for an insignificant sum, has remained ever since in the hands of its original purchaser. It stands at the very centre of business, is covered by a block of brick building, and simply by increase of value [Page 32.1] now forms a snug fortune, giving a large annual yield to its owner.

Speculation in real estate soon began, however, when it was seen that the prediction of John C. Calhoun, made years before, that Altlanta would be the metropolis of Georgia, was about to be verified. Before many years fancy prices were asked for property, and rents required that were out of all proportion to value. It was supposed at first that the town would be built some distance west of its present position, and money was invested in that region. Then a shrewd land-owner gave the site of the present [Page 32.2] Union passenger station, which was accepted by the railroads, bringing the centre of growth in the town over to that spot. Thus money was lost and made, but the city increased in population, got rid of the criminal element which had predominated in her earlier history, educated the country people, became enterprising, and in assuming the powers and legal privileges of a municipality, took to herself city-like ways and pride, and asserted herself to be the gate to the South, through which all commerce and emigration from the Northwest must pass.

The map of Atlanta shows a circular line representing the boundary, and having for its centre the railway station. The radius is one and a half miles. Within this circle (and somewhat also outside of it) is an array of streets so utterly irregular that you wonder how it was possible they ever could have been built up in that way. They go crooked where it would have been easier to go straight, show acute angles where a square corner could be made with less effort, and come to a sudden stop or run away into vacancy at the most unexpected points. The explanation is ready,, and reminds one of the Dutch cowpaths which are said to have determined the pattern of lower New York. It must be remembered that before the town existed the east-and-west road from Marietta to Decatur and beyond crossed at this point a road running north and south. They were such irregular rambling turnpikes as are characteristic of this hilly region, and the village extended itself along them without any attempt at straightening. Reckoning from the junction, as habitation spread, the road to Marietta naturally became Marietta Street, while that leading in the opposite direction was soon called Decatur Street. Not far north of the village was an old justice-court ground (a State reservation) known as the Peach-tree Court-House. A few miles southward stood a tavern, famous among all the teamsters [Page 33.1] through Georgia as the White Hall. The two crooked roads leading north and south thus became Peach-tree and Whitehall streets; and in the case of the latter it is told that the detour made by the stage-driver in going about a bad mudhole one winter is preserved by an elbow in the street. The bend is there, certainly, but the evidence of the `chuck-hole' has gone, or rather it is distributed throughout a mile of bad paving. Then the three railway lines introduced new factors of discord, and finally the owners of the original half-dozen farms and land lots each laid out streets for himself entirely irrespective of his neighbor. The result is a city in some parts easy, and in others very difficult, to get about in, and which, from a bird's or balloonist's point of view, must appear very confused.

So, deriving her success from a multitude of business advantages, and from her favorable situation in point of geography and climate, Atlanta has waxed great and powerful, and, withal, very attractive. All the evidences of busy life are around you, and only unless you are fresh from New York or Baltimore or Chicago do you notice the provincial air. The telegraph [Page 33.2] pole at your elbow bears the little red box that carries the electric fire-alarm to ever-ready steamers and ladder trucks; the lamp-post serves as standard for the mail drop-letter box; and a policeman in full uniform will assist you into a street car for any part of the city, if you need the help of the `force.' There are banks, and boards of trade, and business exchanges, and all the rest of the list of `modern conveniences,' from artificial ice to a Turkish bath or a complete system of telephonic communication. Yet, however comfortable this is for the citizen, it has the drawback to the magazine writer and artist that it makes Atlanta too much like a hundred other large towns with which we are all acquainted in the North, and leaves less that is peculiar, characteristic, and picturesque than perhaps exists in any other city in the South. She looks to me more like a Western town, since her newness and enterprise hardly affiliate her with Augusta, Savannah, Mobile, and the rest of the sleepy cotton markets, whose growth, if they have any, is imperceptible, and whose pulse beats with only a faint flutter.

Yet there are certain features that strike the stranger's eye. On Monday you may see tall straight negro girls marching through the street carrying enormous [Page 34.1] bundles of soiled clothes upon their heads; or a man with a great stack of home-made, unpainted, and splint-bottomed chairs, out from among the white legs and rungs of which his black visage peers curiously; or urchins under baskets of flowers poised like crowns. Troops of little black boys, bare-footed, bare-headed, and ragged `to a degree,' as a certain English novelist is fond of expressing it, go about carrying bags in which they gather up rags in a manner wholly different from the New York chiffoniers. At certain corners stand farmers in scant clothing of homespun, and the most bucolic of manners, waiting for some one to buy for a dollar, or even half a dollar, the little load of wood piled up on the centre of a home-made wagon so diminutive that two men could walk away with the whole affair, while a third carried the mule under his arm. It is great fun, too, to go to the post-office after the arrival of the noon mails from the North. The office closes its windows, although it is in the middle of the day, and devotes itself to the task of distribution. Meanwhile a crowd accumulate—mostly the rabble who get a letter about once in four weeks, but mixed up of all sorts—and amuse themselves by making remarks not always complimentary to the rule of the office, or [Page 34.2] stand patiently in line until the window opens. This delay in a post-office which supports the delivery system looks like a `relic'; but everybody has time enough in Georgia.

On certain days you will hear the beating of triangles, and have your attention attracted to the red flag of the curb-stone auctioneer, whose volubility will be heard above the din of traffic. These out-of-door auctions are always amusing, and the crowd of negroes, `poor whites,' and loungers that they gather afford an interesting study to the lover of physiognomy. It is like a bit of the Bowery or Chatham Street turned out of doors; but the articles sold are more miscellaneous and wretched. You may buy worn-out stoves and tables, second-hand bacon, muddy croquet sets, rubber hose of one kind and cotton hose of quite another, canary-birds, hat racks, baby carriages, old fruit jars, clothing, bath tubs, straw sun-bonnets and hats, squirrel cages, carpets, books, bedclothes made `befoh de wah,' sweet-oil, saws, crockery, iron garden settees, ice-cream freezers, saddles, window-sashes—everything out of time and miserable, from a pair of snuffers to a horse and wagon alive and harnessed.

As yet Atlanta has no market-house; but it is proposed to build one at an early day, which shall be supported upon arches [Page 35.1] over the railway tracks between Whitehall and Broad streets. This would utilize (and handomely too) a waste space; but if a locomotive should explode its boiler under there, wouldn't the rise in breadstuffs be so sudden as to disturb the market?

Another event of the traveller's life in Atlanta, which may or may not be amusing, is his contact with the brush fiend. This imp, or rather this species of imp, for there are many individuals, finds its home at the hotel, and there lies in wait for the unwary tourist, as the spider crouches in quiet anticipation of its muscine meal. You enter the door and walk half way across the marble floor, when you feel a gentle stroke upon your shoulders, and turn your head to see an uplifted whisk in the hand of a darky, who grins in a conciliatory manner. But you harden your heart, proceed to the register, and lend your autograph in suppport of the eminent respectability of the house to which that much-blotted book is supposed to testify. The flourish is not yet from under your pen, when your modest hand-bag is seized, and down comes a broom upon your coat tail. A look fails to arrest the brush, and you flee. At the foot of the stairway is a shadowy corner. You are unsuspicious, not having yet learned [Page 35.2] to give it a wide berth. Just as your foot is upon the first stair, out leaps a whisk-broom and begins upon you. Now you must shout your menaces in language strong if you would be saved. Escaped this, you meet a fiend at the first landing. You watch him firmly grasping a brush as you approach, but you are ready. Fixing upon him your eagle eye, you say, `Lift that whisk-broom but one inch, and I pitch you down stairs!' You turn your head as you go past, and never relax the deadly gleam of your eye until he is far behind. Finally you reach your room, and the porter opens the door, sets down your baggage, raises the curtains, glances at the toilet arrangements, and being satisfied, civilly retires to the door, hesitates, seems to be trying to remember something, and softly asks, `Would you—you like to have your coat—' while out of his pocket steals the handle of a broom. The heavy match-box is nearest, and it flies, while you look for the iron poker with one hand and feel for your pistol with the other. But the imp is used to this, and has prudently vanished. You bolt the door, and find youself in possession of the field; but he is the real victor, and until you either maim him for life or pay generous tribute of dimes, the brush fiend will torment, and the spirit of whisk-brooms refuse to be laid.

Atlanta has been a military post for United States troops for many years, and the McPherson Barracks, in the northwestern edge of the city, is one of the [Page 36.1] points of interest for a stranger. The Barracks are commodious, and the officers' quarters, surrounded by neat gardens and hidden in masses of honeysuckle and wisteria, form attractive homes. A succession of regiments has held them, and they have bewailed when orders came sending them to the frontier, or transferring their post to some fever-haunted garrison on the sea-coast. At present the Fifth Artillery are stationed here, and making themselves agreeable to the citizens, who find the presence of the garrison pleasant as well as profitable. From the Barracks, which are upon high ground, a wide and enchanting landscape spreads northward before the eye, terminating in the pale outlines of Tennessee mountains, where Lookout, Mission Ridge, Resaca, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga recall such exciting memories. Near by towers the lofty double peak of Kenesaw Mountain, scene of the most severe fighting of the whole Atlanta campaign; and my companion, captain of a Confederate battery, has a bloody incident to tell of each landmark as he guides my eye over the wide expanse of this vast field of battle. [Page 36.2] Imagination alone must fill the distance with the action which his stories relate: but as he explains the method of advance, the successive retreats and conquests by which the lines of attack were narrowed more and more upon the beleaguered city, the evidences of war become more apparent, and we can bring the remains of hostile operations actually before the eye, helping the fancy to picture the stirring scene. Down there in the valley stretches a long, low, irregular embankment, not yet overgrown with grass. That is the inner line of intrenchment which surrounded the city. Beyond it, appearing now and then in the second growth of woods, here lost in a valley, there enlarging into a fort upon a commanding hill-top, is an outer line, and all about are scattered the little piles of earth thrown up at the rifle-pits, and the half-filled trenches which the pickets dug to protect themselves from sharp-shooters and stray cannon-shot. Georgia seems to have little desire to hide her scars. The red soil upturned by the soldier's spade contains no dormant seeds, and takes so slowly to a new planting that for fifteen years compassionate Nature has tried in vain to hide these marks of Mars under her mantle of herbage and wild shrubbery. Everywhere as you ride out of Atlanta you cross cordon after cordon of earth-works, pass through woods torn with round shot, where shells cut long pathways, and wander across fields sown with the leaden seed.

Gradually the city is extending itself beyond these red lines of embankments, and in twenty years their scant remains will become curiosities to the traveller. In the rural districts, however, they bid fair to last a very long time. Five or six miles out on the Peach-tree Road, for example, is a fort crowning a hill, whose lines and angles and full height are as well preserved to-day as though the work was thrown up only yesterday. It saw no fighting, however. The tide of war swept by without coming under the range of its guns, and its symmetrical outlines were never trampled beneath the feet of a storming column. [Page 37.1]

On the other hand, some of the fields of the fiercest battles leave little to show of the strife and carnage once enacted over their sunny slopes. To the stranger's eye the city itself presents few marks of that tide of war which crept up to it, and finally surged so destructively across its whole area. There are ruins in the suburbs of what were once stately mansions, that have never been rebuilt, and you see scattered about the lonely stone chimneys that stand as monuments of a fireside forsaken, and a roof-tree long ago thrown down or burned away. The city itself has been rebuilt, and the houses that survived the shelling are already becoming dignified with historical interest. Usually it is some very insignificant incident which preserves the recollection of the conflict in particular places. Atlanta is a region of roses. A lover of them never tires of peeping over the fences and pausing before the conservatories in this early May season, so rich in the superb blossoms. One day we came to a modest [Page 37.2] garden, where an old lady was busy among her thorny pets. We stopped and talked with her a few moments. She told us she had one hundred and twenty-five kinds there, but that her rose garden now was nothing compared with its splendor before the war. `We had to leave during the siege,' she said; `the cannonading ruined the house, and the soldiers and all just spoiled my beautiful flower beds. I had a rare lily that was given to me by the royal gardener at Berlin, and that was killed; and I do believe, when I got back, of all the dreadful ruin, the loss of that flower hurt me the most.'

It was in 1865 that the citizens and merchants came back to their desolate homes. Only one building, of all the commercial part of the town, had survived the flames. Business had to be built up from the very foundation again, and the energy with which this task was attempted shows the strong faith Atlanta men feel in their lively town. One of the first to return was the present president [Page 38.1] of the Board of Trade. He secured a cellar under the sole remaining building (on Alabama Street), paying $150 a month for its use, and began the produce and groceries trade, increasing his income by renting ground privileges of a few feet square on his sidewalk at $20 a month each. Soon the owner of a corner lot on Whitehall Street built a brick building containing two store-rooms. As soon as these were ready, our merchant and another moved in, paying $3000 a year rent each, and giving half of it in advance, in order to aid the proprietor to go on with his construction. (The accommodations for which that $6000 a year was paid now rent for $1500.) Thus by mutual help and enterprise, together with a vast amount of personal labor, the ruins were replaced by substantial business edifices, new hotels of magnificent proportions were erected, churches more lofty in gable and spire arose upon the sites of those destroyed, and the vacant streets were refilled with people. Atlanta became at once the distributing point for Western products, and now finds tributary to her a wide range of country. She handles a large portion of all the grain of Tennessee and Kentucky, besides much from the Upper Mississippi Valley. Much of the flour of the Northwestern mills comes into her warehouses, and thence finds its way southward and eastward. [Page 38.2] The same is true of the canned meats of Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati packing-houses: this is a very important item of her wholesale business. The provision men naturally were the first to obtain foothold in the new town. After them came the dry-goods people. Most of them began in a very modest way—brought their goods tied up in a blanket almost—yet now the jobbing trade in dry goods alone amounts to some millions of dollars annually. No tobacco can be grown in the vicinity of Atlanta, hence she is without tobacco factories; but she used to handle an enormous quantity of it, and there are half a dozen firms who deal wholly in it now. It was found that Atlanta's dry, equable climate, consequent upon her great altitude, made this point the safest place to keep stores of the grateful plant: it would not mould, as it is liable to do in a damp atmosphere. A few years ago the revenue regulations were not as effective as at present. The practice of stencil-plating packages of tobacco afforded easy means of evading the payment of duty, and great warehouses here were stored with `blockade' tobacco, from which Uncle Sam had derived very little, if any, pocket-money. Enormous profits accrued, but the introduction of the stamp system put a stop to this, though Atlanta was left a very large legitimate business in storing and selling tobacco at whosesale.

Another source of prosperity to the city is cotton. The `cotton belt' of Georgia is a strip of country between here and Augusta. Years ago the land became exhausted, and the cultivation of cotton came to be of small account. Then followed the discovery of the guano island of Peru, and the subsequent invention of artifical fertilizers having similar qualities to the natural manure. These superphosphates are manufactured mainly in Boston, and cost the farmer about forty dollars a ton. It was proved that by their use the worn-out cotton belt could be made to produce as bountiful crops in a series of five years as the Mississippi bottoms did; and, moreover, that cotton could be raised as far north as the foot of the Tennessee mountains. Atlanta, [Page 39.1] therefore, has come to be not only a great dépôt of supply for this guano, furnishing its vicinage a hundred thousand tons a year, but also the entrepôt of all the cotton produced within a circle of nearly two hundred miles. This cotton is bought mainly for foreign export, and is shipped under through bills of lading to foreign ports, thus dodging the factors at New York, Savannah, and other coast cities. The business is not done on commission, but by buying and selling on a margin of profit.

There are other extensive business interests. Iron is mined near by, and extensive foundries and rolling-mills manufacture it. Great crops of corn and grain are raised throughout the central part of the State, which find their way into Atlanta distilleries, while her wine-merchants are many and rich. She can make the best brick, and has a whole mountain of solid granite close by, with other building material accessible and cheap. She sighs for only one more commercial advantage, namely, a railway to the coal regions of Alabama. Now her coal is largely supplied from ex-Governor Brown's mines in the extreme northwestern corner of the State.

Looking away from the city, Barracks Hill furnishes a good vantage point, as I have already hinted; but to view the town itself, let me commend a ride along the [Page 30.2] new `boulevard' on the eastern edge. This broad, well-formed driveway follows the crest of one of the many ridges into which the surface of the country is cut up, and the solid squares of the city's business houses, the lofty proportions of her great hostelries, the scores of spires of her handsome churches and school-houses, and the charming, foliage-hidden avenues of her dwelling-places and suburbs—all appear to the best advantage. No one will deny that she is attractive.

Just at the northern extremity of the boulevard is a pretty little vale, upon which some slight cultivation has been attempted, mineral waters having been discovered bubbling out of the bank a few years ago. The name Ponce de Leon Spring was at once given to it, and the spot has become a pleasure resort, always visited in the course of an afternoon's drive. The horse-cars run out there along a wonderful tramway, laid through a series of cuts and over a long trestle-work, like a steam railroad. The waters have a sulphurous, nasty taste, and therefore it is quite likely that they possess some at least of the medicinal properties ascribed to them. But I fancy the bracing violet-scented air, the tramping about under [Page 40.1] the trees, and the vigorous bowling over of ten-pins have more efficacy in accomplishing cures.

On the outer side of the boulevard, as it follows the circle of the city boundary eastward and southward, runs a strip of tangled woodland, where two or three little streams meander in shadow and negligence. The ground is rough, and the authorities propose to take advantage of all this prettiness by annexing the vale and forming it into a park. It is certainly to be hoped that the scheme will be carried out. Atlanta has no park at all at present, excepting the grounds about the City Hall.

This is less to be deplored here, however, than in any other town you could find in the country, perhaps. One doesn't appreciate how healthful is the position of this favored spot until he studies it. Atlanta stands upon an outmost spur of the Blue Ridge, eleven hundred feet above the sea—an altitude equalled by no other city of her size in the United States. Her climate is equable and pleasant. `The nineties,' with which New Yorkers and Philadelphians are so familiar, are an almost unexplored region to Atlanta's mercury, [Page 40.2] while in winter the southern latitudes preserve her from long or severe cold. The head waters of the Ocmulgee and several minor streams spring within her very boundary and flow both east and west to the Atlantic and to the Gulf. Her drainage is therefore excellent. Men and women do die there—no denying it; but epidemics are unheard of, and the locality is an island of health in the treacherous yellow-fever climate of it regions. It is all Dei gratia, however. No sanitary measures worthy of mention have ever been effected, or even tried; yet Atlanta is by no means a dirty city.

From a consideration of her healthfulness we turn by antithesis to Oakland, the most artistic and beautifully cared-for cemetery south of the oak groves. It shows a marked contrast to the decay and complete neglect of grave-yards prevailing in all the rural towns. Here lie some thousands of dead Confederate soldiers, and a plain but enduring monument watches over the graves. At this grateful season the cemetery becomes a garden of flowers, and is worth being seen for these alone. Here too, as elsewhere in Atlanta, the number and perfect growth of the hedges are very noticeable; but that finest of all Georgia's hedge plants, the historic holly, is not often seen, though abundant in a wild state in all the hilly regions of this part of Georgia.

Public buildings in Atlanta are not imposing. The United States is just finishing a custom-house, court-room, and post-office in the shape of an attractive structure of brick and granite, modelled in a manner happily different from the ordinary government architecture. The State-house of Georgia is a square, business-looking building on a prominent street, having as unofficial an air as any warehouse, and almost as roughly furnished within. The Court-house and City Hall form a large square building, surmounted by an accumulation of cupolas, reminding one of the touching ballad of `Kafoozalum,' where the hero appears as a `gentleman in three old tiles.' The site is high and beautiful, and will before long be adorned by an ornamental building for public purposes.

A noted trial for homicide was in progress, and I went in to witness the proceedings. The court-room was crowded to repletion with men, half of whom were [Page 41.1] smoking, though all had their hats off except an officer or two. The prisoner was in a happy mood, perhaps following Mark Tapley's rule as to jollity under creditable circumtances. The lawyers and jury and everybody else were mixed up in the most picturesque style, and the judge's bench had been seized upon as a good point of view by a dozen or more eager spectators. Notwithstanding these seemingly unfavorable conditions, good order was preserved. It was a good place to study faces. The audience was just such a [Page 41.2] throng as naturaally would gather at a murder trial in the provinces. No city man or person of delicacy did more than glance in out of momentary curiosity, unless he had a direct part in the proceedings. It was interesting to watch these farmers and roughs, the consumption of unlimited quantities of tobacco in [Page 42.1] every shape forming a bond of union among them. I fancied an indefinable air hung over the assemblage which would not pervade a Northern crowd of similar character, or want of character. Each one of these gaunt-limbed, high-cheeked, swarthy loungers seemed to say; `I may be poor, ignorant, diseased, and bevermined, may have come here in a two-wheeled cart with a mule in a rope harness, and sat on the bottom because I was too lazy to arrange a seat; no doubt I'm an utterly useless Corn-cracker—but, Sir, I am a Georgian!' There have been persons in the halls of Parliament and on the floor of Congress who have attempted to assert themselves Englishmen and Americans, with the intent to be impressive in their patriotism, but I am perfectly sure none of them ever really did make the asseveration half so strong as do these butternut-dyed Crackers by a single glance of the black eyes and a single toss of the shaggy head. Well, to be a Georgian is something; otherwise these fellows would be hard put to it to define their position in the economy of nature.

Atlanta boasts, undoubtedly upon a firm basis of facts, that she offers the best educational privileges to her citizen of [Page 42.2] any community, large or small, south of `the line.' Unless Richmond, Virginia, be excepted, this is true. Atlanta has a complete system of graded and high schools, and they are fully attended. Then there are two or three commercial colleges, two `universities' for colored pupils who desire more than a common-school education, two medical colleges, and an instructive display of the geological and agricultural resources of the State at the State-house. The Library of Atlanta is peculiarly Southern in its associations. Around the walls of it handsome hall on Marietta Street are hung portraits and engravings of Confederate leaders, some in the gray uniform of the defeated `cause,' and some in the flowing robes with which painters love to enshroud their statesmen. Swords and banners and maps and other relics of war are profusely displayed. The Library is self-supporting, contains some thousands of well-selected and, what is more, well-read volumes, has chess-rooms and reading-rooms attached, and is a matter of just pride and comfort to the town.

A feature of the city to which no well-ordered resident will be likely to direct a stranger's attention is `Shermantown'— [Page 43.1] a random collection of huts forming a dense negro settlement in the heart of an otherwise attractive portion of the place. The women `take in washin',' and the males, as far as our observation taught us, devote their time to the lordly occupation of sunning themselves. When General Sherman occupied Atlanta, it is said, barracks were located here; hence the name.

After dinner I take a cigar and saunter out. The streets are very quiet. People have hardly risen from their evening meal; and as I walk on out Peach-tree Street, and the moon rises proof-bright toward the starry zenith, it is not easy to realize that I am in the midst of forty thousands of busy men and women. Beautiful homes, varied, tasteful, sometimes grand in exterior appearance, luxurious in interior appointments, stand thickly on either side, embowered in trees and surrounded by hedges and lawns, thickets of shrubbery, and parterres of flowers. Between the sidewalk and the hard but unpaved roadway stand lines of venerable shade trees, through whose dense foliage the moonbeams struggle in uncertain manner, and sketch a flickering mosaic of light and shadow across the path.

Attracted by music down a dark alley-way, [Page 43.2] I find five laborers, each black as the deuce of spades, sitting upon a circle of battered stools and soap boxes, and forming a `string' band, despite the inconsistency of a cornet. The whole neighborhood is crowded with happy darkies, and though the music is good, I choose the enchantment of distance. Not far away I strike another little circle of freed-men, and discover that a guitar and a banjo are the attractions. On a vacant lot near the railway station a vendor of patent medicine has set up a rough platform, and hung about it some flaring paraffine lamps. Two negroes—genuine negroes, but corked in addition to make themselves blacker!—dressed in the regulation burlesque style familiar to us in the minstrel shows of the North, are dancing jigs, reciting conundrums, and banging banjo, bones, and tambourine to the amusement of two or three hundred delighted darkies.

Ten o'clock arrives, and with many another lounger I saunter down to the station to see the trains from the north and east come in. Then the lights of the station are extinguished. Even the `Raven' who croaks his dismal forebodings of fatality, and sells accident policies to travellers, has disappeared.

The Palestine of To-Day

by Dr. J. F. Hurst

[Page 44.1]

The position of Palestine on the map of the world has fitted it and its successive peoples for a remarkable place in history. Here is a little country, with only eight thousand square miles, or two thousanad less than our State of Vermont, which, if we measure it by the scope of its history, the remote antiquity of its literature, and the great forces it has started into irresistible movement, we must place among the foremost in the ancient family of nations. It is practically the meeting-place of three continents—Africa, Asia, and Europe. If Belgium is the `cockpit [Page 44.2] of Europe,' where many of the chief battles of modern times have been fought, Palestine holds the same relation to the ancient world. Her plain of Esdraelon has been the battle-ground of nations and civilizations from Abraham's day to Napoleon Bonaparte's. This little country was the pathway of the nations on land, while on the sea it was her Phœnicia which planted colonies all around the shores of the Mediterranean, created Carthage, rival of Rome, and dared to send [Page 45.1] her ships as far north as Britain. There is something, too, akin to magnetism in this wonderful little land. It gave a certain measure of historical importance, and, indeed, of immortality, to every people [Page 45.2] and land it touched. Take from our knowledgve of Egyptian history all we have learned from the Mosaic narrative, and there will be a marvellous diminution of the fund. It is only where Assyria in [Page 46.1] an early day came into relations with Syria that we get something of a definite knowledge of that great Oriental power. We find Rawlinson, in his Five Monarchies, and Wilkinson, in his Manners and Customs of the Egyptians, contantly appealing to and leaning on the Scripture hitory, in order to treat the subject in hand in consecutive form. It is Palestine that brings all great ancient countries within our vision. It is our best telescope for a view of the remote past. We read the fortunes of other peoples through her. Of right she did not possess the Greek language. It was foisted upon her through Alexander's conquest, and yet so carefully did she learn the new tongue that it became the receptacle for the new faith from Him of Nazareth, and the medium of its communication to the remotest shores known to men. Palestine long resisted Rome, and finally suffered destruction through Titus. Her acres and faith were bartered like a piece of merchandise, and were, in turn, owned by Canaanite, Jew, Assyrian, Greek, Syrian, Maccabæan, and Roman. But in three centuries we find Bethlehem supplanting Rome. Christianity held the sceptre on the Seven Hills, and paganism became a thing of the country village, or pagus.

This historical importance of Palestine does not come within the purpose of Dr. Thomson. While he admits this fact, and could have drawn upon his rich experience in the country for abundant illustration, he has aimed to show that the country of which he writes, though now in wretched decline, and broken up many a score of times by the ploughshare of war, can still tell the story of its own varied fortunes. He goes farther than this, and proves that the people who live in the country, and the very surface of the land itself, with the vegetation and animals that exist now, are all witnesses to the exactness and authenticity of the Biblical narrative. The Bible, then, has taken the coloring of the country itself. No other country could have produced it. A stranger drifted ashore at Jaffa, and never inquiring what country he was in, could see from the people and their daily life, and from the fields, and houses of the poor, and humble labors of the husbandman, that he was in the country of the Bible. The firt edition of Dr. Thomson's work, in two volumes, is now to give place to a larger one, in three volumes, which adheres [Page 46.2] to the same fundamental thought, but is essentially a new work. It reverses the itinerary of the former edition, and begins with the south country, traverses the entire hill country of Judæa, and concludes with Jerusalem and the environs. In our examination of the volumes we shall make liberal use of the author's own language.

With Jaffa as a starting-point, one of the first things we observe is the system of irrigation. The use of the water-wheel is constant in Egypt, but it was one of the inducements which Moses held out to the Israelites, that if patient and earnest in their journey, they would not need the water-wheel in their new home: `For the land whither thou goest in to possess it is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs.' Nothing could be more laborious and tedious than the plying of the little Egyptian water-wheel by the feet. If the whole of the promised land had to be irrigated by such a process, it would require a nation of slaves like the Hebrews, and task-masters like the Egyptians, to make it succeed. The Hebrews had learned by bitter experience what it was to water with the foot, and this would add great force to the allusion, and render doubly precious the goodly land which drank of the rain of heaven, and required no such drudgery to make it fruitful. But the labor of the feet does not cease with getting the water upon the surface of the ground. The farmer or gardener is often compelled to conduct the water about from plant to plant and furrow to furrow by his feet alone. When one place is sufficiently saturated, he pushes aside the soil between it and the next furrow with his foot, and continues to do so until all are watered. He is thus sometimes knee-deep in mud, and many diseases are generated by this slavish work. But the people of Palestine, while they do not use the little wheel worked only by the feet, make use of the large and clumsy Persian water-wheel. Hundreds of these are to be seen in the Jaffa region, and to them must be attributed largely the delicious fruit of the gardens and orchards. Simple in construction, cheap, quickly made, soon repaired, easily worked, they raise an immense quantity of water. Many efforts have beem made to introduce pumps, but they [Page 47.1] always fail, and get out of repair; and as there is no one able to mend them, they are thrown aside, and the gardener returns to his nâ'urah. A clumsy cog-wheel, fitted to an upright post, is made to revolve horizontally by a camel attached to a sweep; this turns a similar one perpendicularly placed at the end of a heavy beam, which has a large wide drum built upon it directly over the mouth of the well. Over this drum revolve two rough hawsers, or thick ropes, made of twigs and branches twisted together, and upon them are fastened small jars or wooden buckets. One side descends while the other rises, carrying the small buckets with them, these descending empty, those ascending full, and as they pass over the top they discharge into a trough which conveys the water to the cistern. The length of these hawsers and the number [Page 47.2] of these buckets depend of course upon the depth of the well, for the buckets are fastened on the hawser about two feet apart. The depth of wells in Jaffa varies from ten to forty feet. If the mule or camel turns the wheel rapidly—which he rarely does—a bucket with about two gallons of water will be carried over the top of it and discharged into the trough every second, and it must be a good pump that will steadily do as much. The hawser is made of twigs, generally of myrtle, not merely because it is cheap and easily plaited by the gardener himself, but because its extreme roughness prevents it from slipping round on the wheel, as an ordinary rope would do, and thus fail to carry up the loaded buckets.

There are other kinds of water-wheels in use. The shadûf, so conspicuous on the Nile, is nowhere to be seen in Palestine, [Page 48.1] but the well-sweep and bucket are used in many places.

Another method is common in Philistia. A large buffalo-skin is so attached to cords that, when let down into the well, it opens, and is instantly filled, and being drawn up, it closes so as to retain the water. The rope by which it is hoisted to the top works over a wheel, and is drawn by oxen, mules, or camels, that walk directly from the well to the length of the rope, and then return, only to repeat the operation, until a sufficient quantity of water is raised. This also is a very successful mode of drawing water.

The wheel and bucket, of different sorts and sizes, are much used where the water is near the surface, and also along rapid rivers. For shallow wells, merely a wheel is used, whose diameter equals the desired elevation of the water. The rim of this wheel is large, hollow, and divided into compartments answering the place of buckets. A hole near the top of each bucket allows it to fill, as that part of the rim, in revolving, dips under the water. This, of course, will be discharged into the trough when the bucket begins to descend, and thus a constant succession of streams falls into the cistern. The wheel itself is turned by oxen or mules.

This system of wheels is seen on a grand [Page 48.2] scale at Hums, Hamath, and all along the Orontes. The wheels there are of enormous size. The diameter of some of those at Hamath is eighty or ninety feet. Small paddles are attached to the rim, and the stream is turned upon them by a low dam with sufficient force to carry the huge wheel around with all its load of ascending buckets. There is, perhaps, no hydraulic machinery in the world by which so much water is raised to so great an elevation at so small an expense. Neither is there any so pictureque or musical. These wheels, with their enormous loads, slowly revolve on their groaning axles all day and all night, each one singing a different tune, with every imaginable variation of tone—sobs, sighs, shrieks, and groans, loud, louder, loudest, down to the bottom of gamut—a concert wholly unique, and half infernal in the night, which, heard once, will never be forgotten.

In 1834, Dr. Thomson resided for several months in Jaffa, and, to pass away the time, frequently came out in the afternoon `to the gate through the city, and prepared his seat in the street.' There the governor, the cadi, and the elders of the people assembled daily, `in a void place,' [Page 49.1] and held an extemporaneous divan, at which affairs of every kind were discussed and settled with the least possible ceremony. But recently from America, Dr. Thomson was greatly amused with this novel open-air court, conducted amidst the din, confusion, and uproar, of a thronged gateway—men, women, and children jostling each other, horses prancing, camels growling, donkeys braying, as they passed in and out of the gate; but nothing could interrupt the proceedings, or disturb the judicial gravity of the court. The scene, with all its surroundings, was wholly Oriental, and withal had about it an air of remote Scriptural antiquity which rendered it doubly interesting.

The Biblical descriptions of pottery are singularly applicative to the present process of manufacture. Now, in this nineteenth century, the potter sits at his frame and turns the wheel with his foot. Or, as we read in the Apocrypha: `So doth the potter, sitting at his work and turning the wheel about with his feet: he fashioneth the clay with his arm.' The potter had a heap of the prepared clay near him, and a pot of water by his side. Taking a lump in his hand, he placed it on the top of the wheel, which revolves horizontally, and smoothed it into a low cone, like the upper end of a sugar-loaf; then thrusting his thumb into the top of it, he opened a hole down through the centre, and this he constantly widened by pressing the edges of the revolving cone [Page 49.2] between his hands. As it enlarged and became thinner, he gave it whatever shape he pleased, with the utmost ease and expedition.

It is evident, from numerous expressions in the Bible, that the potter's vessel was the synonym of utter fragility; and to say, as David does, that Zion's King would dash his enemies in pieces like a potter's vessel, was to threaten with ruinous and remediless destruction.

We who are accustomed to strong stone-ware of considerable value can scarcely appreciate some of these Biblical references, but for Palestine they are still as appropriate and forcible as ever. Arab jars are so thin and frail that they are literally dashed to shivers by the slightest stroke. Water jars are often broken by merely putting them down upon the floor; and the servant frequently returns from the fountain empty-handed, having had all his jars smashed to atoms by some irregular behavior of the donkey.

The steam-plough has not yet reached [Page 50.1] Palestine. To witness the primitive method of separating the grain from the husk, one would suppose himself living far back in the primitive days. Yusef the Moslem gets at the kernel in precisely the same fashion as did Abraham the patriarch. Some very interesting incidents of Biblical history are connected with this peculiar agricultural custom.

The common mode of threshing is with the ordinary mowrej, which is drawn over the floor by a yoke of oxen, until not only the grain is shelled out, but the straw itself is ground into chaff. To facilitate this operation, bits of rough lava are fastened into the bottom of the mowrej, and the driver sits or stands upon it. It is rare sport for children to get out to the baidar, as the floor is called, and ride round upon the mowrej.

These floors, which one sees at Yebna and elsewhere, have, perhaps, changed less than almost anything else in the [Page 50.2] country. Every agricultural village and town in the land has them, and many of them are more ancient than the places whose inhabitants now use them. They have been just where they are, and exactly as they were, from a period `to which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.' In very many cases the topographical conditions of the sites necessarily decided the place of the threshing-floors. It must be an unoccupied spot near the outside of the village, in a place exposed to the prevailing wind, and sufficiently large for one or more of these floors. Generally there are several in the same vicinity.

The construction of the floors is very simple. A circular space, from thirty to fifty feet in diameter, is made level, if not naturally so, and the ground is smoothed off and beaten solid, that the earth may not mingle with the grain in threshing. In time the floors, especially on the [Page 51.1] mountains, are covered with a tough, hard sward, the prettiest, and often the only, green plots about the village; and there the traveller delights to pitch his tent. Daniel calls them summer threshing-floors, and this is the most appropriate name for them, since they are only used in that season of the year. The entire harvest is brought to them, and there threshed and winnowed; and the different products are then transferred to their respective places. In large villages this work is prolonged for several months, but all is finished before the autumn rains, and from thence on to the next harvest the floors are entirely deserted; but when occupied, and the threshing in full operation, the scene is both picturesque and eminently Oriental.

The Egyptian mowrej is quite different from this, having rollers which revolve [Page 51.2] on the grain, and the driver has a seat upon it, which is certainly more comfortable. In the plains of Hamath, Dr. Thomson saw this machine improved by having circular saws attached to the rollers. It is to this instrument in all probability that Isaiah refers in the forty-first chapter of his prophecies: `Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff.' This passage has several allusions which residents in Palestine can readily understand.

Treading out the corn was also employed to separate the grain from the husk and stalk. On some floors—at Yebna, for example—there is no machine of any kind, but boys ride or drive horses, donkeys, and oxen, either separately or yoked together, round upon the grain, and it is [Page 52.1] this in part which makes the scene so peculiar. Some run from left to right, and others the reverse, and no one continues long in the same direction, but changes every few minutes, to keep the animals from becoming dizzy, while some seek to secure the same result by fastening blinders over the eyes of the bewildered animals.

Elihu says, `The whirlwind cometh out of the south.' Is that still the case? According to Dr. Thomson's experience it is, and also that `fair weather cometh out of the north.' There is in both statements an indication that the author of them dwelt in the `south country,' in which these phenomena are most frequently witnessed, and where one looks earnestly northward for relief from persevering and relentless rain. With regard to whirlwinds, there is something in the manner in which they catch up the chaff, and whirl it hither and thither, over hill and plain and thorn hedge, in a sort of manifest fury, that vividly excited the imagination of the Hebrew poets. For example, in the first Psalm, and the thirty-fifth, and the eighty-third, and in Isaiah xvii. and xxix., and Hosea xiii., and elsewhere, every incident is noticed which could intensify the destruction denounced against the ungodly `as chaff of the mountain, chased by the wind, and driven [Page 52.2] out of the floor by the whirlwind.' These whirlwinds are extremely common, and very curious. Without warning or apparent cause, they start up suddenly, as if by magic or spirit influence, and rush furiously onward, swooping dust and chaff up to the clouds in their wild career.

The intention of the farmer is to grind down his unthreshed grain to chaff, and much of it is reduced to fine dust, which the wind carries away. The references to the wind which drives off the chaff are numerous in the Bible, and very forcible. The grain, as it is threshed, is heaped up in the centre of the floor, until it frequently becomes a little mound, higher even than the workmen. This is particularly the case when there is no wind for several days, since the only way adopted to separate the chaff from the wheat is to toss it up into the air, when the grain falls in one place and the chaff is carried on to another.

There seems, likewise, to be no change in preparing food for bread. The grinding of the grain by two women goes on now as in the remote times. One hears this low rumbling sound in every town in the land, and can see for himself this unchanged custom. Solomon says, `The grinders cease because they are few; the sound of the grinding is low.' Jeremiah [Page 53.1] also saddens his picture of Israel's desolation by Nebuchadnezzar with the prediction that `the sound of the millstones' should cease. And upon Babylon, whose king stilled the voice of the grinding in Jerusalem, John denounces the like desolation: `The sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee.'

Southward through Philistia there are no mill-streams, and one constantly hears the hum of the hand-mill at every village and Arab camp, morning and evening, and often deep into the night. When at work, two women sit at the mill facing each other; both have hoid of the handle by which the upper is turned round upon the nether millstone. The one whose hand is disengaged throws in the grain, as occasion requires, through the hole in the upper stone, which is called el rukkâb, the rider, in Arabic, as it was long ago in Hebrew. It is not correct to say that one pushes it half round, and then the other seizes the handle. This would be slow work, and would give a spasmodic motion to the stone. Both retain their hold, and pull to or push from, as [Page 53.2] men do with the whip or crosscut saw. The proverb of Christ is true to life, for women only grind. Dr. Thomson recalls no instance in which men were grinding at the hand-mill. It is tedious, fatiguing work, and slaves or servants are set at it. >From the king to `the maid-servant that is behind the mill,' therefore, embraced all, from the very highest to the very lowest inhabitants in Egypt. This grinding at the mill was often imposed upon captives taken in war. Thus Samson was abused by the Philistines, and, with Milton for his poet, bitterly laments his cruel lot:

`To grind in brazen fetters under task,

Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.'

Every traveller in Palestine learns from experience that he has to pay an ample price for everything he receives and enjoys. There seems to be no fixed price, [Page 54.1] but the vender or employé gets all he finds it possible to procure. But one of his methods, peculiar enough, is to begin his bargain by making no charge. We remember that the dragoman to whom we applied at Nablus to conduct us to Damascus refused at first to make any charge whatever for his services, but declared he would be amply rewarded for his eight days' going and returning by the mere companionship of a Frank. On urging him to name a price, he put so high an estimate upon his valuable aid that we were compelled to forego the pleasure of his company. We found out that it was all a ruse. He was hoping to be offered our price, thinking it might be a large one, and was determined that if it did not suit him, he would then raise it as high as he [Page 54.2] might see fit. Every one who has travelled at all leisurely through the country has met with similar instances of shrewd bargaining. Dr. Thomson says he has been presented with hundreds of houses and fields and horses, and by-standers were called in to witness the deed, and a score of protestations and oaths were taken to seal the truth of the donation; all of which meant just nothing, or rather just as great a price as he could possibly be induced to pay. A knowledge of this adroit method of dealing, still current in Palestine, greatly facilitates our understanding of Abraham's purchase of a burial-place for his wife. Hebron is much the same to-day as in his time. If one were to arrange for the purchase of a tomb for a member of his family, he would likely be told that he could have one for nothing. There is great exclusiveness in the matter of tombs, and a high price is expected. The Hittites said to Abraham, on his application for the purchase of one: `Hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his [Page 55.1] sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead.' Beautiful compliment! but only compliment. Abraham, however, was too shrewd a man not to see through the trick; so he repelled the liberal offer, but insisted on paying for the burial-place. Ephron, with all due politeness, said: `Nay, my lord, hear me: the field give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee: bury thy dead.' But Abraham undertood the proposition for buksheesh too well to accept, and insisted on an outright purchase. So Ephron named four hundred shekels of silver. But `four hundred shekels; what is that betwixt me and thee?' A mere trifle by name, but a very large price in fact. This, however, was serious business for Abraham, and he made no objection. So he proceeded to weigh out the money, just as men do now in Palestine, with a little pair of scales, to see that none of the coins are clipped. But Oriental custom requires that all the specifications be named in every contract. [Page 55.2] When you buy a house, not only the building, but every room in it, must be named, above and below, down to the kitchen, pantry, stable, and hen-coop. So when Abraham bought a field, he also bought the cave that was therein, and all the trees in the field, and all that were in all the borders round about. Then this sale was effected in public, just as all similar transactions in these days are brought about. When any sale is now effected in a town or village, the whole population turn out to witness it, in the space about the city gate. All the people take part in discussing the matter with as much interest as if they were personally concerned. In this way the transaction acquires legal force; it has many living witnesses.

From the grave we turn to a more [Page 56.1] cheerful scene, namely, a marimonial event in this same family of the emeer Abraham, and near this same Hebron. The chief servant in the family of a sheik or emeer has very great functions in these days. So it was not at all an unusual occurrence that Eliezer, the steward of Abraham, should have so much respect and confidence shown him as to be made the manager of the matrimonial engagement for Abraham's only son Iaac. Abraham was solicitous that his son should marry one of his own kindred—a desire in exact accord with the custom of Oriental nobility, where a relative has always the preference. The oath of fidelity which Eliezer took was very sacred, and in harmony with his delicate mission. The preparation and outfit for the journey were just what would be made to-day for such an errand and such a distance as that from Hebron to Mesopotamia. On reaching Nahor, Eliezer made his camels [Page 56.2] kneel down by a well of water at the time of evening, when women go out to draw water. The place of a well, in all the East, determines the site of the village. The people build near it, but the well remains outside of the city. It is about the fountain that travellers and caravans assemble. About the large cities the men carry water, both on donkeys and on their own backs, but in the country villages it is only women who carry the water. The way that Rebekah carried her pitcher or jar was precisely the present Palestinian mode—on her shoulder. She went down to the well, for in the East the wells are in the wadies, and are often reached by steps. She watered the camels, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, just as one always sees now beside the fountain. The jewels for the head, neck, and arms are still worn by the women, probably without any variation between Eliezer's days and ours. [Page 57.1] Laban's address, `Come in, thou blessed of the Lord,' was the ordinary Oriental compliment, while the inclusion of the camels in the invitation to come into the house is still kept up. The water to wash the feet, the mode of negotiating the marriage contract, the presenting of the gifts, and the management of the whole affair by the parents, with the advice of the eldest son, however, are all in precise accord with the customs of our time in Syria and Mesopotamia.

In taking leave of this first installment of the new edition of Dr. Thomson's work, we can not forbear to express our admiration for his great fidelity to his original plan of tracing the truth of the Scriptures in the Oriental life of the present times, and for the important additions he has made to his group of evidences. Were it not for his array of indisputable facts, it would seem almost incredible that a land [Page 57.2] which has undergone so many changes, or rather complete revolutions, should preserve so many traces of its original life and thought. We suspect, however, that with the new interest in Palestine, there will be large accessions to this store of parallels between the former times and the present. We observe in this new edition of Dr. Thomson's work that the publishers have provided it with an entirely new set of illustrations, derived from fresh observations in Palestine. Having been for nearly half a century an American missionary in Palestine, Dr. Thomson has had better opportunities than any man now living for close observation of the life and habits of the people. In addition, he has made wise use of the labors of Warren, Wilson, Conder, and all the recent explorers sent out by the exploration societies of Great Britain, France, Germany, and America.

Sea-Drift From a New England Port

by Lizzie W. Champney

[Page 59.1]

Heavy and regular, like the recurrent strokes of a sledge-hammer, the hoofs of Sheriff Joshua Hempstead's horse strike the Norwich turnpike, and horse and rider, alike stout of heart and strong of limb, go lumbering on through the darkness. The dwellers in the scattered farm-houses, as they turn in their beds, recognize that steady thud, thud, and it gives them a sense of security, for they know that all rogues must flee before the valiant sheriff of New London. Every three miles he passes a tavern. At Dodge's, nearest the town, they are putting up the shutters, and a colored valet is endeavoring to persuade an inebriated gentleman to leave the basset table, and venture on what is sure to prove a tempestuous voyage, to his home just around the corner. At Fink's tavern, further on, fiddles and bassoon still keep up a jovial din, and flying silhouettes are [Page 59.2] thrown upon the window-shades, a kaleidoscopic panorama of ribboned queues and high combs on cushioned hair, for Fink's is the favorite tavern to which to drive for dances. The horses waiting in the shed, and harnessed to quaint sulkies, gigs, chaises, one-horse chairs, and phaetons—very different vehicles from those which bear the name nowadays [Page 60.1] (for this was during the war of the Revolution)—neigh to the powerful horse that strides over the road; and the sleepy hostlers and grooms shake themselves, and wonder what rascal is doomed now. Then they note the good points of the sheriff's horse, and tell how when a thief sprang down an `off-set' eight feet high, the horse leaped after him, and pinned him down by the clothing with his forefeet until his master could alight and secure him. At Horton's tavern all is dark and quiet, but Hempstead refreshes his horse at the trough, and the landlord, unbolting a shutter, first shows a nightcapped head, and then brings out a stirrup-cup to strengthen the arm of the law. On through the night, till at Norwich the sheriff secures his prisoners—two runaway sailors, who, having pocketed the bounty paid for enlisting, have determined to quit the service while they are still in a condition to enjoy it—and at early dawn he sets out again for New London, tying his prisoners together, and driving them before him. While still at a distance from the town he notices that the fastenings have become loosed, and that the sailors are free. He springs from his horse, but the men at the same instant exchange glances: their only safety is in separation, and they set out at a run in different directions. The sheriff plunges after one, but the other is already out of sight in the wood, and his escape seems very probable. Joshua Hempstead has returned to the place where he alighted from his horse, holding the arm of the unlucky sailor in his powerful clutch, but the animal which he neglected in his haste to fasten is no longer there. The captive grins at this contretemps; but a whinny is heard a little further on, and the sheriff drags his unwilling companion toward the sound. There stands the black horse, with his teeth in the collar of the other runaway. When his master had given chase to the firt, he had comprehended the situation, and dashed after the other. Sheriff and deputy-sheriff return in triumph with their prisoners, and deputy is after this a public character in New London. He carried the dispatches between Boston and New London during the war, bringing the news of the battle of Bunker Hill in one day and night—a distance, as the road was then travelled, of one hundred and ten miles. And Joshua Hempstead [Page 60.2] was no light weight: `there were giants in those days. When lately the sheriff's bones were removed from one cemetery to another, men gazed with wonder at his colossal frame, whose huge jaw-bones would have fitted easily as a visor over any modern countenance.

The work of New London during the Revolution was very much the same as Sheriff Joshua Hempstead's—that of furnishing sailors, willing or unwilling, for the American navy. The antiquarian, turning over snuff-colored files of the Connecticut Gazette, a little sheet published in New London during the Revolution, will be struck by the frequent insertion of notices such as the following:

`All Gentlemen Volunteers who are desirous of making their fortunes in 8 weeks' time are hereby informed the fine Privateer called the New Broome, mounting 16 pieces and 4 Pounders, besides swivels, is now fitted out for an 8 week' cruise near Sandy Hook, in the Sound, and will have the best chance that there has been this War of taking Prizes. She only waits for a few more Men, and then will immediately sail for her cruise. `July 25, 1778.'

`The new and swift sailing Privateer Brigantine Le Marquis de la Fayette, mounting sixteen 6 pound Cannon, with Swivels and Small Arms compleat, will sail on a Cruise against the enemies of these United States in eight days from the date hereof at farthest. All Gentlemen Seamen and able-bodied Landsmen who are desirous of making their fortune an Opportunity now presents, by applying on Board said Brig, when they will meet with good Encouragement. Peter Richards. `New London, Feb. 7, 1781.'

The call is repeated again and again, with very little variation except in the name of commanders and vessels. In the latter a grim humor is often diplayed. The New Broome, already mentioned, was evidently designed to become a `besom of destruction.' The Wilful Murder and the Sturdy Beggar, both authentic names of privateers, strike a somewhat piratical key-note, but they were regularly commissioned vessels of war sailing under letters of marque and reprisal issued by the government, and stand in the relation of great-grandfathers to our present navy. The official history of the navy of the Revolution is comprised in the corsair-like exploits of these privateers.

In December, 1775, Congress chose a committee for carrying into execution its resolutions for fitting out armed vessels. New London became the head-quarters for the Connecticut quota. Its fitness as a naval station is demonstrated by a report [Page 61.1] made to the British government in 1774, before the breaking out of the Revolution:

`New London, the best harbor in Connecticut, from the light-house at the mouth of the harbor to the town is about three miles, a breadth of three-fourths of a mile, from five to six fathoms of water, and entirely secure and commodious one mile above the town for large ships. The principal trade is to the West India Islands, excepting now and then a vessel to Ireland and England, and a few to Gibraltar and Barbary. There are 72 sail now belonging to this district, in which there are 406 sea-faaring men employed, besides upward of 20 sail of coasting vessels. Almost every sort of British manufactures are here imported, of £150,000 or £160,000 sterling per annum. The custom-house officers here are attentive to their duty, besides which this harbor is so situated that the coming in from the sea is between the east end of Long Island and Block Island, and by the west end of Fisher's Island, where the king's cruisers are generally upon the look-out, and very critical in examining the vessels they meet with,' etc.

Blank letters of marque were sent to the Governor of Connecticut, vessels were built and remodelled, notices requesting `Gentlemen Volunteers' began to appear in the Gazette, and the work of enlisting went merrily on. Four captains' commissions were issued by Congress at this time—one to Dudley Saltonstall, of New London, who afterward rose to the rank of commodore. Among those receiving the rank of lieutenant at the same date [Page 61.2] was the famous John Paul Jones. Twenty-six vessel were fitted out from Conneticut, and sailed away to dispute the arrogant boast:

`The winds and seas are Britain's wide domain,

And not a sail but by permission spreads.'

Prizes as they were brought in were amnnounced in the Gazette, and referred to the decision of the Maritime Court, where the owners of the property seized were summoned to appear and claim their goods, first having proved themselves loyal to the new government. The following summons is taken at random from a score of similar one, and will serve as an example of the established procedure: `State of Connecticut, ss., County of New London. To whom it may concern:

`Know Ye that Libels are filed before the Honorable Richard Law, Esq., Judge of the Maritime Court of New London, in Favour of John Murow, Commander, Elias Parshal, Owner, and the Men on board the Sloop Hulker, against two Whale Boats laden with British Goods taken on the 18 of March, 1781....In Favour of Amos Judson, Commander of Boat Revenge, and his Associates, against two trunks and a Box of European and India Goods seized and taken on Long Island....Which Whale Boats and Goods the Libellants claim as Lawful Prizes. The hearing of said Libels will be at New London the 17 Day of April, 1781: of which all persons claiming Property are to take due notice. Per Order of the Judge. Winthrop Saltonstall, Regr.'

[Page 62.1] It is an acknowledged fact that navel stations are the gayest society centres, and while the perononel of the little navy of the Revolution were busied with exciting enterprises taxing their courage and endurance on the high seas, they were all the more ready to indulge in social enjoyments when in port. The ladies of New London, too, were as patriotic as they were handsome, and devised innumerable entertainments [Page 62.2] for their gallant defenders. The Marine Tavern and the Golden Ball in the town, as well as the inns on the Norwich and Old Lyme turnpikes, became scenes of revelry, while private mansions outvied each other in hospitality. Some of the old mansions of the town are particularly rich in miniatures and others in oil-paintings of the ladies of this period—refined, sweet faces, set off by elaborate coiffures and great ruffs. The miniatures painted by Mrs. Champlin at the beginning of this century, in especial those of the Coit sisters, have a delicacy of treatment and a purity of sentiment peculiarly suited to the fair young faces of her sitters. The family portrait gallery of the Shaw family introduces us most vividly to the early society of New London. It is difficult not to imagine while gazing on these aristocratic dames, stately gentlemen, and gentle girls who surround us, standing at full [Page 63.1] length in their tall frames, that they are lookling at us through open doors—that Madam Temperance Shaw, in her white satin and mob-cap, with the open Bible in her hand, is not expecting a visit from her pastor, the Reverend Gurdon Saltonstall. Nathaniel Shaw, her son, with his long light locks, sober dress, and knee and shoe buckles, reminds us of William Penn, but of William Penn minus his rotund figure. In his almost Quaker simplicity of attire he forms a decided contrast to his courtly wife, in her stiff gold-colored satin dress, bosomed like Rubens's wife, with pearls in her hair and around her beautiful throat; she holds a red rose in one shapely hand, and as she stands there is the embodiment of haughty aristocracy. And yet this proud dame, when the war ships in Shaw's Cove, on which the mansion fronts, were full of men dying with ship-fever, opened her house, turning it into a hospital, nursed the stricken men with her own hands, and fell at last, sad to say, a victim to the same malignant disease. What a romance might be written in this picture gallery! The next portrait is that of pretty Polly Shaw, sister of Nathaniel Shaw. The portrait represents her at fifteen, in a dress of white satan, simply cut, with a square neck; its only ornament [Page 63.2] is a formal cross-of-Malta-shaped rosette of four loops of satin ribbon, with a tear-shaped pearl in the centre. All innocence, is our thought as we look at the serious young face. She stands in a garden, with a basket of fruit and a shade hat upon her arm. `She is going to visit the poor,' said my companion; `we need not be told that she married a minister.' Here too is the portrait of her daughter, a coquettish woman in a `bee-hive' headdress, which reminds us of the portraits of Madame Le Brun in her white muslin turban. She holds a baby on her lap—a baby who, grown to man's estate, became the father of the present generation now occupying the house. How far back it throws everything! And yet, as we walk through the manorial house, peep into the library with its portrait of Cromwell in armor, stand reverently in the room that entertained Washington, half expecting to see his figure held as by a sensitive plate in the high mirror, and stroll through alleys of box that rise a high hedge on either hand, up the knoll crowned with a summer-house a century and a half old, where Lafayette, who visited the place twice, probably toasted the bright eyes of pretty Polly Shaw in those spiral-stemmed, monogram-engraved Champagne glasses, and Washington presided at the lawn party, ladling [Page 64.1] the punch from the magnificent Chinese bowl—how real and near it all seems! These pictured ladies are the real and only dwellers here; we flesh-and-blood intruders are only ghosts.

There are not many old houses in New London so rich in associations, for when Arnold burned the town in 1781 he made thorough work, anxious to ingratiate himself with his commanders by doing all the injury in his power to the cause he had deserted. Every locality has its epoch to which it refers in determining the date of every event; in New London nothing is old which did not exist `before the burning.'

No attempt was made to defend the town at this time, the militiamen, one hundred and fifty-seven in number, attempted only the defense of Fort Griswold, on the other side of the river, under the command of Colonel Ledyard. The greater part of the town was laid in ashes. While it was being fired, Arnold dined at the Christopher house—a quaint old wooden building, still standing, and next to the imposing stone mansion of the Shaws; its roof projects like that of a Swiss chalet over a porch, and from it depend ancient trellises of antiquated pattern. Mr. Christopher was a rank old Tory, but a very good friend of Mr. Shaw; and when the beautiful old manor-house, which had been built of limestone, was fired, he extinguished the flames by pouring on them a vat of vinegar from the roof of his wood-house.

Miss Caulkins, the author of The History of New London, laments in a little poem the absence of antiquities in the town:

`We're nothing old; our parchment proofs,

Our red-ink print, our damask woofs,

All perished with our gabled roofs

When Arnold burnt the town.

`The strange, quaint fashions of old time—

Three-cornered hats, white wigs sublime,

Red cloaks, knee-buckles—left our clime

When Arnold burnt the town.

Hood-pinners, and blue homespun dye,

The pillion, and the ride and tye,

The spinning-wheels, long since went by,

When Arnold burnt the town.

Our London is forever New,

Our Father Thames runs on as blue,

As smooth, as on that day of rue

When Arnold burnt the town.'

It is possible that the very destruction of the greater part of their household gods caused those that were rescued to be cherished [Page 64.2] with greater care than is usually the case. Certain it is that New London is quite as rich in relics of old time as most towns of it size. Old china of exquisite shape and translucency may be found carefully treasured here. I recall one set that would have made the heart of an Avis swell with envy. Each piece was decorated, not with a single bright feather, but with a different bird, herons, doves, hawks, storks, and sparrows pencilled so finely that they resembled drawings or engravings. The Washington and sailor's keepsake pitchers so much prized by collectors are occasionally found. The owner of the bird set possesses one with the inscription:

`When riding o'er the Mountain wave,

The Hardy Sailor, ever brave,

He laughs at danger, smiles at fate,

And risks his life to save his mate.'

A pewter porringer supported by dolphins, and a coffee-urn of very graceful shape, are heirlooms in the same family. The coffee at evening parties was often not only made but ground at the table. The lover of Pope will recall the lines:

`For lo! the board with cup and spoons is crown'd,

The berries crackle, and the mill turns round;

On shining altars of Japan they raise

The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze;

From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,

While China's earth receives the smoking tide:

Coffee which makes the politician wise,

And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.'

The fragrant cups were passed, it is very possible, by some negro footman, for slavery early found a lodgment here. It is interesting to see how this question was viewed by some of the wise and good of ancient times. In the early days of the colony, before the importation of negroes, the Indians were sold as slaves. We quote from a letter to John Winthrop:

`Sir,—Mr. Endecot and myself salute you in the Lord Jesus, etc. Wee have heard of a dividence of women and children [Pequot captives] in the bay, and would bee glad of a share, viz., a young woman or girle and a boy, if you think good. I wrote to you for some boyes for Bermudas.'

In the following letter, to the same, written in 1645, a scheme for the slave-trade is broached:

`If upon a Just warre with the Narraganset, the Lord should deliuer them into our hands, wee might easily haue men, women and children enough to exchange for Moores, which wil be more gaynefull pilladge for us then wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive vntil wee gett into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our buisines, for our children's children will hardly see this great Continent filled [Page 65.1] with people, soe that our servants will still desire freedome to plant for them selves, and not stay but for very great wages. And I suppose you know verie well how wee shall maynteyne 20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant.'

The Connecticut Gazette during the Revolution contained frequent advertisements for runaway slaves, among them, `very black negro men,' branded with scars received in Africa, `Mustee boys,' and `Indian women.' The time seemed to have been seized upon for a general hegira. The reward offered for their return was seldom more than five dollar.

Dr. Johnson's derisive taunt, that `the loudest yelps for liberty' were heard from a slave-keeping people, seems to us at this day to have been not without its justice.

We have already touched on the matter of dress. The enaction of rigid sumptuary laws was proposed during the Revolution by a letter of instruction to the Connecticut members of Congress, written in 1774 by Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, chairman of a committee from the counties of New London and Windham.

`However, gentlemen,' says Mr. Saltonstall, `it is at least possible that this almost infinitely important dispute [between England and the colonies] may be brought to a decision without the intervention of carnage. The Nation [England] are not blind and callous to their own interest, and what can so effectually touch that in the most tender place as in good earnest to break off all commercial intercourse with Great Britain? What a trifling hardship should we be subjected to! Why, truly no more than for many to cease impoverishing themselves in the pursuit of the extravagancies and luxuries of the rich and great in the Mother Country. But even if we were for a while reduced to Bread and Water, or Mallows and Juniper for food, and Sheep-skins and Goat-skins for covering, what would that be to deluging our country with blood too pretious to be spilled in vain? and yet that would be preferable and far sooner take place than a submission to such horrid and unnatural oppression.'

Some of the people of Connecticut were not satisfied with `sheep-skins and goat-skins' au naturel for clothing, but preferred the intervention of the looms and dyes of England to convert them into elegant fabrics, [Page 65.2] and a small business was done in surreptitious importation. British manufactures, whether smuggled or seized as prizes by privateers, were advertised throughout the entire war. We quote again from the Gazette: `A number of pieces of choice brocaded and other English silks, flowr'd, strip'd, blossom'd, blue, pink, and green lutestrings and sarcenets,' are advertised with `Pad Locks, Raisons, Ostrich Feathers, Rum, Sickles, Allum, and Bohea Tea. Good Pork taken in pay for goods.'

Even the very first of the New London settlers gave some attention to fashion and to smart clothing, as we may judge from one of the oldest wills extant in the county, that of Mary Harries, in 1655:

`I give to my daughter Mary my blew mohere peticote and my straw hatt and a fether boulster. And to her eldest sonne a silver spoone. To her second a silver whissel.

`I give to my youngest daughter a piece of red [Page 66.1] broad-cloth; alsoe a damask livery cloth, a gold ring, a silver spoone, a fether-bed and a boulster, my best hat, my gowne, a brass kettle. Alsoe I give my three daughters of the dyaper table cloth.

`I give to my sister Migges a red peticoat, a silke hud, a quoife, and a neck cloth.

`To my daughter Elizabeth, my great chest. To Mary, a ciffer [coiffure?]. To my brother Kawlin, a lased band.

`I give to Rebekah Bruen a pynt pot of pewter, a new petticoat and wascote weh she is to spin herselfe; alsoe an old byble and a hat weh was my sonn Thomas his hat.
`The mark of Mary Harries.
`Wittness hearunto:
`John Winthrop' and others.

In the Hemptead house, the oldest building now standing in New London—a fortified house which dates back to the founding of the town in 1645—is still carefully preserved a sky-blue satin waistcoat [Page 66.2] heavily embroidered with silver thread; it belonged to some ancestor of the sturdy sheriff, whose huge gun, of a make anterior to the old Queen's arm, still hangs on the hooks in the `summer-tree,' a rafter running across the `keeping-room' ceiling. The waistcoat's owner could not have been of the same stuff as the bearer of the heavy musket. We fancy him some cavalier

`Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain,

And the nice conduct of a clouded cane.'

It was probably when the sumptuary laws were favorably regarded that Patty Hempstead, finding her father averse to the purchase of a new ball dress in which she might shine before the young naval officers, desecrated the sacred vestment of [Page 67.1] the courtier ancestor by a pair of rash little scissors, which changed the relic of stately awkwardness into a jaunty `jockey' or jacket, which, worn over an India muslin, must have been `marvellous becoming' to Miss Patty. The waistcoat has been restored as nearly as possible to its original shape, but it still bears the snippings of the scissors which adapted it to the softer outlines of the feminine form. The `jockey' must have figured at a dance, for dancing was about the only amusement. There was no theatre or opera here; no `art atmosphere,' as at Newport. The popular sports, the dance excepted, were of a grim nature. Pope-day was annually celebrated on the 5th of November, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. Two effigies were exhibited, one representing the pope and the other the devil, each with a head of hollow pumpkin, illuminated from within by a candle, the pope wearing a paper tiara and the archfiend a pair of horns. The procession passed through the principal streets, the effigies being borne on men's shoulders. Songs were sung, and it halted frequenly to levy contributions of money or refreshments from every house of any importance. The day closed with the burning of the two figures, while the crowd danced around the pyre.

In 1729 the first approach to a circus visited the town—a lion drawn in an ox-cart. The previous autumn it had travelled from New York to Albany. While in New London the illustrious stranger was lodged in Madam Winthrop's stable.

Deer were hunted on Fisher's Island. A record remains of a famous hunting party in 1739, in which Colonel Saltonstall brought down a doe and Mr. George Mumford two bucks, one of which was immediately sent by a carrier to Mr. Wanton at Newport. Fisher's Island remained through six generations the property of the Winthrops. This family is the one most celebrated in the early annals of the town. Fitz-John [Page 67.2] Winthrop, major-general in the Indian wars, was for many years Governor of Connecticut.

The records of the State of the year 1693 state that

`This Court by their vote made choyse of Major General Fitz John Winthrop to be their agent to goe ouer for England and to endeauoure to present our addresse to their Maties and to obteeyn in the best way and maner he shall be capeable a confirmation of our charter priuiledges. The Court grants a rate of a penny upon the pound of all the rateable estate in the Colony to defray the charge of sending an agent to England, and if any can not pay money they haue liberty to pay doble in wheat, rye, pease, or indian. Rev. Gordon Saltonstall is invited to go to England with Gen'l Winthrop.'

This was the event selected by Walcott as the basis of a heroic poem, from which we make a quotation. It opens thus:

Learned Winthrop then by general consent

Sat at the helm to sway the government,

Who prudently the people doth advise

To ask the King for chartered liberties.

All like his counsel well, and all reply,

Sir, you must undertake our agency.'

The Winthrop mansion still stands, and is an exceedingly interesting one; the `best room' is panelled, and the fireplace [Page 68.1] surrounded with tiles of Scriptural design. Another building that escaped `the burning' is the old `Manwaring house.' The family deserted it on the approach of the British, and returning after their departure, found a wounded Hessian lying upon the floor. The `General Huntington house—an imposing mansion, but not so old as those already mentioned—was modelled after Washington's residence at Mount Vernon. There remains little record of schools; probably Yale College supplied the needs of higher education. Nathan Hale, the martyr spy, taught a boys' school here before the Revolution.

The church history of these early times abounds in interesting episodes. The Rev. Mather Byles, so well remembered as the son of the wittiet of clergymen after Swift, was first settled in New London. But he found his parish little to his liking. The people were given to practical [Page 68.2] jokes. The Quakers came and sat in his church with their broad-brims on, their wives bringing their spinning-wheels and spinning in the aisles.

Gurdon Saltonstall, another facetious minister, resigned his functions as a preacher for the office of Governor. A religious sect arose professing allegiance to Christ only, and acknowledging no authority in the civil law. Among other peculiarities of their creed was the right to contract marriage without the sanction of the civil authorities. A man named Gorton was their leader. He appeared before Gvoernor Saltonstall one day, as his Excellency was peacefully smoking his long pipe, and announced that he was married to a woman whom he had brought with him, and that without the sanction of the law. The Governor serenely removed his pipe, and asked, `And thou art determined to have this woman to thy wife?' [Page 69] `I am,' replied Gorton. `And you, madam, have you taken this man for your husband?' `That I have, Sir,' was the prompt reply. `Then,' exclaimed the Governor, `by the authority and in accordance with the laws of the State of Connecticut, I pronounce you legally man and wife.' `Gurdon, thou art a cunning creature.' replied the discomfited Gorton.

All the religious sects then known in America were represented in New London. Here were to be found the

`Churchman,....fond of power;

The Quaker, sly; the Presbyterian, sour;

The smart Freethinker, all things in an hour.'

It was in New London, says Trumbull, that the Separatists, or Baptists, carried their enthusiasm to such a degree that they made a large fire to burn their books, clothes, and ornaments, which they called their idols. This imaginary work of piety and self-denial they undertook on the Lord's day, and brought their clothes, books, necklaces, and jewels together in the main street. They began with burning their erroneous books, but were prevented from detroying their clothes and jewels.

Among the scientific inventions of the period, one that seems to foretell Jules Verne's dream of submarine navigation claims our attention, It was called the American Turtle, and was so arranged as to be propelled under water toward the enemy's ships, where an infernal machine could be attached which would blow up the ship five hours afterward. Only the electric light, which the commander of the Nautilus made so useful, was lacking. [Page 70.1]

How many luckless expeditions for buried treasure have been carried on along these shore, stimulated by the history of Kidd's visit to Gardiner's Island, just across the Sound, in his black-flag sloop Antonio, which he commanded after sinking his first ship, the Adventure. How like an old romance is the account of Mrs. Gardiner's roasting a pig for the pirate prince, and `cooking it so very nice` that he made her a present of enough cloth of gold to make dresses for her two daughters, while her frightened husband was made the unwilling guardian of the iron chests buried in the swamp, with the injunction that he must answer for their safe-keeping with his head. No wonder that even after Kidd was secured at Boston [Page 70.2] Mr. Garadiner trembled and hesitated when ordered by the Earl of Bellmont to give up the chests.

A favorite haunt of Captain Kidd's was at Block Island, at a lonely house occupied by Mercy Raymond, whose husband was much of the time absent at New London. Here, the legend says, Captain Kidd brought a strange lady, whom he called his wife, and whom Mercy Raymond boarded for a considerable time. When he finally departed he bade Mercy hold out her apron, which he filled with handfuls of gold and jewels.

The lamentable ballad of Captain Kidd, which we subjoin, gives his name as Robert, but more authentic records assert that it was William:

The Song of CAPTAIN KIDD

Oh, my name was Robert Kidd, as I sail'd, as I sail'd'

Oh, my name was Robert Kidd, as I sail'd.

My sinful footsteps slid; God's laws they did forbid;

But still wickedly I did, as I sail'd.

I'd a Bible in my hand when I sail'd, when I sail'd;

I'd a Bible in my hand when I sail'd.

I'd a Bible in my hand, by my father's great command,

And I sunk it in the sand, when I sail'd.

I spied three ships of France, as I sail'd, as I sail'd;

I spied three ships of France, as I sail'd.

I spied three ships of France; to them I did advance,

And took them all by chance, as I sail'd.

I spied three ships of Spain, as I sail'd, as I sail'd;

I spied three ships of Spain, as I sail'd.

I spied three ships of Spain; I fired on them amain,

Till most of them were slain, as I sail'd.

I murdered William Moore, as I sail'd, as I sail'd;

I murdered William Moore, as I sail'd.

I murdered William Moore, and I left him in his gore,

Not many leagues from shore, as I sail'd.

I'd ninety bars of gold, as I sail'd, as I sail'd;

I'd ninety bars of gold, as I sail'd.

I'd dollars manifold, and riches uncontrolled,

And by these I lost my soul, as I sail'd.

White Wings: A Yachting Romance

by William Black

[Page 78.1]

Chapter XIV.—Evil Tidings.

We had indeed returned to the world: the firt thing we saw on entering the saloon in the morning was a number of letters—actual letters that had come through a post-office—lying on the breakfast table. We stared at these strange things. Our good Queen T—was the first to approach them. She took them up as if she expected they would bite her.

`Oh, Mary,' she says, `there is not one for you—not one.'

Angus Sutherland glanced quickly at the girl. But there was not the least trace of disapppointment on her face. On the contrary, she said, with a cheerful indifference:

`So much the better. They only bother people.'

But of course they had to be opened and read—even the bulky parcel from Strathgovan. And amid much trivial domestic and other news, one of us stumbled upon one little item that certainly concerned us. It was a clipping from the advertisement column of a newspaper. It was inclosed, without word or comment, by a friend in London who knew that we were slightly acquainted, perforce, with Mr. Frederick Smethurst. And it appeared that that gentleman, having got into difficulties [Page 78.2] with his creditors, had taken himself off in a surreptitious and evil manner, insomuch that this newspaper clipping was nothing more nor less than a Hue and Cry after the fraudulent bankrupt. That letter and its startling inclosure were quickly whipped into the pocket of the lady to whom they had been sent.

By great good luck Mary Avon was the first to go on deck. She was anxious to see this new harbor into which we had got. And then, with considerable dismay on her face, our sovereign mistress showed us this ugly thing. She was much excited. It was so shameful of him to bring this disgrace on Mary Avon! What would the poor girl say? And this gentle lady would not for worlds have her told while she was with us—until at least we got back to some more definite channel of information. She was, indeed, greatly distressed.

But we had to order her to dismiss these idle troubles. We formed ourselves into a committee on the spot; and this committee unanimously, if somewhat prematurely and recklessly, resolved:

First, that it was not of the slightest consequence to us or any human creature where Mr. Frederick Smethurst was, or what he might do with himself.

Secondly, that if Mr. Frederick Smethurst were to put a string and a stone round his neck and betake himself to the bottom of the sea, he would earn our gratitude, and in some measure atone for his previous conduct.

Thirdly, that nothing at all about the matter should be said to Mary Avon; if the man had escaped, there might probably be an end of the whole business.

To these resolutions, carried swiftly and unanimously, Angus Sutherland added a sort of desultory rider, to the effect that moral or immoral qualities do sometimes reveal themselves in the face. He was also of opinion that spare persons were more easy of detection in this manner. He gave an instance of a well-known character in London—a most promising ruffian who had run through the whole gamut of discreditable effenses. Why was there no record of this brave career written in the man's face? Because nature had obliterated the lines in fat. [Page 79.1] When a man attains to the dimensions and appearance of a scrofulous toad swollen to the size of an ox, moral and mental traces get rubbed out. Therefore, contended our F.R.S., all persons who set out on a career of villany, and don't want to be found out, should eat fat-producing foods. Potatoes and sugar he especially mentioned as being calculated to conceal crime.

However, we had to banish Frederick Smethurst and his evil deeds from our minds, for the yacht from end to end was in a bustle of commotion about our going ashore; and as for us, why, we meant to run riot in all the wonders and delights of civilization. Innumerable fowls, tons of potatoes and cabbage and lettuce, fresh butter, new loaves, new milk; there was no end to the visions that rose before the excited brain of our chief commissariat officer. And when the Laird, in the act of stepping, with much dignity, into the gig, expressed his firm conviction that somewhere or other we should stumble upon a Glasgow newspaper not more than a week old, so that he might show us the reports of the meetings of the Strathgovan Commissioners, we knew of no further luxury that the mind could desire.

And as we were being rowed ashore, we could not fail to be struck by the extraordinary abundance of life and business and activity in the world. Portree, with it wooded crags and white houses shining in the sun, seemed a large and populous city. The smooth waters of the bay were crowded with craft of every description; and the boats of the yachts were coming and going with so many people on board of them that we were quite stared out of countenance. And then, when we landed, and walked up the quay, and ascended the hill into the town, we regarded the signs over the shop doors with the same curiosity that regards the commonest features of a foreign street. There was a peculiarity about Portree, however, that is not met with in Continental capitals. We felt that the ground swayed lightly under our feet. Perhaps these were the last oscillations of the great volcanic disturbance that shot the black Coolins into the sky.

Then the shops: such displays of beautiful things, in silk, and wool, and cunning wood-work; human ingenuity declaring itself in a thousand ways, and appealing to our purses. Our purses, to tell the truth, were gaping. A craving for [Page 79.2] purchase possessed us. But, after all, the Laird could not buy servant-girls' scarfs as a present for Mary Avon; and Angus Sutherland did not need a second waterproof coat; and though we reached the telegraph office, there would have been a certain monotony in spending innumerable shillings on unnecessary telegrams, even though we might be rejoicing in one of the highest conveniences of civilization. The plain truth must be told. Our purchases were limited to some tobacco and a box or two of paper collars for the men; to one or two shilling novels; and a flask of eau-de-Cologne. We did not half avail ourselves of all the luxuries spread out so temptingly before us.

`Do you think the men will have the water on board yet?' Mary Avon says, as we walk back. `I do not at all like being on land. The sun scorches so, and the air is stifling.'

`In my opeenion,' says the Laird, `the authorities of Portree are deserving of great credit for having fixed up the apparatus to let boats get water on board at the quay. It was a public-spirited project—it was that. And I do not suppose that any one grumbles at having to pay a shilling for the privilege. It is a legeetimate tax. I am sure it would have been a long time or we could have got such a thing at Strathgovan, if there was need for it there. Ye would scarcely believe it, ma'am, what a spirit of opposition there is among some o' the Commissioners to any improvement: ye would not believe it.'

Indeed,' she says, in innocent wonder; she quite sympathizes with this public-spirited reformer.

`Ay, it's true. Mind ye, I am a Conservative myself; I will have nothing to do with Radicals and their Republics; no, no, but a wise Conservative knows how to march with the age. Take my own poseetion, for example: as soon as I saw that the steam fire-engine was a necessity, I withdrew my opposition at once. I am very thankful to you, ma'am, for having given me an opportunity of carefully considering the question. I will never forget our trip round Mull. Dear me! it is warm the day,' added the Laird, as he raised his broad felt hat, and wiped his face with his voluminous silk handkerchief.

Here come two pedestrians, good-looking young lads of an obviously English type, and faultlessly equipped from head [Page 80.1] to heel. They look neither to the left nor right; on they go manfully through the dust, the sun scorching their faces; there must be a trifle of heat under these knapsacks. Well, we wish them fine weather and whole heels. It is not the way some of us would like to pass a holiday. For what is this that Miss Avon is singing lightly to herself as she walks carelessly [Page 80.2] on, occasionally pausing to look in at a shop?

```And often have we seamen heard how men are killed or undone,

By overturns of carriages, and thieves, and fires in London.'''

Here she turns aside to caress a small terrier; but the animal, mistaking her intention, barks furiously, and retreats, growling [Page 81.1] and ferocious, into the shop. Miss Avon is not disturbed. She walks on, and completes her nautical ballad, all for her own benefit:

```We've heard what risk all landsmen run, from noblemen to tailors,

So, Billy, let's thank Providence that you and I are sailors!'''

`What on earth is that, Mary?' her friend behind asks.

The girl stops, with a surprised look, as if she had scarcely been listening to herself; then she says, lightly,

`Oh, don't you know the sailor's song?—I forget what they call it.

```A strong sou'wester's blowing, Billy, can't you hear it roar now?

Lord help 'em, how I pities all unhappy folks on shore now!'''

`You have become a thorough sailor, Miss Avon,' says Angus Sutherland, who has overheard the last quotation.

`I—I like it better—I am more interested,' she says, timidly, `since you were so kind as to show me the working of the ship.'

`Indeed,' says he, `I wish you would take command of her, and order her present captain below. Don't you see how tired his eyes are becoming? He won't take his turn of sleep like the others; he has been scarcely off the deck night or day since we left Canna; and I find it is no use remonstrating with him. He is too anxious; and he fancies I am in a hurry to get back; and these continual calms prevent his getting on. Now the whole difficulty would be solved if you let me go back by the steamer; then you could lie at Portree here for a night or two, and let him have some proper rest.'

I do believe, Angus,' says his hostess, laughing in her gentle way, `that you threaten to leave us just to see how anxious we are to keep you.'

`My position as ship's doctor,' he retorts, `is compromised. If Captain John falls ill on my hands, whom am I to blame but myself?'

`I am quite sure I can get him to go below,' says Mary Avon, with decision—`quite sure of it. That is, especially,' she adds, rather shyly, `if you will take his place. I know he would place more dependence on you than on any of the men.'

This is a very pretty compliment to pay to one who is rather proud of his nautical knowledge. [Page 81.2]

`Well,' he says, laughing, `the responsibility must rest on you. Order him below, to-night, and see whether he obeys. If we don't get to a proper anchorage, we will manage to sail the yacht somehow among us—you being captain, Miss Avon.'

`If I am captain.' she says, lightly—though she turns away her head somewhat—`I shall forbid your deserting the ship.'

`So long as you are captain, you need not fear that,' he answers. Surely he could say no less.

But it was still John of Skye who was skipper when, on getting under way, we nearly met with a serious accident. Fresh water and all provisions having been got on board, we weighed anchor only to find the breeze die wholly down. Then the dingey was got out to tow the yacht away from the sheltered harbor; and our young doctor, always anxious for hard work, must needs jump in to join in this service. But the little boat had been straining at the cable for scarcely five minutes when a squall of wind came over from the northwest and suddenly filled the sails. `Look out there, boys!' called Captain John, for we were running full down on the dingey. `Let go the rope! Let go!' he shouted: but they would not let go, as the dingey came sweeping by. In fact, she caught the yacht just below the quarter, and seemed to disappear altogether. Mary Avon uttered one brief cry; and then stood pale—clasping one of the ropes—not daring to look. And John of Skye uttered some exclamation in the Gaelic, and jumped on to the taffrail. But the next thing we saw, just above the taffrail, was the red and shining and laughing face of Angus Sutherland, who was hoisting himself up by means of the mizzen boom; and directly afterward appeared the scarlet cap of Hector of Moidart. It was upon this latter culprit that the full force of John of Skye's wrath was expended.

`Why did you not let go the rope when I wass call to you?'

`It iss all right, and if I wass put into the water, I have been in the water before,' was the philosophic reply.

And now it was, as we drew away from Portree, that Captain Mary Avon endeavored to assume supreme command, and would have the deposed skipper go below and sleep. John of Skye was very obedient, but he said: [Page 82.1]

`Oh, ay. I will get plenty of sleep. But that hill there, that iss Ben-Inivaig; and there iss not any hill in the West Highlands so bad for squalls as that hill. By-and-by I will get plenty of sleep.'

Ben-Inivaig let us go past its great, gloomy, forbidding shoulders and cliffs without visiting us with anything worse than a few variable puffs; and we got well down into the Raasay Narrows. What a picture of still summer loveliness was around us!—the rippling blue seas, the green shores, and far over these the black peaks of the Coolins, now taking a purple tint in the glow of the afternoon. The shallow Sound of Scalpa we did not venture to attack, especially as it was now low water; we went outside Scalpa, by the rocks of Skier Dearg. And still John of Skye evaded, with a gentle Highland courtesy, the orders of the captain. The silver bell of Master Fred summoned us below for dinner, and still John of Skye was gently obdurate.

`Now, John,' says Mary Avon, seriously, to him, `You want to make me angry.'

`Oh no, mem; I do not think that,' says he deprecatingly.

`Then why won't you go and have some sleep? Do you want to be ill?'

`Oh, there iss plenty of sleep,' says he. `Maybe we will get to Kyle Akin to-night; and there will be plenty of sleep for us.'

But I am asking you as a favor to go and get some sleep now. Surely the men can take charge of the yacht.'

`Oh yes, oh yes,' says John of Skye. `They can do that ferry well.'

And then he paused, for he was great friends with this young lady, and did not like to disoblige her.

`You will be having your dinner now. After the dinner, if Mr. Sutherland himself will be on deck, I will go below and turn in for a time.'

`Of course Dr. Sutherland will be on deck,' says the new captain, promptly; and she was so sure of one member of her crew that she added, `and he will not leave the tiller for a moment until you come to relieve him.'

Perhaps it was this promise, perhaps it was the wonderful beauty of the evening, that made us hurry over dinner. Then we went on deck again; and our young doctor, having got all his bearings and directions clear in his head, took the [Page 82.2] tiller, and John of Skye at length succumbed to the authority of Commander Avon, and disappeared into the forecastle.

The splendor of color around us on that still evening!—away in the west the sea of a pale yellow-green, with each ripple a flash of rose-flame, and over there in the south the great mountains of Skye—the Coolins, and Blaven, and Ben-na-Cailleach—become of a plum-purple in the clear and cloudless sky. Angus Sutherland was at the tiller, contemplatively smoking an almost black meerschaum; the Laird was discoursing to us about the extraordinary pith and conciseness of the Scotch phrases in the Northumbrian psalter; while ever and anon a certain young lady, linked arm in arm with her friend, would break the silence with some aimless fragment of ballad or old-world air.

And still we glided onward in the beautiful evening; and now ahead of us, in the dusk of the evening, the red star of Kyle Akin light-house steadily gleamed. We might get to anchor, after all, without awaking John of Skye.

`In weather like this.' remarked our sovereign lady, in the gathering darkness, `John might keep asleep for fifty years.'

`Like Rip Van Winkle,' said the Laird, proud of his erudition. `That is a wonderful story that Washington Irving wrote—a verra fine story.'

`Washington Irving!—the story is as old as the Coolins,' said Dr. Sutherland.

The Laird stared as if he had been Rip Van Winkle himself: was he forever to be checkmated by the encyclopedic knowledge of Young England—or Young Scotland rather—and that knowledge only the gatherings and sweepings of musty books that anybody with a parrot-like habit might acquire?

`Why, surely you know that the legend belongs to that common stock of legends that go through all literatures?' says our young doctor. `I have no doubt that Hindoos have their Epimenides; and that Peter Klaus turns up somewhere or other in the Gaelic stories. However, that is of little importance; it [Page 83.1] is of importance that Captain John should get some sleep. Hector, come here.'

There was a brief consultation about the length of anchor chain wanted for the little harbor opposite Kyle Akin: Hector's instructions were on no account to disturb John of Skye. But no sooner had they set about getting the chain on deck than another figure appeared, black among the rigging; and there was a well-known voice heard forward. Then Captain John came aft, and, depite all remonstrances, would relieve his substitute. Rip Van Winkle's sleep had lasted about an hour and a half.

And now we steal by the black shores; and that solitary red star comes nearer and nearer in the dusk; and at length we can make out two or three other paler lights close down by the water. Behold! the yellow ports of a steam-yacht at anchor; we know, as our own anchor goes rattling out in the dark, that we shall have at least one neighbor and companion through the still watches of the night.

Chapter XV.—Temptation.

But the night, according to John of Skye's chronology, lasts only until the tide turns, or until a breeze springs up. Long before the wan glare in the east has arisen to touch the highest peaks of the Coolins, we hear the tread of the men on deck getting the yacht under way. And then there is a shuffling noise in Angus Sutherland's cabin; and we guess that he is stealthily dressing in the dark. Is he anxious to behold the wonders of daybreak in the beautiful Loch Alsh, or is he bound to take his share in the sailing of the ship? Less perturbed spirits sink back again into sleep, and contentedly let the White Dove go on her own way through the expanding blue-gray lights of the dawn.

Hours afterward there is a strident shouting down the companionway; everybody is summoned on deck to watch the yacht shoot the Narrows of Kyle Rhea. And the Laird is the first to express his surprise; are these the dreaded Narrows that have caused Captain John to start before daybreak so as to shoot them with the tide? All around is a dream of summer beauty and quiet. A more perfect [Page 83.2] picture of peace and loveliness could not imagined than the green crags of the main-land, and the vast hills of Skye, and this placid channel between shining in the fair light of the morning. The only thing we notice is that on the glassy green of the water—this reflected, deep, almost opaque green is not unlike the color of Niagara below the Falls—there are smooth circular lines here and there; and now and again the bows of the White Dove slowly swerve away from her course as if in obedience to some unseen and mysterious pressure. There is not a breath of wind; and it needs all the pulling of the two men out there in the dingey, and all the watchful steering of Captain John, to keep her head straight. Then a light breeze comes along the great gully; the red-capped men are summoned on board; the dingey is left astern: the danger of being caught in an eddy and swirled ashore is over and gone.

Suddenly the yacht stops as if it had run against a wall. Then, just as she recovers, there is an extraordinary hissing and roaring in the dead silence around us, and close by the yacht we find a great circle of boiling and foaming water, forced up from below and overlapping itself in ever-increasing folds. And then, on the perfectly glassy sea, another and another of those boiling and hissing circles appear, until there is a low rumbling in the summer air like the breaking of distant waves. And the yacht—the wind having again died down—is curiously compelled one way and another, insomuch that John of Skye quickly orders the men out in the dingey again; and again the long cable is tugging at her bows.

`It seems to me,' says Dr. Sutherland to our skipper, `that we are in the middle of about a thousand whirlpools.'

`Oh, it iss ferry quate this morning,' says Captain John, with a shrewd smile. `It iss not often so quate as this. Ay, it iss sometimes ferry bad here—quite so bad as Corrievreckan; and when the flood-tide iss rinnin, it will be rinnan like—shist like a race-horse.'

However, by dint of much hard pulling and judicious steering, we manage to keep the White Dove pretty well in mid-current; and only once—and that but for a second or two—get caught in one of those eddies circling in to the shore. We pass the white ferry-house; a slight breeze carries us by the green shores and woods of Glenelg; [Page 84.1] we open out the wider sea between Isle Ornsay and Loch Hourn; and then a silver tinkle tells us breakfast is ready.

That long, beautiful, calm summer day: Ferdinand and Miranda playing draughts on deck, he having rigged up an umbrella to shelter her from the hot sun; the Laird busy with papers referring to the Strathgovan Public Park; the hostess of these people overhauling the stores, and meditating on something recondite for dinner. At last the doctor fairly burst out a-laughing.

`Well,' said he, `I have been in many a yacht, but never yet in one where everybody on board was anxiously waiting for the glass to fall.'

His hostess laughed too.

`When you come south again,' she said, `we may be able to give you a touch of something different. I think that, even with all your love of gales, a few days of the equinoctials would quite satisfy you.'

`The equinoctials!' he said, with a surprised look.

`Yes.' said she, boldly, `Why not have a good holiday while you are about it? And a yachting trip is nothing without a fight with the equinoctials. Oh, you have no idea how splendidly the White Dove behaves!'

`I should like to try her,' he said, with a quick delight; but directly afterward he ruefully shook his head. `No, no,' said he, `such a tremendous spell of idleness is not for me. I have not earned the right to it yet. Twenty years hence I may be able to have three months' continued yachting in the West Highlands.'

`If I were you,' retorted this small person, with a practical air, `I would take it when I could get it. What do you know about twenty years hence?—you may be physician to the Emperor of China. And you have worked very hard; and you ought to take as long a holiday as you can get.'

`I am sure,' says Mary Avon, very timidly, `that is very wise advice.'

`In the mean time,' says he, cheerfully, `I am not physician to the Emperor of China, but to the passengers and crew of the White Dove. The passengers don't do me the honor of consulting me; but I am going to prescribe for the crew on my own responsibility. All I want is that I shall have the assistance of Miss Avon in making them take the dose.' [Page 84.2]

Miss Avon looked up inquiringly with those soft black eyes of hers.

`Nobody has any control over them but herself—they are like refractory children, Now,' said he, rather more seriously, `this night-and-day work is telling on the men. Another week of it, and you would see Insomnia written in large letters on their eyes. I want you, Miss Avon, to get Captain John and the men to have a complete night's rest to-night—a sound night's sleep from the time we finish dinner till daybreak. We can take charge of the yacht.

Miss Avon promptly rose to her feet.

`John!'she called.

The big brown-bearded skipper from Skye came aft—quickly putting his pipe in his waiscoat pocket the while.

`John,' she said, `I want you to do me a favor now. You and the men have not been having enough sleep lately. You must all go below to-night as soon as we come up from dinner; and you must have a good sleep till daybreak. The gentlemen will take charge of the yacht.'

It was in vain that John of Skye protested he was not tired. It was in vain that he assured her that, if a good breeze sprung up, we might get right back to Castle Osprey by the next morning.

`Why, you know very well,' she said, `this calm weather means to last forever.'

`Oh, no! I not think that, mem,' said John of Skye, smiling.

`At all events we shall be sailing all night; and that is what I want you to do, as a favor to me.'

Indeed, our skipper found it was of no use to refuse. The young lady was peremptory. And so, having settled that matter, she sat down to her draught-board again.

But it was the Laird she was playing with now. And this was a remarkable circumstance about the game: when Angus Sutherland played with Denny-mains, the latter was hopelessly and invariably beaten; and when Denny-mains in his turn played with Mary Avon, he was relentlessly and triumphantly the victor; but when Angus Sutherland played with Miss Avon, she somehow or other, generally managed to secure two out of three games. It was a puzzling triangular duel. The chief feature of it was the splendid joy of the Laird when he had conquered the English young lady. He rubbed his [Page 85.1] hands, he chuckled, he laughed—just as if he had been repeating one of his own `good ones.'

However, at luncheon the Laird was much more serious; for he was showing to us how remiss the government was in not taking up the great solan question. He had a newspaper cutting which gave in figures—in rows of figures—the probable number of millions of herrings destroyed every year by the solan-geese. The injury done to the herring fisheries of this county, he proved to us, was enormous. If a solan is known to eat on an average fifty herrings a day, just think of the millions on millions of fish that must go to feed those nests on the Bass Rock! The Laird waxed quite eloquent about it. The human race were dearer to him far than any gannet or family of gannets.

`What I wonder at is this,' said our young doctor, with a curious grim smile that we had learned to know, coming over his face, `that the solan, with that extrordinary supply of phosphorus to the brain, should have gone on remaining only a bird, and a very ordinary bird too. Its brain power should have been developed; it should be able to speak by this time. In fact, there ought to be solan school boards and parochial boards on the Bass Rock, and commissioners appointed to inquire whether the building of nests might not be conducted on more scientific principles. When I was a boy—I am sorry to say—I used often to catch a solan by floating out a piece of wood with a dead herring on it: a wise bird, with its brain full of phosphorus, ought to have known that it would break its head when it swooped down on a piece of wood.'

The Laird sat in dignified silence. There was something occult and uncanny about many of this young man's sayings—they savored too much of the dangerous and unsettling tendencies of these modern days. Besides, he did not see what good could come of likening a lot of solan-geese to the Commissioners of the Burgh of Strathgovan. His remarks on the herring fisheries had been practical and intelligent; they had given no occasion for gibes.

We were suddenly startled by the rattling out of the anchor chain. What could it mean?—were we caught in an eddy? There was a scurrying up on the deck, only to find that, having drifted so far south with the tide, and the tide beginning to turn, John of Skye proposed to [Page 85.2] secure what advantage we had gained, by coming to anchor. There was a sort of shamed laughter over this business. Was the noble White Dove only a river barge, then, that she was thus dependent on the tides for her progress? But it was no use either to laugh or to grumble. Two of us proposed to row the Laird away to certain distant islands that lie off the shore north of the mouth of Loch Hourn; and for amusement's sake we took some towels with us.

Look now how this long and shapely gig cuts the blue water. The Laird is very dignified in the stern, with the tiller-ropes in his hand; he keeps a straight course enough, though he is mostly looking over the side. And indeed this is a perfect wonder-hall over which we are making our way—the water so clear that we notice the fish darting here and there among the great brown blades of the tangle and the long green sea-grass. Then there are stretches of yellow sand, with shells and star-fish shining far below. The sun burns on our hands; there is a dead stillness of heat; the measured splash of the oars startles the sea-birds in there among the rocks.

`Send the biorlinn on careering,

Cheerily and all together—

Ho, ro, clansmen!

A long, strong pull together—

Ho, ro, clansmen!'

Look out for the shallows, most dignified of cockswains: what if we were to imbed her bows in the silver sand?—

`Another cheer! Our isle appears,

Our biorlinn bears her on the faster—

Ho, ro, clansmen!

A long, strong pull together—

Ho, ro, clansmen!'

`Hold hard!' calls Denny-mains; and behold! we are in among a net-work of channels and small islands lying out here in the calm sea; and the birds are wildly calling and screaming and swooping about our heads, indignant at the approach of strangers. What is our first duty, then, in coming to these unknown islands and straits?—why, surely, to name them in the interests of civilization. And we do so accordingly. Here—let it be forever known—is John Smith Bay. There, Thorley's Food for Cattle Island. Beyond that, on the south, Brown and Polson's Straits. It is quite true that these [Page 86.1] islands and bays may have been previously visited; but it was no doubt a long time ago; and the people did not stop to bestow names. The latitude and longitude may be dealt with afterward; meanwhile the dicoverers unanimously resolve that the most beautiful of all the islands shall hereafter, through all time, be known as the Island of Mary Avon.

It was on this island that the Laird achieved his memorable capture of a young sea-bird—a huge creature of unknown species that fluttered and scrambled over bush and over scaur, while Denny-main, quite forgetting his dignity and the heat of the sun, clambered after it over the rocks. And when he got it in his hands, it lay as one dead. He was sorry. He regarded the newly fledged thing with compassion, and laid it tenderly down on the grass, and came away down again to the shore. But he had scarcely turned his back when the demon bird got on its legs, and, with a succession of shrill and sarcastic `yawps,' was off and away over the higher ledges. No fasting girl had ever shammed so completely as this scarcely fledged bird.

We bathed in Brown and Polson' Straits, to the great distress of certain sea-pyots that kept screaming over our heads, resenting the intrusion of the discoverers. But in the midst of it we were suddenly called to observe a strange darknes on the sea, far away in the north, between Glenelg and Skye. Behold! the long looked-for wind—a hurricane swooping down from the northern hills! Our toilet on the hot rocks was of brief duration; we jumped into the gig; away we went through the glassy water. It was a race between us and the northerly breeze which should reach the yacht first; and we could see that John of Skye had remarked the coming wind, for the men were hoisting the fore stay-sail. The dark blue on the water spreads; the reflections of the hills and the clouds gradually disappear; as we clamber on board, the first puffs of the breeze are touching the great sails. The anchor has just been got up; the gig is hoisted to the davits; slack out the mainsheet, you shifty Hector, and let the great boom go out! Nor is it any mere squall [Page 86.2] that has come down from the hills, but a fine, steady, northerly breeze; and away we go, with the white foam in our wake. Farewell to the great mountains over the gloomy Loch Hourn; and to the light-house over there at Isle Ornsay; and to the giant shoulders of Ard-na-Glishnich. Are not these the dark green woods of Armadale that we see in the west? And southward and still southward we go, with the running seas and the fresh brisk breeze from the north: who knows where we may not be to-night before Angus Sutherland's watch begins?

There is but one thoughtful face on board. It is that of Mary Avon. For the moment, at least, she seems scarcely to rejoice that we have at last got this grateful wind to bear us away to the south and to Castle Osprey.

Chapter XVI.—Through the Dark.

`Ahead she goes! the land she knows!'

What though we see a sudden squall come tearing over from the shores of Skye, whitening the waves as it approaches us? The White Dove is not afraid of any squall. And there are the green woods of Armadale, dusky under the western glow; and here the sombre heights of Dun Bane; and soon we will open out the great gap of Loch Nevis. We are running with the running waves; a general excitement prevails; even the Laird has dismissed for the moment certain dark suspicious about Frederick Smethurst that have for the last day or two been haunting his mind.

And here is a fine sight!—the great steamer coming down from the north—and the sunset is burning on her red funnels—and behold! she has a line of flags from her stem to her topmasts and down to her stern again. Who is on board?—some great laird, or some gay wedding party?

`Now is your chance, Angus,' says Queen T—, almost maliciously, as the steamer slowly gains on us. `If you want to go on at once, I know the captain would stop for a minute and pick you up.'

He looked at her for a second in a quick, hurt way; then he saw that she was only laughing at him.

`Oh no, thank you,' he said, blushing [Page 87.1] like a school-boy; `unless you want to get rid of me. I have been looking forward to sailing the yacht to-night.

`And—and you said,' remarked Miss Avon, rather timidly, `that we should challenge them again after dinner this evening.'

This was a pretty combination; `we' referred to Angus Sutherland and herself. Her elders were disrespectfully decribed as `them.' So the younger people had not forgotten how they were beaten by `them' on the previous evening.

Is there a sound of pipes amid the throbbing of the paddles? What a crowd of people swarm to the side of the great vessel! And there is the captain on the paddle-box—out all handkerchiefs to return the innumerable salutations—and good-by, you brave Glencoe! you have no need to rob us of any one of our passengers.

Where does the breeze come from on this still evening?—there is not a cloud in the sky, and there is a drowsy haze of heat all along the land. But nevertheless it continues; and, as the gallant White Dove cleaves her way through the tumbling sea, we gradually draw on to the Point of Sleat, and open out the great plain of the Atlantic, now a golden green, where the tops of the waves catch the light of the sunset skies. And there, too, are our old friends Haleval and Haskeval; but they are so far away, and set amid such a bewildering light, that the whole island seems to be of a pale transparent rose-purple. And a still stranger thing now attracts the eyes of all on board. The setting sun, as it nears the horizon line of the sea, appears to be assuming a distinctly oblong shape. It is slowly sinking into a purple haze, and becomes more and more oblong as it nears the sea. There is a call for all the glasses hung up in the companionway; and now what is it that we find out there by the aid of the various binoculars? Why, apparently, a wall of purple; and there is an oblong hole in it, with a fire of gold light far away on the other side. This apparent golden tunnel through the haze grows redder and more red; it becomes more and more elongated; then it burns a deeper crimson, until it is almost a line. The next moment there is a sort of shock to the eyes; for there is a sudden darkness all along the horizon line; the purple-black Atlantic is barred against that lurid haze low down in the west.

[Page 87.2] It was a merry enough dinner party: perhaps it was the consciousness that the White Dove was still bowling along that brightened up our spirits, and made the Laird of Denny-mains more particularly loquacious. The number of good ones that he told us was quite remarkable—until his laughter might have been heard through the whole ship. And to whom now did he devote the narration of those merry anecdotes—to whom but Miss Mary Avon, who was his ready chorus on all occasions, and who entered with a greater zest than any one into the humors of them. Had she been studying the Lowland dialect, then, that she understood and laughed so lightly and joyously at stories about a thousand years of age?

`Oh, ay,' the Laird was saying, patronizingly to her, `I see ye can enter into the peculiar humor of our Scotch stories: it is not every English person that can do that. And ye understand the language fine....Well,' he added, with an air of modest apology, `perhaps I do not give the pronunciation as broad as I might. I have got out of the way of talking the provincial Scotch since I was a boy—indeed, ah'm generally taken for an Englishman maself—but I do my best to give ye the speerit of it.'

`Oh, I am sure your imitation of the provincial Scotch is most excellent—most excellent—and it adds so much to the humor of the stories,' says this disgraceful young hypocrite.

`Oh, ay, oh, ay.' says the Laird, greatly delighted. `I will admit that some of the stories would not have so much humor but for the language. But when ye have both! Did ye ever hear of the laddie who was called in to his porridge by his mother?'

We perceived by the twinkle in the Laird's eyes that a real good one was coming. He looked round to see that we were listening, but it was Mary Avon whom he addressed.

`A grumbling bit laddie—a philosopher too,' said he. `His mother thought he would come in the quicker if he knew there was a fly in the milk. `Johnny,' she cried out, `Johnny, come in to your parritch; there's a flee in the milk.' `It'll no droon,' says he. `What?' she says; `grumbling again? Do ye think there's no enough milk?' `Plenty for the parritch,' says he—kee! kee! kee!—sharp, eh, wasn't he? `Plenty for the [Page 88.1]parritch,' says he—ha! ha! ho! ho! ho!'—and the Laird slapped his thigh, and chuckled to himself. `Oh, ay, Miss Mary,' he added, approvingly, `I see you are beginning to understand the Scotch humor fine.'

And if our good friend the Laird had been but twenty years younger—with his battery of irresistible jokes, and his great and obvious affection for this stray guest of ours, to say nothing of his dignity and importance as a Commissioner of Strathgovan? What chance would a poor Scotch student have had, with his test-tubes and his scientific magazines, his restless, audacious speculations and eager ambitions? On the one side, wealth, ease, a pleasant facetiousness, and a comfortable acceptance of obvious facts of the universe—including water-rates and steam fire-engines; on the other, poverty, unrest, the physical struggle for existence, the mental struggle with the mysteries of life; who could doubt what the choice would be? However, there was no thought of this rivalry now. The Laird had abdicted in favor of his nephew Howard, about whom he had been speaking a good deal to Mary Avon of late. And Angus—though he was always very kind and timidly attentive to Miss Avon—seemed nevertheles at times almost a littie afraid of her; or perhaps it was only a vein of shyness that cropped up from time to time through his hard mental characteristics. In any case, he was at this moment neither the shy lover nor the eager student; he was full of the prospect of having sole command of the ship during a long night on the Atlantic, and he hurried us up on deck after dinner without a word about that return battle at bézique.

The night had come on apace, though there was still a ruddy mist about the northern skies, behind the dusky purple of the Coolin hills. The stars were out overhead; the air around us was full of the soft cries of the divers; occasionally, amid the lapping of the water, we could hear some whirring by of wings. Then the red port light and the green starboard light were brought up from the forecastle and fixed in their place; the men went below; Angus Sutherland took the tiller; the Laird kept walking backward and forward as a sort of look-out; and the two women were as usual seated on rugs together in some invisible corner—crooning snatches of ballads, or making impertinent [Page 88.2] remarks about people much wiser and older than themselves.

`Now, Angus.' says the voice of one of them—apparently from somewhere about the companion, `show us that you can sail the yacht properly, and we will give you complete command during the equinoctials.'

`You speak of the equinoctials,' said he, laughing, `as if it was quite settled I should be here in September.'

`Why not?' said she, promptly. `Mary is my witness you promised. You wouldn't go and desert two poor lone women.'

`But I have got that most uncomfortable thing, a conscience,' he answered; `and I know it would stare at me as if I were mad, if I proposed to spend such a long time in idleness. It would be outraging all my theories, besides. You know, for years and years back I have been limiting myself in every way—living, for example, on the smallest allowance of food and drink, and that of the simplest and cheapest—so that if any need arose, I should have no luxurious habits to abandon—'

`But what possible need can there be?' says Mary Avon, warmly.

`Do you expect to spend your life in a jail?' said the other woman.

`No,' said he, quite simply. `But I will give you an instance of what a man who devotes himself to his profession may have to do. A friend of mine, who is one of the highest living authorities on Materia Medica, refused all invitations for three months, and durng the whole of that time lived each day on precisely the same food and drink, weighed out in exact quantities, so as to determine the effect of particular drugs on himself. Well, you know, you should be ready to do that—'

`Oh, how wrong you are!' says Mary Avon, with the same impetuosity. `A man who works as hard as you do should not sacrifice himself to a theory. And what is it? It is quite foolish!'

`Mary!' her friend says.

`It is,' she says, with generous warmth. `It is like a man who goes through life with a coffin on his back, so that he may be ready for death. Don't you think that when death comes, it will be time enough to be getting the coffin?'

This was a poser.

`You know quite well,' she says, `that [Page 89.1] when the real occasion offered, like the one you decribe, you could deny yourself any luxuries readily enough; why should you do so now?'

At this there was a gentle sound of laughter.

`Luxuries—the luxuries of the White Dove!' says her hostess, mindful of tinned meats.

`Yes, indeed,' says our young doctor, though he is laughing too. `There is far too much luxury—the luxury of idleness—on board this yacht, to be wholesome for one like me.'

`Perhaps you object to the effeminacy of the downy couches and the feather pillows,' says his hostess, who is always grumbling about the hardness of the beds.

But it appears that she has made an exceedingly bad shot. The man at the wheel—one can just make out his dark figure against the clear star-lit heavens, though occasionally he gets before the yellow light of the binnacle—proceeds to assure her that, of all the luxuries of civilization, he appreciates most a horse-hair pillow; and that he attributes his sound sleeping on board the yacht to the hardness of the beds. He would rather lay his head on a brick, he says, for a night's rest than sink it in the softest feathers.

`Do you wonder,' he says, `that Jacob dreamed of angels when he had a stone for his pillow? I don't. If I wanted to have a pleasant sleep and fine dreams, that is the sort of pillow I should have.'

Some phrase of this catches the ear of our look-out forward; he instantly comes aft.

`Yes, it is a singular piece of testimony,' he says. `There is no doubt of it; I have myself seen the very place.'

We were not startled; we knew that the Laird, under the guidance of a well-known Free Church minister, had made a run through Palestine.

`Ay,' said he, `the further I went away from my own country, the more I saw nothing but decadence and meesery. The poor craytures!—living among ruins, and tombs, and decay, without a trace of public spirit or private energy. The disregard of sanitary laws was something terrible to look at—as bad as their universal beggary. That is what comes of centralization, of suppressing local governmemnt. Would ye believe that there are a lot of silly bodies actually working to get our Burgh of Strathgovan annexed to Glasgow—swallowed up in Glasgow!' [Page 89.2]

`Impossible!' we exclaim.

`I tell ye it is true. But no, no! We are not ripe yet for those radical measures. We are constituted under an act of Parliament. Before the House of Commons would dare to annex the free and flourishing Burgh of Strathgoven to Glasgow, I'm thinking the country far and near would hear something of it!'

Yes, and we think so too. And we think it would be better if the hamlets and towns of Palestine were governed by men of public spirit, like the Commissioners of Strathgovan; then they would be properly looked after. Is there a single steam fire-engine in Jericho?

However, it is late; and presently the women say good-night and retire. And the Laird is persuaded to go below with them also; for how otherwise could he have his final glass of toddy in the saloon? There are but two of us left on deck, in the darkness, under the stars.

It is a beautiful night, with those white and quivering points overhead, and the other white and burning points gleaming on the black waves that whirl by the yacht. Beyond the heaving plain of waters there is nothing visible but the dusky gloom of the island of Eigg, and away in the south the golden eye of Ardnamurchan light-house, for which we are steering. Then the intense silence—broken only when the wind, changing a little, jibes the sails and sends the great boom swinging over on to the lee tackle. It is so still that we are startled by the sudden noise of the blowing of a whale; and it sounds quite close to the yacht, though it is more likely that the animal is miles away.

`She is a wonderful creature—she is indeed.' says the man at the wheel, as if every one must necessarily be thinking about the same person.

`Who?'

`Your young English friend. Every minute of her life seems to be an enjoyment to her; she sings just as a bird sings, for her own amusement, and without thinking.'

`She can think too; she is not a fool.'

`Though she does not look very strong,' continues the young doctor, `she must have a thoroughly healthy constitution, or how could she have such a happy disposition? She is always contented; she is never put out. If you had only seen her patience and cheerfulness when [Page 90.1] she was attending that old woman—many a time I regretted it—the case was hopeless—a hired nurse would have done as well.'

`Hiring a nurse might not have satisfied the young lady's notions of duty.'

`Well, I've seen women in sick-rooms, but never any one like her,' said he, and then he added, with a sort of emphatic wonder, `I'm hanged if she did not seem to enjoy that too! Then you never saw any one so particular about following out instructions.'

It is here suggested to our steersman that he himself may be a little too particular about following out instructions. For John of Skye's last counsel was to keep Ardnamurchan light on our port bow. That was all very well when we were off the north of Eigg; but is Dr. Sutherland aware that the south point of Eigg—Eilean-na-Castle—juts pretty far out; and is not that black line of land coming uncommonly close on our starboard bow? With some reluctance our new skipper consents to alter his course by a couple of points; and we bear away down for Ardnamurchan.

And of what did he not talk during the long star-lit night—the person who ought to have been look-out sitting contentedly aft, a mute listener—of the strange fears that must have beset the people who first adventured out to sea; of the vast expenditure of human life that must have been thrown away in the discovery of the most common facts about currents and tides and rocks; and so forth, and so forth. But ever and again his talk returned to Mary Avon.

`What does the Laird mean by his suspicions about her uncle?' he asked on one occasion—just as we had been watching a blue-white bolt flash down through the serene heavens and expire in mid-air.

`Mr. Frederick Smethurst has an ugly face.'

`But what does he mean about those relations between the man with the ugly face and his niece?'

`That is idle speculation. Frederick Smethurst was her trustee, and might have done her some mischief; that is, if he is an out-and-out scoundrel; but that is all over. Mary is mistress of her own property now.'

Here the boom came slowly swinging over; and presently there were all the sheets of the head-sails to be looked after— [Page 90.2] tedious work enough for amateurs in the darkness of the night.

Then further silence; and the monotonous rush and murmer of the unseen sea; and the dark topmast describing circles among the stars. We get up one of the glasses to make astronomical observations, but the heaving of the boat somewhat interferes with this quest after knowledge. Whoever wants to have a good idea of forked lightning, has only to take up a binocular on board a pitching yacht and try to fix it on a particular planet.

The calm, solemn night passes slowly; the red and green lights shine on the black rigging; afar in the south burns the guiding star of Ardnamurchan. And we have drawn away from Eigg now, and passed the open sound; and there, beyond the murmuring sea, is the gloom of the island of Muick. All the people below are wrapped in slumber; the cabins are dark; there is only a solitary candle burning in the saloon. It is a strange thing to be responsible for the lives of those sleeping folk, out here on the lone Atlantic, in the stillness of the night.

Our young doctor bears his responsibility lightly. He has—for a wonder—laid aside his pipe; and he is humming a song that he has heard Mary Avon singing of late—something about

`Oh, think na lang, lassie, though I gang awa',

For I'll come and see ye in spite o' them a','

and he is wishing the breeze would blow a bit harder, and wondering whether the wind will die away altogether when we get under the lee of Ardnamurchan Point.

But long before we have got down to Ardnamurchan there is a pale grey light beginning to tell in the eastern skies; and the stars are growing fainter; and the black line of the land is growing clearer above the wrestling seas. Is it a fancy that the first light airs of the morning are a trifle cold? And then we suddenly see, among the dark rigging forward, one or two black figures; and presently John of Skye comes aft, rubbing his eyes. He has had a good sleep at last.

Go below, then, you stout-sinewed young doctor; you have had your desire of sailing the White Dove through the still watches of the night. And soon you will be asleep, with your head on the hard pillow of that little state-room; and though the pillow is not as hard as a [Page 91.1] stone, still the night and the sea and the stars are quickening to the brain; and who knows that you may not perchance after all dream of angels, or hear some faint singing far away?

`There was Mary Beaton—and Mary Seaton—'

Or is it only a sound of the waves?

The Connemara Hills. II.

by J. L. Cloud

[Page 91.1]

It was now twilight. As we advanced over the rocky path, the air, sweet with the scent of the heather, was still warm. The sky was gold and purple, the mountains were clothed with a rich and mellow tint, and the mists that settled between the lakes and hills were now russet, and again nearly blue. The quiet lakes reflected the beautiful tints of the arc above, and the shrill cry of the curlew broke on the air with a strange, wild emphasis. Yesterday every leaf and sod was dark and dripping with rain, but now the heather was like a soft carpet, the vegetation dry and aromatic from the ripening sun, and the tints of the landscape had the depth and richness seen in Southern climes. We were now compelled by the ruggedness of our path to dismount, and leave the horse and car in charge of the light-footed maiden. We continued our way over a narrow stony foot-path among the furze, which here grew breast-high, until, arriving at the brow of the hill, we saw beneath us a lake almost encircled by precipitous cliffs, one side alone opened to the mountains and sea. The lake was about a mile in length, while its breadth varied from a few yards in some places to a mile in others. A multitude of islets dotted its waters, some consisting of a mere rock and clump of brush, others large enough for a pleasure-garden or little farm, if such similitudes are not too incongruous for so desolate a scene.

`Do you see there beyond on the far island a curl of smoke?' asked the potheen-maker, pointing to what I had supposed to be the blue mist hanging over the lake. `That is our island, and on it is our still, which by the blessing of God we have run, father and son, among these hills and islands for a hundred years.'

We descended a steep path, carved among the bog and rocks, into a rude stairway, and arriving at the border of the lake, saw tethered there a miserable, [Page 91.2] frowzy-looking pony, which could do his forty miles with a load on his back, I was told, on a handful of outmeal and a drain of water, and moored to a clump of brush a rickety boat, half filled with water. My companions immediately set to work bailing out the skiff, while I stood in the mud, feeling my curiosity growing cooler every moment.

Before reaching the island to which the skiff now served to carry us, the potheen man rose three times to his feet, at the imminent risk of capsizing the craft. I learned that his movements would be taken as a signal that all was right to those who were watching from the island: without it, all the appliances of their trade would be hidden, and the spirits either buried or thrown into the lake before our arrival. On landing, we were accosted by a straight-haired, wide-browed youth of seventeen, as handsome as Apollo, but with a great deal more vivacity of expression. Through the deepening twilight I descried the rank underbrush and the long ferns forming a very romantic-looking retreat for so vulgar and reprehensible an occupation as the illicit distillation of whiskey.

In a wretched hovel, without window or chimney, three men were seen through the smoke, busied with the fire and the still. They looked more like gnomes than human beings. The suffocating smoke, combined with the odor of the potheen, was more than my inexperienced olfactories could endure, and I retired precipitately to the purer air without. Here, seated on a stone, we partook of a repast of potatoes and buttermilk. I profited by this occaion to make a sketch of my host, while he entertained me with some particulars concerning his trade. Thirty years ago, he informed me, there were between forty aand fifty thousand private stills at work in Ireland, but now there are not many hundred, the most of it being made by small farmers who have a surplus of grain. Although it is sold for one-half the price of the `Parliamentary whiskey,' as he termed it, the profits are still so large that, notwithstanding the severe punishment inflicted on detection, it seems impossible for the government to thoroughly eradicate the evil. The islands off the Connemara coast are even more extensivelly occupied in its manufacture. One of the principal duties of the coast-guards, we are told, is the [Page 92.1] prevention of illicit distillation on the islands, and in conjunction with the police they have to make visits as frequently as practicable for the purpose. When the chance offers, the islanders have their stills at work, and at such time have a sentinal with a telescope on a high rock to give warning of the approach of the enemy. Manufacturers from the mainland also frequently avail themselves of the favorable situation of the island to come across and make a venture. If the look-out is vigilant, a capture is rarely made. When the approach of the coast-guards or police is annnounced, the rapidity of the work of concealment is said to be marvelous. The still is taken to pieces and hidden amongst the rocks or buried in the sand, sometimes taken out to sea and sunk, with a small floating mark attached, and the materials secreted in various ways. Every one gives help except the light-house keeper and his assistants, as it is a point of honor to do all that is possible to outwit the revenue.

The moon had now arisen, and shone with a wonderful brightness; it seemed as if the lingering twilight had melted back into day. I hurried to resume my journey; and on taking leave of the illicit distiller he pressed upon me a bottle of spirits, which he assured me upon his oath to be twenty-five years old.

As I sped along the road I admired Nature under a stranger and wilder aspect than I had ever seen her. The lakes and sky seemed like a flood of subdued silver light, broken by the greenish-gray of the mountains and the strips of brown heather; here and there jutted forth a rugged line of rocks. The gray stones, which by daylight gave a dreariness to the scene, now glittered like silver and gold. Far off we heard the roar of the sea, and the cry of the curlew, as restless by night as by day.

Since leaving the potheen-maker, Flanigan had been unremitting in beating and scolding the pony, without any apparent reason. When spoken to, he said the same thing over many times, with a thickness of enunciation that savored strongly of potheen. In answer to my suggestion that he had been imprudent in his libations, he called on a very select and respectable company of saints to witness the contrary, assuring me that nothing had passed his lips save a little luncheon. He then lighted his pipe, and relapsed into silence. [Page 92.2] After some miles the constantly recurring mountains and lakes became monotonous, the pony seemed to have lost his ambition, and even my driver's whistle lacked its usual sharpness. I took out my book and read with ease by the clear moonlight, until the fleecy clouds that had slept on the horizon multiplied and darkened the sky; the wind, bearing its salty ocean odor, sighed fitfully over the moors, and warned, with most solemn cadence, of an approaching storm. Something of this melancholy crept over me. The clouds, rapidly gathering into huge masses, obscured the moon, and left only a few stars. Flanigan adjusted my water-proof and India rubber coverings, and buckled around me a strap which these outside cars are always supplied with as security against falling. At last the storm came, and obscured everything. The monotonous sound of the pony's feet on the hard road acted like the old prescription of counting to make one sleep. Notwithstanding that great gusts of rain were dashed into my face from the hand of the storm, I fell into one of those persistent sleeps which we often experience under unaccustomed circumstances, and thought of the troopers I had seen in deep slumber in their saddles during the Franco-Prussian war. The pattering of the pony's hoofs seemed now the glib chatter of an Irish peasant, and again and again I awoke, straining to catch their sense. Sleep still pursued me, and still came these uncomfortable awakenings, now caused by the jolt of the car, and now by the strap which kept me from falling to the road beneath.

When I became thoroughly aroused, I found I had been asleep many hours. On the other side of the car crouched Flanigan, with his head bored into the corner of the car; the pony was proceeding at the slowest possible walk, and I think was asleep too. The storm had passed, and the sun was rising over the distant mountains, which, instead of being on our right, now surrounded us. I felt stiff, cold, and fatigued, and deeply annoyed at my guide's remissness. I awoke him, and reproved him in no very amiable terms. He did not himself know where we were, and his bewilderment was probably increased by my severity. I concluded, however, to continue, in the hope of meeting some one who could set us right. Ere log we descried an individual standing at the door of a hovel, smoking his matutinal [Page 93.1] pipe, who upon being asked whither the road led, replied. `To Joyce's Country.'

`Where is that?' I said, in despair.

`Isn't it a quare thing to say,' he replied, in an indignant tone, `that ye niver heard of Joyce's Country?'

While I was trying to excuse my ignorance, a priest passed. I begged him to tell me the most direct road to Clifden; he said we would have to return and take the third road to the right: it was twelve Irish miles. I was drenched with rain, and too tired to go further without some rest or refreshment. I looked about vainly for a resting place. The priest, pointing to his own house, a cabin far off on the mountain-side, said his fare would be too humble for me; `but a gentleman lives near, to whose house I will accompany you, and I am sure he will give you an Irish welcome.' He took a seat on the car, and after fifteen or twenty minutes' [Page 93.2] ride we arrived at a little cottage surrounded by trees and shrubbery. In front was an old-fashioned garden, with well-trimmed borders, and an assemblage of dahlias looking like country girls in their Sunday finery. Even the well-trimmed thatch told of comfort: it was thick and new, and crossed by innumerable ropes, as though it defied both wind and rain.

A loud knock brought an old woman to the door, who gave the priest the usual welcome, and bade us enter, adding that both master and mistress were within. We were ushered into a parlor, whose genial warmth and home-like aspect were most welcome; on either side of a large grate, that was packed with blazing turf, were great broad chairs, whose arms seemed outstretched to welcome us. Everything in the room looked at least a hundred years old, but an air of cleanliness and care pervaded all. On the mantelpiece were some ornaments of the now celebrated old Chelsea ware, a well-worn but neat carpet covered the floor, and heavy curtains hung at the window. The picture was a charming one: to complete it, two old people in the costume of George's time were needed to fill the arm-chairs. Soon the door opened, and an old gentleman entered, followed by his gentle wife. They both welcomed the priest, who explained my troubles to them. The old lady cried out, `Why are you standing, when the chair is there waiting for you by the fire?' I said I was very tired. `To be sure you are,' said the host, `and you must go to sleep, after a cup of tea, and rest until mid-day.'

A Frenchman would have turned to [Page 94.1] the priest and added: `Monsieur le curé, since it is to your good offices we owe the pleasure of madame's visit, increase our obligation by giving us the pleasure of your company to dinner.' But the Irishman said, `Bedad, father, there will be only three of us to dinner now, and as it is an unlucky number, you'll make another at the table for luck.'

`Ive made three so often,' the father replied, `that I suppose I owe the amends of making, when possible, the luckier number.'

Meanwhile my hostess hurried about, giving orders to a maid, who finally announced my room was ready. It adjoined the parlor, and was, as regards comfort, a reflex of it. On a tiny three-legged table stood a miniature Japanese tea service. A fragrant cup of tea and a piece of bread sufficed; for the luxuries of warm water, and the bed whose snowy covers were already turned down, were irresistible. I resolutely shut my eyes to the quaint furniture and ornaments of the room, promising myself the pleasure of another inspection after my nap.

I awoke feeling fully refreshed, and set about my preparations for dinner, with some feminine regrets at having nothing in the shape of dress with which to do honor to my entertainers. An old piece of tapestry—it was so well preserved that I only knew its date by the costumes of the figures upon it—covered the wall of one end of the room, and little oval-backed arm-chairs, covered with embroidery of the time of Louis XVI., stood around.

When my toilet was completed I rang, and the maid appeared, followed by her mistress, who was again so warm-hearted in her hospitality that I felt deeply touched. In the parlor I found the priest and the old gentleman in warm discussion upon the question of Home Rule. I do not suppose that the fact of my being an American had any weight in the cordial hospitality of this excellent lady and gentleman; I am sure their greeting would have been as warm to any stranger in need of it; but they spoke with affection and interest of America. The old gentleman added: `Our poor boy went there many years ago, but he did not succeed very well. He lost his health, and came home and died; but I know a great many who, having gone there with nothing but their brogue and blunders, have amassed large fortunes. Those who go in the steerage [Page 94.2] come back in the cabin, and those who go in the cabin come back in the steerage. In a little while, I think, there will be no Irishmen left in the land.'

I will confess that pleased as I was with the good people around me, I was more so when the repast was served. Although we may affect to despise the material part of life, a good dinner occupies the large portion of every traveller's time and thoughts. May I stop for an instant to say how delicious were the dainty little trout and fat salmon, which were all the sweeter because they had been enjoying life a few hours before. The lobster was large and red enough to have been an alderman, if there be aldermen in the sea; and a roast of the delicious mutton that is peculiar to these mountains, along with great mealy potatoes which had burst the buttons off their jackets in a plethora of heartiness, formed part of our dinner. The national dish of bacon and cabbage stood with a kind of proud reserve, as if awaiting that homage which it knew every true Irishman would accord. Nor can I pass by without some notice the rare old china, the worn, polished silver, spread upon linen of snowy whiteness and finest texture, that seemed to have just issued from the family stores of some lavendered press.

As we lingered over our dessert, my good priest expatiated upon the beauties of the Irish language, which is certainly the best preserved, as it is the purest, of all the Celtic dialects. It contains written remains transmitted from so remote an antiquity that it has become nearly unintelligible. Manuscripts so old that they had become ancient in the fourth and fifth centuries, and required a glossary, which glossary has become nearly as obsolete as the work it was designed to explain, formed part of the possessions of this language. As an evidence of the love of the peasantry of Connaught for their own tongue, he told the story of a priest who was called upon to administer the last rites to an old woman. As he entered she spoke to him in English; he conversed with her a few moments, whereupon she began her confession in Irish. To the priest this was an unknown tongue, and he told her so. `If you can't speak to me in my own language,' she said, `what brought you here?'

He replied: `You understand English, wherein the rites can be as well administered as in Irish.' [Page 95.1]

The dying woman raised herself from her pallet of straw, and angrily cried:

`And do you think I am going to say my last words to the great God in the language of the Sassenach?' with which she dismissed him.

The priest's reminiscences of his people and the antiquities of their language interested me so much that he was encouraged to dwell upon them at great length. These recitals had a contrary effect, however, upon our host and hostess, probably because they were no longer new to them, for they were fast asleep. On parting for the evening, the priest proposed to accompany me to a `hurling,' which, he said, will give a clearer insight into Irish character than any other scene. `You will there see their fighting and their love-making, their mixture of the tenderest sentiments with the rudest sport.' I promised to defer my departure for the purpose of accompanying him, and found the scene no less curious and characteristic than he had described.

He re-appeared with the morning sun, and after taking leave of my kind entertainers, he accompanied us as far as the little village where the hurling was to take place. Our way lay over a rugged mountain road, but our slow progress was deprived of all tedium by the beauty of the scene. Every hawthorn bush and barren stone was made bright and beautiful by a sun as warm as midsummer, but tempered by the delicious mountain air, and made musical by the robin, thrush, the piping bullfinch, the linnet, and all the family of glorious songsters that abound in Ireland. The gray granite of the mountains glistened like the precious minerals which their bosoms contain, and the clear blue [Page 95.2] sky above shone with richness and brilliancy.

Far to the left of us, through a little gorge, rose the shrill and hurried notes of the pipes. Turning in that direction, we saw a procession of merry-makers. At the side of the piper a man bore a pole, upon which was suspended a basket made of laurel branches, and on the summit floated a green flag. The chosen bride, with her friends and companions, followed. Twelve stalwart fellows, who were her champions, were in one group, while about her were ranged as many laughing girls. Their best apparel was donned for this occasion, and arranged according to the taste of the wearer. The bride had on at least five petticoats and a cloak; the others varied from the same number to two or three. The worldly wealth of these mountain girls is exhibited just as much by the number and quality of their petticoats [Page 96.1] as is that of the most aristocratic lady by her silks and diamonds. They exhibit them by adjusting each one in such a manner that the hem of the other is seen beneath it. The cloak is seldom worn in Connemara; a petticoat serving as a mantle is used instead, sometimes covering the head, again prettily worn upon the shoulders, and one side thrown up to disencumber the arm; others put the head and one arm through, and gather it up with much grace.

They wound along to the village, and stopped at a shebeen, where they partook of refreshments, and joked and gossiped with each other.

The priest informed me that the games of hurling were made the occasions of bringing young people together in a kind of match-making frolic. The heads of two families who have an eligible son and daughter meet and arrange the preliminaries of the game. The boy—they are all boys in Ireland until married—chooses twelve companions, or groomsmen, the family of the girl selects twelve others from their relations or friends, and each party starts to the ground selected for the festivity, led by a piper and banner-bearer, as we have seen. The basket made of laurel branches which surmounts the banner is filled with oranges and apples, and is planted on the ground till the conclusion of the game, when a general scramble takes place for its contents. As nearly all assemblages of Irish rustics terminate in a fight, a good deal of `skull-cracking' is often done on these occasions. Matches are also made between other participants of the game and the fair damsels, who now meet for the first time, perhaps, the young men of the neighboring parishes; another day for hurling is then appointed, and the same scenes are again enacted.

The newly arrived party were now busy with their preparations for the game, and already beginning to circulate the mether of potheen.

`The boy is late,' cried one, to the the intended bride; `he is going to skirt.'

`No matter for that,' said an old woman; `she'll get his equal any day: the year is long, and God is good.'

The shrill notes of the bagbipes announced that the groom and his company were approaching. They passed through the only street of the village, preceded by a piper and a banner-bearer as before. [Page 96.2] The hurling boy, a fine stalwart fellow, and his twelve groomsmen, were followed by his family and friends. A loud shout of welcome arose from the assemblage, quickly repressed, however, as they caught sight of the priest, whom they now descried for the first time. Every hat was raised, and a murmur of `God speed your reverence, and give you long life!' broke from every lip; and an old man stepped forward, and kneeling, asked a blessing.

`You see,' said the priest, turning to me, `I will spoil their merriment if I remain; and to save you a disappointment, I will take my leave of you.' With which he bade me adieu, and I never saw him again.

The mistress of the shebeen was a tall, black-haired woman, who was busy preparing refreshments. When I entered she took down a chair from a nail on the wall, and giving it an extra polish with her apron, placed it for me in the chimney-corner. I watched her make the cakes, as they are called, and relished them so much after they were made that I can not refrain from giving the recipe. Into half a stone, or seven pounds, of flour she mixed thoroughly a small quantity of soda, and upon it she poured gradually a pint of buttermilk. The oven in which it was baked was a large iron pot with a heavy lid, on which hot coals were placed, while beneath and around it was heaped a mass of burning embers. The bread, eaten warm with fresh butter, was delicious.

I turned to the window, and witnessed the game without. The poles were planted in the field, where the wickets and hurls were placed, and the boys began to prepare for the contest. The hurl is a sort of curved bat, which they use with great dexterity. Some twenty-five or thirty were engaged in it, and all not being supplied with hurls, they went to work madly with feet and hands, sending the balls in every direction. Many severe blows were dealt, and many a fight took place, before the game was done. Meanwhile serious flirtations were going on among the company; even the bride so far forgot her position as to smile upon one of her champions so amiably that her intended made a frantic attempt to deface the charms of his rival then and there. The old people walked about, or sat upon the rocks talking of the crops and the weather, for which they invariably blessed God when complaining of its severity. [Page 97.1]

While the landlady was at work, two old men strolled in for refreshment. One of them was evidently a small farmer. He wore his hat pulled down over his eyes, and appeared occupied by a matter of some weight. Talking to him earnestly and in a low tone, his companion, an old fellow with a shabby hat, shiny breeches, and much-worn shoes, looked about him with cunning eyes for the most retired nook, and pulling out an old stool, said,

`Sit ye there, man, and we'll have a pint and a talk.'

The colorless potheen was served them, and each drank a tumblerful of it as if it had been water.

`Now man,' said the smaller and older of the two, `why not make a match between them? He is a smart lad, and she is a fine girl, God bless her! Just say what you will give her, and we can have done with it before the game is out.'

`Well,' said the farmer, after pulling and cracking all his fingers, `I have no thought of being mean. I will give her a cabin, a quarter acre of land, with the potatoes tilled and brought to the door.'

There was silence on the other side.

`I will give her a fine feather-bed.'

`Very good, very good,' said he with the cunning eyes. `We'll have another pint.' They were served with the fiery liquid, and smacking their lips over it, declared it the best.

`The players must be near through.'

The farmer, staring in the bottom of the cup, added, `I will give her fifteen pounds in gold.'

A short quick laugh from his companion was the response: `That's very good, man; you are doing well, God bless you!'

`Her mother will give her the best of petticoats—and that is about all.'

`And enough it is, if her mother would not forget the old silver beads, so that she [Page 97.2] can prepare her soul for heaven when the end comes.'

`What then,' said the other, a little defiantly, `has your boy got?'

Drawing his stool closer, and fixing his little gray eyes on the old man, he said, `Sorra a h'apenny; but he's a good lad for all that, and can knock as much work out of day as any boy in the country, and in a fight can bate anybody that stands before him.'

`It isn't a fighting man I want for my daughter,' responded the farmer, testily; `there's little good comes of it.'

`Well, well, he need not do that same, but he's good for it if wantin'.'

`I'll not stand for money, as he's a nate, tidy boy:' the farmer was somewhat mollified. `I'll buy him a boat, and he can knock his living out of it.'

`Long life to ye! Shall it be next Thursday? I'll stop to-night to see the priest and have it all ready.'

To my horror, the farmer now called for another pint, with which they sealed their bargain.

In spite of all the wishes and manœuvres of the parents, the boys and girls meet sometimes others whom they prefer, and the match falls through. [Page 98.1]

I saw from the window that the game was about finished. A dash was made for the poles, the apples and oranges were scattered about, and the players struggled madly for the fruit. Shouts and yells of pleasure and wrath filled the air. Not a leaf of laurel or piece of fruit was left uncrushed. After partaking of the buttermillk bread, tea, and whiskey, they prepared for the dance. The suitor took his bride, and the attendants paired off for a jig, which was entered into with surprising spirit and energy, to the shrill accompaniment of the two bagpipes, which made up in vigor what they lacked in time. After a while the old folks left their bread and tea to join in the dance, aroused by the notes of some old Irish air, and hobbled off as merrily, if not as briskly, as the youngest of them. In passing the hats of the pipers, each dancer bestowed a piece of money.

We again set out for Clifden. Flanigan's luncheon on this occasion not having been of an intoxicating nature, he was fully alive to his duties. The fine [Page 98.2] weather and dry roads—a few hours of sun and wind suffice to dry this soil—tempted me to walk. I sat down upon rock that overhung the road, and sketched one of the most beautiful little lakes I had seen on my travels. Its waters gleamed in the sun, and the little islands basked on its bosom, the homes of innumerable birds. Not a sound broke on the air—the songs of birds seemed to enhance rather than mar the stillness that reigned.

I had finished a sketch of this charming spot, when a ragged boy approached, leading a little girl, who was vainly trying to screen herself behind him; another in petticoats brought up the rear. Observing my occupation, they had, with more intelligence than most peasants, divined its character, and begged me to take their likenesses. Notwithstanding this ardent spirit of patronage for the arts, I could not conscientiously advise an aartist to take up his abode in that region. The urchins, like the most civilized of amateurs, were pleased to see themselves on paper. The eldest, after looking at the drawing for some time, said, `That'll do.'

Our road now led through a ravine, past the hovel, miscalled a house, from which this little brood had come. It admitted the rain, and did not keep out the cold. I asked their father, a stalwart fellow clothed in rags, with an anxious expression of face, why his landlord did not repair the hut.

`Oh, your honor,' he replied, `he would tell me to lave it. And lave it I must this year, for the potatoes are black, and where can we get money to pay our rent? A society gives us free tickets now for Australia, and though I am sorry to lave the old country, I must go, for the childer's sake.' [Page 99.1]

As I left him standing by his wretched home, with his poor little family around him, ready any minute to leave their land forever, Goldsmith's lines seemed more sadly true than ever:

`Scourged by famine, from the smiling land

The mournful peasant leads his humble band;

And while he sinks, without one arm to save,

The country blooms—a garden and a grave.'

Further on, where a few sheep were sunning themselves on the rocks, and some long-haired cattle sniffing for rain, we passed a little whitewashed cottage, at the door of which stood a beautiful girl, talking, with laughing and blushing face, to a knee-breeched swain, who, leaning upon the back of his ass, unmindful of a listener, poured into her ears, I doubt not, the story which in all climes and among all classes is still the same. At least such was the verdict of Flanigan, who, eying them through a whiff from his pipe as we rode by, laconically remarked, `Courting.' They were probably arranging matters with much less parade and a happier result than the match-makers I had quitted a few hours before.

Impelled by that curiosity which is too generally admitted an endowment of our sex to need apology here, I stopped and asked the shortet road to Clifden. The man, who had no mind to be interrupted in his love-making, vouch-safed no reply; but the girl, with that womanly address which never appears to be doing what she is doing most, left her lover, and pointing to a hill before us, said, `Clifden is just beyond; you can see it from the top of the hill.'

Just before arriving at Clifden we passed through a collection of miserable huts, which is hereabouts dignified with the title of a village. A forlorn beggar, going from door to door, stopped before [Page 99.2] one more miserable than the rest, I thought, from which emerged an old woman, who gave him two or three potatoes. One would suppose this poor woman a more pitiable object of charity than the beggar upon whom she bestowed her mite. All over Ireland one meets the strange spectacle of the poor begging from the poor; there seemed to be none so abject in their poverty but that another can be found still more wretched.

One does not often find a more beautifully situated town than Clifden. It seems to have been placed by a poet whose sole consideration was setting a picturesque village in a situation where it both adorns and is adorned by the surrounding mountains and sea. As we approached it I was fascinated by its beauty, and promised myself a repose of some days in this charming spot. This anticipation, however, was doomed to a bitter disappointment. As a reverse to the beautiful picture presented by the town from a distance, I found houses and people, on a near inspection, the most insipid, common, and utterly uninteresting I had ever [Page 100.1] seen. The buildings, comparatively new, for the most part unpainted, had a pitiable look of cheap respectability. Indeed, it had the appearance of a town built by contract, but which the absconding contractor had heartlessly abandoned before completion, so that houses and streets seemed to be hopelessly waiting for their finishing touches. When we arrived at the hotel door my enthusiasm was in this manner almost entirely dispelled; but when I entered the imposing-looking hostelry, the wood of whose doors and windows grinned through a single coat of paint, as if in mockery of their disguise, my heart sank within me. New as the place was, at its very threshold I perceived a musty oder. The reckless flinging about of chops, potatoes, and dusting rags, so eminently characteristic of Irish hotels, was evidently here in its carnival season.

When I have more leisure I will write a dissertation upon Irish landlords, who always greet their guests as if they were a bad bargain, only accepted from a force of circumstances, who always have the air of grand gentlemen that have seen [Page 100.2] better days, and who are excessively punctilious in their ideas of the consideration due them. The landlord in this case had greasy lapels to his coat, and a profusion of garnet studs in his bosom. His hair, of which he wore an elegant sufficiency, shone with a pomade which I think even he would have changed had his nose occupied any other place than the centre of that radius of perfume which he bore about him.

The table d'hôte, served with great pretension and formality, would have speedily quieted the keenest appetite. Even in this out-of-the-way place I descried among the guests at table a fellow-countryman in a tall lank youth with a small head, long neck, and untrimmed hair. His nonchalant manner, and the peculiar dry contempt with which he measured everybody and everything, apart from being a birthright of Americans, had something familiar in it. I recognized a youth who had impressed himself upon my memory a year before, during a visit to the Tower of London. He had excited my interest by the silent pertinacity with which, while his keen and restless eye wandered unceasingly over every object, he had masticated the same mouthful of tobacco from the court-yard, through the wondrous collection of ancient arms and armor, past the Koh-i-noor and crown jewels, till he arrived at the cell where we were informed Sir Walter Raleigh had been imprisoned thirteen years; thereupon he expectorated sufficiently to remark, `It was good for him.'

When I went to my window the next morning a terrible Atlantic storm was venting its fury upon the town. The gusts of rain beat against the window and streamed down the panes, and the wind seemed to shake the house from its very foundations. The chamber-maid who entered to make the fire dropped a courtesy, and saying good-morning, added, `It's a cruel day, ma'am, glory be to God!'

Old Baltimore and Its Merchants

by Frank Meyer

[Page 175.1]

Let us seat ourselves beneath the venerable oaks of Druid Hill Park, the pride of Baltimore, and summon its ghostly guardians to our aid. Emerging from the deep shadow, gray and gnarled as the forest around him, stands in rude majestry a venerable Druid, a priest of Baal. In the husky tones of extreme age he tells of a former home under groves of Irish oak, of a Druidical circle and a worship of the sun and of fire, of the sacred mistletoe and the great god Baal, the Phœnician type of life and power; and how, David being then King in Israel, his ancestry had blessed a grove and built a temple in Erin, and called the place Baál-ti-môr, or `the great place of Baal.' Loyal to his sacred office, and like a true Phœnician of old, his spirit braved the ocean, and haunts the grove that bears his name, the guardian of this city of the sun.

And so, Lords of Baltimore in Ireland, the well-beloved Calverts gave the oldet name to the youngest city of our seaboard; for New York was already one hundred and sixteen years old, and Boston aged a century, when, `In the 15th year of the Dominion of the Right Honorable Charles, absolute Lord and Proprietary of the province of Maryland and Avalon, Lord Baron of Baltimore, etc., Anno Domini 1729,' a law was enacted for erecting a town on the Patapsco, and for laying out in lots sixty acres of land, etc. This location was the fruit of a lucky blunder, for when the owner of a previously selected site got wind of the attempt to be made to put a town upon his property, setting prodigious store by certain iron mines which he believed to be upon his territory, he posted off to Annapolis and defeated the plan, much to his own satisfaction and the subsequent regret of his heirs, but greatly to [Page 175.2] the advantage of posterity. It was on the 12th of January, 1730, that `commissioners, assisted by Philip Jones, the county surveyor, laid off the town,' under the advice of those primitive engineers the cows, whose instinctive selection of easy grades might have continued to save the tear and wear of the breeches and legs of subequent generations, had not that evil genius of American cities, the demon of right angles, found a pliant agent some years later in one Poppleton, whose `plat'—a covenant with the spirits of materialism—has, ever since its adoption as a plan of the city, waged a merciless war against nature's curves in the cause of rectangular inconvenience and monotony. However, hills, water-courses, and marshes were not to be trifled [Page 176.1] with so curtly as to destroy utterly the cheering irregularity of a varied surface, but, thanks to the cows, and in spite of Poppleton, some street scenery of charming diversity survives in crooked ways and steep ascents and commanding heights.

The town of the enactment was but one of a conglomerate of settlements which became finally merged in the title of Baltimore, but which, under the names of `The Town,' `Old Town,' `Fell's Point,' `The Hill,' etc., held distinctive claims to individuality, and presented defined characteristics as marked as the people of separate provinces, and until finally obliterated through the agency of street railways,these distinctions were a marked peculiarity of the place. It was at Fell's Point, a quarter nearly two miles distant from the spot where Jones and the cows began their survey, that the heavy shipping lay, and where the older merchants, prior to the Revolution, had their spacious residences and their counting-rooms, looking out over their wharves and through the towering spars of shipping to the broad water. Their homes were those of old English merchants, blooming with the added grace of a [Page 176.2] warmer sun and sharper shadows. They were panelled and tiled, and spacious and secure, honestly built, but not weighed down by extravagant excrescences either in the way of cupola or mortgage. A vague savor of far-away lands suggested itself in odd bits of marine mementos, as in the conch-shell borders of the flower beds, the narwhal's tusk and the sharks' teeth on the mantel, East India settees, and `Forty-theves' jars from the Levant. Old anchors and chains rusted in damp shadows, and the streets and shops had a pungent smell of oakum and tar. Storm-worn figure-heads served as signs of tobacco shops and taverns, and old salts sat around them clinging to their chairs and benches with as tenacious a twist of their legs and arms as though rocked in a gale, spinning the while unconscionable yarns, or lamenting the fate of poor Jack. As in all sea-ports, a sadness and anxiety questioned inscrutable fate, and the awful mystery and uncertainty of the sea penetrated every hearth. Many left these wharves never to return, cast away, wandered off. Far-away sweethearts and husbands were anxious facts, and solaced widows not too sure of the death of the late lamented. [Page 177.1]

Of the primitive days before the Revolution, it is recorded of `Baltimore town' that `as all were peaceable and healthy, lawyers and doctors found little to do, but tradesmen and working-men found ready pay and constant employment. Women's wages especially were high, as the sex was not numerous; and as they generally married by the time they were twenty, they sought a maid-servant for themselves in turn. A duty of from five to twenty shillings per annum was laid upon all bachelors, and old maids were not to be met with, neither jealousy of husbands. The children were well-favored and beautiful to behold, and without the least blemish. A frank and generous hospitality prevailed, devoid of glare and show, but always abundant and good. Bashfulness and modesty in the young were regarded as virtues, and young lovers listened gravely and took sidelong glances before their elders. At even-tide the family, neatly dressed, sat in the street porch and welcomed their neighbors. It was customary to live at one's place of business, and the wives and daughters served the shop, retailers of dry-goods being mostly widows and spinsters. If a townsman failed in trade, it [Page l77.2] was a cause of general and deep regret. Every man who met his neighbor expressed his sorrow. Bankruptcy was a rare occurrence, because honesty and temperance in trade were then universal, and none embarked without means adequate to their busines. At Christmas, dinners and suppers went the round of every social circle, and they who partook of the former were expected to remain for the supper. Afernoon visits were made at [Page 178.1] such an hour as to permit matrons to go home and see their children put to bed.

`Between tradesmen and the gentry there was a marked difference. The aristocracy of the gentleman was noticed, if not felt. Such as followed rough trdes, and all men and boys from the country, were seen on the streets in leather breeches and aprons, and would have been deemed out of place without them. Hired women wore short gowns and linsey-woolsey petticoats, and some are still alive who used to call master and mitress who will no longer do it. Cookery was plainer than now, and coffee as a beverage was used but rarely. Chocolate was the morning and evening drink, and thickened milk for children. A white floor sprinkled with clean silver sand, large tables and high-backed chairs of solid walnut or mahogany, decorated a parlor enough for the best. Sometimes a carpet, not, however, covering the whole floor, was seen upon the dining-room. There was a show parlor up stairs, not used but upon gala occasions. Pewter plates were in general use, but china was a rarity. Plate, in the form of bowls, tankards, and waiters, was seen in most families of easy circumstances. Punch, [Page 178.2] the most common beverage, was drunk from one large bowl, and beer from a tankard of silver. At dancing assemblies no gentleman under twenty-one or lady under eighteen was admitted, and the supper consisted of tea, chocolate, and rusk. Six married managers distributed partners by lot for the evening, leaving nothing to the success of forwardness or favoritism. Gentlemen always drank tea with the parents of the ladies who were their partners the day after the assembly.' Invitations were printed on playing cards: `The honor of Miss—'s company at a ball to be held at six o'clock, P.M..' indorses the queen of hearts, and is one of many such trophies still preserved.

In sight of his ships and his goods, on the ground-floor of his warehouse usually, the old-time merchant had his counting-room. It was separated by a slight partition from the surrounding mass of merchandise and from his muscular auxiliaries, the stevedores and draymen, who lounged around the archway—lusty negroes generally, who basked in the broiling sun stretched on range of barrels, their yawning mouths displaying a wealth of ivory, and their skin glistening like oiled ebony. From the warehouse beams and [Page 179.1] joists, which extended in rugged strength through the counting-room, were hung rows of leather buckets and a ladder, `for the more effectual remedy to extinguish fire in Baltimore town,' as the act reads which obliged `every householder to keep two leather buckets hung up near the door of his house.' None of the elegance of modern counting-rooms graced the interior; the affected simplicity of Eastlake was unknown, but in its place a business-like directness and orderly confusion amounting to picturesqueness. In harmony with the rude beams, an arch of solid masonry supported the safe, built into the walls, and closed by its iron door with a lock to make a modern burglar laugh. In the wide hearth a `black-jack' fire was reflected in the brass andirons, and from an armchair by it, as from a throne, the `head of the house' surveyed a row of deferential clerks at their desks, almost buried behind their ponderous ledgers. Six-by-eight panes filled the windows, half closed by green blinds, above which appeared the topmasts of ships and the blue sky. On the walls hung maps, models of ships' hulls, and limnings of the same vessels under full sail, drawn with nautical fidelity, but which would have scarcely escaped the lash of a captious critic in art. Innumerable bills, ruthlessly impaled on wires, met a deserved fate, and were exposed conspicuously, probably as warnings against misplaced confidence. Rows of tin or wooden coffers, marked with the names of dead years, rested in dusty security on a high shelf, and suggested long-passed transactions with correpondents who had closed their accounts in paying the debt of nature.

The discipline, thoroughness, and simplicity of mercantile training in Europe were brought over by our English and salt-water ancestors, and the habits of the quarter-deck in some measure transferred to the counting-room. No slovenly habits of dress or demeanor were allowed [Page 179.2] among the clerks, who were often inmates of the family, on the basis of equals, but in subordination, and whose hair, in some houses, was daily dressed by the barber, who came for that purpose at a fixed hour to the counting-room. Punctuality and courtesy were exacted, and the neglect to pay his respects to the heads of the house on commencing and terminating his daily duties subjected the delinquent to a caustic reprimand. These youths, whom it was a favor to admit to a great commercial house, were in training as the future merchants and as gentlemen. Memory recalls the vividness of a child's impression of three old merchants, the last of their generation, the one venerable in his bent form, his snowy hair gathered in a queue of black ribbon, his plum-colored coat receiving a share of the powder which covered it, a white cravat and lemon waistcoat, light breeches and broad-brimmed beaver; another in his suit of drab; and the third in the lively blue coat and brass buttons, ruffled shirt and costume of harmonious tints—all scrupulous [Page 180.1] in niceties of apparel and person, as they were exact in rendering the courtesies of life. The oldest of these gentlemen carried an umbrella which must have been the primeval one. It was a ponderous machine, with a brass handle placed above the frame-work of rattan, and when not in use carried as a staff. Efforts were made in 1772 to introduce the use of umbrellas in Baltimore, then scouted as a ridiculous effeminacy, but finally the doctors, `who recommended them to avert vertigoes, epilepsies, sore eyes, and fevers,' set an example which was generally adopted. Before this time only in severe storms physicians and clergymen wore a roquelaure, or oiled cape, hooked around the shoulder. The gold-headed cane and the watch and seals were distinctions of the gentry of the day, and afforded a mild form of gymnastics to the elderly gentlemen who carried them—the latter particularly, as to extract it from the depths of the breeches fob required a prolonged hand-over-hand movement, involving, [Page 180.2] if the bearer were pursy, considerable exertion. This nautical exercise took place daily, whenever your old-fashioned merchant on his progress to or from 'change reached the town `regulator'—an immense dial occupying the greater part of a shop window. Assured of the accuracy of the chronometer, he, with great deliberation, lowered his time-piece into its hold again, and resumed his habituaal gait, his tasselled cane keeping time to the cadence of his walk. None of your elevator rapidity existed in those days, when grain was loaded or unloaded in half-bushel measures by a gang of negroes under the guidance of an ancient son of Africa, who was known in his latter days as the `old elevator.' There was no corn exchange, but the captain of a bay craft made his cruise of the counting-rooms with a sample of his cargo tied up in a Madras handkerchief, and the merchant had no nervous apprehensions of a disastrous telegram in naming his terms.

There must have been a gallant array of buckskin breeches when the tradesmen and manufacturers of Baltimore town, from a true patriotic spirit, determined to clothe themselves in home manufactures, and gave an order for the nether garments of the association, hoping at the same time to find sufficient American woollen and linen to clothe their familie.

Under such social influences existed the merchants whose patriotism during all the varying fortune of war had sustained the cause of Independence, so nobly illustrated in the glories of the Maryland line. `We are sending all that we have that can be armed and equipped; and the people of New York, for whom we have great [Page 181.1] affection, can have no more than our all.' These words from Maryland expressed the spirit of her merchants and people, and the fixed bayonets which in every engagement met the veteran foe attested their sincerity.

By the exertions of the Baltimore merchants the army of Lafayette, on its way to the South, was fed and fully equipped, and the good marquis seems never to have forgotten the ladies whose fair fingers had clothed his ragged troops. The French camps and the cordial intercourse between towns-folk and military remain a cheerful tradition of the war, and Lafayette, after a lapse of forty years, acknowledged with tears the kindness. It is with the naval history of the republic that Baltimore is peculiarly connected. Both in the war of the Revolution and that of 1812 she appears as a champion of the sea, and many a keel laid in her ship-yards brought victory to our flag. Her sailors were the first officers of the Continental navy, and Nicholson, in the Virginia frigate, the first officer in rank in the infant service. The Virginia, the Defense, Buckskin, Enterprise, Sturdy Beggar, Harlequin, Fox, and others were Baltimore ships, whose successful cruises aided Congress with the means of carrying on the war. But it was in the war of 1812 that the `Baltimore clippers' gained world-wide reputation, for on every sea as privateers they smote the enemy with unprecedented audacity, and astonished the stolid Briton by their rapid movements and skillful seamanship and gunnery. This fleet numbered [Page 181.2] fifty-eight—an excess over every other port of the Union.

It was the successes of these privateers which made Baltimore a peculiar thorn in our adversary's side, and excited a concentrated venom which brought about the attack upon the city, and the enemy's repulse and discomfiture before the guns of Fort McHenry and at North Point.

As sharing the glories of that day, we must recall a forgotten hero that maintained the honor of the `star-spangled banner.' During the bombardment of Fort McHenry, at a time when the explosions were most tremendous, a rooster mounted a parapet and crowed heartily. This excited the laughter and animated the feelings of all present. A man who was worn down with fatigue, and ill, declared that if ever he lived to see Baltimore, the rooster should be treated with pound-cake. Not being able to leave the fort, the day after the bombardment he sent to the city, procured the cake, and had fine sport in treating his favorite.

In recognizing the obligations of wealth, the merchants of Baltimore have left many noble examples, recalled by the names of Patterson, Oliver, McKim, Donnell, Sheppard, Peabody, McDonough, Johns Hopkins, Kelso, Watson, Ready, Wyman, Wilson, and others. In many cases their own executors, their generous endowments, aggregating many millions of dollars, illustrate the true use of money.

The Isms of Forty Years Ago

by W. P. Garrison

[Page 182.1]

The seventh chapter of the Rev. O. B. Frothingham's Life of Theodore Parker (Boston, 1874) opens with these words:

`It was a remarkable agitation of mind that went on in Massachusetts thirty years ago. All institutions and all ideas went into the furnace of reason, and were tried by fire. Church and state were put to the proof; and the wood, hay, stubble—everything combustible—were consumed. The process of proving was not confined to Boston: the whole State took part in it. It did not proceed from Boston as a centre: it began simultaneously in different parts of the Commonwealth. It did not seem to be communicated, to spread by contagion, but was rather an intellectual experience produced by some latent causes which were active in the air. No special class of people were reponsible for it, or affected by it....It was a time of meetings and conventions for reforms of every description.'

It was a time, in one word, of isms. Mr. Parker himself, in August, 1840, walked [Page 182.2] thirty mile from Boston to Groton, to attend a convention called by Second Adventists and `Come-outers.' His companion all the way was George Ripley; at Newton they picked up Christopher Pearse Cranch; at Concord, Bronson Alcott. They heard Brother Jones hold forth on the second coming of Christ, and Mr. Parker too addressed the convention. In September he attended a Non-resistant Convention in Boston. In November he joined in calling a convention to consider questions concerning the Sabbath, the ministry, and the church—a step over which Dr. Channing shook his head. But the good doctor that very year had started a movement not less disruptive of old traditions and usages. He had consulted with Ripley and Emerson and Margaret Fuller as to whether it was possible `to bring cultivated, thoughtful people together, and make a society that deserved [Page 183.1] the name.' The first result of such an inquiry was the founding of the Dial, the organ of the Transcendentalists, in July, 1840. The next was the establishment, in 1841, of the socialistic community of Brook Farm, which lay only a mile from Parker's residence in West Roxbury, and which, though it did not reckon him among its members, was frequently visited by him for the sake of intercourse with Ripley, Curtis, Hawthorne, Dana, and the rest of that remarkable company. In 1841 the Hopedale Community, in 1842 the Northampton Community, both distinct and original Yankee attempts after an ideal society, were likewise founded. Fourierism came with the following wave. Brisbane, it is true, had published in 1840 his Social Destiny of Mankind, but his zeal first found a proper vehicle in the daily columns of the new-born Tribune, presently to be re-enforced by the Brook Farm Harbinger (harbinger `of the Renaissance,' as they explained it), when that experiment had gone over to the new doctrine. In 1843 Fourierism was at its height. If Transcendentalism had paved the way for it, Swedenborgianism lent it a helping hand. Those who looked upon Swedenborg as `the most remarkable phenomenon of the age,' noticed with satisfaction `the singular fact that the groups and series of Fourier's plan of society are in accordance with Swedenborg's description of the order in heaven,' and thought they beheld the kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven. `In religion,' wrote John S. Dwight in the Harbinger, `we have Swedenborg; in social economy, Fourier; in music Beethoven.' Finally, Robert Owen was issuing his `manifestoes' in the columns of the Washington National Intelligencer in the winter of 1844-45, and in 1846 addressing that New York Constitutional Convention whose labors were inspired by a sort of `Communism,' not then understood.

Before passing from Socialism to the other isms of the period, let us enjoy this [Page 183.2] extract from a private letter of the late Charles C. Burleigh, describing a Community Convention held in Boston in the last week of December, 1843, the first exposition of the system in that city:

`Garrison spoke while I was in, and spoke well, but not in accordance with the views of the community leaders. Collins said a few words. Two or three good speeches besides were made, and there was considerble interesting talk, but not much system or method was manifest in what was said, or much definite information given tending to any specific point. Some noble sentiments were uttered in a happy style, but on the whole I was not enough interested to go in again in the afternoon. I was told that the preceding evening's session had been a grand one; that Channing [not the doctor, who had gone to his rest, but his nephew, William H.] had made a splendid speech, and several others had spoken very well....Brisbane and Channing were to present to-day, I believe, somewhat more in detail, with a view to something practical, the Fourier system of social organization. Had it been convenient for me to attend, I doubt not I should have been much more interested and gratified than I was by the desultory discussions of yesterday forenoon.

`The meeting was well attended, though not crowded; yet I do not remember to have ever seen a larger number of distinct individuals at any one gathering than it seemed to me were there. Abby [Page 184.1] Folsom was present, and had a few words to say—good and to the purpose, too, crazy as she is generally thought to be. One man was there (Lamson by name) who announced himself a sinless man, if I rightly took his meaning. He had a long beard, venerably white—as was also his hair—and was dressed in garments of undyed cloth. A. B. Alcott was there, and S. J. May, and some of the Roxbury and the Hopedale and the Northampton Community people. I had a pleasant chat with Alcott. He classifies the three communities just named as exemplifying—the first, refined and elegant taste; the second, piety, simple-hearted goodness, and honesty of soul; the third, enterprise and reformatory energy. He wants all three to be blended in one association. His little community of himself and Charles Lane, he tells me, is likely to be broken up by various adverse circumstances, one of which is the unfavorableness of the climate to Lane's constitution.'

The year 1840 marked a new era in the progress of Second Adventism. Not only was the `day of probation' drawing nigh—the day on which the univere should shrivel with fire, the resurrection and ascension of the just attend the awful coming of Christ, and the millennium begin, after which the wicked would be raised for their eternal dicomfort—of which the date was at first approximately fixed between the vernal equinoxes of 1843-44; but Father Miller, `the end-of-the-world man,' as he was irreverently called by [Page 184.2] those whose sense of humor was greater than that of his followers, began more freely to extend the sphere of his personal exhortations, particularly in Eastern New England. Though a native of Pittsfield, his labors up to his fifty-eighth year had been almost wholly confined to the border counties of New York and Vermont, until in April, 1839, he appeared for the first time in Massachusetts as a prophet—a reed shaken by palsy, if not by the wind. In December he was again in Boston; and in February, 1840, he saw the publication of the Signs of the Times (afterward Advent Herald) begun, the first of the Millerite organs, which afterward reckoned the Midnight Cry (New York), the Glad Tidins (Rochester), the Millennial Harbinger, etc. From this time to his death he lectured frequently in his native State in halls and groves, expounding his rules of interpretation by which the harmony of the Scriptures was assured, and interpreting by the aid of Revelations the `time, times and a half' of Daniel, on which his destructive calculations rested. It was in Massachusetts that his venerable and sincere presence first failed to restrain the rotten egg, which in those times awaited the utterer of unpopular doctrine, for he was mobbed with missles at Newburyport in May, 1842. A month later we find him holding forth at the first Second Advent camp-meeting, held at East Kingston, New Hampshire, and in the audience the poet Whittier taking notes of the strange, impressive, picturesque scene—a tall growth of pine and hemlock throwing its melanchly shadow over the multitude, who were arranged upon rough seats of boards and logs; the white tents, drawn about in a circle, forminmg a background of snowy whiteness to the dark masses of men and foliage; a hymn pealing through the dim aisles of the forest; preachers thundering from a bower of hemlock boughs. The poet continues:

Suspended from the front of the rude pulpit were two broad sheets of canvas, upon one of which was the figure of a man, the head of gold, the breast [Page 185.1] and arms of silver, the belly of brass, the legs of iron, and feet of clay—the dream of Nebuchadnezzar! On the other were depicted the wonders of the Apocalyptic vision: the beasts, the dragons, the scarlet woman seen by the seer of Patmos—Oriental types and figures and mystic symbols, translated into staring Yankee realities, and exhibited like the beasts of a travelling menagerie. One horrible image, with its hideous heads and caly caudal extremity, reminded me of the tremendous line of Milton, who, in speaking of the same evil dragon, describes him as
``Swinging the scaly horrors of his folded tail.'' To an imaginative mind the scene was full of novel interest. The white circle of tents; the dim wood arches; the upturned, earnest faces; the loud voices of the speakers, burdened with the awful symbolic language of the Bible; the smoke from the fires, rising like incense from forest altars, carrying one back to the days of primitive worship, when
```The groves were God's first temples.
Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them.'''

On the 14th of March, 1844, Father Miller closed the diary of his public labors, and reckoned up his 3200 lectures given since 1832. It was almost the only change in the regularity of his daily life which betokened the approach of `the burning day.' When March had gone out, and April saw not the heavens in commotion, and May had come, the poor old man was heard confessing his error and acknowledging his disappointment, but not his unbelief. October might yet witness the fulfillment of prophecy: `The Lord will certainly leave the mercy-seat on the 13th, and appear visibly in the clouds of heaven on the 22d.' During the interval of ten days, secular business was suspended among the Adventists. In New York, as Mrs. Child records, at a shop in the Bowery, muslin for ascension robes was offered; tradesmen shut up shop, or gave away goods, or dealt more liberial measure, to make their record good with the Almighty—all the while that the ungodly disturbed the meetings with stones and brickbats, and crackers and torpedoes. The Advent Herald issued its last number with a valedictory. And then the sun rose on the 23d, and the sad prophet could only say, `I have fixed my mind on another time, and here I mean to stand until God gives [Page 185.2] me more light, and that is, to-day, to-day, and TO-DAY, until He comes.' Some, however, alleged that the Lord had come, but invisibly, and `closed the door of mercy to the sinner;' and then arose a contention between the orthodox and the `shut-door' party as to which should gain over Father Miller. This was exquisite cruelty, but not without a logical cause. The shut-door faction, given up to fanatical excesses, or neglecting its wordly affairs in a way to call for guardianship or the work-house at the hands of judges and selectmen, did not in the end prevail. The orthodox party became a tame and uninteresting sect like any other, with an indefinite lease of life. The `Come-outers,' who had made with the Adventists the joint convention at Groton, were chiefly from Cape Cod, and appear to have formed a lasting union with them. The Cape is still the country par excellence of camp-meetings and Adventists, and there the wretched Freeman, offering his little daughter as a sacrifice, recalled an almost forgotten superstition.

A Non-resistant Convention was perhaps the last place in which to expect to find the grandson of Captain John Parker. And in truth even then the gentle [Page 186.1] and tender-hearted Theodore regarded none of his earthly possessions more fondly—more proudly, too—than that ancestor's fowling-piece and the musket yielded to him by a grenadier at Bunker Hill—the twin ornaments of his study; while ten years after that Boston gathering, in marrying two fugitive slaves, he gave the husband a copy of the Bible `for the salvation of his own soul and his wife's soul,' and, `with words of equal pertinency,' says Mr. Frothingham, a bowie-knife for the defense of his wife's liberty. Still, in 1840, as we have seen, the spirit of Lexington and Bunker Hill was not exempt from being put to the test. The year before (January 3, 1839) had been issued the first number of the Non-Resistant, a paper which, while not an official mouth-piece of the Abolitionists, represented the peaceful methods to which they had pledged themselves as an organization, and was conducted by William Lloyd Garrison, Edmund Quincy, and Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman—three eminent associates in the antislavery warfare. Mr. Quincy was the chief editor, and furnished most of the original articles, Mr. Garrison's part being confined to the `selections' and to the general oversight. The paper barely survived a couple of years, for the disastrous division in the antislavery ranks in 1840 made it necesary [Page 186.2] to avoid dissipation of forces. Its significance for the philosophic historian is that it is one more proof of the millennial character of the reformatory ferment of that wonderful period. It should not be overlooked, too, that the military provisions of the Constitution prevented many Abolitionists from voting as effectively as did its pro-slavery guarantees.

Chance had given some distinction to Boston as the focus of a doctrine which, though probably to be classed as pseudo-scientific, has had a permanent effect on theological belief through it bearing on the question of moral accountability—we mean phrenology. Those admitted to the intimacy of a late popular physician in Boston remember an ear of Spurzheim's neatly preserved in alcohol; and thousands of vistors to Mount Auburn have had their attention called to the monument which marks his last resting-place. Six years after the German apostle had planted his seed and been himself interred in a foreign soil, the interest already excited in figured and lettered skulls, and bumps, and organs, and `examinations,' was confirmed by the arrival of George Combe, with his dry, unhumorous Scotch mind, his pure and earnest nature, and his considerable reputation as a writer and as a strictly scientific expounder of the truths of phrenology. For nearly two years his lectures were listened to in all the great cities of the Union. In June, 1840, he returned to England. `It was the frequent remark of Mr. Combe,' says Mrs. Child, in her familiar Letters from New York, `that of all nations whose heads he had ever had the opportunity to observe, the Americans had the organ of veneration the least developed.' `Veneration' was marked `full' on the chart made of Father Miller in 1842 by a `phrenological friend,' and on the same chart `Marvellousness' was set down as `moderate.' But the good old man perhaps made some allowance for the prepossessions of the examiner, seeing that the prejudice of another had in that very year laughably betrayed the uncertainties of this sort of divination. His incognito being preserved, as was customary, the phrenologist remarked to his introducer: `I tell you [Page 187.1] what it is, Mr. Miller could not easily make a convert of this man to his harebrained theory. He has too much good sense.' Putting his hand on the organ of marvellousness, he proceeded: `There! I'll bet you anything that old Miller has got a bump on his head there as big as my fist.' Such mistakes seem like a reductio ad absurdum of the whole system; but, other considerations apart, they hardly do more than prove the incompetency or charlatanry of the individual professor who makes them. Every attempt to popularize the result of learning and research is exposed to such disgraces, and it was for this reason that the old Puritans founded Harvard College, expressly to avoid `leaving an illiterate ministry to the churches,' Father Miller himself being precisely one of this kind, and his calculations and predictions being the result of his want of scholarly discipline, though it must in candor be allowed that his theory of Scriptural interpretation is not [Page 187.2] open to this objection from the orthodox. Some of these, by the way, complained of phrenology as favoring fatalism too much. Mrs. Child, on the other hand, hailed it as `the democracy of metaphysics'—a view not less abhorrent to the clergy, whose occupation it threatened to take away.

Both the physics and the metaphysics of the brain were embraced in another rage of the period under review—the still mysterious and scientifically unexplored and unexplained mesmerism. Harriet Martineau, whose experience with `practical' phrenologists had been as ludicrous as Father Miller's, had at least the excuse of bodily restoration—resurrection, she would rather call it—for a profound belief in the virtues of mesmerism. Her letters on this subject were published by the Messrs. Harper in 1845, at which time such advances had been made in this country that teeth were extracted mesmerically, without pain, in Washington, in the certified presence of Congressmen. Nevertheless, in spite of this high indorsement, mesmerists were generally classed among Millerites, Mormons, and other fanatics of the hour. Mrs. Child, writing in 1842 of the `recent phenomena in animal magnetism or mesmerism,' tells her correspondent that she was `ten year ago convinced that animal magnetism was [Page 188.1] destined to produce great changes in the science of medicine, and in the whole philosophy of spirit and matter.' When she goes on to relate how a venerable friend of hers fell into a deadly swoon, in the midst of which she was conscious of being dizzy, and of standing beside her own lifeless body, watching the effort to resuscitate it, she seems to be anticipating those spiritual manifestations which the `Rochester knockings' were presently to revive and rename, but not to originate. Some of the terminology of spiritualism is already to be found in an English work published in 1840, entitle, `Facts in Mesmerism (as Somnambulism, Sleep-walking, Consciousness, Sensation, Mediums, etc.), with Reasons for a Dispassionate Enquiry into it,' by C. H. Townsend.

The great expectations in regard to the therapeutic province of mesmerism have not been justified, but neither have those of the new schools of medicine whose exclusive claims forty years ago were the subject of so much and so vehement discussion. `The Water-Cure applied to every known Disease: a complete Demonstration of the Hydropathic System of Curing Diseases; showing, also, the Fallacy of the Medicinal Method, and its utter Inability [Page 188.2] to effect a Permanent Cure'—such is the modest title of a work translated from the German, and published by the phrenological house of Fowler and Wells, in New York, in 1847. Priessnitz, who was still alive, might have blushed a little at this. As usual, Massachusetts was early in applying the test. The Round Hill Water-Cure at Northampton succeeded Mr. Bancroft's famous school on the same site; and not far away, in the suburb now known as Florence, a blind Æ.sculapius, named Ruggles, profiting by the attractions of the neighboring Northampton Community, established a water-cure on Mill River, which !or a quarter of a century at least found abundant patronage. No such odium attached to hydropathy as to homœopathy, a system originally founded by Hahnemann, and which, about 1840, was beginning to acquire respectability in Boston through the skillful practice of the Wesselhoefts. Nor did either of these important systems fare so hardly at the hands of the `regular' practitioners as did Thomsonianism, a pure Yankee product, whose founder, Dr. Samuel Thomson, was a native of New Hamphire, but practiced largely in Massachusetts, and was long a resident of Boston, where he died [Page 189.1] in 1843. The persecutions to which he was subjected read strangely now, whatever predilection we may have for a learned basis to every profession. Dr. Thomson was self-taught, it is true, but he was sincere and unaggressive; he was undoubtedly philanthropic, and we must now acknowledge that he co-operated with hydropathy and homœopathy in asserting the vis medicatrix naturæ—the most important principle established in medicine during the century—and in forcing the regular school to diminish the quantity of drugs administered, and otherwise to modify its practice for the better. Smile as we may at the doctrinaire who held that `all diseases are the effect of one general cause, and may be removed by one general remedy,' i.e., by restoring the natural heat of the body, starting the perspiration, and clearing away `canker' and `putrefaction,' `we must not forget his opposition to the reckless and frightful use of mercury and the indiscriminate blood-letting which he found in vogue; and the steam-bath alone would entitle him to grateful recollection. `All in time must become Thomsonian,' wrote his son in 1841; but the failure of this prophecy does not excuse the atrocity of his treatment when thrown into prison on a charge of murder preferred by one Dr. French. In Dr. Thomson's autobiography we read (and the extract throws light on the state of society at the time, as well as on the bigotry and malignity of the prosecutor):

`I was then put in irons by the sheriff, and conveyed to the jail in Newburyport, and confined in a dungeon with a man who had been convicted of an assault on a girl six years of age, and sentenced to solitary confinement for one year. He seemed to be glad of company, and reminded me of the old saying that misery loves company. I was not allowed a chair or a table, and nothing but a miserable straw bunk on the floor, with one poor blanket which had never been washed. I was put into this prison on the 10th day of November, 1809; the weather was very cold, and no fire, and not even the light of the sun or a candle; and, to complete the whole, the filth [Page 189.2] ran from the upper rooms into our cell, and was so offensive that I was almost stifled with the smell. I tried to rest myself as well as I could, but got no sleep that night, for I felt something crawling over me which caused an itching, and not knowing what the cause was, inquired of my fellow-sufferer; he said that it was the lice, and that there were enough of them to shingle a meeting-house.

`In the morning there was just light enough came through the iron grates to show the horror of my situation. My spirits and the justice of my cause prevented me from making any lamentation, and I bore my sufferings without complaint. At breakfast-time I was called on through the grates to take our miserable breakfast. It consisted of an old tin pot of musty coffee, without sweetening or milk, and was so bad as to be unwholesome, with a tin pan containing a hard piece of Indian-bread, and the nape of a fish, which was so hard I could not eat it. This had to serve us till three o'clock in the afternoon, when we had about an equal fare, which was all we had till the next morning.'

If Dr. Thomson aroused the ire of physicians whose patients, given up by them to [Page 190.1] die, he succeeded in saving, other classes were incensed by the doctrines of Dr. Sylvester Graham, a native of Connecticut, who preached the moral and physical advantages of a vegetable diet. In the ranks of his opponents one would naturally expect to find the butchers, but Graham contrived to outrage the bakers also, by extolling the superiority of home-made bread. It is ludicrous to read of the stir this caused, and of the measures they took to suppress him. He was lecturing in Amory Hall, Boston, in the winter of 1837, when the bakers' rising took place. The proprietors of the hall, becoming alarmed for their property, closed it on him, and no other could be had. Happily the owner of the new Marlborough Hotel, then nearly completed, offered Dr. Graham the use of his dining-room. The mayor interposed, protesting that he could not protect the meeting with his constables; but the warning was unheeded. The lower story of the hotel was barricaded, the upper stories provided with a quantity of slacked lime and a shovel brigade. The brave proprietor planted himself at the door, parleyed with the mob that [Page 190.2] filled the street, and then, as the crisis approached, gave the signal to the shovellers above, whereupon, the `eyes` having it, the rabble incontinently adjourned. Graham died, by no violence, in 1851, having by his Lectures on the Science of Human Life made numerous proselytes, not yet extinct; and if he failed to establish his system of dietetics, he at least favorably modified the prevailing habit by showing that muscular strength does not depend on the consumption of meat, by popularizing the unbolted flour to which his name was given, and generally by paving the way for the use of the coarser grains which now regularly appear on the most refined breakfast tables. His rank as a benefactor will not seem slight to those who reflect on the gain to the public health and wealth resulting from the enlarged use of fruit and vegetables, and that variety which so distinguishes the American from the European menu.

In 1830 Dr. Graham was lecturing on temperance, some three years before the firt National Temperance Convention was held in this country, and this early advocacy of the good cause made it fitting that he should find shelter in the firt temperance house in America, which the [Page 191.1] Marlborough Hotel had the honorable ditinction of being. In legislation what characterized this later period was the continued struggle between license and no license. In April, 1838, Massachusetts had passed its famous Fifteen-gallon Law—far more stringent than that of Mississippi (1839), which forbade the selling of liquor in quantities of less than a gallon. In 1840 the Massachusetts statute was repealed, with twelve month' notice. How intense the struggle was, was illustrated that year in Boston by the dissensions in the Hollis Street Church, whose pastor, John Pierpont, was arraigned in July before an ecclesiastical council by a committee of his parish. He was charged with `too busy interference' with prohibitory legislation, with legislation on imprisonment for debt, and with the popular controversy on abolition. He had even shown scruples about the letting of the basement of the church for the storage of liquors. The result of the trial was that the connection existing between him and the parish was then and there dissolved—a milder penalty than that which the courts awarded the Rev. George B. Cheever, of Salem, whose Deacon Giles's Distillery [Page 191.2] cost him a few days' imprisonment. But that was in 1835. What further signalized the year 1840 was the `Washington movement,' instituted on April 2 at Chase's Tavern, Baltimore, by six inebriates, for the conversion of drunkards and rum-sellers by moral suasion. Its success did not prevent the subsequent resort to `pledges' and prohibition, but its influence is still visible in the Washingtonian homes which usefully supplement the charities of our large cities.

Like temperance, the woman's right agitation may be said to have passed its fervid stage of growth. It is the youngest of the isms, and the legitimate offspring of the antislavery movement. In 1836 and 1837 two refined and cultivated South Carolina ladies, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, were giving private parlor addresses to women at the North on the subject of slavery. These conferences were presently attended by men also, and before long pulpits were opened to them by Samuel J. May and others. At the May meeting of the New England Antislavery Society, in 1838, all persons, men or women, were invited to become members, and participate in the proceedings. [Page 192.1] As half the slaves were females, this seemed a very rational invitation; but eight orthodox clergymen immediately took their names off the rolls, while the General Association of clergymen in Massachusetts launched a pastoral letter against the speaking of women in public. The division of sentiment on this important question reached a climax at the annual convention of the American Antislavery Society in New York in May, 1840. The chairman, Francis Jackson, of Boston, placed on one of the committees Miss Abby Kelley, a well-known lecturer (afterward Mrs. Stephen Foster), and the split then declared itself. Henceforth the `Old Organization' went its way, welcoming without question all who were opposed to slavery, the `New Organization' declining all fellowhip with women and infidels. At another time it may be in place to narrate what happened a little later in the same eventful year, when the question of the sexes sitting and acting together for a philanthropic purpose arose in the World's Antislavery Convention in London. The two incidents in the metropolis of the Old and in that of the New World make the year 1840 the proper one from which to date the woman's rights movement, and both markedly show its relation to the antislavery cause.

We stop here, but not because our subject is exhausted. One must turn over the newspapers of the time to realize the charaacter of the period 1835-1845, of which we have dwelt on a few phases. We [Page 192.2] have not mentioned the societies for the reform of prisons and their inmates, and for the abolition of capital punishment, nor a host of minor traits, like the popular lectures on anatomy, illustrated with manikins, or Professor Gouraud's lectures at the New York Tabernacle on phreno-mnemotechny—a new sytem of mnemonics in ten lessons of one hour each, insuring `a memory of incalculable powers of retention.' We have not even alluded to phonography, a name first borne on the title of the second edition of Isaac Pitman's Stenographic Hand-Book in January, 1840. What remains to be emphasized, in order to bind all these together into the `spirit of the age,' is the interlacing of them. Theodore Parker, as we have seen, could give attention (not necessarily sympathy) to half a dozen causes. Graham, in addition to temperance and dietetics, we find lecturing on the water-cure in 1845. Fowler and Wells thirty years ago advertised as part of their regular list `the works of Gall, Spurzheim, Combe, and Graham, together with all works on phrenology, physiology, and magnetism; also on the water-cure;' and in the same connection the following titles:—Woman: her Education and Influence; Tobacco: its Use and Abuse; Tea and Coffee; Temperance and Tight Lacing; Phonographic Class-Book and Reader, etc. Their successors have this year (1879) put forth a translation of Deleuze's Practical Instructions in Animal Magnetism. On the other hand, the current list of publications of the New Church Board of Publication, New York, begins with Swedenborg's theological works, and adds what it calls `collateral works,' among which we find Ellis's Family Homœopathy (!). It is but a few years since the Oneida Community gave up, with an effort almost equivalent to a moral scruple, the use of Graham bread as a staple and orothodox article of socialistic diet. In New England, within twenty years, in certain circles, it has seemed strange that any one who was a homæopathist could be at the same time a Calvinist; and Dr. Holmes's intolerance of homæopathy has been deemed inconsistent with his ardent Unitarianism. This may seem ridiculous, but there is here a nexus between premise and conclusion which is real if not logical. We can not pause to point it out.

Compulsory Education in Brooklyn

by F. E. Fryatt

[Page 218.1]

Difficult is an ascent to the `mount of learning' for the unwilling little disciple in the chief cities of the Empire State, but especially in Brooklyn. Let the birds sing ever so sweetly, he knows where, and the brooks flow murmurously in familiar woods; let the apples gleam ever so distractingly in sunny orchards, just beyond the city line; ay, let every breeze and leaflet whisper, `Come'—still he may not listen, but, like the youth who toiled up the enchanted mountain in the Arabian tale, press steadily on, his ears stuffed with the figurative cotton of steadfast aim, lest, hearing the alluring voices on every side, he be tempted to loiter, and turning backward his longing gaze, find himself suddenly beset by all the terrors prepared for those who wander from the `strait and narrow way.' The secret of his hardships lies not in the air, the earth, or the water, nor altogether in his own personality, as compared with that of the `small boy' in other States, but in the more than parental care with which this city provides for and watches over his intellectual growth.

Loves he, `not wisely, but too well,' to roam, then there lieth in wait to seize him, not only the police, but a non-uniformed individual from whom there is no escape—the attendance agent, whose [Page 218.2] mission it is to let loose upon truant scholars and non-attendants the legal `dogs of war,' and woe be to the hapless urchin who becomes the target of his terrible eye! Petitions, complaints, warrants, and commitments are hurled at his devoted head, until he is thrust headlong into the Attendance School—a sort of earthly purgatory in which he may expiate the errors of his youthful way, or insure himself a rapid transit to another institution, whence he will not return until he is duly impressed with the majesty and power of the compulsory law.

Such was the tenor of my conclusions after patiently studying a pile of legal papers, and arranging a collection of notes on the educational statutes of New York.

I remember hearing of the passage in 1874 of an `act to secure to children the benefits of an elementary education,' and of its amendment in 1876, but until now I had not thoroughly realized that every parent is bound under penalty of fine, nolens volens, to cause his children to be instructed at home or in school.

I was sitting in a `brown-study' of the subject, when my library door opened, and Rhene, in her immpetuous way, entered, and flinging down her sketch-book, exclaimed, in a tone of vast discontent: `I can not think what has come over all the children in Brooklyn! Every time this blessed summer that I have wanted a model, this child is in school, and that one is in school, another is studying at home; and there are none to be found on the streets where they were thicker than blackberries last fall. I wonder if they send them to the pound with the dogs?'

`Patience, patience, Rhene.' replied I, soothingly; `I have the key to your puzzle in two words—it's compulsory education. Let me read you the law on the subject. Listen:

``An Act to secure to Children the Benefits of an Elementary Education. Passed May 11, 1874, by the Legislature of New York.

``Section 1. All parents, and those who have the care of children, shall instruct them, or cause them to be instructed, in spelling, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, and arithmetic. And every parent, guardian, or other person having control and charge of any child between the ages of eight and [Page 219.1] fourteen years, shall cause such child to attend some public or private day school at least fourteen weeks in each year, eight weeks at least of which attendance shall be consecutive; or to be instructed regularly at home at least fourteen weeks in each year in spelling, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, and arithmetic, unless the physical or mental condition of the child is such as to render such attendance or instruction inexpedient, or impracticable.

``Section 2. No child under the age of fourteen years shall be employed by any person to labor in any business whatever during the school hours of any school day—''

`Dear me!' interrupted Rhene, her blue eyes opened wide in wonder; `that's the reason, is it? Don't read any more; that's sufficient.'

`If you want any models after three o'clock, you will be sure to get them if you will come with me to the new reform school. It will be worth your while to study faces there.'

`Odious and tyrannical!' murmurs Rhene, catching up her sketch-book and preparing to follow me.

In a quaint old chapel of one of the Brooklyn churches, in Pacific Street, we find the first Attendance School established in America. There are as yet only [Page 219.2] two of these schools, one in the Eastern and one in the Western Dictrict of the city, both founded toward the close of 1878, mainly through the efforts of Mr. R. H. Huntley, chairman of the Committee on Attendance, and his colleagues, Messrs. Cole, Klein, Fisher, McKellar, Fox, and Davies. They form an intermediate station between the public schools and the Truant Home, to the manifest relief of both institutions.

A curious picture of contrasts presents itself to us as we enter the little chapel. On either side and over the platform hang the gayly painted banners and gilded mottoes of some Sunday-school festival, whose withered garlands still depend from dingy roof and wall. A cool soft light shimmers through the green vines that clamber around the pointed windows, and fall on the faces of forty or fifty boys seated on narrow benches on either side the aisle, a few neatly dressed, well shod, and bright, but the majority ragged, barefooted, and forlorn.

Here a dozen mites are poring with troubled countenances over their well-worn readers, there half a score labor painfully over their writing lessons, while a group in the corner, with knotted brows, study the intricacies of a problem in fractions on the blackboard, listening anxiously to the explanations of the master, [Page 220.1] who stands over them, keeping, however, a watchful eye on the rest of the school.

Rhene, who only sees models in these small bits of humanity, has already commenced to sketch them, seating herself conveniently to study their faces. On invitation from the master I follow her example.

The lessons are slowly being learned, the problem in fractions proceeds, and pot-hooks appear on all the little slates as long as the eye of the master watches. But let him step down a moment to explain to us the discipline of the school, and lo! a perfect Babel of sound invades the ear; he does not see the especial offenders, but, as if by intuition, he turns speedily around, selects two or three of them, and, rod in hand, administers correction.

We were informed that these were all bad little boy, expelled from the public schools for truancy, and that if they accomplished their allotted tasks for fourteen week, and were punctual in attendance, they would earn a certificate entitling them to re-admission to the public schools; if not, they well knew what was in store for them at the Truant Home.

`Time and the hour runs through the roughest day,' so at last the problem is finished, the reading class has stumbled or drawled in weary monotone through the appointed chapters, the pot-hooks have been exhibited, books and slate put away, and all sit, with folded arms, in attitudes of unpleasant expectation. The master is going to unfold the law to its victims. He steps down, with the rod still in his hand, fronts the boys, and with a grave, magisterial expression, intensified to suit the occasion, addresses them a follows:

`Boys, attention! I am now about to inform you of a proposed change in the Truancy Law. I presume that many of you, either by personal experience or common report, are aware of the far from agreeable characteristics of the Truant Home. Are you not?'

By way of answer forty pairs of shoulders gradually ascend to the neighborhood of forty pair of ears, and forty pairs of eyes turn so obliquely toward the master that little but the whites is visible.

`Truly this is sufficient commentary on the boys' memories and sentiments of the Home,' whispered I to Rhene.

`The Board of Education, Sirs, finding that fourteen weeks' incarceration in the [Page 220.2] Home has not been sufficient warning to such of you as have been within its walls, and that threats of recommitment have no power to deter you from violation of the law, or to intimidate you to the point of desistance from the evil tenor of your ways, have concluded, after serious deliberations—do you attend, Sirs?—yes, after serious deliberations, have decided to extend the term of sojournment to such of you as prove delinquent from the paths of educational duty to at least one year!'

Here the rod falls with a crash on the desk before the speaker. Thereafter silence fills the room.

The address has had its effect for the time; some are puzzled, some amazed, and some afraid. The majority do not comprehend the words, but over all there hangs a sense of doom.

`Busby redivivus!' exclaims Rhene, as we leave Attendance School No. 1, and taking the cars, depart for Williamsburg, in the Eastern District.

There we find Attendance School No. 2 in the top story of an old public-school building in South Third Street, near Fifth. Mounting the long last flight of stairs, we pause on the landing and listen to the pleasant voice of the master. What is this he is relating? Ah, it is a story, with a suitable moral, you may depend.

A boy will be tried to-morrow for stealing a dress from an old lady in his mother's house. Step by step his career is graphically traced: his first disobedience; his truancy from school; his bad companions' advice; his following it, and being led to lie, and then to steal the dress; his probable commitment to the House of Refuge, and his terrible life there until he is twenty-one years of age. And then the moral of the tale.

Here we peep through the half-open door, and see about sixty boys sitting in attitudes of grave attention, their arms folded, their eyes fixed on the benevolent face of the teacher.

We enter just as the boys are dismissed for recess. Everything, contrary to our expectation, is done in perfect order. Two boys receive the slates and books, and two others hand around the hats; then all file slowly out in divisions, passing down to the play-grounds

`We wished to see how moral suasion suits the ``bad little boy'' of Williamsburg,' explain I, as the teacher approaches us. [Page 221.1]

`My boys,' replies the teacher, with a smile, `are not at all bad; indeed, the majority are very good and clever, poor fellows! It's only their overflowing animal spirits that get them into disgrace in the public schools, and their love of sport; and then their home surroundings! Ah, if we could but instruct the parents!'

`You believe, then, in moral suasion, evidently?'

`I do indeed. When I consider the treatment many of them receive at home, the upbraidings and beatings, the complete misery of their little lives, how can I bring myself to touch them? Of course in rare instances I must, but not so much to give pain as to humiliate them. I desire my boys to grow up into manly men; and in my opinion the rod hardens: it dose not ennoble. Our percentage,' continues the teacher, with pardonable pride, `is ninety-eight. No school in the city can boast a better record than that, and these, too, are supposed to be the worst little fellows in Brooklyn. What a gross mistake!'

Touching a bell at this moment, the teacher leave us, stationing himself near the doorway. Presently, with an orderly tramp, on they come, the sixty little urchins on whom the law has laid its iron fingers—Irish, Germans, Americans, and one wee son of Ham, all more or less `tattered [Page 221.2] and torn,' but flushed, smiling, and out of breath; each glances confidently up into the face of the master in passing him.

Two of the elder boys—none are over fourteen—hang up the hats, and two hand around the books and slates, both parties holding their offices as posts of honor, and soon all are engaged in study.

At leisure once more, the master explains that the Attendance School relieves the public school of it disturbing element and the Truant Home from overcrowding, but that its true mission is to give to truants an opportunity to redeem themselves, and to incorrigibles a chance to earn a good reputation, and thereby salvation from the degradation of imprisonment in the Truant Home.

We remain through the final exercises, note the earnest and even cheerful faces of the little fellows, watch their hearty hand-shakes and cheery `Good-day' as each extends a brown hand to the master, and coming away with the babbling throng, cast our mental vote in favor of moral suasion.

Although compulsory education was authorized throughout the State of New York as far back as 1874, no steps were taken to comply with its regulations until 1877. The initial efforts to enforce the law were met by the violent opposition of the people in general, and the principals of [Page 222.1] both public and private schools. Among the people, the idle, the avaricious, and the extremely poor oppposed it, because it deprived them of their children's earning; the teachers in the public schools, because they feared a lowering of their percentage; the teachers in the private schools, because they considered it a high-handed interference in matters over which they arrogated to themselve supreme control. No one was prepared to accept what was regarded as a tyrannical innovation, but least of all the heads of these pay schools, many of which were long established and famous.

An incident which occurred a few months ago illustrates this feeling. It was an old educational establishment to which Brooklynites refer with pardonable pride; it was elegant and above par in all respects; so was its learned professor. An attendance agent, in the line of his regular duties, called, explained his instructions from the `Board,' and inquired if he could do anything for the professor. That gentleman, being thus addressed, drew himself up to his full height, regarded the truant fficer for a moment, and then loftily asked him by what right he presumed to interfere with the management of such an institution as this. The agent read the law to him. This only incensed the already irate professor still more, for he declared, in high tones, that the law could not possibly be intended to affect such a well-conducted and well-known institute. `Besides,' added he, `we have no truants here; they are all young ladies.' `Good-morning, Sir,' replied the agent; `I'll call again.'

Meanwhile a young gentleman had called at the office of the Board of Attendance with a complaint that his two young sisters—who, by-the-way, were pupils of the above institute—were in the habit of playing truant, and going off to Prospect Park with young gentlemen; he had discovered it, and found it was not an infrequent occurrence, and not wishing to make trouble for the girls at home, he determined to go quietly to the superintendent, whom he knew to be a kindly and honorable gentleman, and ask his advice. The superintendent called at the residence of the young ladies. Only one of them was at home. After a tearful interview on the part of the girl, and passionate promises never to do so any more, but be faithful to her school duties, the official left. [Page 222.2]

The next morning the attendance agent escorted both of the girls to school, handing them over to the surprised professor with these words: `I have brought two of your truants back to you, Sir. Shall be glad to serve you at any time, Sir. Good-morning.'

That the popular prejudice to compulsory education is steadily decreasing is shown by the fact that the office of the Superintendent of Attendance is daily besieged by anxious parents or guardians begging his advice in regard to their refractory little one. The Board of Attendance has undertaken a vast and noble work, and that it is well performed by the superintendent and his five agents will also be shown when it is stated that seven thousand cases of truancy have been disposed of within the past year, the majority of these having been returned, or for the first time placed in their proper schools, the remainder being committed to the Attendance Schools, whence some have passed to the tender mercies of the Truant Home.

One of the best results of the compulsory law has been the breaking up of many gangs of small boys, some of whom had not been near their homes for months. These are ferreted out of their dens—for dens they are—and brought before the superintendent, who, it should be mentioned to his credit, is a faithful and philanthropic worker in the cause. They are questioned closely as to their mode of living, and sent to their homes, accompanied by the agent of the district, and notice given to their parents to send them to school.

As an instance of this herding together, five small children were discovered sleeping under an old barn. They had conveyed thither a mass of rags and straw, which served them for a bed; they subsisted by begging and thieving, and when these resources failed them, they turned to the garbage boxes and swill pails in the better portions of the city, rising early in the morning to forestall the city scavengers. They had comrades who slept in ash-boxes, empty coal-bins, and under stoops; but they preferred the nest under the barn, where they huddled together like rats.

The Attendance Schools have been so powerful an instrument in aiding the enforcement of the law that permanent buildings are soon to be erected for their [Page 223.1] accommodation. Vigorous measures are being taken in other cities, reform schools as adjuncts to the public schools and Truant Homes having proved to be a necessity. New York and Buffalo have sent committees to inquire into the system practiced in Brooklyn. Other towns are also seeking the way, and it is to be hoped that soon all will feel the benefit of a law that admonishes parents so imperatively that they must needs learn that to feed and clothe is but the beginning of their duty to their offpring.

So far the law has twice placed its grasp on the `small boy,' first as a non-attendant, then as a truant; next, as an incorrigible, its iron hand closes over him. He now passes to the Truant Home—

`A house of study and contemplation,

A place of discipline and reformation'—

which, chained, bolted, and doubly barred, keeps its own secrets from the outer world.

Thither, to this grim abode, go Rhene and I early the next morning; armed with lunch-baskets, note-books, and sketching material, we mean to spend the day. A five-mile crawl in the East New York horse-car, a bit of rapid transit on the Jamaica Railway, and a five-minute ride in the oddest of Dutch conveyances, passing the old toll-gate and the flourishing gardens of Cypress Hills, and we halt at the Truant Home, which stands on the old Jamaica plank-road near Eldert's Lane.

The firt impression of the visitor can not fail to be a pleasing one. The main building occupied by the scholars stands back from sight, and one only sees an extremely picturesque old mansion showing a sloping roof overshadowed by majestic trees, a long low front, and a broad piazza with an imposing colonnade. This was once the famous `Snedekor's Long Island Hotel,' of pleasant memory to Brooklynites and old New-Yorkers, but now an adjunct of the Truant Home.

As we enter the gate the superintendent meets us. We are conducted through the [Page 223.2] spacious kitchen of the hotel, with its huge soup boilers and piles of bright tin platers, to a sunny garden beyond. We are reminded of the prison aspect of affairs when the great door is unlocked and we are ushered into the melancholy presence of the ninety and nine little pisoners, sixty of whom occupy the main room, called the Senior Department, the remainder being only separated from them by a glass partition. Never shall I forget my first impression of the despondent boys with awe-stricken faces; tanned and freckled, save here and there that of a pale new-comer, with their closely cropped heads, and full suits of Kentucky jean, each seemed but a repetition of his neighbor.

On entering the Home the boy passes through various processes of mutation. His hair is clipped by an instrument constructed on the same principle as the lawn-mower; the clipping occupies twenty seconds' time, and is done with as little ceremony as a performance of that machine on a bit of greensward. [Page 224.1]

The victim is then seized by two boy inmates of the Home, who enjoy their `brief authority,' stripped, plunged into a bath, and plentifully doused with soap and water, and scrubbed with a scrubbing-brush from crown to heel till he glows again. He is then arrayed in the uniform of dark brown jean, a large gray felt hat placed on his head, and stout shoes on his feet. `Led like a lamb to the slaughter,' he soon finds himself in the dreaded prison school-room, where before the sun sets he is initiated into the rules of the institution, and warned by ocular demonstration of the consequences of breaking them.

The doors being locked and the windows iron-barred, Rhene and I are prisoners for the hour, so we employ our time in studying the situation. Of all the little [Page 224.2] faces before us, not one can be called really a bad one; many have finely cut and even noble features, but the majority are childishly simple and unformed.

The principal of the school takes no notice of our intrusion, but with head bent on his breast keeps up from under his dark brows a penetrating gaze on the flock before him. Behind him on the wall hang three narrow blackboards, labelled `Caution,' `Censure,' and `Disgrace,' each showing its list of victims.

Seated near the platform at his right hand are half a dozen boys whose woful faces, with their swollen eyes and tear-strained cheeks, testify only too well that the rod on his desk has not been idle.

We long for a rush of the free outer air, and are glad, when the noon bell rings, to follow the little ones out to the school grounds—a large open space inclosed by a very high fence, around which are long wooden seats. On the right hand stands a row of trees, shading some gay flower beds and bits of grass-plat; the remainder is bare ground, trodden hard by the tramp of many feet.

`Forward—march!' shouts the principal; and the little army passes, troop by troop, in double file. After many orders and evolutions, they form in open square, and halt, standing in perfect silence under the noonday glare.

A large box is brought out, and placed on trestles near the stoop, and two huge wooden pails carried to a table beyond.

`What is this ceremony?' asks Rhene, turning toward the principal.

`Lunch,' replies he, sententiously.

Again the columns are in motion; this time, in single file, they swing toward the wooden bin, and Rhene, with an expression of high disdain, watches the pilot-crackers shovelled out, two to each boy.

The line passes on toward the pails, each boy pausing long enough to drain a pint cup of milk, and giving way to his successor.

`Scanty nourishment for growing [Page 225.1] lads,' whispers Rhene, as we saunter down under the trees to the lower part of the grounds.

`Yes,'I reply; `and they have not eaten a morsel since seven o'clock—five hours. Think of it.'

We sit in the shade, take our luncheon, and watch a group of boys in a corner; they are discussing oranges, cakes, and other dainties sent them by remembering friends in the outer world, and are evidently the aristocrats of the home. Presently the teacher of the Junior Department invites us to visit his part of the school. He is a bright young fellow, who manages to keep up a sunshine of his own, notwithstanding the gloom of [Page 225.2] his surroundings. As we watch his little flock and hear them recite, we wonder if they will take away with them a touch of his culture to brighten their homes.

As the hour for closing school draws near, the young assistant leads the primaries into the larger school-room. Marshalled with military exactness, they stand line upon line. He opens the piano, and soon scores of voices are singing, somewhat dolefully, it must be confessed, though in fair time:

`I met a lad the other day

That ran away from school,

He doubted all his teacher aid,

And hated every rule.

His books were underneath his coat,

His dinner in his hat, [Page 226.1]

And down upon a cheerless stone,

All sorrowful, he sat.

Oh, fie, fie, truant!

Oh, fie, fie, for shame!

Who can respect an idle boy

Who can not spell his name?'

```They that carrried us away captive required of us a song,''' murmurs Rhene, pensively gazing at the singers; but her gravity is soon changed to delight when the player singles out a boy of perhaps twelve summers, opens an organ near at hand, and bids him sing. The rest of the school remain standing in perfect silence. Hush! listen. It is a hymn to the Virgin, composed by the young player.

`Mary, mother immaculate,'

sings the young voice, faint and low. Now [Page 226.2] it rises in a pathetic wail sweeter than a flute, clearer than crystal, trembling like a bird, to the soft accompaniment of the reed instrument. Once more it rises, faints, and dies; and we leave the room glad of the refining influences of the `divine art' for these young souls.

We are speedily brought down from our atmosphere of loftier contemplation to the stern realities of life at the Home by hearing the superintendent order the `dining-room committee' to proceed at once to the refectory.

We follow the six little lads whose duty it is this week to fill the office, and watch them put on their snow-white aprons, and remove the tin soup plates and cups from three long wooden tables of more than mediæval rudeness of structure. The platters are piled on a fourth table near the kitchen door; iron spoons brought on, and placed in order.

We now follow the boys into another room, and watch the bread-cutting. Here is apparently an old-fashioned hay-cutter; the blade is clean and bright. One boy takes down loaves from an immense pile standing against the wall, a man works the knife, and as each loaf is placed in the cutter, slices it into a box underneath. Two boys fill their arms, and bear away the bread to the refectory. Meantime the superintendent is ladling out soup from a large tin boiler; the plates are all filled, and carried to the three long tables in the refectory; a slice of bread lies near each. A whistle sounds, there comes a tramp of feet, and in march the boys with a quick step. Soon all are standing at the long tables. The master again sounds his whistle, all heads are bowed, and a blessing is asked on the bounty before them, at the close of which the little Catholics of the company reverently cross themselves on forehead and breast.

Not a word is spoken, but the silence is broken by a din of spoons and platters, and we feel as if witnessing a funeral feast. As each boy concludes his meal he wipes his hands on a towel hanging near, folds his arms, and stands with his back to the table until the whistle sound again and grace is repeated by the principal; then ho for the play-ground! where they play in solemn fashion, occasionally [Page 227.1] giving way to bursts of boyish spirits, which, when advancing too far, are speedily checked, in due deference to order—and the Kentucky jeans.

We have visited the dormitories before, coming away with pleasant impressions, marred only by the memory of an ominous `cat-o'-nine-tails' hanging on the wall. Ere we leave we take another look. It is now evening; the clock strikes eight; the lamps are lighted, revealing a hundred snowy little beds and fair white pillows, soon to be pressed by as many weary forms. At the foot of each bed, robed in loose white gowns, with hands clasped on their breasts, kneel the children. It is a [Page 227.2] touching picture! Listen once more! With one voice, as it were, they repeat"

`Here on my bed my limbs I lay;

O, hear, great God, the words I say!

Preserve my friends and kindred dear

In life and health for many a year.

And still, O Lord, to me impart

A gentle and a grateful heart,

That after my last sleep I may

Awake unto eternal day!'

As they conclude with the simple `Now I lay me down to sleep' they remain kneeling for private prayer. We softly say `Good-night,' and come away, hoping that soon in happy dreams the cares and trials of the day will be forgotten.

Ferdinand De Lesseps as Minister at Rome in 1849

by Edwin De Leon

[Page 230.1]

The name and fame of Ferdinand de Lesseps have been so closely identified with the Suez Canal that the fact is familiar to few of his having had two careers. He was in the diplomatic service of his country until his forty-fifth year, and did not commence his efforts in behalf of the great work by which he is now generally known until he had closed that career in a way and for a reason eminently characteristic of the man. He may be said to have been almost born in the French diplomatic service, his father, Matthew de Lesseps, having acted as France's first representative at the court of Mehemet Ali, and for many year having figured in Eastern diplomacy. [Page 230.2]

The son at an early age was enlisted in the same service, commencing with consular duties in or near Egypt, rising to the grade of acting consul-general there, and finally filling the important post of French minister at Rome in 1849, when the old historic city was made a battle-field by factions, and her young republic, under Mazzini, bombarded out of existence by General Oudinot with French cannon.

From the seed of Ferdinand de Lesseps's early intimacy with the young Said Pasha, younger son of Mehemet Ali, and afterward Viceroy, germinated the Suez Canal concession. For it was from the hands of his former playmate, twenty-five years later, that De Lesseps received that grant—the stepping stone to his fame and fortune. The young men, though so widely different in blood, training, and culture, yet had qualities in common which attached them to each other. Both were frank, fearless, gay, and adventurous in temper; both loved manly sports and horsemanship; both had a keen zest for feats of strength or skill, and the management of the unrivalled Arab steeds.

But Said Pasha did not obtain the throne until 1854; and De Lesseps, many years before, had drifted far away from the East, and in 1849 was French minister at Rome—a position equally critical and embarrassing, owing to the vacillating policy of the government he served, at one time encouraging the revolutionists, at another sending them greeting in the shape of shot and shell.

Mazzini (perhap next to Cavour the most remarkable Italian of the century) was the heart and soul of the movement for Italian liberation, and a more enthusiastic and self-devoted patriot no land could boast of. At that period he stood before the world as the first of Romans, and the charm of his society and the contagion of his enthusiasm were caught by the French minister, himself ever an enthusiast for liberty.

No man ever aw and conversed freely with Mazzini (as has the writer) without being impressed with the thorough sincerity and unselfish patriotism of the man, beside whom that soldier of fortune and filibuster Garibaldi was almost dwarfed into an adventurer. The broad open brow, the luminous eyes, the earnest intensity of look, the silvery persuasivenes of voice and speech, and the enthusiasm which glowed under all like a flame, made [Page 231.1] Mazzini an irresistible advocate with men of kindred natures. In the rôle he was then playing at Rome there was everything to assist these personal attributes. For whatever errors may be charged on Mazzini's later acts, when driven to be a plotter in exile, this Roman episode is luminous, and casts no shadow on his name.

The year 1848-49 was memorable as a year of national convulsions—of an upheaval of populations and crash of falling thrones. The Pope, who had commenced as a reformer, but turned into other paths, terrified at the disaffection of his people, fled from Rome in diguise, and left the Romans free to adopt what form of government they might prefer. The Pope's flight was accepted as an abdication, and on the 9th February, 1849, the Roman Parliament proclaimed Rome a republic. Mazzini was declared a Roman citizen, and made a member of the Assembly, and he forthwith hurried to Rome, where he soon was placed at the head of the republic as one of three Triumvirs. He at once prepared for war with Austria, flushed with her victory over Charles Albert at Novara. While they were organizing their forces to resist their avowed enemy, before a month had elaped, France, from whom they had every reason to expect aid, perfidiously sent an army, under General Qudinot, to crush the republic. Yet even against these fearful odds Mazzini inspired his people to resistance. He took the bold measure of assembling all the troops, defiling them in battalions before the palace of the Assembly, and put the quetion of peace or war to them. The universal shout of `War!' that rose from the ranks `drowned in an instant the timid doubts of their leaders,' to use his own language in narrating this event. Louis Napoleon was then President of the French Republic, and Italy never forgave him for this act, which he afterward strove to redeem. After two months' siege, during which time the Romans proved worthy of their old renown, the French gained possession of the heights dominating the city, and threatened to detroy it with their artillery, as they easily could have done. The Assembly, declaring further resistance to be impossible, called on the Triumvirate to treat for peace with the French general. This Mazzini refued to do, saying he `had been elected a Triumvir to defend, not [Page 231.2] destroy, the republic;' and, with his two colleagues, sent in his resignation.

It was at this critical period, when the army of France was sent to Rome, that Ferdinand de Lesseps showed the stuff that was in him. He, as minister of France at Rome, boldly took issue with the French ministry, and denounced the sin and shame of the bombardment of a sister republic, in violation of solemn pledges. He refused absolutely to have act or part in such proceedings, and finding his protest to the ministry and Council of State disregarded, resigned his position, and passed from the service to which he had devoted his life, rather than violate principle, truth and justice; for he surrendered not only his high position, but his diplomatic career at the same time, and met the denunciation not only of the ministers, but also of the National Assembly, for daring to run counter to the action of France. With the franknes and fearlessness of his nature, M. De Lesseps confronted his accusers and adversaries, and in a printed brochure of thirty-eight pages, under his own signature, dated 25th August, 1849, with merciless logic and irrefragable facts, vindicated himself, and hurled back the denunciations of his accusers in the cabinet and the Assembly.

That vindication (presented me by M. De Lesseps when he came on his new private mission to Egypt in 1854 to agitate the Suez Canal question) is now lying before me, and a few extracts from it will open a new page of Roman history as well as of personal biography. In this defense he convicts the ministry of falsehood and treachery, and furnishes a curious chapter of history, from extracts from notes daily jotted down by him from the 15th of May until his departure.

The pamphlet is divided into three parts: firstly, a reply to the ministry; secondly, appearance before the Council of State; thirdly, reponse to the report of the Council of State.

His defense commences thus: `The ministry which, after confiding to me, under circumstances of the most critical kind for its own existence, a mission bristling with difficulties, and which, its own peril passed, so easily abandoned me, wthout even deigning to examine into my acts, has also instigated public attacks on me from the highest national tribunal, before the Council of State, [Page 232.1] charged with the examination into my conduct, had even commenced its inquiry. I have been slow in using my right of self-defense, and I now do so with all reserve, moderation, and sincerity, as becomes a man who, through respect for public opinion and his own dignity, will not imitate the arts of his adversaries. Yet for this I am denounced as having taken too great a liberty. I am accused of insubordination; and because a simple statement of the facts lays bare the policy under which I have been so unreasonable as not to permit myself to be crushed silently, they again assail me with new blows—always in advance of an inquiry into the facts—in the meetings of the Legislative Assembly of the 6th and 7th of August. I shall therefore briefly respond to the later allegations of the ministry, and shall then show the character of the examination made by the Council of State, as well as its report, based thereon, which, by another peculiarity in this strange affair, was first made known to me through a publication in the official Moniteur of the 22d August.' [Page 232.2]

He commences by complaining of the use and falsification of a private letter addressed by him to M. Drouyn de Lhuys, his personal friend, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, by the then minister, who attempted to prove that this letter was the moving cause of the French occupation.

By a citation of dates M. De Lesseps proves the falsity of this statement, and at the same time reveals the remarkable fact that from the 10th May to the 1st of June he was left by the ministry without one word of instruction, or response to his repeated requests for such answer or instructions, were it but in the words `Yes' or `No' by telegram.

The ministry was silent, evidently intending to make their representative their scapegoat, should it be necessary for their own safety. But they found to their cost that their scapegoat had sharp horns, and they came badly damaged out of the conflict they had provoked. M. DeTocqueville and M. De Falloux were the chief assailants of M. De Lesseps in the Assembly, and to these gentlemen he pays his respects, [Page 233.1] politely proving their utter ignorance of the facts of the case on which they dogmatized so arrogantly.

`In my answers to an investigation which lasted four hours,' he goes on to say, `I have covered all the facts of the case, I have shown how impartially I judged the internal condition of Rome, absolutely free, as I was, of all political prejudice or private interest. Intercepted by the ministry at Paris a few days after my return from Madrid, on my way to Berne, my new post, I only accepted a temporary mission to Italy which was then offered me, and could have had no preconceived policy to carry out. My sole purpose was, if possible, to prevent a renewal of hostilities between the French forces and the Romans, and to avoid any misunderstandings between them. But chiefly to avoid the destruction of the Roman Republic by our arms, was the point on which my attention was fixed on leaving Paris.'

He proves that M. Drouyn de Lhuys, one of the cleverest heads in French diplomacy, was equally anxious to keep the peace with Rome, and placed him in relations with M. Accursi, Minister of the Interior at Rome—then an envoy to France—who was to meet him at Toulon, and furthermore that Drouyn de Lhuys placed him in immediate communication with Mazzini through a mutual friend, an Italian.

The `notes' of M. De Lesseps, referred to above, contain some curious facts. Among others, he cites the opinion of the captain of an American man-of-war, who, having visited the defenses, declared that it would require at least 30,000 or 40,000 men and a protracted siege to take the city. In this opinion our American was right, and Lord Napier, captain of the Bull-dog, expressed the same opinion. De Lesseps's opinion of the policy to be pursued is thus briefly sketched:

`It were unworthy of France, under the pretext of diputing Austrian influence in Italy, to charge herself with the odious task which the policy, natural tendencies, and interests of that power have devolved upon her. Austria has ever been better informed than we as to the opinions which constitute the strength of parties on the peninsula. She knows the horror inspired by the government of priests in the Roman mind, and would gladly see us charge ourselves with a restoration more political [Page 233.2] than religious, one greatly more desired by absolutism than by the Church.

`Should we seek to occupy Rome by force, without the papal sanction, we will be greatly embarrassed. Certainly our soldiers can triumph over mere material difficulties, but that is the smallest consideration. For should we crush the republic, the Pope will not return under the conditions we must impose upon him. M. D'Harcourt agrees with me on this point. We should therefore be forced into a permanent occupation. We would finish by losing our influence over all parties, and forfeiting all the objects of our expedition. Our efforts and expenditures will end in uniting against us the passions of the whole Italian people.'

These statements M. D'Harcourt confirmed at the Council of State, of which he was a member, expressing astonishment that M. De Lesseps should be blamed for conduct of which the Council had previously approved, as he personally knew. But his opinion was overruled, although, as the testimony of an able and eminent statesman, it carries great weight with it, and makes the vindication conclusive.

In the third division of M. De Lesseps's plea there occur some reflections on the `theory of the infallibility of instructions,' which are ingenious and forcible. He says: `The theory of the infallibility of instructions inaugurated by the report of the Council of State overturns all received ideas on diplomacy, making an ambassador but an automaton, without the power of initiating anything, and binding him with a chain which prevents his making any movement under circumstances unforeseen, or not literally explained by his government in advance. For my own part, while insisting that neither in letter nor spirit did I act against any instructions, I yet can not admit the doctrine, and proceed to lay down the true principles from indisputable authorities.' After which he quotes from Marten's Diplomatic Manual to sustain his position, as well as the instructions of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, which say, `Your enlightened judgment must guide you, according to the circumstances; for to make your instructions more precise we should require detailed information as to the condition of the Roman States, inaccessible to us;' and he triumphantly adds, `Must, therefore, all that was said to me by M. Drouyn de Lhuys, by M. Odilon Barrot, and by the President of the Republic [Page 234.1] [Louis Napoleon], count for nothing, as weighed against this dictum of the Council of State?' He then quotes largely from the declarations of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in his proclamations, and explanations to Parliament, as to the scope and object of the Oudinot expedition, one of which gives him discretionary power, thus: `As to the real purpose and scope of this expedition, to preserve them intact in spite of all eventualities, by decision of the cabinet we have sent to Rome an envoy who enjoys our entire confidence, and who has proven under difficult circumstances that he would ever advocate the cause of liberty and humanity. M. De Lesseps has been chosen as that envoy.'

The justification of this eulogium by the minister thus sent was the moving cause of his withdrawal from the diplomatic service. He would palter neither with truth nor justice; he would not lend himself to a policy equally cowardly and cruel; nor sanction the crushing out of a young republic whose baptism of blood and tears appealed to the sympathy of every enlightened mind and generous heart in Europe. Under the timid and truckling policy of the then French cabinet the crime against the Italian people was perpetrated, equally against policy and principle, and years since Ferdinand de Lesseps stood justified before France and the world for the attitude he then assumed and the predictions he then made. It is a curious fact that Louis Napoleon but ten years later, when Emperor, should have taken M. De Lesseps into his confidence, and exerted all the weight of his then powerful influence in behalf of the Suez Canal scheme, essentially aiding in its speedy execution.

Equally curious is it to speculate on the consequences that might have resulted to Mr. De Lesseps and the world had his government not disapproved of his action at Rome, and had he continued in his diplomatic career. For when he came to seek that concession in 1854 he was upward of fifty years old—an age in which few men change the whole direction of their thoughts and labors, although it can not be doubted that his diplomatic training aided greatly in his successful prosecution of his work. For the natural difficulties in cutting through that narrow isthmus of sand were as nothing to the international rivalries and jealousies to be removed [Page 234.2] before spade or dredging-machine could be set to work efficiently. The Suez Canal had to be cut as much with tongue and pen as with pick and shovel, and to this work the ever-ready tongue and pen of the ex-diplomate were invaluable adjuncts. Like Cleopatra,

`age can not wither him,

Nor custom stale his infinite variety.'

Although past the allotted Scriptural term of man's life, M. De Lesseps is as youthful in body, brain, and heart as men twenty years his juniors, and the charm of his manner and presence and vivacity as unflagging as when he went on that mission to Rome just thirty years ago. The only indications of the touch of time are to be found in the plentiful snowy hair which crowns a vivacious countenance, a healthy complexion, and a lustrous eye. With a family of small children clustering around him, and a lovely young wife, he seems to have renewed his youth by some process like that which Bulwer assigned to Zanoni; and even now, like Alexander, is sighing, not for new worlds to conquer, but for new canals to cut in Greece, in Africa, and in America.

One curious trait of the man, from youth to age, has been his utter incapacity for concealment of his plans or purposes, or indirection of any kind. He has always taken the world into his confidence, and gone to his object straight as an arrow to its mark, with a conviction of his own success always which has greatly assisted in his attaining it. The frankness with which he admits his changes of conviction is a key-note to his character. In the defense from which I have been quoting he says: `I can not see why I should be blamed for not having persevered in following up an erroneous appreciation of the situation. No man is infallible, nor is there any representative man who does not find good cause under altered circumstances to rectify his original impressions, without incurring the reproach of inconsistency.'

But space will not allow an extended notice of the personal traits of a man who has stamped himself on his era, and whose career, like a bright sunset, throws as brilliant hues over the heavens as when it rose up to public view more than a quarter of a century ago.

The Shepherds of Colorado

by A. A. Hayes

[Page 193]

As I sat, on a summer afternoon, on the balcony of El Paso Club, at Colorado Springs, I found myself inclined to meditation. Before me, and not far away, rose that beautiful Cheyenne Mountain (Chy-ann, they call it in the West) of which poor Fitz Hugh Ludlow said: `Its height is several thousand feet less than Pike's, but its contour is so noble and massive that this disadvantage is overlooked. There is a unity of conception in it unsurpassed by any mountain I have ever seen. It is full of living power. In the declining daylight its vast simple surface becomes the broadest mass of blue and purple shadow that ever lay on the easel of nature.' I felt that I quite agreed with Mr. Ludlow, even if I failed to put the matter quite so expansively; and then my attention was diverted by a mule team, with the driver lying on his load, and just over it a sign, on which was, `Wines and Liquors'—very large—and, `for medical purposes'—very small; and I thought that it would befit a man to be on good terms with his doctor in this place, even if he belonged to the `Moderate Drinkers' Association. Next it came forcibly to my mind that a wandering writer might think himself exceptionally fortunate to find, at the base of the Rocky Mountains, a capital club with sage-green paper on the wall, if you please, and a gilt dado, and Eastlake furniture; and then I could not help thinking how little our people really know of the history, or geography, or resources, of this part of their great country.

In 1540 Coronado was sent into this region by those old fellow-Spaniards of his who were consumed with the auri sacra fames, that fierce hunger for gold, which induced them to scour the earth in search of it, just as it has sent a good many people who are not Spaniards into regions wild and desert. Eighty years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth he was perilously traversing the San Luis Park, and perhaps seeing the Wet Mountain Valley lying, as it does to-day, green and fertile between the two ranges; and he went away disappointed, after all. Then,in 1806, when Mr. Jefferson was President, and Aaron Burr was engaged in his treasonable conspiracy to found a new empire west [Page 194.1] of the Alleghanies, General Wilkinson ordered Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, an adventurous and persevering officer of the United States army, to proceed westward, and explore the region between the Missouri and the frontier of Mexico. He left St. Louis on the 24th of June, and camped in the foot-hills at this point on the 25th of November. Now I had made the same journey in 1879, and beaten Pike hollow, for I left St. Louis at 9.15 P.M. on a Thursday, and arrived at the same place as he at 5 P.M. on Saturday, and I would not camp for the world, but was assigned a room by a hotel clerk with eyeglasses. I sympathized with Pike in one thing, however, as must many travellers, including the Englishman who wouldn't jump the three-foot irrigating ditch because he `couldn't tell, by Jove! you know, that the blasted thing wasn't three-quarters of a mile wide.' Pike saw the great peak on the 15th of November, when he says that it `appeared like a small blue cloud.' On the 17th he `marched at the usual hour, pushed with the idea of arriving at the mountains; but found at night no visible difference in their appearance from yesterday.' And on the 25th he again `marched early, with expectation of ascending the mountain, but was only able to camp at its base.' Poor Pike! he was modest, for he called it Mexican Mountain, and left others to give it his name; and he was a brave patriot, for, after serving his country faithfully, he laid down his life for her at Toronto in 1813.

Again, in 1843, Fremont, the `Pathfinder'—now living quietly in Arizona as Governor of `the Marvellous Country'—reached the base of this peak, and wrote about it; but still, in the imagination of the average American citizen, it lay beyond the `Great American Desert,' as remote as Greenland, as mystical as the Delectable Mountains. Of white men only a few saw it—the scattered trappers and fur traders, camping, perhaps, on the Fontaine, and drinking from the Soda Spring (price nothing per glass), as they passed down from their little forts to winter on the Arkansas, and perhaps it was some of them who gave utterance to the sentiments which a Western poet has paraphrased as follows:

`I'm looking at your lofty head

Away up in the air,

Eight thousand feet above the plain

Where grows the prickly-pear. [Page 194.2]

A great big thing with ice on,

You seem to be up there.

`Away above the timber-line

You lift your frosty head,

Where lightnings are engendered,

And thunder-storms are bred.

But you'd be a bigger tract of land

If you were thin outspread.'

It was the `old, old story' which turned the tide of migration in this direction. People probably never wanted gold more than after the panic of 1857, and the reports of its finding here in 1858 caused such a stampede across the plains as has never been equalled, except in early Californian days. Events moved rapidly, and in the winter of 1860-61 a Territorial Legislature, numbering some twenty-five devoted patriots, met at Colorado City, just about where Pike and Fremont had camped. Candor compels one to state that the surroundings were not those of grandeur or pomp; rather of a stern and Spartan simplicity. The State-house is still standing. Tradition states that it contained three rooms; in one the members met, in one they slept, the third contained the bar! In the course of the proceedings a motion was made to transfer the seat of government to Denver. `And we carried our point,' said a most entertaining pioneer, with whom it was my good fortune to converse, `because we had the best wagon, and four mules, and the most whiskey. In fact,' he added, sententiously, `I rather think that we had a kind of a wagon capital most of the time in those days.'

The Colonel and the Commodore rode into Colorado City from the north one bright moonlight evening, musing on its departed glories. In the pale, glimmering light the rear view of a pretentious brick and adobe building brought faint suggestions of Syria to their minds, and the flat-roofed dwellings of Palestine. The Commodore with a pensive air drew his pencil from his pocket. Alas! another moment dispelled our visions: in this Oriental dwelling they bottle lager-beer; in a wooden building opposite they drink it (largely). I believe that `Hay and Feed' are sold in the ancient Capitol. A young lady, accompanied by a gentleman in a linen duster and wide felt hat, passed in a buggy, and was heard to ask, `Oh, ain't this real pleasant?' and a stray burro, emerging into the road, lifted up his voice in a wail that sounded like a dirge [Page 195.1] for the departed statesmen and lost greatness of Colorado City. The Commodore murmured: `Sic transit gloria mundi. I know that amount of Latin, anyhow;' and struck the horse viciously with the whip. Later on, he was seen drawing, with a savage expression on his face—an expression altogether indicative of vanished illusions.

But if Colorado City is a thing of the past, Colorado Springs is a bright and flourishing little city of the present. When one conceives, however, the intention of describing it, he is fain to ask himself, `What shall the man do that cometh after the king?' Not only has the special correspondent bankrupted himself in adjectives long ago, but, as is well known, a charming lady writer, whose praise is in all the book review columns, has established her home in a pretty vine-clad house on a pleasant street in the town itself, and made due and varied record of her impressions and experiences. The colony (for such it is, and containing [Page 196.1] now some 4000 souls) lies on a little narrow-gage railroad, starting at Denver, running at present to Southern Colorado and San Juan, and destined and confidently expected, say its friends, to establish its ultimate terminal station in one of those `halls of the Montezumas' of which we so often hear. It is a charm of this country that its residents are filled with a large and cheering, if somewhat vague, hopefulness, and there is no doubt that the station agent at Colorado Springs beguiles his leisure, when not selling the honest miner a ticket for El Moro or Alamosa, with roseate visions of dispatching the `City of Mexico Fast Express,' and checking luggage for Chihuahua and Guaymas. The little city is undeniably growing, and it has pleasant residences, well-stocked stores, water from the mountains, and a college and gas-works in prospect. An inspection of the forms of deeds of property and of the municipal regulations will satisfy the most skeptical inquirer that the sale of beer, wines, and liquors is most strictly prohibited, unless `for medical purposes,' and on the certificate of a physician. Now the Colonel knew that the town was founded by some worthy Pennsylvania Quakers, and he told the Commodore all about these regulations, and how rigid and effective they were; but he regretted to notice a tendency on the part of the latter worthy to disbelieve some of the statements made to him, especially since his visit to Colorado City. He made a remark, common to naval men, about `telling that to the marines,' and went out. In a short time he returned, and [Page 196.2] with a growing cynicism of manner proceeded to demonstrate, with as much mathematical exactness as if working up his longitude or `taking a lunar,' that the support of the number of drug stores which he had seen would involve the furnishing to each able-bodied inhabitant of a per diem allowance of two average prescriptions, one and one-half tooth-brushes, three glasses of soda (with syrup), five yards of sticking-plaster, and a bottle of perfumery. He also muttered something about this being `too thin.' During that evening he was missed from his accustomed haunts, and in the morning placed in the Colonel's hands a sketch which he said was given him by a wicked young man whom he had met in the street. It purported to represent a number of people partaking of beer in a place which bore no resemblance to a druggist's shop; but as the Colonel knew very well that such practices were prohibited in the town, he assured his friend that it must have been taken in some other place.

Colorado Springs it was that killed poor Colorado City, only about three miles to the westward, and all that is left to the latter is the selling of lager-beer in serene lawlessness, while the former is the county town, and has a court-house, and a fine school building of light-colored stone, and a hotel very pleasantly situated in view of the mountains. Down from the Divide comes the Monument Creek, joining, just below the town, the Fontaine qui Bouille, which we shall by-and-by see at Manitou, and away up in the Ute Pass. Along the wide central street or avenue (and what fine names they have!—Cascade, Willamette, Tejon, Nevada, and Huerfano), and up the grade toward the pass and the South Park, go the great canvas-covered four-mule teams, bound, `freighting,' for Fairplay, Leadville, and `the Gunnison.' But we must go five miles northwest (the Commodore would ride his burro Montezuma, and the Colonel positively refused, and took a horse), and climb Austin's Bluffs, and look out. To the north rises the Divide, nearly as high above the sea as Sherman, on the Union Pacific Railroad. Westward the great mountains seem to have taken on thousands of feet in height, and to loom up with added grandeur. Away at the south, whither the course of the Fontaine is marked by the line of cottonwood-trees, are seen the [Page 197.1] Sierra Mojada, and on a clear day, the Spanish Peaks: and to the eastward stretch, across two States, and afar to the Missouri, the great `plains.'

It was to this pleasant region that the Colonel and the Commodore, after their researches, already chronicled, among the cattle ranches farther south, had come in search of fresh fields and pastures new; and they were not long in discovering that El Paso County was famed for it sheep, and the quality of its wool product. It stretches from a point well over the range, out toward the Kansas line some seventy-two miles, and from the Divide on the north well down toward Pueblo; and there are between 150,000 and 200,000 head of sheep returned as held this year within its borders. Although in many respects the sheep business is less attractive than that of cattle-raising, it deserves attention as an important and growing industry, and it is doing very much for the prosperity of the country. There is, to be sure, something exciting, and, in a sense, romantic, about the steer and his breeding, while the [Page 197.2] sheep is a quiet and modest animal. One can fancy the broad-hatted `cow-boy' on his fleet horse, and throwing his lasso at full gallop, as feeling himself a kind of Spanish toreador, and perhaps imparting a spice of danger into the chase by flaunting a red scarf in the eyes of the lordly bull. The Mexican herder, on the other hand, plods monotonously after his flock, and all the chasing is done by his shepherd dog, while I know of but one man who was ever able to find anything alarming in the nature of this simple animal. This worthy, desiring a supply of mutton for his table, shot one of his neighbor's sheep, and was overtaken by the owner while carrying it away on his shoulder.

`Now I've caught you, you rascal,' said he. `What do you mean by shooting my sheep?'

Sternly and grimly replied the accused: `I'll shoot any man's sheep that tries to bite me!'

But the gentle sheep does not lack friends and adherents, especially in El Paso County. It may here be stated that between the flock and the herd, there is [Page 198.1] an irrepressible conflict. The sheep puts in a mild plaint to the effect that when he is nibbling away at the grass in company with his relations and friends, the steer comes in with a party and `stampedes' him, and sets him running so far away that sometimes he can not find his way back, also that the steer stands a long time in the water, and tramples about there, and makes it so muddy that he (whose cleanly habits are well known), is debarred from drinking. He further deposes that while he stays at home, on his master's range, the steer is a first-class tramp, and roams about, trying to get meals from the neighbors. To this the steer disdainfully replies that no well-bred cattle can associate with such mud-sills as sheep, and that the latter gnaw the grass so close that there would be nothing left for him in any case. It is a clear instance of `incompatibility of temperament,' and a separation has generally to be effected.

Sheep are kept in many parts of Colorado, but they have a special hold on this county, and have done a good deal in the way of dispossessing the cattle, the taking up and inclosure of water privileges tending materially to that end. This county affords a favorable opportunity for studying the life and work of the shepherd, for although there may be more sheep in some of the others, the wool from this neighborhood commands a high price, and it is claimed that the growth of grass and weeds here is particularly suitable for food.

The public lands of the United States are divided into two classes—those held at the usual price of $1.25 per acre, and those which lie in sections alternate with railroad lands, and are consequently put at $2.50. It is on the cheaper ones that the prospective sheep-owner wishes to settle, and his first object is to find that one great and important requisite—water. He examines the county map, and finds the public domain laid out in `townships' measuring six miles each way. Each township is divided into thirty-six `sections' of 640 acres each, and these again into `quarter sections' of 160 acres. Of a quarter section the whole, three-quarters, one-half, or one-quarter (the minimum) can be had in one of various ways. The sheep man finds a stream, which we will suppose to run in one of the two courses shown on the diagram, which represents [Page 198.2] a section of 640 acres. In the case of the lower stream his plan is simple. The law requires that his plots of forty acres each shall touch along one side, and plots Nos. 13, 14, 15, and 16 will give him 160 acres and a mile of water frontage. In the former case, after taking No. 1, he must take either No. 2 or No. 8 (containing no water) in order to secure Nos. 6 and 7. This land can be had in different ways. In the first place, there are sales held by the government, at which any amount, great or small, down to the minimum, and within the offerings, can be taken by the highest bidder; and portions offered and not sold can be taken subsequently at $1.25 per acre. Next, each man can `preempt' 160 acres, i.e., give notice that he is going to take it up, and receive patent at the end of either six or thirty months, for $1.25 per acre and fees. Next, again, he can occupy 160 acres under the Homestead Law, and having actually lived on it for five years, secure title, paying only fees—a fact which is respectfully commended to the attention of Socialist orators. But there may not be `offered lands' which suit our friend; and although he may have his 320 acres, and be debarred from singing,

`No foot of land do I possess,

No dwelling in the wilderness,'

he may require much more, and find no man who wants to sell out to him. Now Uncle Sam gave the soldiers in the civil war the right to 160 acres each, only requiring them to take them up and live thereon five years, from which, up to four years, was deducted the time of their military service. Some of the boys in blue only took up portions, and the Solons at Washington then said that they should not suffer for this, and that `scrip' should issue to each one for the forty, eighty, or 120 acres which he had failed to take [Page 199.1] up. The beauty of this and other scrip, such as `Louisiana,' `Sioux half-breed,' etc., is that it can be bought, and the purchaser can locate, in forty-acre parcels, where he pleases. Thus, by paying perhaps at the rate of $3.50 per acre for scrip, our sheep man can secure plots Nos. 11 and 12, and more in that direction, also perhaps a nice spring near by, and, what he most wants, land long another water-course three to five miles away. Between, therefore, his two water frontages his sheep can roam, for no one will take up this waterless tract. Between him and his next neighbor there is a courteous understanding that each shall use half the space. Then up go his wire or post-and-rail fence around the springs; perhaps some more divergent water-courses are secured; and now

`He is monarch of all he surveys,

His right there is none to dispute.'

Next our shepherd must purchase his sheep, and here come in a good many honest differences of opinion as to the kind which will give the best results. Some will buy cheap `Mexicans,' expecting to breed a better quality of lambs, and then dispose of the original purchase. Others affect the California stock, which, of late years, has come into favor in some quarters. The weight of opinion, however, would undoubtedly incline our enterprising [Page 199.2] young ranchero to buy sheep on the spot in good condition, and, what is very important, thoroughly acclimated. His `bucks' (say about three to each hundred ewes) will generally be Merinos. In the autumn, we will say, then, he begins operations under favorable auspices. His cabin is very plainly furnished, and his `corrals,' or yards and sheds, properly constructed, and in readiness. For feeding in stormy weather he has enough hay safely stored away; and after due care and inquiry, he has secured an experienced and competent herder—better an American. At daylight all hands are called to breakfast, and soon after the bleating flock are moving over the range, and the herder, with his canteen slung over his shoulder, and probably a book in his pocket, has whistled to his shepherd dog and started after them. During the whole day they graze on the short grass, going once to water; and afternoon sees them brought back near to the corrals, in which, later on, they are again confined for the night. Day after day, week after week, month after month, pass in monotonous round; and then the cold weather comes, and the herder puts on a thicker coat, and reads less, and walks about rapidly, and stamps his feet for warmth. And then some day, when he is far away from the ranch, there comes on that dreaded enemy of sheep-raising [Page 200.1] —a prairie snow-storm. With but little warning the clouds have gathered, and the snow is falling in thick and heavy flakes. The sheep hurriedly huddle together, and no power can make them move. The herder may have had time go get them into a gulch, or under a bank; failing in this, there is nothing for it but to stay with them, sometimes a day and a night, and trust to getting them home when the storm is over. Not far from Colorado Springs is a gulch called the Big Corral, in which more than one thousand sheep were lost a year or two ago, having followed each other up to the brink, and fallen over into the deep snow. Nor did the Mexican herder ever return to tell the tale, for he shared their fate. It is with the snow-storm, indeed, that the dark side of the Colorado shepherd's life is associated, and the great tempest of the [Page 200.2] spring of 1878 left a sorrowful record behind it. It must be mentioned that sheds are an innovation, that some ranches have none even now, and that before they were built the sheep were exposed, even in the corrals, to the fury of the elements. Per contra, it should be said that no such storm as that of March, 1878, has been known since there were any sheep in this part of the country. On this occasion thousands and thousands of sheep perished. The snow was eleven feet deep in the corrals, and sheep were dug out alive after being buried for two and even three weeks! Their vitality seems very great, and many perish, not from the pressure of the snow, but from suffocation caused by others falling or crowding upon them. It is asserted that they sometimes, while still buried, work their way down to the grass, and feed thereon. But our shepherd [Page 201.1] has taken care to have plenty of sheds, and he knows, too, that by the doctrine of chances he need not count on such a storm more than once in ten years, and he faces the winter with a stout heart. Whenever it is possible to send the sheep out, the herder takes them, despite the weather; but when that is impossible, or indiscreet, they are fed at home.

In May comes `lambing,' and the extra hands are busily occupied in taking care of the young lambs. With their mothers, they are separated from the rest of the flock, first in small `bunches,' then in larger ones; and in October they are weaned. In June comes shearing—an easy and simple operation; and, if need be, `dipping,' or immersing the stock in great troughs containing a solution of tobacco or lime, cures the `scab,' and completes the year's programme. Our shepherd sells his wool, counts the increase of his flock after weaning, and if, as is to be hoped, he is a good book-keeper, he sits down and makes up his accounts for the year. It is hard to picture a greater contrast than that which exists between the sheep and the cattle business, the freedom and excitement of the latter bearing about the same relation to the humdrum routine of the former as does the appearance of the great herd of often noble-looking animals widely scattered over the plains, and roaming sometimes for months by themselves, to that of the timid flock bleating in the corral, and frightened at the waving of a piece of white paper. And then to think of the difference between the life of the `cow-puncher' (as he calls himself), riding his spirited horse in the company of his fellows, and that of the herder, on foot and in solitude, is enough to make us wonder how men can be found for the one, while there is the slightest chance of securing the other. And yet, there are many such men, and the Colonel and the Commodore saw and talked with them.

It was through the courtesy and kindness of Mr. J. F. Atherton, of Colorado Springs, that we were first enabled to see something for ourselves of the life and operations on sheep ranches. We drove out of the town on a bright morning, and north and east over the prairie. On the [Page 201.2] front seat sat our guide, philosopher, and friend—a young man of a dry humor, and gifted with a faculty of forcible and incisive expression. Far off in the direction in which we were going rose a high ridge which we must surmount before reaching our destination, and twenty-two miles must be scored off before we could hope for dinner at a small road-side ranch. Had the road been twice as long, the flow of anecdotes from our friend would have made it short enough. First we had a sprightly account of some of the manners and customs of the colony which we had left behind us.

`Temperance town? Not much. If a man wants his beer, all he's got to do is to sign his name in a book, and get a certificate of membership in a beer club, and then he's a share-holder—blamed if he ain't—and they can't stop him from drinking his own beer!'

`You've seen old—,haven't you? Didn't you know that they run him for Senator—just put up a job on him, you know. Blamed if he didn't think he was going to be elected. The boys got a two-wheeled cart, with a little runt of a burro in the shafts, and an everlasting great long pole sticking out in front with a bunch of hay tied to the end. (You see, the burro was just a-reaching out for that [Page 202.1] hay, and that was the only way they could get him to go.) Blamed if the old chap didn't ride round in that outfit, all dressed up in a kind of uniform with gold epaulets, and two fellows behind, one beating a big drum, and the other blowing away at a cornet. He was the worst-looking pill that you ever saw, and doggoned if he didn't put it up that he was going to be elected sure. Well, that night the boys hired a hall; and when he come out to address them, they made such a noise that you couldn't hear a word, and then, in about five minutes, there come a cabbage, and took him alongside of the head, and then eggs, and potatoes, and I don't know what. And when the election come, he had just one blamed vote, and he cast that himself.

`Rain? No; I guess not. But when I was in Pueblo last time—that's the blamedest town, ain't it?—I was caught in a storm, and it turned into hail, and before I got to the hotel, blamed if I didn't turn round three times to see who was throwing stones at me!'

With quaint narrations of this kind, made doubly comical by that manner of telling which the hearer must despair of reproducing, the miles slipped away, until the earth-roofed log-cabin came in sight at which dinner was to be had. At a [Page 202.2] short distance therefrom we saw the white tents of a party from the United States Geodetic Survey. In one of them we found the cook hard at work baking bread and cake, and engaged him in friendly converse. He informed us that in the matter of pay he came next to the chief, and from the account which he gave of the appetites of the party, we were disposed to think that he was earning his stipend. It may be that it was only because our charioteer judged all occupations by contrast with the hardships of sheep-raising, but we found him inclined to underrate the labors of the surveyors, and he told us that they `had a soft thing.'

While we were dining, a man who was sitting near us quietly remarked that he had just lost twelve hundred sheep. With the most perfect nonchalance he went on to say that he and his `pard' had only just come to the country and bought the sheep, that he was driving the wagon, and that his pard, who was behind with the flock, was ill, and lay down, and missed them. To those who know what a showing a body of twelve hundred sheep will make on the plains, this will seem rather like a fish than a sheep story, but it was quite true. Our companions made a show of offering sympathy and advice, but, in confidential converse with us, spoke with a certain lofty disdain of the `tender-feet' (Coloradoan for new-comers), and their efforts to find their lost stock. Nor did they change their tone when the poor man said that he was too tired to search any more, but would pay men to do it for him; and it was left for the Colonel and the Commodore—painfully conscious as they were that, despite their exalted military and naval rank, they were also `tender-feet'—to feel for the sufferers.

Resuming our journey, and after passing a notice of the lost sheep, and a primitive prairie post-office, consisting of a small box on a pole, in which the `cow-punchers'' letters were quite as safe as in any of Uncle Sam's iron receptacles, we met the pard, his long legs dangling on each side of a small broncho, and a calm and happy smile on his face. We made sure that he had found his little flock, and his assurance that he had not seen anything of them elicited the remark from our companions that he `took it mighty easy.' It may give some idea of the character and sparse population of this country to mention that these sheep, lost on Thursday [Page 203.1] night, were found on Sunday, thirty miles away, less some seventy killed by gray wolves and coyotes.

A few hours later, ascending the hill which had loomed up before us all day, we entered a little valley, and came to Mr. Atherton's ranch—a representative one for this region. There were a small cabin, a stable, sheds, a pump at the spring, three corrals connected by `shoots,' or narrow passages, and a curious swinging gate for throwing the sheep into alternate divisions. A more lonely place it is hard to imagine. The short greenish-yellow grass stretched to the horizon on all four sides, and not even a tree or a shrub was to be seen. Before long a few sheep came in sight, then more, then hundreds, and then the herder, in a long dingy canvas coat, walking with swinging stride. Smoke, meantime, was coming out of the iron stove-pipe in the cabin roof, and the herder was busy, as soon as the sheep were safe in the corrals, in preparing the supper. The ranchman does not feel inclined to say, with the late Mr. Motley, `Give me the luxuries of life, and I'll dispense with the necessaries.' On the other hand, he treats luxuries with pronounced disdain, but is not without certain comforts. Of the herder's homemade bread and roast mutton, on this [Page 203.2] particular occasion, no one could complain; nor is `apple-butter' to be altogether despised. Que voulez-vous? If you sigh for the flesh-pots of Delmonico, you ought to have staid in New York, or at least gotten into the good graces of the cook of the Survey party. And, after all, these things are a matter of taste and habit. A genial traveller, whose brilliant sketches used often to appear in these pages, remarked to the writer, when engaged in the discussion of a particularly good dinner: `But you know that this formality, this elaborate cooking, these courses, are all barbarism. True civilization is to be found in the Colorado Desert, where one fries his salt pork on a ramrod, and goes his way rejoicing.'

We heard rumors of ranch cabins wherein a third room was added to the one in which the occupants eat and sleep and the kitchen; but we saw them not, and were yet content. And after the knife had been duly sharpened on the stove-pipe, and the mutton carved, and the tin porringers of tea served out to all, we cultivated the acquaintance of the herder, and a remarkable character he proved to be. The first words that we heard him speak settled his nationality, for, on being told that the owner of the twelve hundred sheep wanted a man to [Page 204.1] search for them, he sententiously remarked, `Hi'm 'is 'uckeberry.' Then his conversation flowed on in a steady stream:

`I was in the British harmy. Left there? Yes; deserted. Then I was in the United States harmy twice. Used to shoot two or three Indians every day, me and two other good fellers. I didn't have no hard duty. Was the pet of the regiment. Then I was brakeman on a railroad. Oh yes, I have been in all [Page 204.2] kinds of business. I'm the champion walker for five hundred yards. Lost $700 of my own money on a bet last winter. Leadville? Yes; I've worked in the—mine. You bet it's the best one there. Lively place? That's so. I used to work all day in the mine, and spar in the theatre at night for twenty dollars per week. You bet they've got the fattest grave-yard in the country in Leadville. A pard of mine saw twelve fellers [Page 205.1] dragged out in one night. Been to Hengland lately? Oh yes, Made $1600 in two weeks. Why do I herd sheep at twenty dollars per month? Oh, just for my health. System's kind of run down. I tell you a feller can just make money in this country, but he's got to have sand,' (It must be explained that `sand`—one of the happiest and most forcible expressions in the whole vocabulary of Western slang—means dogged resolution, or what we call `grit.')

Neither the Colonel nor the Commodore approves of very early rising, but, the next morning, determining to `assume a virtue if they had it not,' they said that it was very pleasant to breakfast at 5:30. Then they saw the sheep run through the shoot to be counted, giving long leaps as they cleared it, and, as soon as the gates of the corral were opened, tumbling over each other as they rushed out to find the grass; and their last sight of the herder, as he stepped off, vividly recalled the atmosphere of Madison Square Garden and the feats of Rowell and O'Leary.

Then again we went to visit the ranch of resident of Bijou Basin—a pretty valley on the Divide—with a pleasant house in the village, and 8000 sheep in ample corrals just over the first hilly ridge. As we drove into this curious little village it seemed steeped in a sleepy atmosphere most strongly suggestive of Rip Van Winkle. Two stores out of three were closed as we passed them; and when we came back, and found one open, the proprietor rose from his bed to make a small sale. The keeper of the second also reclined on a couch of ease, and the third store—Dick's—remained obstinately closed.

`Blamed if I ever see a day seem so like Sunday,' said our cicerone. `If I had to live here, I'd just bottle up and die.'

`Dick's got some beer in his shop,' charitably suggested the second store-keeper, again gracefully stretched on his counter. `He ain't there a great deal, [Page 205.2] but he 'most always leaves the key at the blacksmith's.'

With a singular unanimity a move was made to the establishment of that artisan, whose sturdy blows on an iron wedge were the first signs of life in the place. Two villagers were watching him; the three new-comers joined them; then three residents came up on horseback, and swelled the throng. The blacksmith had no key, and Dick had gone away. The Colonel and the Commodore felt the somnolent influence coming on them; in common with six other able-bodied men, their sole interest in life seemed to be the completion of that wedge, and only the ring of the hammer saved them from the fate of the sleepers of Ephesus. Suddenly there was a cry, `Dick is coming!' and everything was changed. The blacksmith remarked that he `must wash down that wedge before he made another,' and when Dick arrived he took the key from him and opened the door. Then somebody [Page 206.1] said `Beer,' and the majority of the residents of Bijou Basin held a town-meeting in the store: Dick's coming, like that of the prince in the tale of the Sleeping Beauty, had completely broken the spell.

After a talk with our new host, and an inspection of his flocks and corrals and some of the operations in progress, we concluded that no better place could be found than Bijou Basin (where, as an exceptional thing, the family home has replaced the cabin, and the school-house is close to the ranch) wherein to rest a while, and carefully compile some figures, which the reader, unless he intends becoming a shepherd, can readily skip. They apply to the case of a man with capital, coming out, not to take up or preempt land, but to buy a ranch ready to his hand.

Such a one, capable of accommodating [Page 206.2] 5000 head of sheep, could be had, say, for $4000, comprising at least three claims three to five miles apart, also proper cabins, corrals, etc. A flock of 2000 assorted ewes, two to three years old, should be bought at an average of $3 each, say $6000; and 60 bucks at an average of $30, or $1800. A pair of mules and a saddle-horse will cost $275; and we allow for working capital $1925. Capital invested, say, October 1, $14,000.

Under ordinarily favorable circumstances, and with great care, one may expect during May his lambs, and estimate that there will be alive of them at time of weaning a number equal to seventy-five per cent, of his ewes, or, say, 1500, on the 1st of October, a year from time of beginning operations.

His gross increase of values and receipts will then be, for that year, as follows:

1500 lambs (average one-half ewes, one-half wethers),

at $2 each............................................. $3000.00

In June he will shear his wool, and get from:

2000 ewes, 5 pounds each, or 10,000 pounds,

at 21 cents............................. $2100.00

60 bucks, 17 pound each, or 1000 pounds,

at 15 cents.............................. 150.00 2250.00

------- -------

$5250.00

Expenses:

Herders, teamsters, cook, and provisions.... $1835.00

Shearing 2060 sheep, at 6 cents.............. 123.60

Hay and grain................................ 275.00

---------

$2233.60

Losses all estimated as made up,in money):

Ewes, 4 per cent. on $6000..........$240.00

Bucks, 5 per cent. on $1800......... 90.00 330.00

-------

Depreciation:

On bucks, 5 per cent. on $1800.................. 90.00 2653.60

------- --------

Net profits for first year....................... $2596.40

--------

--------

SECOND YEAR.

The 1500 lambs will be a year older, and worth an additional

15 per cent. (or 15 per cent on $3000)................. $450.00

1500 new lambs will be worth, as before................ 3000.00

And there will be of wool from

2000 sheep, 5 pounds each, or 10,000 pounds,

at 21 cents.............................. $2100.00

1500 lambs, 4 pound each, or 6000 pound,

at 21 cents.............................. 1260.00

60 bucks, 17 pounds each, or 1000 pounds,

at 15 cents.............................. 150.00 3510.00

------- -----

6960.00

Expenses:

Herders, etc.................................. $2060.00

Shearing 3560 sheep, at 6 cents............... 213.60

Hay and grain................................. 350.00

-------- $2623.60

Losses:

On ewes, 4 per cent. on $6000...... $240.00

On bucks, 5 per cent. on $1800..... 90.00

On lambs, 7 per cent. on $3000..... 210.00 540.00

--------

Depreciation:

On ewes, 5 per cent. on $6000..... $300.00

On bucks, 5 per cent. on $1800.... 90.00 390.00 3553.60

-------- ------- ------

Net profits for second year........................ $3406.40

THIRD YEAR

The second year's lambs will be worth an additional 15 per

cent., or, say, (15 per cent. on $3000)............... $450.00

There will be 1500 lambs from original 2000 ewes, and, say,

from new 750 ewes (one-half of 1500), not more than 60 per cent.

in first lambing, or say, 450—in all, 1950 lambs, at $2.. 3900.00 [Page 207]

Wool will be:

From 3500 ewes, 5-1/2 pounds each, or 19,250

pounds, at 21 cents............ $4042.50

From 1950 lambs, 4 pounds each, or 7800

pounds, at 21 cents................. 1638.00

From 60 bucks, 17 pounds each, or 1000

pounds, at 15 cents............... 150.00 5830.50

--------- --------

$10,180.50

Expenses:

Herders and fodder.................. $2970.00

Shearing 5510 sheep, at 6 cents.... 330.60

New corrals, etc................... 300.00

---------

$3600.60

Losses:

On ewes, 4 per cent. on $6000.........$240.00

On new sheep, 4 per cent. on $4500.... 180.00

On lambs, 7 per cent. on $3000........ 210.00

On bucks, 5 per cent. on $1800........ 90.00 720.00

-------

Depreciation:

On old ewes, 10 per cent. on $6000... $600.00

On bucks, 20 per cent. on $1800... 360.00 960.00 5280.60

-------- -----------------

Net profits for third year................. $4899.90

RECAPITULATION.

First year's profits.............$2596.40

Second year's profits.............3406.40

Third year's profits..............4899.90

--------

Total.................... $10,902.70

[Page 207.1]

This statement would probably meet with scant favor from an `old-timer,' who would confidently assert that he can `run' a flock of 5000 sheep, year in and year out, at an average cost of fifty cents per head. Such a one (and there are many of them) has perhaps lived twenty years in this part of the country, and tried many kinds of business. He is deeply attached to the soil, and knows no other home. He has spent years and years, it may be, in the mountains, prospecting and mining, and while he may like a soft bed and a tight roof and a good dinner as well as his neighbor, there have been epochs in his life when they, or any one of them, would be no nearer his reach than the joy of a Mohammedan paradise, and `he counteth none of these things dear' when his mind is set on the accomplishment of any object. When this man takes up the business of sheep-raising, he is in dead earnest. At the beginning, at least, he knows nothing, thinks of nothing, but sheep; lives among them, studies and masters every detail of their management, and institutes a rigid and searching economy. He will have good sheep, good corrals, and probably good sheds; but he will care little for comforts in his cabin, and it is well known that one of the most successful sheep men in this region began by living in a cave in the bluffs near Colorado Springs. To loneliness the old-timer is a stranger, and very possibly early habits have made him [Page 207.2] prefer a solitary life. His herder will most assuredly give good value for his wages, and will do exactly as he is told, and know that the master's eye is on him.

`Yes, he was a good herder, when he wanted to be,' remarked an old-timer, `but he liked to be boss, and so did I, and there couldn't very well be two.'

His pencil would be busy with the foregoing estimates, and if such as he were the only ones to engage in the business, then indeed might they be modified.

On the other hand, we will suppose the case of the young man in the East whose health will, he thinks, be improved by a residence in Colorado, or who fairly believes himself inclined and suited to face a life on the plains, `with all that that implies.' This ideal personage, if (and that word must be italicized in mind as well as on paper) he is wise, and wisely advised, will come out on a preliminary visit. He will live for some time on a ranch, and make up his mind how the life and the business will suit him; also, if an invalid, will he most carefully, and with good medical advice to aid him, notice the effect on his health. He will not underrate the monotony of the existence, the isolation, the dead level of the year's progress; and unless he be exceptionally constituted, small blame to him if he invite his hosts to a good dinner, propose their very good health and overflowing prosperity, bid them good-by, shake off the dust of his feet on sheep ranches, [Page 208.1] and betake himself either to some other avocation in Colorado, or to the nearest railway station where he can catch the Eastern express. But, perhaps wisely counting the cost, he remains until he has thoroughly learned the business, then leases before he buys, and then launches boldly out as a full-fledged shepherd. It will not be necessary to recall to him or his kind the old, old truth, the cardinal axiom, that there is no royal road to business success of any sort; and that in Colorado, just as in New York, or London, or Calcutta, or Constantinople, there is no hope for him without economy and industry and strict personal attention, and that, even with them, the fates may be sometimes against him.

To such a one, then, are these figures respectfully submitted, showing returns of something like twenty-five per centum per annum. Comparing them with those previously given in these pages about cattle, he sees that the latter promise him larger but more tardy returns, while the former show smaller requirements in the way of adequate capital, and his wool is a yearly cash asset. As regards variety and attractiveness, and in any æsthetic sense, the poor sheep must clearly go to the wall in the comparison, and the steer be elected to the place of honor `by a large majority.'

It may here be properly remarked that good men can almost always find employment as subordinates, and ought to learn the business quickly, and perhaps do well for themselves.

`I wanted a man to herd sheep,' said, for instance, an old-timer in the hearing of the writer, `and I met one coming out of Pueblo. He said that he would like to work for me. ``Look here,'' said I, ``I won't pay you any wages, but I'll give you 250 lambs, which you must herd as part of mine.'' He agreed to that, and worked for me three years and a half, and until he had to go away and be married, and then I bought him out. The wool had paid all expenses, and he had $2250 coming to him in cash.'

Nor would it be impossible for a hard-working man, with a very much smaller sum at his command than that assumed in the figures, to purchase a few sheep and make a beginning for himself: but, with the gradual absorption of the streams and springs, this is becoming daily more difficult. [Page 208.2]

For the Colonel and the Commodore there was small need to conjure up ideal shepherds, for they found them in El Paso County in every conceivable variety, and heard most entertaining and veracious narratives of their manners and experiences. Successful old-timers, enjoying the results of their past labors, and clad in the sober garb of civilization, laid down the law over social cigars, while youthful beginners, with doubtful prospects, sported hats with an enormous breadth of brim, and seemed to delight in garments of dubious cut and texture and extreme antiquity. In this connection, indeed, there is room for a homily, for it may surely be said that in a new country the incomers who have enjoyed the blessings of an advanced civilization in their former homes owe it to themselves to do all in their power to translate said blessings to their adopted residence. And so, when water has come, and gas is coming to the county town of El Paso, it would be well for youthful rancheros to cease emulating the attire of Buffalo Bill, and make the acquaintance, when they come thither, of a tailor and a boot-black. One of two gentlemen from the Eastern States, visiting Colorado Springs, and calling upon a lady to whom the convenances of life were traditionally dear, apologized for the absence of his companion, whose clothes suitable for such an occasion had been delayed by the expressman.

`Only hear that!' she delightedly cried. `Why, I have been meeting the sons of dukes and earls, with their pantaloons tucked in their boots.' To which the very natural reply was: `So much the worse for the sons of dukes and earls. They would not presume on such liberties in their own country, and it is high time that they were effectually taught that they shall not take them here.' Indeed, there are features of the curious irruption into Colorado of scions of the nobility and aristocracy of Great Britain which are extremely interesting and amusing, and which may justly claim future attention; but at present it may simply be remarked that sheep have no regard for noble birth, and that Piccadilly seems to furnish an inadequate preparation for a successful ranchman.

Then before our observant eyes there passed other figures and faces—two gentlemen from New England, in from a distant ranch; one, after some months' hard [Page 209.1] work, to desipere in loco at Manitou, another to drive sheep to Las Vegas, in New Mexico, at the rate of ten miles per day, through the sage-brush! Next came an Englishman bearing the name of a noble family—a university man of remarkable culture, and manners befitting his birth and education, but in garb and general appearance a veritable figure of fun. Learning that after abandoning a sheep ranch of special squalor, where he had toiled to little purpose, he had been engaged for four months in driving horses up from Texas in company with some Mexican herders, a gentleman engaged him in friendly converse, and finally asked point-blank what possessed him to lead such a life. With great gentleness and courtesy he replied that he was one of Matthew Arnold's `Philistines.' and thus the procession went on.

We were indebted at the last to a very lively and outspoken resident for some illustrations, given us `in dialect,' of the unfavorable side of the shepherd's existence. His experience of men had not been an agreeable one, and an officer of the law appeared with unpleasant frequency at the end of the vistas of ranch life which he portrayed; but the shepherd of Colorado is not the only man who finds fatal enemies in whiskey and cards, extravagance, inattention and laziness, and stupidity.

`Didn't you never here of—?' asked our friend. `He was the worst pill you ever see. High-toned Englishman; always ``blasting this bloody country, you know.'' Come here with $50,000; went away owing $20,000. How is that for high? Blamed if he cared what he paid for anything! Offer him a horse worth $40, and charge him $150, and he'd give you a check. You bet he lived high; always set up the drinks. Didn't take long to bust him. He didn't care what he paid for his sheep. Had 2500 of them, and you used to see thirty or forty Englishmen loafing on him. You bet he didn't have the trouble of selling them sheep. Sheriff did that for him,' [Page 209.2]

`Then there was——. He just put on heaps of style. Flew high, you know—regular tony. He started in with 600 sheep—just think of that; wouldn't pay for his cigars. He used to come into town in great style—four horses to his buggy. Then he come down to three; then two; then one. Then he had none, and had to stay on the ranch. Sheriff sold him up sharp. Then he kept a billiard saloon. You bet he busted on that, because, you see, he used to play with the boys and alway got beat. Then he was a-going about the streets, just everlastingly played out; and the last I see of him he was a kind of rostabout, or dish-washer, to a camping outfit. Wouldn't that just get some of his high-toned relations up on their ear?'

We thought that it undoubtedly would, and we thought, too, with a certain wonder, of the habit of some parents and friends of sending young men to this country who are either mauvais sujets, and better out of their sight, or incapacitated for competition with the keen souls whom they must meet, and then letting them shift for themselves.

But, like the recent writer on Colorado [Page 210.1] in an English magazine, we are giving `the dark side of a bright picture;' and it was only with kindly and pleasant impressions and memories of the gentle shepherds of the plains that the Colonel and the Commodore bade them good-by, and turned their steps toward the grim cañons and lofty mountains holding in their remote fastnesses those silver and golden treasures for which most of the dwellers in this land so eagerly strive. They are kindly and hospitable, these lonely ranchmen, and no one goes hungry from their doors, or lacks a sheep-skin on which to sleep; nor are the lighter graces altogether neglected. We had heard much from one of our friends, the proprietor of a large and successful ranch, of the extraordinary gifts and quaint peculiarities of his chef de cuisine, and had the honor of making the acquaintance of this gentleman. His appearance suggested the Wild Hunt of Lutzow rather than the surroundings of a peaceful kitchen; but we were bound to credit his assertion that if we `would come out to the ranch he would treat us [Page 210.2] kindly. You bet he could cook. He was just on it.' This worthy had run through his cash, and desired to negotiate a small loan. This being effected, he proceeded to invest the funds in a bouquet, which with great courtesy and gravity he presented to his `boss' just before he galloped off. We had understood that he resembled the person of whom Mr. Harte says,

`He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,

And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town;'

and we therefore made record of this little incident as truly pastoral.

And so, as we looked back from the Ute Pass over the plains dotted with ranches away out to Kansas, the lovely lights and shadows were altogether suggestive of the vicissitudes of their occupants' career; and as an abrupt turn shut them out, we recalled admiringly the herder's epigrammatic saying: `A man can make a lot of money in the sheep business, but he's just got to have sand!'

First Families of the Atlantic

by John Habberton

[Page 284.1]

It is the popular supposition that none but predestinated suicides are in the habit of seeking diversion in the fat pages of volumes known as `Pub. Docs.,' and that the value of such of these books as wander into the market is to be measured by standards avoirdupois rather than literary. Yet the report of The Award of the Fisheries Commission, in more than three thousand large pages, contains some material which is more entertaining than that of the average novel, and more instructive than many a text-book. The Commission was an outcome of the Treaty of Washington, now six years old, and its duty was to ascertain whether in the mutual concessions of fishery rights made by that document Great Britain gave more than she received, and to award her such compensation as might seem her due, in case the investigations proved that her claim was just. The fact of an award of more than five millions of dollars to Brittania has been abundantly made known by the press, without eliciting much enthusiasm from the American Public, but some of the testimony upon which a majority of the Commission based its calculations is curious and interesting enough to compensate any inquisitive tax-payer for the loss of that portion of the award which must come from his own pocket. [Page 284.2]

Among the many persons examined by the Commission were hundreds of fishermen and two specialists, the object of the examiners being to learn something of the numbers, habits, and favorite sea-side resorts of certain fish of prominent commercial standing. Although the marine jurisdiction of a country extends for only a league from the shore, the habit of drawing from headland to headland the dividing line between free and protected territory has the effect of placing under national jurisdiction most of the favoring fishing grounds on the North American coast. Cod, mackerel, and herring, like many other notable sea-side visitors, have local habitations in obscure spots, and they become objects of interest only when found reasonably near to land. During the course of the examination some marvellous fish stories and theories were offered by old sailors; but as truth is stranger than fiction, the testimony of the specialists leads all others in interest. These gentlemen—Professor Henry Youle Hind, who was called on the part of Great Britain, and Professor Spencer F. Baird, the principal witness for the United States—astonished commissioners and counsel with a mass of information which they had collected upon a subject apparently so difficult of investigation.

The fish to which principal attention was given was naturally the cod, he being the leading commercial fish of the civilized world. Besides being the most prolific of food fishes, he is large, easily taken, and quickly prepared for market, while his different parts are utilized as generally as those of his land rival, the hog. Professor Baird says that besides the muscular parts, the sounds and roes are used as food, the oil is valuable for medical and mechanical purposes, the offal is converted into a valuable manure, the bones make good fuel, while the skins serve many nations for leather and clothing. This fish, like the more prominent of his relatives, is at home only in cold water, the latitude of Cape May being his extreme southern boundary, while he lives as close to the pole as he can without risk of being frozen in. He probably exists farther south than the line indicted above, but if so, it is in cool depths too retired to admit of successful interviewing. At certain points off the Massachusetts coast he finds a sufficiently low temperature in shallow water, and at these [Page 285.1] places he is frequently seen and caught of fishermen, but his favorite American haunts are the semi-inclosed waters of the coast of Canada and adjacent islands. Fond, however, as he is of very cold water, there are temperatures which he will under no circumstances endure, even though they be but two or three degrees removed from the normal. Among these is the water that comes from melting salt ice, and slowly sinks to the level to which its specific gravity entitles it. In such water the cod will not remain; he will not go through it, even though his dinner be on the opposite side, the distance very short, and the cod very hungry. He prefers to circumnavigate such an inhospitable region if he has business on the other side, as fishermen have learned to their own exceeding profit.

There are different varieties of the cod, and the entire lack of evidence of mixed blood, and the rarity with which more than one variety is found in any given locality, prove either that the cod is a non-migratory fish, or that he regards the preservation of caste as a paramount duty. Like aristocrats everywhere, he is an omnivorous feeder. The `dredge' is considered by naturalists to be the best implement with which to obtain information upon deep-sea life, but Professor Baird says that the stomach of the cod is the best of all dredges, for it generally contains morsels of every sort of marine resident within reach. With a high-born contempt of the requirements of trade, the cod feeds largely upon herring and mackerel, but he is partial to crabs, lobsters, and most other shell-fish. As his digestion is not equal to the task of assimilating these last-named items of the ocean menu, he stows them away in the side of his stomach, and when the quantity becomes burdensome, he disposes of them according to the method to which Jonah owed his escape from submarine lodging. While not migratory by inclination, any failure or deterioration of his habitual larder will cause him to remove to the nearest resort of good livers. Years ago cod-fish were quite plentiful off Newburyport, Massachusetts, but disappeared as the Merrimack River was depleted of fish; since the restocking of the river, however, with shad and alewives, the cod has re-appeared at his old dining-place, gladdening the hearts of the fishermen, and gracing the Sunday breakfast [Page 285.2] table of the descendants of the Puritans.

The cod resorts to the shore for feeding purposes; but who that is not a cook or a scullion cares always to be in the vicinity of the dining-room? Naturally he is an off-shore, deep-water fish, for at a distance from the land he is always sure of finding those strata of cold water in which he delights. There are times when he will not leave these, even for food; but the seasons in which fresh-water fish revisit the scenes of their childhood are also the seasons when the water is cool inshore. While hot weather remains, with sea-water warm enough to lure human beings into the surf, the cod abhors the beach, and takes what food is nearest at hand, preferring, like summer lodgers elsewhere, to endure the plainest fare for the sake of cool quarters. When, however, the temperature of the water allows him to follow the shad and other fish to the shore, he never travels alone; if he is not accompanied by a family, he takes so much company with him that those who extend hospitality seines to receive him take sometimes as many as thirty thousand fish at a single haul.

The cod is wonderfully prolific, depositing from three to seven millions of eggs at a time. It not only prefers to spawn in the winter months, but in the coldest water it can find, and yet avoid an icy coverlet; a temperature of 32° is the favorite, while nothing above 40° is tolerated. The largest spawning grounds of the cod are in the vicinity of the Loffoden Islands, though the American members of the family put up with such accommodations as they can find near home. The domestic arrangements of this fish are so informal that the eggs have no special abiding-place, nor any protection whatever. Of the millions of eggs that are deposited by a single female, not more than a hundred thousand, probably not more than ten thousand, result in full-grown fish. Like the small boy who, if he could not whip a larger boy, could at least make faces at his sister, the smaller fish upon which the cod preys find delicious revenge in eating the eggs of the latter, while the mass of `low-down' inhabitants of the ocean are true to the instinct of low-downers everywhere to prey upon aristocracy, particularly upon the younger scions thereof. It is probable, too, that many of the eggs [Page 286.1] which escape the keen eyes of searchers after delicacies do not become fertilized.

The mackerel, which commercially ranks next to the cod among salt-water fishes, is also partial to a cool home, though it is found somewhat farther south than the cod. Like the last-named fish, it seeks very cold water in which to spawn, preferring that of which the temperature is but little above the freezing-point. Instead of enjoying cold water all the year round, however, as the cod seems to do, there is a possibility that the mackerel hibernates. Seeking a soft muddy or sandy bed at the approach of winter, it buries itself therein, first drawing a scale or film over each eye. Whether this film is an apology for a night-cap, or the result of a dropping of the eyelid through extreme drowsiness, or due to providential design, or development according to environment, à la Darwin, is yet to be decided, but the existence of such a covering to the eye during hibernation has been proved by examination of mackerel which have been dragged from their comfortable couches by the dredges of intrusive scientists. It is not impossible that it may yet be discovered that the film is the result of disease, and that the muddy bottom is resorted to, not as winter-quarters, but as a hospital where `earth-cure' is practiced as a specialty. Whether sick or only sleepy, however, the mackeral has an intense aversion to a cold bed, so in selecting a resting-place he avoids ground over which salt ice is likely to drift, and drizzle its chilling water downward. How the fish arrives at certainties or probabilities on this subject is something that no fellow not a mackerel can find out, but the dredge has never found one of these fish in localities where salt ice melts.

The mackeral is quite a sociable fish among those of its own blood, moving always in great families or schools. When it comes inshore from the deep sea it is always with an innumerable company, which seems to move with a sort of regimental front, and wheeling from left to right, the point d'appui being that portion of the shore, naturally the southernmost that it frequents, where earliest in the season the fresh-water fish return to their native streams. The mackeral's shoreward movements are not always due to its own hunger, but frequently to that of the tunny and other predaceous fish which are fond of fresh mackeral. The [Page 286.2] discreetness of the fish under such circumstances is highly praised by scientists, and is cheerfully recognized by the honest fishermen, who welcome the fugitives heartily upon their arrival, and care for them so effectively that when next the tooth of the tormentor threatens them it will be unfelt and uncared for. The means of welcoming the mackeral are several, seines, nets, weirs, and pounds being as effective as the hook. The success of the last-named implement is due to the plebeian habits of the fish while dining. It seldom bites, nor does it prolong the enjoyment of a choice delicacy by nibbling, but it vulgarly swallows at a single gulp whatever is set before it. Selecting its food by appearance instead of flavor, it is not wonderful that a bit of red flannel, a bright `spoon,' or even a bare fishhook may seem worth taking. What disappointed fishermen on `the Banks' are pleased to term the (qualified) fastidiousness of the fish seems to contradict this statement of the mackerel's gustatory habits, but the apparent capriciousness with which these fish appear and disappear at a vessel's side is due to temperature instead of taste. Lying at a depth of perhaps two hundred fathoms, in cool water, the fish hurry to the surface for the chopped bait which fishermen throw overboard to attract them; the surface water, however, is generally too warm to be endured for more than a few moments, and they hurry back home as soon as comfort becomes more desirable than food.

When the mackerel disappear—which they do frequently during the season, and afterward for a long time—they seek for depth rather than distance. They remain off the coast, but far this side of the Gulf Stream, throughout the warm season, but in water sufficiently deep to meet their views in point of temperature. They often lie in vast schools within a mile or less of equally numerous herring, for which fish the mackerel has a yearning throat; but while the mackerel are two hundred fathoms down, the herring are within fifteen or twenty fathoms of the surface. Between these two zones, a distance of only a few seconds, mackerel time, the water is too warm to permit even a hungry mackerel to enjoy the pleasures of the chase, so these life-long enemies remain within sight of each other in a state of truce—until the coming of cold weather. [Page 287.1]

The herring, though a small fish, is commercially attractive enough to often find its own prospects of peace and longevity seriously endangered. Its diminutive size causes it to suffer more from finny enemies than either the cod or the mackerel, and its spawning capacity is comparatively feeble—a mere trifle of thirty thousand eggs, which the mackerel exceeds by fifteen or twenty times, and the cod by a hundred or more. And yet there seems no limit to the quantity of herring. Were the demand many times as great as it is, it could easily be supplied from this side of the ocean. This is doubtless due in great measure to the peculiar security enjoyed by the spawn and the young. Instead of floating, orifice downward, like the eggs of most other fish, herring spawn sinks to the bottom, the orifices of the eggs being upward, and as it is deposited in deep water, there are but few fish that interfere with it. The young, finding no loving parent near to guide their youthful steps, sensibly remain close to their birth-place, feeding upon diatoms and the smaller crustacea, until they grow old enough and strong enough to venture abroad. Migratory only to a limited extent, it is probable that the herring changes its base only on account of annoyance from larger fish. They are caught inshore by many varieties of seines and pounds, and the hook has occasionally been tried upon them by self-sufficient city youths, urged thereto by sea-shore boys who wished to remove the conceit from their visitors. To attempt to lure with hook and line a fish which can not bite, but lives wholly by suction, and to spend long hours at the attempt, under the stimulus of some wonderful story about how many some other city youth caught in the same way, is very stimulative of one's memory of the imprecatory Psalms and of other Scripture as misquoted by the wicked.

The herring, like the other fish named, inhabits cold water, the line of Long Island Sound being its southern boundary, while it is far to the north that it must be sought in quantity. The secret of the selection of particular localities for fish homes seems explained by an examination of the course of the great arctic current. This body of cold water, starting from the Spitzbergen seas, flows westerly until it strikes the Greenland coast, when it changes its course to the southward, and [Page 287.2] carries great masses of cold water into localities the latitude of which leads one to look for a high temperature in the water. It is a branch of this current that enables the cod to live and multiply about Block Island and Nantucket Shoals, in water at 40°, while farther north bathers at the beach luxuriate in water at 70° The same current forces its way into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which is the most profitable fishing ground in the world, and probably has something to do with the phenomenal tides of the Bay of Fundy. This current brings not only cold water, but food for the fish. This food consists of diatoms and other minute forms of vegetable and animal life. Coming into existence in a latitude higher than that of the fish that devour it, this food is swept southward by the great arctic current, and wherever it is found the waters are almost alive with fish. Professor Hind says that although the sea off Canada and the United States appears abundant in life, it is nevertheless almost a desert compared with the Northern seas, particularly on the Labrador and Greenland coasts. There the ocean at times seems to be thick with fish, and to such an extent that during a single night the temperature of the water will be materially influenced by animal life!

The profusion and seeming carelessness of nature, as well as the system of the same mysterious force, can not be better illustrated than by the facts concerning the spawning of the commercial fishes. While cod, mackerel, and herring spawn in midwater, the eggs of the last-mentioned sink, while those of the first two rise to the surface. The milt, or fecundating principle of the male, is also voided in midwater, but rises in the case of cod and mackerel, while that of the herring sinks. Eggs and milt alike are tossed hither and thither by the waves and currents before reaching their proper level. It would seem that this method, or lack of method, would lead to an early extinction of fish, yet life is nowhere else so abundant as in the ocean. The numerical relation of the eggs of fish to their apparent safety or danger, and all else connected with the natural propagation of sea fish, afford powerful arguments equally to the upholder of evolution and he of creation according to design.

The inshore feeding grounds of fishes most esteemed by commerce are not determined [Page 288.1] by mere luck, as fishermen are so fond of believing. The mouths of rivers are naturally attractive, particularly during the family reunions of fresh-water fish which have been making the grand tour. Bays with stony bottoms are the homes of some varieties of prolific crustacea dearly beloved of fish, and the motion of the water is constantly detaching this food from the rocks. In land-locked shallows are to be found numerous small fish which either make their homes there, or flee thitherward as to a city of refuge. Straits through which strong tides can not easily force their way, and currents which oppose tides, are generally full of eddies, and these present many attractions to hungry fish. An eddy is a sort of aqueous saving-bank, which absorbs whatever fish food come near it, and, like savings-bank elsewhere, it frequently yield it treasure to those whose might is their only substitute for right. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence and adjacent waters all these conditions for supplying food exist, so it is not wonderful that the Gulf is as popular a resort for fish as it is for fishermen.

Neither manifest cleanliness, healthful exercise, nor cooling environment can keep fish from cannibalistic practices. Human beings sometime love their fellows so much that they want to eat them; to the fish this wish is father of the act. A hungry cod or mackerel that finds no other food convenient has no scruples against dining off some of the tender darlings of his own family. The same lack of squeamish sentimentality saves him from any care upon the burials or scavenger question. A Dead fish, or the useless portions of the catch which are thrown overboard from fishing vessels, are promptly applied to the sustenance of the living, the lobsters and other occupants of the lower zones getting but the jackal's share of such prey. This habit of swallowing dead fish sometimes leads to undesirable results, particularly for the mackerel. In attacking any choice morsel he always begins at the larger end; but when the object happens to contain a spinal column with ribs attached, which has been thrown overboard by a cleaner, any subsequent attempt to dislodge the useless portions shows the incompatibility which exists between two sets of similar bones in the same fish, for the newer set becomes unduly searching, and exhibits a painful reluctance to departing. Offal that is not [Page 288.2] put to family uses goes to lobsters, starfish, and other residents of the bottom, but many a sea-flea lunches on it en route; and if these tiny creatures are allowed their own way, they leave nothing but bones, which in turn are entirely absorbed by sea-urchins.

Herring, cod, and mackerel are commercially interesting, principally as dried or salted fish; but the increasing demand for fresh fish, and the improved methods that have been devised for preserving and shipping in fresh condition, are causing study of other sea fish which are abundant and of fine quality. Among these is the mullet, which, though scarcely known by name at the North, is said by Professor Baird to be largely consumed, both fresh and salted, in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Florida. It is larger, fatter, and sweeter than the mackerel; the supply seems to be inexhaustible; and it is so generally a shore fish that it is always taken with seines, the only vessels required being ordinary row-boats from which to lay the seines. Professor Baird believes that when its merits are known, the mullet will be a formidable market rival of the mackerel. The blue-fish will be pursued more eagerly than ever, now that it has earned the reputation of being the most destructive of and among food-fishes. Fortunately for inshore fish at the North, the blue-fish generally goes South to get its growth, and seldom returns. The merits of the halibut are beginning to be known elsewhere than on the coast, and it is to the interest of the cod-fish trade that it be caught in large quantities, for it fights the cod, while the odds of size are overwhelming in favor of the halibut. The disappearance of the cod from any locality is more likely to be due to the halibut than to any other predaceous fish.

Disappearances of sea fish from their long-time homes occur frequently, and for reasons unknown to man. The herring have left the coast of Sweden, where once they were numerous, and the big-eyed or chub-mackerel, which thirty years ago was common on our coasts, is now so rare that Professor Baird has been unable to obtain it for his collection, although he has offered $25 for a single specimen. Whether the merits of this fish have suddenly become known to marine epicures, or whether the chub-mackerel has found a deep-sea larder which is better stored than his old one was, must for the present [Page 289.1] be matter for conjecture. Perhaps tunny-fish, sharks, porpoises, dogfish, and other lordly fellows with discriminating appetites might throw some light upon the subject if they could be interviewed. At one time the tunny had driven the cod entirely away from the vicinity of Block Island, but the tunny himself having become attractive to oil men and purveyors to manufacturers of fish guano, the cod hurried back to the family homestead. Professor Baird believes that the demand for tunnies, dogfish, sharks, etc., by the factories which will turn them into oils and manures, will have the effect of increasing the number of food fishes by lessening that of their enemies. `Grand, gloomy, and peculiar,' like other great slaughterers, these predaceous fish also resemble their human prototypes in being comparatively few in number, and in keeping themselves prominently before the eyes of those who are eager to destroy them.

Extensive as the fisheries are, and interesting as they have become to scientists and statesmen, their monetary value is startlingly small compared with that of some other food-producing industries. The total value of all the sea fisheries of the United States, excluding whales and shell-fish, but including the whole catch by American fishermen in Canadian waters, is less than $15,000,000 per year, while that of oysters alone is $30,000,000. Any single item of animal food produced on the land is more valuable than all the [Page 289.2] fishes, although in all the cities and many small towns meat is more costly than fish. The cause may probably be found in the custom of despising whatever is plentiful and cheap. Until lately any boy could supply his family table with fish if there was any stream or pond convenient; so any but the rarer fish have been considered plebeian food. There are many well-to-do Eastern families to-day who know only the salted mackerel and the dried cod, and this while the markets of the larger cities offer of fish a variety such as can be found in no other food department, excluding not even that of winter game. Between devices for securing low temperature and dry air, it is now possible to preserve fish in their fresh condition for months, so that, though taken only at the season in which they are best, they may be purchased in any month of the year. Professor Baird tells of seeing in an immense New York Refrigerator `a cord of cod-fish, a cord of salmon, a cord of Spanish mackerel and other fish, piled up just like cord-wood; dry, hard, and firm, and retaining their qualities for an indefinite time.' By dryness it should not be understood that the fish has been cleaned and dried, for it is in its natural shape and condition, as if just caught. When the public becomes generally aware that such excellent food material can be had so cheaply, the business of fish-taking will doubtless increase greatly, for the supply at present is limited only by the demand.

The Ghost of the Nineteenth Century

by Phœbe Yates Pember

[Page 251.1]

`Are you really sincere in asserting that you are utterly incredulous in belief in the existence of all sights, sounds, and omens?' She hesitated a moment before she answered. There was a faraway, dreamy look in her eyes, and a general delicacy of feature and contour, that physically appeared to disprove this assertion; but her mouth was firm, and the chin would have been masculine but for the soft dimple indented in it.

The present summer had been very hot and debilitating, and although far advanced into September, there had been no cooling change in the temperature of the Southern city where they lived. She had passed her first youth, but the rose was as lovely as the bud had been. Not the mere beauty of coloring and feature, but the higher grace of symmetry, and the nameless charm that, lacking the proper expression, we call fascination. The full but slight limbs, the graceful fall of shoulders and arms, the setting of the spirited head upon the throat and neck, were correct, even classic. The eye became satisfied in looking, and when she spoke, the crowning charm of woman was hers—the slow, soft voice, sweet, low, and distinct. Her companion had been always her friend, and they had lived as neighbors from childhood. If at times a passing anger at attentions shown her by other men fretted him, a little sisterly soothing on her part, and the absence of apparent interest toward the aspirants, soon quelled the feeling.

Still he was not her lover, their intimacy from childhood precluding her looking upon him differently to her brothers, whose companion he was, and if any passion lingered in her heart, it was dormant. The subject of love as applied to their intimacy had never intruded its presence.

Once there had arisen a coldness—a fancy on her side, an estrangement on his—but the object was dead, and how deeply she had suffered she alone knew. None questioned, and she gave no sign, save in shrinking from all mention of a name, and an avoidance of aught that could recall a memory. At the time a long and wasting illness had prostrated her, but the physician suggested a malarious atmosphere, and as she had no female relative [Page 251.2] save a paralyzed old grandmother, who, with her two brothers and her father composed their household, and who were as obtuse in such matters as those of their sex generally are, no one surmised any cause beyond local fever.

They were seated upon the stone steps leading down into the garden, with the long, dark conservatory, odorous with tropical plants, behind them. The house, an old discolored mass of bricks, monopolized the whole square, for it stood in the centre centre of a perfect wilderness of greenery. Tall forest trees grew there, straight magnolias towering above roof and chimney, feathery acacias with their yellow hair, dense fig-trees, all shading a wilderness of rose-bushes. Thick vines threw their embracing arms from bough to bough, dropping twisted loops of giant tendrils almost to the ground, and, softening the ruggedness of branch and bark, the tender gray moss clung around them, light almost as the mist of the Indian summer. Even at noonday there brooded shadow and mystery around the place. The old master had been opposed to all modern innovations, and the few flitting candles that hardly supply the need of gas made the spacious rooms seem larger, and the high walls higher. Only familiarity with these gloomy surroundings from early childhood could have rendered the pair indifferent to the dreariness of the place. They may still have had their influence, for the conversation often insensibly took, as it did this night, a mysterious tone.

She was leaning against the stone balustrade now, having left him a moment to tie up a wandering bud, with her soft white mull muslin dress clinging to the outline of her graceful shoulders. The stephanotis flowers dropped mutely from the vine above her head, and fell like stars about her dark hair, as the soft south wind shook them from their loose stems. Her mind was evidently much occupied with thoughts apart from her surroundings, for her answers were very unsatisfactory to his lively attempts to amuse and interest her. They were alone, the father and brothers having joined a hunting party early in the spring, whom they had met marooning on one of the sea islands, waiting for their annual sport. Except her old grandmother and an intelligent woman, partly companion and partly nurse, there had been no one living in the house with her since they left. [Page 252.1]

The question that had at last roused her attention was a challenge from Linton to go to a chamber in the garret which had always been locked up on account of foolish rumors among the servants of strange sounds having been there heard. The missing key had been found by him that morning when searching for fishing-tackle. She refused with some impatience, which provoked a jesting retort from him, and then an accusation that `she and Mrs. Prynne were both afraid of ghosts.'

`Mrs. Prynne left us some weeks since,' she said, calmly, `and I have only that stupid Candis to supply her place. I fear my grandmother needs me now.'

Still she lingered, casting long apprehensive glances down the dim wide hall. The summer evenings stretched far into the night, and the dull heavily cut glass lamp, that made the passage only more gloomy, had not yet been lit, the air seeming cooler in darkness.

Linton was not very observant, but love quickens the senses, and as he looked attentively into her face, struck by the gravity of her manner, he became aware that some change had thinned her figure and hollowed her cheeks. The blood came and receded too quickly in her fair face, and the quiet composure which was her chief charm seemed to be maintained only by great control. If he had noticed this before, it had made no impression, but the full nature of the alternation in face and form burst upon him now with startling force.

`Esther,' he said, springing to his feet, `what is troubling you? Are you sick again? Why did you turn so white, and then red, when I jested about ghosts? Has any one dared to play a trick upon you, knowing your solitary position at present, and the silly rumors concerning this house?'

`Who do you suppose would dare to take such a liberty?' she answered, gravely.

`But there must be some cause for your manner, your looks, and the abstraction of your mind from all that once interested and amused you. Good Heaven! how blind I have been!'

She seemed about to speak, then hesitated, and he noticed how uneasily she glanced around her. `If only—' she said, under her breath, but the words died upon her lips.

`Esther,' he said, `you have known [Page 252.2] me, boy and man, from childhood; can not you trust me?'

`Yes, yes,' she eagerly cried; `it is not the trust that is wanting. If only I could, if only I dared! I have tried in vain to be self-reliant, to be sensible if possible, and I have failed so entirely—so entirely!'

`Then let me judge for you,' he said. `I am a man, Esther, and have, I think, as much power of will and as much brain as are apportioned to most men. You do not seem willing to believe this. Be just, and give me the same consideration you accord to others. Have I no influence with you, because long familiarity of intercourse, untrammelled by etiquette, has blinded you to the changes of time? Whatever I may lack in your sight, I shall never be any more of a man than I now am.'

Undoubtedly he felt aright. He had never yet been aught to her but her boy-playmate grown a bigger boy, for she looked at him with some surprise, and a dawning sense that he had true cause for his complaint. Her eyes filled with tears, and her voice trembled, as she answered him: `I know that you are kind and brave, manly and tender-hearted, and I need help so much! My brain feels giving way. I have been so skeptical, so determined in my disbelief, and it has been so fearful, so horrible, so unaccountable. Why should it have been forced upon me?'

He took her shaking hand, and waited to hear more, but she seemed to regret what she had already said. He entreated her to trust in his interest and power to aid her, but she shrank away.

`Leave me now,' she said. `I may not be disturbed to-night. Sometimes, but very rarely, I am allowed to rest without hinderance—when it is stormy, or when the night is dark and wild; and whatever it is, it seems to shun the conflict of the elements. There is a storm brooding now, and I may escape to-night. Come to me to-morrow evening, and if I can, I will tell you everything. Indeed, I must, for I can not bear it alone; and yet'—she spoke under her breath—`any one rather than you.'

He checked his rising impulse of resentment, for he saw how pale she grew, and how the strong agitation she labored under shook her fragile form. He had waited and hoped apparently in vain for [Page 253.1] years, serving faithfully for his reward, and never knowing what was the nature of the invisible and intangible but impassable barrier which separated them.

`As you please,' he replied, gravely. `You are the best judge of how far I am to be relied upon in any emergency. Give or withhold your confidence, it will make no difference. I shall always, I think, be the same to you.'

`Always the same,' she said. `Always the truest, the kindest, the most unselfish friend that any woman was ever blessed with. I can not tell you why I shrink from confiding to you this story, for a fearful story it is.'

He checked her words, seeing her increasing agitation, called Candis—a heavy, stupid negro girl, only brought from the kitchen to fill Mrs. Prynne's place during her temporary absence—tried to bid Esther good-night as coldly as he could, for he feared to trust his excited feelings of tenderness, and telling the girl not to leave her young lady until she saw that she slept, left the house before the storm burst.

It was, indeed, a wild September night, so stormy that all sounds were swallowed up in the roar of wind and the rush of rain; but it swept away for a time the intense summer heat, and the next day the sun arose brilliantly, disclosing the destruction of roses and jasmines, which in that generous clime it takes but one day's sunshine to renew in their perfect beauty. The torn branches of trees strewed the streets, but the soft sandy soil had already drunk up the rain. All nature seemed healthier, stronger, and fresher.

He found Esther more in unison with the change. The bracing atmosphere had apparently invigorated her, for her movements were not so languid; but her face was deadly pale, and the violet shadows deeper under her eyes. Sad or bright, they were the loveliest, tenderest eyes he had ever looked into.

The twilight was melting into the deep sapphire of the summer night as they seated themselves in their accustomed spot, but they still talked upon indifferent subjects, as if shunning one particular one. She seemed loath to allude to her promise of the previous night, and he felt a natural delicacy in urging her confidence. The young crescent moon, with a bright star just touching her horn, floated over the mimosa-trees, where a young [Page 253.2] mocking-bird tried his melodious notes. Linton fancied once or twice that she made an effort to commence her story, for her breath came short at times, and then would end in a long painful sigh. At last he turned suddenly to her.

`Esther, what have you to reveal to me? It can be nothing but for which an easy solution can be found. Your imagination has been excited, and has exaggerated whatever it is into an alarming matter. I wish to hear all about it now—this instant. I can not see you so distressed, and feign indifference.'

`You shall hear,' she said; `but promise not to interrupt me. Listen to the very, very end, I entreat you, and then give me some explanation that may satisfy me, or I shall die, I believe.'

They were seated as usual on the steps of the veranda overlooking the garden. So thick was the undergrowth of vines and rose-bushes and honeysuckles that it appeared to stretch miles away. The boundaries were hidden from sight by close hedges, and only here and there a mass of green caught the rays of the bright crescent light.

`You remember the years we passed in Europe,' she commenced, `the time you were finishing your collegiate career, when our house and grounds were rented to Mr. Winstoun, while his were painting and repairing? Winny Winstoun and I had always been fast friends from the day we entered school together, and the intimacy continued unbroken for many years, for we shared our girlish pleasures too in after life. We had no jealousies then, our attractions being as different as our characters. It is just five years since we made our début, and for a long time after our entrance into society there seemed to be no one among the young men who associated with us who could be considered a favored lover for either. Then came a naval vessel to our port, and among her officers one proved as attractive in society as he appeared to be among his friends. He was with us very often, and almost domesticated in Mr. Winstoun's family, and our little world soon decided that Winny's bright face and gay manners had won him. I never could draw from her any serious avowal on the subject. She seemed uneasy when questioned, laughing as long as she could evade inquiry by jesting, and then growing angry if pressed; but she always declared when [Page 254.1] I appealed to her for confidence that he did not know whom he wanted, and that whatever his game was, it was too deep for her penetration to fathom. She was an heiress, and my father's affairs at that time were much embarrassed, so I had an advantage over her in never being suspicious of the motives of my lovers. Then a coolness grew up between us, and before I could resolve to ask explanations, my mother's health became much affected, and we left for Europe. It was then that Mr. Winstoun took our house, and occupied it until his was added to and put in complete repair. He gave it up then to my brothers when they returned home that winter. They were young and wild, free from all supervision, and they led a very gay life, and filled the old house with their noisy companions. Foremost among them in reckless daring was our young naval friend, who, after all, had proved the shrewdness of Winny's judgment by flying off with his wings unsinged, apparently fancy-free, never having enacted decidedly the rôle of lover. For many months they lived their lively, careless life, until the terrible tragedy occurred which threw a gloom over the whole city, and gave my brothers a shock which sobered their life for many months. We were at Pau, watching my mother's declining days, for she lived only a few weeks afterward, when, among the items in a long letter received from Winny, was a studiously careless account of the death of Captain Santerre' (her voice died away to a faint whisper, and the pale cheeks and lips waned even paler in the moonlight).

`I remember,' Linton said, briefly; `a life thrown away recklessly; but it was very sudden, and very awful.'

Awful indeed! You do not know the real circumstances of the case. The reports were false that said it was not accidental. Why should a man choose such a death, if even he was tired of life? and why should he have been—' Again the sweet voice faltered and broke.

`My youngest brother was his chosen friend,' she continued, `and he bears witness to the falsehood of the charges made. In the full flush of health and strength, Captain Santerre insisted on making a bet that he could spring over the stone balustrade of the piazza on the west front, leading out from my bedroom (the one I now occupy), and that he could clear the iron fence that separates the garden [Page 254.2] from the yard, and reach the ground in safety. I can not tell you more; you know the rest.'

`Hush,' he said, soothingly. `Do not force yourself to recount that horrible story. It is all past. Why dwell upon it?'

Her mind still clung to her narrative, and she continued as if he had not spoken: `In the distraction of travel and the constant anxiety about the state of my mother's health, as well as the necessity of preserving her mind from all agitation, and perhaps, also, by reason of our distance from the scene, I did not feel with the acuteness you would suppose the horror of the tragedy that had occurred in our very house, amidst all our daily surroundings. Then my mother died, and with that great sorrow pressing upon me, all reminiscences faded into the background. We were then recalled home immediately to receive my grandmother, who had been struck with paralysis at hearing of her daughter's death, and had become as helpless as she is now. As soon as we became settled, Winny came from the plantation to see me. She was as gay and thoughtless and noisy as ever, inquired why had we resolved to live again in such a gloomy, dreary old prison-house, and what rooms I had determined to immure myself in. I told her that I had exchanged the former nursery, where I had remained before we left, to be near my mother, for a couple of rooms on the western side.

```Which two?'' she asked; ``back or front?''

```The back ones, for the sake of the westerly view of the river and ocean, and the comfort of the little piazza that led out of the chamber windows.''

```I should not like to sleep in either of them,'' she said, lightly. ``Captain Santerre, when he was picked up apparently lifeless, was taken into one of those rooms, and there laid upon the couch. For nearly a week they watched him day and night, but he gave no sign of life except the loud sobbing, struggling of the breath to escape, and the hurrying beat, beat of his heart. It could be heard even outside of the house, sounding like nothing human. If I were you, Essie, I would change my rooms: you might hear him some night, and you would not easily forget it all. You know he always had a fancy for you, and could not make up his mind to take me, even for the money [Page 255.1] that he needed so much. Indeed, people said—''

`But I turned way, and would listen to no more, and the light laugh—not without bitterness—which followed me revealed then the reason for her coldness and captiousness in times past. But her remarks made little impression on my mind, as all my faculties had been dulled and my heart deadened by the loss of my mother, and the daily need I felt for her presence and companionship.

`This conversation occurred about a week after our return. It was then late in the winter. I was very busy for some time getting the house re-arranged comfortably, and distributing the many luxuries we had brought home with us. My father had been specially solicitous that the bedrooms I occupied should be made as pretty and fresh as muslin and cretonne could make them, and there was no trace left of the heavy, old-fashioned look that they had worn for many years. I had never remembered Winny's careless and cruel words, or her description of Captain Santerre's death, and could feel no nervousness living in the changed rooms where so sad a tragedy had been enacted, for there was not a sign of their former appearance left.

`And now, Linton, I come—oh, so reluctantly!—to the cause of my distress, or terror, I should say, for terror and horror worse than death have I borne for weeks. I know that I am sane, and that my bodily health is good. I disbelieve entirely, as I have always asserted, in the existence of any phenomena contrary to the laws of nature. I am not a weak or a fanciful woman, or even a superstitious one, and that I have great control over myself I have shown by bearing for six weeks all the suffering that I will relate to you, as well as by trying in every way my mind could suggest to elucidate the mystery. I have failed. And now I want your help, and am more than relieved that you have persuaded me to rest part of my burden upon your shoulders. God grant that your investigations may lead to the elucidation of the mystery!'

He gazed at her in speechless surprise. She was usually so calm and composed, so self-reliant and free from all feminine nervousness, that her violent agitation and convulsed voice stupefied him.

`I never again thought of Winny's story, as I assured you,' she continued, [Page 255.2] `and all that winter and spring I occupied my rooms contented and happy. Then my father and brothers left for their annual hunt to the lower part of the State, my grandmother, myself, and Mrs. Prynne, whom I had engaged on my own account as well as my grandmother's (for she was an educated, efficient woman, on whom I could depend), alone occupying the house, the quarters of the servant-men being over the stable. My grandmother became so helpless and so deaf that a capable woman was a necessity for her, but when Mrs. Prynne was summoned away to her daughter, and wrote me that she would be unable to come back, I replaced her with Candis, a stupid negro girl, thinking I could supervise her duties, as I preferred not getting a stranger to fill the office until my father's return.

`It was very quiet in the house before you came. All our friends had left for a cooler atmosphere, but it was necessary for me to remain with grandmother, as she could not be moved, and I had no inclination, I had been so long away, to leave home again. The gloom of the high, wide passages and rooms had never depressed me, for we use so little light in the summer months at the South that the absence of gas was naturally unnoticed.

`One night, a week after Mrs. Prynne's departure, I awoke suddenly with a confused feeling of fright—wide-awake, with every sense alive, as we are when aroused in the dead of night by the unexpected cry of fire or murder. I sat up in bed, listening intently in the deep silence around me, when there smote upon my ear a faint, oppressed, and smothered breathing, low and distinct. Quick as light Winny Winstoun's careless speech came to me. I pushed my hair back, and waited, motionless; and then, regularly, steadily, commencing softly, as if half suppressed, then momently increasing in volume and agony they came—those awful sounds. Gasp after gasp. They filled the room. They labored like a soul in mortal agony, ever growing louder and louder, stronger and stronger, and between the suffocating sobs came the bewildering beat, beat, beat of the crushed and lacerated heart. The room, the air, the walls from which they re-echoed, everything around me, above me, below me, resounded with the ghastly tumult, and was burdened with the horrible regularity of the struggling breath that came fluttering and sobbing and writhing in the [Page 256.1] still night like a tortured spirit in torment, like an agonized body broken upon the wheel. I sat up in my bed, motionless, pulseless, breathless, but my senses ever keenly alive. I knew that I was not dreaming, and that my imagination had not conjured up that scene, that there was no deception in the sounds I heard, and I forced myself to remain calm.

`For three-quarters of an hour it lasted, commencing low, then rising, and lastly culminating into a tumult of tones that forced me to crush my hands into my ears, and then it died away as it had commenced, and I strained my ears to hear the last of the faint, far-away sobs that had ceased.

`The next morning I awoke late, for I had dropped asleep near day-dawn from exhaustion, and my first thought, under the brightness of the summer sun streaming in the windows, was entire disbelief in the possibility of the night's occurrence. It was a feverish dream, and nothing more, and at the time, could I have summoned courage to have sprung out of bed, the nightmare would have been dispelled. All day I busily occupied myself, and allowed but scant time for reflection upon supernatural phenomena. Even when night came, I gathered the late roses, and sitting where we now are, made bouquets for my vases, wondering when I should have you with me to cheer my loneliness—for you were absent just then—and when it grew too dark for work, I thought of the coming pleasures for the winter, and what occupations I would make. I thought of everything I could conjure up that was amusing, and that could interest a girl's mind.

`In this healthy mood I went up to my chamber, said my prayers, went to bed, and dropped quietly to sleep almost immediately. The only difference made in my usual habits was the addition of a candle and box of matches at my bedside.

`Linton, in the dead of night, at the same hour, again I awoke, for my ear as suddenly caught that first faint struggling gasp. I did not wait one moment, but sprang out of bed, lit my candle, and then I stood still and waited. It was not for long. The gasps, the struggles, the stertorous heaving of the laboring chest, again filled all space, while the terrible monotone of the beat, beat, beat of the anguished heart never varied half a second.

`This was no freak of the imagination, [Page 256.2] no delusion of the senses, but an awful reality. Still, it could not be what I dared not think of. I quieted my nerves, and went mechanically around my chamber and sitting-room. I stepped out into the calm of the sweet-smelling summer night, out on the piazza—that piazza from which he had sprung; but I shrank back, for the horror grew louder, the struggles stronger. I wandered into the hall, and across it to the opposite room, and awoke my poor old grandmother. ``Do you hear any one suffering?'' I screamed to her; but she shook her head silently, and was asleep almost before my voice had died away. Candis I knew of old; there would be no use in trying to make her hear, much less understand, when once fallen asleep. Her intellects are dull at all times. Through the long hall, candle in hand, I returned to my rooms, never for a moment losing those sounds, that had only become fainter as I went farther along the passage, and as I neared my chamber filled the dark space, and beat the air with a regularity that was maddening.

`I did not faint, Linton. I did not feel like fainting. I could only die once of horror; but why did not either insensibility or death come? On the contrary, every nerve was strong. I did not, I could not, I would not, believe! I opened all my doors—of closet and cabinet and dressing room, even the small one that closed my escritoire; but I did not again go into the hall—I would never have dared to return to my rooms! I peered into the obscurity of the garden, for my ears were so filled with the ghastly horror that I did not know where to seek it. It was all around me, but it came louder and more shudderingly from that piazza, and I shrank back into a corner of the sofa.

`But I am no coward. I come of a race who never feared, and a passion of anger at my helplessness flamed into my brain, and set my blood boiling and the heretofore still pulses beating to fever-heat, and in my sudden passion I called to him—to it—to whatever the horror might be that was blasting my life. I could no longer endure the quiescence that accorded to such sounds their aggravated terror.

```Speak to me, Captain Santerre,'' I cried aloud. ``I am alone and suffering. Through what power are you here, and why this ghastly presentment to me alone of a past agony? If aught of the manliness is left that was yours in life, cease [Page 257.1] this horrible travesty of vitality. Come to me, if come you must, in a more seemly shape.'' My brain was throbbing, and my wild address, as you may suppose, died on the air; but the tumult was again fading away, and then came silence—still, dead silence, like the calm of exhaustion. Hardly a breath could be heard.

`The first night that I was disturbed, Linton, was the 2d of August. It is now the middle of September; so for six weeks I have lived with this nightly terror near me. Do you wonder that my cheeks are pale and my eyes hollow? You look incredulously at me: why should you not? for believe me that I do not, even in the presence of this horrible experience, rely entirely on the evidence of my own senses; that is, I can not realize those night scenes when the daylight come, but at night—' Her lips contracted, and she trembled all through her delicate frame.

He had listened with surprise at first, then with a kind of puzzled amusement, and lastly with infinite compassion. All the tenderness of his love, and love controlled almost beyond repression for years, was thrilling his nerves and throbbing at his heart. The narration itself influenced but little his masculine incredulity, but the suffering she had evidently endured, and her unconscious appeal to him, to his care, his protection, sank into the very depths of his soul. Mingling, too, with this feeling rose a suspicion, gathering force as it grew, that there was an added horror she had not alluded to in her narration, nor could he ask any explanation; but he knew that the scenes she had described were the death-bed scenes of the man she had once loved, perhaps still mourned, and the only solution he could at that moment confusedly grasp at was that a dormant sympathy had been re-awakened in her heart by returning to the neighborhood of the surroundings of the terrible tragedy which had closed Santerre's life, and had conjured up the nightly scenes she had borne with such secrecy and courage, and had blown the embers of an almost forgotten fancy into flame.

But how to meet the emergency pushed more abstract feelings into the background. That she had suffered deeply was evident from her hollow eyes and extreme depression. Her story showed no signs of hypochondria. She had struggled against illusions and deceptions, and had maintained a courage that few women [Page 257.2] under similar circumstances could have summoned. Here was no weak nature to be laughed out of fanciful moods, or be scolded into common-sense.

`Have you been reading lately any of Dale Owen's books?' he said carelessly. `Been pouring over Foot-Prints on the Borders of Another World, or Mrs. Crowe's Night Side of Nature?'

`I know of what you are thinking. I have not read books of that style for years. They make no impression upon me even at the time of reading them. There is not a single well-attested or well-authenticated fact in them, and although I can not doubt that I have absolutely heard for the last six weeks all I have related to you, still I do not believe in the possibility of its being of a supernatural nature. What have I ever done to him' (suddenly bursting into hysterical sobs) `that he should come to me nightly to rend my heart with his awful agony.'

Now that the excitement had taken the relief of tears, he did not disturb her, but let her weep it away. This outburst, the removal of the pressure of secrecy, and the comfort of unrestrained confidence, all tended to tranquillize her, so that she listened almost cheerfully to his explanation of future plans for the elucidation of the mystery.

`You did not tell me if you were disturbed last night,' he said. `What an awful storm! I thought often of you, and wondered if you were alarmed. I did not then know' (tenderly taking her hand) `of the more serious horrors you had to contend with!'

`I was spared it all,' she said. `In the turmoil of wind and rain, and the swaying and crashing of the old trees, I dreaded the added sounds I had every reason to expect. None came, thank God! Not a groan, not a sob. Can it all be over? And if it is, what has it been?'

`Never mind what it has been, my Esther, my dear Esther, my poor little Essie! If only it is all over, we can sooner or later find the key to the mystery. And now listen to me, and be guided by my judgment, I pray you. Who cares so much for you, and loves—'

But not now. Surely not now, when her weakness, her trial, should call forth his forbearance, his tenderness. He steadied his voice, and calmed his manner.

`It is past eleven o'clock,' he said. `I will go over home and tell them not to expect [Page 258.1] me there to-night, and then I will return, and we will go up to your fearful little piazza, and spend the night there. You can enjoy your European experiences over again by recounting them to me, and while you are so engaged, I will keep a sharp look-out for—' He glanced at her face, and did not finish his sentence. The impression her story had at first made upon him was already dying away. Indeed, his brave, bold nature could hardly be affected by her wild narration of the strange events she had suffered from, particularly when the actual enactment of them was impossible from his common-sense point of view; but he saw she could not then endure any disbelief expressed by him on the subject.

`That is what I should like,' she eagerly assented. `You can only elucidate the mystery (if it can be elucidated) by hearing it for yourself. Come back to me as soon as possible; and, oh! do not leave me alone too long. I could not bear it another night.'

There was nothing further at present to be said, so he silently left. All subjects of former interest appeared to have been banished from her mind by her last six weeks' experience, but her trouble had surely been his gain, and he returned, after a few minutes' absence, hopeful, buoyant, and happy. What a charming ghost was this, he thought, who had frightened her so thoroughly that his care was an absolute necessity! He could hardly control the expression of his gratification, and act with the solemnity which befitted the occasion.

It was a lovely night that followed the storm. Esther was very still and composed, but every nerve was quivering with suppressed expectancy, and even fear that the absence of that which she dreaded most might throw discredit upon her story, and make her appear the weak dupe of a nervous delusion. He was too well satisfied with any cause that would draw them together to care what the nature of it might be. There was but little conversation. Her small slim hands were folded tightly on her lap, and both tried to appear at their ease, as if the circumstances that drew them together at that hour were matters of usual occurrence. They had left their nightly position on the stone steps of the veranda about twelve o'clock, and taken their post of observation on the piazza leading from her bedroom. [Page 258.2]

Away to the west glided the tranquil river, too much in shadow under its wooded banks to add to the beauty of the scene, but beyond it gleamed a broad stretch of silver sand, running out a long tongue of land separating the river from the ocean. Even during the heaviest Atlantic gales the curve of the coast made this stretch a safe passage for small steamers and schooners that coasted along its bend, thus escaping rougher waves. It was called the inland passage, and although very distant, almost too far to add to the view, a quivering, bright line of molten silver always glittered there under the sun or moon beams.

And gazing upon this peaceful scene they watched the night wear on, undisturbed by any present attempt at elucidating the cause of their vigil. Now and then a word from him, and a murmured answer or a slight sigh of relief from her. Her heart, which had fluttered so often with the dread of catching that first struggling sob, fluttered still more wildly for fear that it might not come that night. It was nearly three in the morning when, glancing at him, she fancied she detected the dawning of a faint smile.

`I know, Linton, what you are beginning to doubt,' she commenced, when her voice sank away to a faint whisper, as a low, suppressed, gasping sob breathed lightly into the still air of the summer night, and then another, and another—struggling, gasping, heaving, sobbing sighs, as if the soul beating against its earthly bars strove and fought and writhed to be free, and yet suppressed, restraining the sounds that they might not penetrate too far. Muffled as they were, they filled all the space around. Above, below, wherever the ear met them, their fullness swelled upon the tension; and now, added to the anguish of the struggling soul, came with mechanical regularity the beat, beat, beat of the throbbing heart, agonized beyond endurance.

They both had risen simultaneously. She, lost to all surroundings, only awake to the excitement and dread of the hour, stood clasping his arm with her trembling fingers, her head hidden upon his breast. He, with eyes, ears, senses, all alive, too startled to be conscious of even the sweet burden he bore, listening intently as his mind swept like lightning over all the aspects [Page 259.1] of the situation and its surroundings. Even her vivid description of her fearful experience had not prepared him for what he now heard.

But this lasted only for some minutes, and then the tension of his face and figure relaxed as he put his arms around her yielding form.

`Essie, my darling,' he said, `I do not wonder at the delusion you have labored under. I can well imagine your feelings during this terrible trial. Winny's foolish speech, and the wonderful similarity of the sounds we hear to her description of the scenes of that awful death-bed, may well have deceived you. Your terrors were quite natural, my poor girl; but can not you imagine even now what has caused them?'

`No,' she answered, quieted by his composure, and conscious already that her trouble was over, and the solution clear to him. `What are they? From where do they come? Listen, they are dying away—fainter and fainter.'

`They will be gone entirely in a few moments, Esther; quite as soon as Mr. Winstoun's little steamboat has rounded the tongue of land and steamed out to sea. Your ghost, my dearest, is a modern ghost. The sobs that struggled through the air were the steam-throbs of her engine, mellowed by the distance; the agonized and oppressed heart-beats, the beat of her paddle-wheels. The silence of night, the echo of the woods between us and the ocean, the situation of the house, and the strange peculiarities of the laws which govern acoustics have all combined to produce this delusion. When to these causes were added the mysticism of night, and the strong influence of the previous thoughts which had for a considerable time affected your mind, it is not strange that your senses, prepared as a medium for such impressions, should have succumbed to the result.'

`But the disturbances have occurred with such frightful regularity. They commence and die at exactly the same hour.'

`Because the steamer makes her nightly trips at the same hour. When she leaves the plantation wharf she is farthest from us. As she touches the edge of the wood of water-oaks, we catch the first pant of her engines and beat of her wheels. The sounds culminate as she nears the point, and as she rounds it and makes for [Page 259.2] the open sea they die away till they are lost in the distance.'

`And last night? Why did I not hear it?'

`Last night was too stormy for any small vessel to leave port, particularly when she would have to put out to sea as soon as she got beyond the point. Your not hearing her during the storm helped me to my solution of the mystery. Bring me the night-glass, and I will show you your ghost. He has but limited powers of progress, and can not have made much headway yet. Why, Essie, collect your faculties, and throw off this nightmare. Can you doubt the evidence of our combined senses?'

`But why should I never have heard it until the 2d of August, the anniversary of the very night of his death?'

`The corresponding date is the only strange part of the whole affair. It has been simply a coincidence,' he said. `Mr. Winstoun had before then used the outside ocean steamer for transit and freight for his cotton. She ceased running the 1st of August until business should revive in the fall, and so he was compelled to use his own little private steamer, which he had purchased in case of just such an emergency. Bring me the night-glass, that you may see her before she steams out of sight.'

She brought it silently, and fixing the focus, he showed her the faint light and vapor of the little vessel beating and throbbing against wind and tide. He held the glass with one hand to steady it, but the other had sought a rest around her waist. It remained there, if noticed, at least unrebuked, while a long sigh of relief and satisfaction proved at last her faith in his solution of the mystery.

`And now,' he said, after a long pause, `can not you let all other illusions die away with this one? I have seen and felt for two years the depressing influence of that more important spectre which has stood between us like a wall of ice, and I dared not before to-night venture in his presence to put my fate to the test; but may not a living, loving devotion that has stood the wear of time, coldness, and, worse, indifference, be worth the shadow of a fancy or a memory that I think was only called into being after the object had ceased to exist? It was Santerre's terrible death, in the prime of youth, strength, and health, added to the knowledge of his secret love for you, that has held your [Page 260.1] fancy, more than filled your heart, for so long. You have given a great deal in return, as the suffering of the last six weeks proves. Is not a warm human love an equivalent for this phantom romance? Oh, my darling, my playmate from childhood, my earliest and only love, give me the privilege to protect and comfort you always. I want so little in return!'

The fading dream of her girlish romance, more of brain than heart, vanished before the light of his strong human love, and as the last star of night melted into the dawning day, she laid her weary head upon his breast with a long sigh of relief and—consent; and in the quiet of a deep content they stood, while the pink flush of early morn blushed all over the [Page 260.2] face of nature, and deepened and deepened until the sun, like the triumphant young god he is in Southern climes, glowing with strength and fire, sprang up suddenly from his rest, and threw his network of diamonds over every blade of grass, leaf, and flower.

`I must leave you now, Esther, but I lay upon you my first command, which is, to rest as quietly as you can. I will not seek you before this evening at our usual hour of meeting; and, Essie, before I go make me a promise that as long as you live you will never join in any disparagement of ghosts. I shall sympathize with them, believe in them, even adore them forever. Long live the ghosts of the nineteenth century!'

Editor's Easy Chair - Chair for January

[Page 302.1]

The holiday season this year will be peculiarly pleasant, because the long prostration of industry is ended, and business everywhere revives. The good-will of the season will be even more cheerful and cordial, and the wish of a happy New-Year will have the charm of sincere expectation. But whatever the situation, the magic of the time is resistless.

`Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;

The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.'

This is the ever fresh and recurring sentiment of the season, and although Christendom is wide, and embraces many nationalities, there is always a feeling that Christmas-tide is peculiarly an English season. Certainly our own associations with it, its family reunions, its boundless good cheer, it ample hospitality, the waits, the Yule-log, the morris-dancers, the mistletoe, are especially English. Our Northern ancestors celebrated everything with feasting, with huge eating and deep drinking, and Father Christmas comes in, preceded, indeed, by the cantors intoning a hymn, but closely followed by the boar's head wreathed with rosemary, and the plum-pudding smoking hot not far away.

The great success of Dickens's Christmas stories lay in their felicitous expression of this national feeling. There was a vague `ideal' [Page 302.2] of Christmas hovering in the popular mind, traditions of the good old hearty time of popular games and Christmas carols and universal benignity and well-being. Nobody knew exactly when or exactly where this miracle of changing England into Arcadia was wrought. But that the vision was a mirage nobody believed. The old song was true history:

`A man might then behold

At Christmas in each hall

Good fires to curb the cold,

And meat for great and small;

The neighbors were friendly bidden,

And all had welcome true;

The poor from the gates were not chidden,

When this old cap was new.'

It was a No Man's Land, a land of Cockaigne, during the rest of the year, but at Christmas it was good old England.

This was the generous and wholesome feeling which makes Irving's Christmas sketches so delightful. They are full of the breath of a hallowed and gracious time. There is an inexpressible glamour over the simple narrative, and there are no passages in his books more familiar or more justly popular. It was this poetic aura over very substantial facts to which Dickens gave such exquisite expression. He treats Christmas as a season when Christianity may be represented as really practicable—when simple generosity and forgiveness and repentance may be depicted as natural and actual, and when it is fair to give glimpses of what this modern world, the world of London or New York, would be if people were [Page 303.1] governed by Christian rules, and practiced the faith which they profess.

Dickens does this, of course, in a characteristic and sympathetic way. Honest good cheer is a large part of his Christmas. It is practical Christianity which his blithe pen preaches and describes—feeding the hungry, soothing the sick, raising the fallen, visiting the fatherless and the widow—a homely, hearty, beautiful Christianity; a season in which the bird of dawning singeth all night long. Thackeray followed in his own way. His little Christmas stories preach less than those of Dickens, but they have a prodigious moral. He felt deeply the benediction of a season which the traditions of his race had consecrated to the simple and sturdy virtues, and the tender pensiveness of his genius has a singularly touching expression in the little Christmas verses of various kinds that he wrote. Among these the most familiar are the delightful `Mahogany Tree:'

`Christmas is here:

Winds whistle shrill,

Icy and chill,

Little care we;

Little we fear

Weather without,

Sheltered about

The mahogany tree;'

and the Epilogue to Dr. Birch:

`The play is done, the curtain drops.'

Thackeray also, in his lecture upon `Charity and Humor'—first published, if we may make bold to mention it, in this Magazine—pays generous tribute to the character and influence of Dickens's Christmas literature as re-awakening the hearty spirit of Old English Christmas, which had fallen rather into slumber and forgetfulness.

But in New York and this year no slumber or forgetfulness has overtaken the gracious season. The long ranges of Christmas trees, as if a Birnam wood of evergreens had garrisoned the town; the bewildering piles and masses of Christmas gifts in miles of window, which by their infinite contrariety of temptation are sure to hold the eager youthful buyer in suspense; The markets solid with beeves and poultry and game, recalling the pictures in the old Illustrated News of the London markets at Christmas, and the poulterers with three and four stories of solid poultry covering the entire front of the house; the crowds of buyers with the happy look of the mind bent upon giving pleasure—all these things, and the vast miscellany of sights that can be `better imagined than described,' recall the generous old Christmas traditions, the feeling with which as boys we all read Irving's Sketch-Book and Bracebridge Hall, and then Dickens and Thackeray, and the satisfaction with which we passed from intoning the solemn music of Milton's `Hymn on the Nativity,' and Wordsworth's poem,

The minstrels sang their Christmas tunes

Last night beneath my cottage eaves,'

[Page 303.2] to gazing upon pictures of the bringing in of the boar's head, and the wassail, and Kenny Meadows's blindman's buff, and dishing the Christmas pudding. The Yule-logs, we are told, like half of the Christmas observances, are heathen reminiscences and traditions. But `before Abraham was, I am.' There is nothing in the deepest and best sense human which in the truest and highest sense is not also Christian. The characteristic feeling about Christmas, as it is revealed in literature and tradition and association, is the striking and beautiful tribute to the practicability of Christianity.

Two recent events in England were treated by the papers with an attention wholly disproportioned to their importance. One was the libel suit of Mr. Lawson and Mr. Labouchere, and the other was the suit against Rosenberg for libels upon the two `professional beauties' Mrs. Langtry and Mrs. Cornwallis West. The secret of the interest in both was the personal scandal involved. Both illustrated a reckless license of the press, which is without parallel of the kind in this country. They are both, also, illustrative of that kind of coarseness, as of the old Berserker and Viking, which Taine and other foreign observers perceive in our English race. Another form of the same thing is what we know as blackguardism. The origin of this word Richardson indicates by a quotation from Gifford's notes to Ben Jonson: `In all great houses, but particularly in the royal residences, there were a number of mean and dirty dependents whose office it was to attend the wood-yard, sculleries, etc.; of these the most forlorn wretches seem to have been selected to carry coals to the kitchens, halls, etc. To this smutty regiment, who attended the progresses, and rode in the carts with the pots and kettles, the people in derision gave the name of blackguards.' Richardson cites, among his illustrations of the use of the word, a passage from Ben Jonson' masque of Love Restored, and one from `Hudibras,' beginning,

`Thou art some paltry blackguard sprite,

Condemn'd to drudgery in the night.'

A recent biography of Lord Beaconsfield, by Mr. T. P. O'Connor, a work so severe upon the career of the Prime Minister as to have evoked a counter Life, hints at Mr. Disraeli's powers as a blackguard, and as the counter Life of the earl depicts him as a proud stoic under abuse of every kind, the Spectator answers it by reproducing some specimens of his vituperation. The Globe had taunted Mr. Disraeli as an adventurer in politics, and the young politician, then in his thirty-second year, replied in a letter to the Times by alluding to the writer in the Globe as `the thing who concocts the meagre sentences and drivels out the rheumy rhetoric of the Globe.' Upon a bantering reply by the Globe, Mr. Disraeli retorted:

`The editor of the Globe must have a more contracted mind and a paltrier spirit than even I imagined, if he [Page 304.1] can suppose for a moment that an ignoble controversy with an obscure animal like himself can gratify the passion for notoriety of one whose words at least have been translated into the languages of polished Europe, and circulated by thousands in the New World. It is not, then, my passion for notoriety that has induced me to tweak the nose and inflict sundry kicks on the baser part of his base body—to make him eat dirt, and his own words, fouler than any filth; but because I wished to show to the world what a miserable poltroon, what a craven dullard, what a literary scarecrow, what a mere thing stuffed with straw and rubbish, is this soi-disant director of public opinion and official organ of Whig politics.'

The Globe then proved its assertions incontestably.

This irritable temperament and unbridled tongue are unfortunate possessions for any one who takes part in public discussion. He should not begin until he understands the conditions of the contest, and he will then perceive that upon its surface it is not one of principle and reason, but of selfishness and meanness and foul play. The moment that he professes to prefer cleanliness to dirt, he raises an uproar of objurgation.

In one of Albert Gallatin's letters, recently published, he warns his correspondent not to be troubled by the cry of Pharisee, which his political opponents will certainly raise against him. It is a policy akin to that of abusing the plaintiff's attorney. To sneer at a man as affecting superior virtue because he prefers decency and truthfulness in dealing, whether in politics, or in business, or in any relation of life, is a very amusing but an undeniably effective proceeding. It is really a charge of hypocrisy. It assumes that nobody sincerely wishes anything but what is mean and contemptible, and that to profess a preference for cleanliness is but a more disgusting form of meanness. The truth is that the mere suggestion of decency is a reproach to those who are satisfied to lie in the mire, and inevitably it extorts the grunt of angry sarcasm.

This cry of Phariseeism is especially common in politics. A young man beginning `to attend to his duties as an American citizen' finds immediately that he is expected to sacrifice his self-respect, to flatter and wheedle and lie, to affect good-fellowship with men whom he sees to be despicable, to drink and `treat,' and `run wid de masheen,' and clap `the boys' on the back, and to affect to believe of his political adversaries what Dr. Johnson asserted of his, that `the devil was the first Whig.' If he does not conform—if he declines to drink, and prefers to talk honestly, and to show that he scorns the petty arts that are instinctively repulsive to every generous man—he is marked by his more cunning opponents; and it is they, not those whom he is accused of flouting, who sneer privately to their henchmen that he is `stuck up,' and `unco guid,' and `high and mighty,' and `too proud to speak to a poor man.' We have heard a bar-room statesman insist that a man who brought his own cigars to a political meeting at the tavern, [Page 304.2] instead of buying them at the bar, could not hope to succeed in public life.

Don't be troubled, said Gallatin, because you are called a Pharisee. Blackguardism is not a difficult art, but it is very costly to the performer. When A pelts B with sarcasm and ridicule, B, if he can talk at all, can easily retort. But it is well for him if he has learned that such missiles recoil and wound the thrower. Many a public man, for the gratification of an hour, in giving way to his own bitter feeling amid the delighted applause of loyal stupidity, which innocently confounds fury with force, has forfeited forever the respect of really honorable men. It is a terrible gift, that of fluent blackguardism, however easy it may be, and the more intelligent the blackguard, the more fatal the fluency.

It is fatal to the blackguard, however, only in the estimation of really high-minded men. The universality of the practice, which Gallatin remarks, shows its effectiveness. Non-conformity condemns conformity. Not to yield to the usual custom is to criticize those who do yield as weak or deceived. So when a political orator, addressing a multitude of politicians who hold that intrigue and bribery and swindling of every kind are pardonable in politics, sneers at the men who do not believe that political bricks can be made without the straw of honor and honesty, as Puritans and Pharisees, the crowd feel that they are justified, and shout with triumph over the pretentious hypocrites and smug saints. The orator pleases the crowd, but the judicious grieve. He gains the world, but he loses his own soul. The slums may follow a blackguard, but honorable men demand a different leader.

But the cry of Pharisee is not only a missile, it is also a measure of him who hurls it. It is not an argument, it is simply an appeal to the prejudice of base minds. The man who resorts to it reveals his own essential baseness. With whatever rhetoric he may ornament it, he can not conceal it, and the rhetoric is but a decoration of carrion. The test of power in the contention of debate is the ability to scorn reliance upon these Cow-boy and Skinner tactics. They do not assail the argument of an opponent. They do not meet the foe in a fair field. They skulk and dodge, and strike from behind and in the dark. His opponent sits down, and Cleon rises. He ridicules the face, the form, the movement of his antagonist. He sneers that he is an angel astray in this wicked world, a Pharisee thanking God that he is not as other men. The crowd delightedly cheer. A Pharisee! a Pharisee! That is the end of the argument. The orator's victory is complete. What an able man! What an ugly foe! But his name is Cleon; it is not Pericles.

Those who venture under Niagara must expect to be drenched, and a man who proposes to take part in public affairs must be blackguard-proof. If he venture not to like dirt, [Page 305.1] he will be told that he lacks sympathy with the people. If he suggest honest dealing and loyalty to principle, he will be warned to take care lest he expect too much of human nature. If he refuse to stifle his convictions, he will be exhorted to take men as they are, and not to insist upon heavenly standards. But if he persist not only in preaching decency, but in attempting to practice it—away with him! he is a Pharisee! If drenching is sure to take away a man's breath, he should reflect carefully before going under Niagara. If his soul is wrung by the cry of Pharisee, he should see clearly that it is his duty to encounter it before he provokes it.

If it should be understood that the cabinet was to be dissolved and reorganized because the President insisted that the wives of the Secretaries should visit a particular person, the amazed country would conclude that the republic had become ridiculous. Yet a person has recently died of whom most of our readers probably have never heard, and who was the cause of the `break up' of President Jackson's first cabinet. The story is told in many memoirs of the time, and it is interesting as having led to the nomination and election of Mr. Van Buren to the Presidency. It is also illustrative of the headstrong temper and folly of a man who was the idol of a great political party.

Pretty Peggy O'Neil, as she was familiarly called, who had been a noted tavern belle at Washington during the administration of John Quincy Adams, was, at the close of it, the widow of Purser Timberlake of the navy, and had married Major Eaton, a Senator from Tennessee, just as General Jackson was elected President. Major Eaton was one of the personal henchman of Jackson. He had written a `campaign life' of him, and the general was very much attached to him. After a short bridal journey Senator and Mrs. Eaton returned to Washington, and she very soon left cards, as `Oliver Oldschool' informs us in letters written at the time, upon the wife of Mr. Calhoun, the Vice-President, and the wives of the Secretaries. Mr. Rush was then Secretary of the Treasury, General Porter of War, and Mr. Southard of the Navy.

`Good society was in commotion.' It was whispered that Mrs. Eaton's conduct before her marriage had unfitted her for good society, and as the ladies upon whom she had called were, according to the official social etiquette of Washington, of the highest rank, those who were of `a less exalted station,' as Sir Joseph Porter would describe it, might do as they pleased about calling upon Mrs. Eaton. The cabinet ladies declined to recognize Mrs. Eaton, and the tea-pot of society was in a most tempestuous state when the newly elected President Jackson arrived in Washington, and to him, the old friend of her new husband, Mrs. Eaton made her appeal. The general warmly took her part, and swore that he would compel the ladies of [Page 305.2] Washington to call upon his friend's wife. He appointed Major Eaton Secretary of War, and his domineering will overawed a part of society, which called upon her, but the other part steadfastly refused to call. Even the President's niece, `the lady of the White House,' refused, and the general sent her to Tennessee to reflect. As a goddess of war and battles, Mrs. Eaton was called Bellona, and when the courtly Van Buren, then a widower, arrived at the capital, he surveyed the situation as a politician. He saw Old Hickory resolutely bent upon Mrs. Eaton's recognition, and he knew that the road to political preferment did not lie through opposition to Jackson's will, and with all his bland address he set himself to aid the wishes of his chief. Mr. Van Buren was Secretary of State, and a man of the world. He was especially friendly with the English minister, Mr. Vaughan, and Baron Krudener, the Russian minister, both of whom were bachelors, and each gave a ball in honor of Bellona. But, says our chronicler, at the Russian ball the wife of the minister of Holland, on entering the supper-room, saw Mrs. Eaton already seated at the head of the table, with an empty chair at her side, designed for the lady from Holland. But that lady, having already declined Mr. Van Buren's honeyed invitation, urged in her own native Dutch tongue, to be presented to Mrs. Eaton, now refused to take the seat by her, and thus be compelled to seem to recognize her, and taking her husband's arm, she walked out of the room with stern dignity, and returned to her house. General Jackson was full of wrath, and foolishly threatened to send the Dutch minister home. But Mr. Van Buren had won his heart.

This suppressed hostile social situation continued during the first year of the Jackson administration. It was coincident with the general's jealousy of the Vice-President, Mr. Calhoun, which culminated in the letter of May 30, 1830, which is the date of the real but unconscious destruction of Mr. Calhoun's hopes of the Presidency. Upon the subject of recognizing Mrs. Eaton, Mr. Calhoun had said that it was a ladies' quarrel, and that the laws of the ladies were like those of the Medes and Persians, and admitted neither of argument nor of amendment. The affair of Mrs. Eaton was temporarily adjusted, but after the publication of Mr. Calhoun's attack upon the President, a dissolution of the cabinet was inevitable. In the spring of 1831, therefore, General Jackson undoubtedly agreed with Mr. Van Buren, Secretary Eaton, and Postmaster-General Barry, who composed the Eaton party in the cabinet, to resign. Their resignation enabled the President to request that of the others, and entirely to renew the cabinet. Mr. McLane was recalled from England, and Mr. Van Buren was appointed his successor. He left upon his mission immediately, in the summer of 1831. In the following winter occurred the great debate in the Senate upon his confirmation, during [Page 306.1] which Senator Marcy, of New York, announced the fundamental doctrine of `machine' politics, `To the victor belong the spoils of the enemy'—a phrase admirably chosen to describe the mingled folly and ferocity of the system of patronage introduced by General Jackson.

`A woman scorned' has been the secret source of many historic events and the theme of epic song. But considerable events never sprang from causes more ridiculous than the dissolution of a cabinet and the election of a President from the attempt of the Chief Executive of a great nation to dictate to American women whom they should visit. Such scandals were made possible by the election of a man like Jackson to the Presidency. But they would be astounding now. Indeed, those who are accustomed to bewail the golden age of the republic as lying behind us may well imagine this situation, and figure any President to-day attempting to compel the families of the members of his cabinet to visit any one upon whom suspicion had publicly breathed, and requiring the resignation of the Secretaries if their families refused. The Eaton story is told at length in Mr. Parton's entertaining and instructive Life of Jackson. But nobody can read that book or any other political memoir of the time without feeling that we need ask no odds of our fathers in political decency. ------------------

There is no more thriving or enterprising city than Rochester, in New York, and it is singular that the two things which are most widely known as associated with the city are the Rochester rappings and the last leap of Sam Patch. The name is familiar, but to many persons it is fabulous. Yet there are many living who remember his jumps as matters of contemporary notoriety, and one of them has recently told the story of his last leap, which he saw. The recurrence of the fiftieth anniversary of the incident impelled him to record the details. The writer was then a printer in Rochester.

Sam Patch was a waif, a `wharf rat,' who, according to this historian, spent his days in licking sugar hogsheads and thieving, and his nights where he could. But he was a daring fellow, and was as much at home in the water as out of it, and became notorious for leaping into the Passaic River, in New Jersey, from mast-heads and yard-arms and bowsprits, and in the autumn of 1829 he was in Western New York, and had made two `leaps of the cataract,' as they were called, at Niagara. A stage about eighty feet high was put up at the side of the American Fall, and he leaped into the foam. Patch had a black bear, which he cruelly threw into the water before he leaped, and fortunately the bear always emerged alive. The success of the leaps at Niagara gave him a `sporting' notoriety, and he was invited by that fraternity in Rochester, who took charge [Page 306.2] of him, and kept him half drunk. The Genesee Fall, at Rochester, is ninety-five feet in height, and it was announced that he would leap from the precipice into the river below.

A large crowd assembled, and Patch appeared, leading the bear. Hats were passed around to collect money for `the poor fellow,' of which the old printer says he probably got none. About one o'clock on the 6th of November he stepped to the edge of a rock overhanging the river, and dragging the wretched beast after him, suddenly jerked him off the rock. The poor animal whirled through the air, and reaching the water, sank, but soon swam ashore, and was caught for further torture. Then Sam Patch, with a gay handkerchief twisted about his head, and in shirt and trousers, bowed all around to the spectators, and leaped clear of the rock, spread his arms, and holding his feet together and leaning backward, he fell rapidly to the water, which he struck feet foremost, having suddenly thrown his arms down close to his body. He re-appeared on the surface of the river some rods below, and he gayly pushed away the boat that was ready to take him, and swam ashore. This feat was so successful that the sporting fraternity decided upon another exhibition. They built a scaffold upon the rock twenty-five feet high, so that the leap would be one hundred and twenty feet. The day was a week later, and a still larger crowd assembled. The printer was on the roof of a neighboring factory, and he saw that Sam Patch was pretty drunk. But he climbed totteringly to his perch, and threw off the bear, which happily escaped from the river as before; and again poor Patch, drunkenly bowing to the crowd, sprang into the air; but his body bent to the right, and struck the water below with a loud noise. The day was gloomy and chill. Sam Patch disappeared, and nothing more was seen of him until the next March, when his body, `nibbled by fishes,' was found by a fishing party at the mouth of the river, seven miles below. One of the things that could not be done, moralizes the printer, was safely jumping the Genesee Falls with a skin full of whiskey. He adds that a nephew of Fisher Ames, whose skin was often in the same plight, but whose poetical genius rivalled that of `Sands, Rodman Drake, and even Bryant,' celebrated the demise of Patch in `a poem of singular beauty, a parody on Dibdin's ``Will, Watch,''' reciting in iambic verse how Patch took

`His final, eternal, and life's fatal leap.'

The poet has not succeeded in giving to his hero the fame that tradition has secured to him. Probably few of our readers ever saw the poem, but Sam Patch is a name as immortal as Rip Van Winkle. Indeed, were the Easy Chair not more considerate of its readers than Patch was of his bear, it would proceed to show at length how Sam Patch constantly re-appears on all sides, and how notoriety is won [Page 307.1] at the expense of `good fame' or of decent living. But it forbears. We do not remember that `Flaccus,' in his `Passaic: a Group of Musings touching that River,' alludes to the man whose name, by an odd chance, is more widely known than that of any other man associated with the river. But thousands of travellers in the innumerable railroad trains which daily and nightly pass close to the spot where Sam Patch made his last leap endeavor—and generally in vain—to catch a glimpse of the picturesque gorge into which the Genesee plunges. There is a wicked story told among them, perhaps, as the train rolls into the spacious station, about the famous statesman who, in a paroxysm of after-dinner eloquence at Rochester, declared that Greece and Rome in their palmiest days never had a water-fall ninety-six feet high. But Greece had a fame which rivals that of Sam Patch, as the Rochester Express remarks, in that of

`The aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome.'

Mr. Wendell Phillips has published a caustic and brilliant denunciation of most of the memorial statues of public men in Boston. He interprets the old proverb, De mortuis nil nisi bonum, to mean, Of the dead say nothing unless you can tell something good of them. His criticism was perhaps suggested by a meeting to form an association in Boston for the erection of commemorative statues, tablets, and other works of art, and some such association is plainly necessary if the sharp words of Mr. Phillips are true.

Some of these biting comments are worthy of preservation, for nothing is pleasanter than the courage of a brilliant man who says pointedly precisely what he thinks, and in saying it inevitably speaks for thousands of other men. `Boston,' says this terrible critic, `seems hag-ridden with Thomas Ball, and so groans under the infliction of hideous statues.' He proceeds:

`Mayor Quincy was a man of Goethe-like presence, rare manly beauty, and a sedate, dignified bearing. In a different way his figure was as impressive as was the grand repose of Webster. But what stands for him in School Street?—A dancing master clogged with horse-blankets. Not a dancing master taking a position—that might possibly be graceful—but a dancing master assuming an attitude, which is always ridiculous, and wholly unlike Quincy, who never assumed anything, but was nature itself all over. I tender my sincere condolence to those who share the great mayor's blood.'

Of the statue of Franklin he say:

`His comical companion, a tipsy old gentleman, somewhat weak on his spindle-shanks, swaying feebly to and fro on a jaunty cane, as with villainous leer he ogles the ladies. And this represents the sturdy, self-centred, quiet dignity of Franklin, which at once charmed and awed the court of Louis. Ball's Quincy has one merit—it is better than Franklin; and it is lucky for the artist that his clumsy mayor has the dilapidated roué for a foil.'

Here is Edward Everett:

`And so we come in our walk to Everett, in trousers too large for him, and a frock-coat which he has slightly outgrown. It requires consummate genius to manage the [Page 307.2] modern costume. But this figure also seems toppling over backward, as, with more energy than Everett ever showed in his lifetime, he exclaims, ``That is the road to Brighton!'' pointing with lifted arm and wide-spread fingers to that centre of beef and the races.'

Here is Charles Sumner:

`If this bronze pyramid on Boylston Street be a cask made of staves, why is it set on human legs? And if it is really Sumner, why do his chest and shoulders rise out of a barrel? Is his broadcloth new felt, too stiff for folds, or is he dressed in shoe-leather? That matters little, however. But no angry Southerner would have needed to smite those overfed cheeks, which may have faced many a snow-storm on the locomotive, or many a northeaster on our coast, but surely must have been far too innocent of thought and passion ever to anger senates or rouse nations to war. This heavy-moulded prize-fighter is the marvellous achievement of that wise committee which rejected Miss Whitney's ``matchless model'' (as they confessed it to be) of the seated Senator, ``because no woman could make a statue!'' No, indeed, I hope not, if this Irish porter in his Sunday clothes is the ideal they desired.'

And here are Webster and Horace Mann:

`Then Webster, that mass of ugly iron at the State-house! which cheers us as we climb those endless steps, robbing the effort of half its weariness by resting us with a laugh, of which a journal said, with undue frankness, that Everett, well knowing how hideous it was, let it be raised to revenge himself on the man who overshadowed and eclipsed him. But they have supplied him too with a foil, which half redeems its shapelessness. It is Horace Mann, waked up so suddenly that in his hurry he has brought half his bedclothes clinging to his legs and arms.'

And here is Pater Patriæ:

`But who is this riding master, on a really good horse, staring so heroically up Commonwealth Avenue? Washington? Well, then, my worthy George, drop your legs closer to your horse's side; it must fatigue you to hold them off at that painful distance. Rest yourself, general; subside for a moment, as you used to do at Mount Vernon, into the easy pose of a gentleman; don't oblige us to fancy you are exhibiting, and rather caricaturing, a model ``seat'' for the guidance of some slow pupil. Can not you see, right in front of you, Rimmer's Hamilton? Let that teach you the majesty of repose.'

This is criticism which `sticks.' It will be as impossible hereafter to look at the Everett statue without hearing it say, `That is the road to Brighton,' as at the sitting statue of Washington in the capital with its hand extended toward the Patent-office without recalling the popular notion that it is asking, `Where are my clothes?' Ridicule, of course, is not criticism, and may be grossly unjust. But Mr. Phillips praises as warmly as he censures. We have long ago commmended the model of a statue to Sumner by Miss Whitney, a copy of which is in the Union League Club in New York, and which is altogether a most satisfactory portraiture of the man. Mr. Phillips speaks of it without reserve in the same strain. He also greatly praises the Soldiers' Monument upon Boston Common, saying that it has one peer, the `Minute-Man,' by French, at Concord, `so full of life and movement that one fears he shall not see it again if he passes that way the next week.' He objects, however, to the Soldiers' Monument, as to all monuments of the kind that he has observed since the war, that he finds no sign of the broken chain or of the [Page 308.1] negro soldier. Let us tell the whole truth, he concludes, or raise no monument.

For artistic fitness, however, the only way is for committees who are charged with the erection of memorials to consult acknowledged authorities, and to be governed by their decision. That committee, even of intelligent persons, may go very wrong, the rejection of Miss Whitney's Sumner proves. But, so far as we can learn, that result was due to the singular prejudice which even clever and accomplished men may have against the artistic capacity of women. It was the more comical in this instance because the model was there to plead for itself. To say that a woman could not make a fitting statue, when a most fitting statue made by a woman was upon the table before them, was a judgment only to be explained by the ludicrous supposition that want of physical power was the incapacity meant. But a woman who can design and execute a model has already done the artist's work.

There are two monuments under consideration which will be probably very satisfactory, because of the method pursued in deciding what they shall be, and by whom they shall be made. These are the memorial at the birthplace of Washington, in Virginia, and upon the battle-field of Bennington, in Vermont. The first has been confided to the Secretary of State, who has consulted friends most accomplished in art. And the other is in charge of a committee which will undoubtedly assign the work to some artist of renown. The ridiculous results of jobbery in such matters are displayed for our national shame in Washington. The consequences of competition subject to prejudice are seen in the substitution of an inferior for a superior work in the Sumner statue. If the Boston Memorial Society shall do something to help us in our sore need of securing the nil nisi bonum in our memorial statues and monuments, it will receive the gratitude of the country.

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Harper’s magazine: [1879-1880]
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— Harper’s magazine : [1879-1880], Alden, Henry Mills, 1836-1919 (editor)Electronic editionHarper [and] Brothers. New York: 1850-. (Contents: 60.355 (1879) ; 60.356 (1880))